City

Cities (and villages) have traditionally represented various concepts associated with the idea of centering. For many cultures, their major city or village is the World Center. In Egypt, creation itself occurred when a primal mound rose from the Nile and became the cult center at Heliopolis. Delphi, home of the Greek oracle, was the navel of the world. Any village into which the people emerged from Mother Earth into this existence is the World Center, as in the case of many of the pueblo cultures in the American Southwest.

Most ancient and medieval cities were built around a central temple or church, often defined by walls with four gates representing the four directions. In a sense, then, cities were mandalas, representing wholeness and security and a sense that through the structure of the city, the inhabitants participated in that wholeness. In terms of collective psychology, cities have represented not only wholeness but a reasoned barrier against the chaos surrounding their walls....