Sacred spaces: Shrines, Chaples, Temples. In the Province of Chimborazo, Ecuador

Abstract

The article brings us closer to the reality of sacred spaces to the extent that an irruption of the sacred has taken place in them, a hierophany. It is necessary to go frequently to those places to keep a relationship with the deities manifested there alive and effective so that, in the same way, the benefits redound to the good of the community; but, likewise, they are places that, from profane, have become sacred through a process of sacralization based on rites that separate that special place from others that do not contain the virtues needed to obtain the “graces” of the divinities for agricultural or livestock reproduction necessary for life. These imaginary conditions of reproduction are cyclically renewed in these spaces through different activities, all of them religious: festivals, pilgrimages, prayers.