Religion and Housing

Directives

Religion can provide direction regarding various components of the house. The Hindu Vastu Shastra (ancient doctrine) specifies what, where, how, and when one should build, including location, layout, orientation, arrangement, dimensions, timing of construction, landscaping, materials, colors, and iconography. Feng shui in China was Taoism influenced and modified versions are followed by the Vietnamese (Phong Thuy), Koreans (Pungsu-jiriseol), and others. In their own ways, these provide directives about similar topics and attempt to achieve harmony between the occupant and the house by using design to channel positive and negative energy in beneficent ways in the belief that this will lead to health, safety, longevity, and prosperity of the occupants.

Prescriptions and Proscriptions

Prescriptions specify location, nature, and design. First, they establish the need for and specific characteristics of spaces for religion or keeping religious objects. For example, the Hindu house needs a special room, space, alcove, closet, or altar for pooja (ritual of worship, prayer, and religion). Japanese and Vietnamese Buddhist houses have an altar for religious icons, artifacts, pictures of ancestors, and ritual objects and offerings. Hopis have their sacred kiva, a circular subterranean chamber with only the roof above ground, for fertility rites. Second, religion sometimes specifies the locations of spaces or activities. In the Hindu house, sacred space (e.g., pooja space) is expected to be located in the ritually pure part of the house. Third, religion might include a requirement to separate and distance categories of spaces. For example, orthodox Jews have two sets of ovens, sinks, dishwashers, refrigerators, and storage for dishes to comply with their requirement for strict separation of food categories (meat from milk). In the Hindu house, sacred spaces need to be separated from profane space (e.g., toilet). Fourth, religion can specify or may express preference for an orientation for the house, or spaces within, toward a preferred [Page 592]or sacred direction or away from it. South is the preferred direction for houses to face for Zoroastrians (as it represents Ahura Mazda, “supreme divinity” or good), whereas for Hindus as for the Navajo hogan, east, the direction of the rising sun, is cosmologically very significant and is the most auspicious direction for houses to face. Noncardinal location-centric directionality is followed by Jews, for whom the prayer wall must face Jerusalem, and by Muslims toward Mecca (qibla).

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