treasure temples that were accidentally found for kids

Such it is to this day, even when money itself is nearly weightless. Simply put, they, or the heirs of their practices, built treasuries and banks that look like temples-columns, peristyles, stone-solid and impenetrable. But the bankers did not want to give up the imagery. That event marked a significant change: the clear separation of temple and treasure. They had defiled and corrupted the temple by bringing the worst impulses of materialism into the sacred space.

An important moment and indicator of this western cultural consciousness shift finds its archetype in the parable of the money lenders from the New Testament in which Jesus famously evicts the lenders and all the merchants from the temple. That physical and metaphysical reality has given way to more specialized forms as economic life has become increasingly disconnected from physical and natural resources in short, economic life has become increasingly abstract. With this, human consciousness and its capacities for knowledge have shifted away from the ancient world in which the priesthood held the spirit and the gold. The rise of scientific materialism in the Renaissance in parallel development with the migration of an anthropocentric world view into the primacy of self-interest have both contributed to what has become an intensifying need for resource accumulation as the most coveted measure of worth. But it was certainly not the end of the use of the temple edifice to cultivate the powers associated with it. With their demise came the end of that real and practiced nexus. It may be that this particular founding impulse of the Order of the Templars constituted the last attempt to sacralize economic activity. One might say that the money was always circulating to fulfill others’ initiatives, and it was a rule of the order that there be no private or personal ownership of its assets. The gold the Templars held was circulated through loan for capital projects. Travelers could then exchange for gold along their journeys. As part of protecting the treasures of religious pilgrims, they created reclaimable credit notes as equivalent value for the gold they received from travelers. Anyone who may have seen the 1982 traveling exhibition called the Vatican Collection: The Papacy and Art, billed as the most expensive art exhibition ever mounted, will understand the vast extent of riches accumulated by the Catholic church, as just one example.Īs a contrasting example, the Templars, founded under the aegis of the Pope in the early 12 th century, carried out studies such as the understanding of the sacred geometry of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem along with an emerging practical and service-based banking function. That temples contained and maintained treasuries from Ancient Greece up to and through the Middle Ages and beyond. Sometimes the temples were plundered for spoils, sometimes subjected to the raw will of political power and attended by wanton desecration. It was kept in the temple treasury and meted out by the priests for material needs in the community, to put it simplistically.

It is true that the ancient temples and hierophants who inhabited them were entrusted with sacrificial gold and other precious materials, which may have included wheat.

There are deep origins to the temple-as-bank myth. In this investor-driven business context only profit appears sacred, while true sacrifice in the form of bailouts is meted out from the public trust. However, despite the polished materials and claims that relationships matter, bankers are not priests rather, they preside over a regulated culture that celebrates money not as service but as commodity. The language of trust is brandished amidst the marble columns and promises of security, which we depositors insure through our governmental agencies. How is it that high-profile banks have managed to perpetuate their mythic images as temples of finance? Despite the revelations of wrong-doing, ethical breaches, and market manipulation, banks are still keepers of our money.

Treasure temples that were accidentally found for kids