Consecration

A consecrated object is considered a link with higher reality and often ritually delimited from the everyday world. The act of consecration is thus a deliberate attempt to establish a link with the divine. This link may be in the form of a consecrated building which may contain the relic or material traces of a holy person who has left this world - this is true of relics of the Buddha in stupas and pagodas, and in relics of Christ or the saints in Christian churches. Where a physical relic may not be present, a church is nevertheless consecrated in the name of a saint. The link may be the image of a deity, which will be symbolically transformed so that it represents the deity during a ceremony and then the life of the deity made symbolically to leave the image after the ceremony is over. Consecration considered as permanent may be taken to exemplify the absoluteness of the divine; as temporary, the limitedness of human effort and of the material world.

During the act of consecration, the consecrator himself may need to be consecrated. This is true of the priest at mass, who represents Christ, and who is consecrated for life; or of the individual Hindu consecrating an image for a ceremony, who must first take on the aspects of the divine through a preliminary self-consecration. This giving of divine authority is further exemplified in the consecration or anointing of kings or rulers. The outward ritual giving power to consecrate is related to the inner ritual of contemplation, and so related to spiritual discipline; in fact, the outward ritual may not always be necessary. However, the power to consecrate, whether for the good of others (as in Catholicism) or for the benefit of the recipient (as in Buddhism), generally comes through some recognized tradition or source and is passed through established channels.

A specific example of consecration over which much controversy has arisen is the consecration of bread and wine at communion. Whether the bread and wine are actually transubstantiated on consecration although maintaining their outward appearance, or whether they are viewed as symbolically the body and blood of Christ, the centrality of such consecration to the Christian religion is undeniable. In fact, in many cultures, the ingesting of food is a potent means for transmitting psychic substance, although in Hindu tradition, for example, communion with the deity through consecrated food is without mystery. Similarly, the laying on of hands, as in ordination, expresses the continuity of saving grace from a senior to a junior.