In Freemasonry, the acronym GADU is used to designate God, the supreme intelligence that orders life and its evolution. The first cause, the main creator and also, after these initials, the Great Architect of the Universe. A non-accidental act that symbolizes the close relationship that architecture and religious worship have always had.
“And that they make a sanctuary for me, so that I may dwell among them. According to everything I am going to show you, {according} to the design of the tabernacle and the design of all its furniture, so you will {do}. In Exodus from the Bible it is already made very clear: God will not live in any house. It will be in a place meticulously designed by himself that is up to his task. This maxim of every spiritual guru for materializing a utopian place on Earth to protect the elect, and which James Hilton described as Shangri-La in his novel Lost Horizons (1933), is repeated without exception in the history of any religious movement.
An earthly paradise where you can apply your doctrine without reservation, celebrate rites and ceremonies behind the backs of public opinion, and teach the strict obedience of its faithful. And that as a result, he has given a long list of buildings and microcities where he striking, eccentric and extreme seems to have no limits. Austerity, on the other hand, is only a mandate for its devotees.
Sometimes, as happened in the Rajneeshpuram community, they make secrecy their urban precept , occupying remote farms where they can build and develop their community without anyone watching them. In others, however, they want to leave their grandeur latent for all to see. This is the case of the presence of Scientology in Los Angeles, which has 26 properties, some of them in historic buildings of great beauty in old Hollywood. We started a series to relate the most surprising cases to date.
1. International Headquarters of the Light of the World in Guadalajara (Mexico)
Neither Holy Trinity nor a humble dwelling. Since it was founded in 1926, the religious community La Luz del Mundo has spread throughout 58 countries both its unitarian doctrine and a maximalist and bizarre way of understanding ecclesiastical architecture. No less than 15,000 temples settled in the more is always more have been built since its creator Eusebio Joaquín González was entrusted to the company to restore the primitive version of the Christian Church founded by Jesus Christ in the 1st century.
Founded in 1926 by a peasant and ex-military man who applied the severe methods of the army as a mechanism of obedience in the religious movement, this church is the architect of some of the most impressive buildings in Latin America. Its international headquarters in Guadalajara (Mexico), recognizable by its pyramid shape, is the tallest building on the continent at 83 meters high. Built between 1983 and 1991 with the economic contributions of its almost 200 thousand members, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi), four studios competed for its construction, with the Mexican architect Leopoldo Fernández Font being the final architect of the project.
With an elliptical plant of 60 x 90 meters, it has a capacity for 15,000 people in the most crowded ceremonies, as happens every August 14 with the celebration of the sacrament that gathers parishioners from all over the world for a massive baptism. This building of the second largest confession in Mexico (only after the Catholic Church) lacks a facade. In its absence, a set of parabolas are replicated in ascending order to give the feeling of infinity until it is crowned at a peak. From the top, you can see Byzantine mosaic covers on each roof tinted with a rainbow color, symbol of the covenant between God and Noah when he stepped on firm ground to promise that he would not destroy the world again. This light fantasy is reiterated at night with neon-based lighting in the seven mystical colors.
Inside, the pomposity reaches its climax. A sanctuary like a Millennium Falcon - a true reflection of the futuristic trend of the time, as its architect once declared - with walls painted in white and marbled tint where the initials of the grandson of its founder and current apostle, Naasón Joaquín , follow one another. Garcia. The ceiling seems to undulate through an inexhaustible succession of chandeliers, chandeliers, and stained glass.
But its impact on the city does not end here. The temple is surrounded by a colony known as La Hermosa Providencia, founded in 1952 and whose inhabitants - about 8,000 in total - are almost exclusively faithful to its church. All its streets have biblical names - Bethlehem, Gethsemane, Jerusalem, Jericho, Jordan, Nazareth ... - and end at the main avenue Dr. Samuel Joaquín Flores that leads directly to the temple. In its entrance, the left side is reserved for men and the right side for women.
Built on a 15-hectare site on the outskirts of Guadalajara, Eusebio Joaquín González acquired this land to build a community that would have its own resources, including a hospital, a school and a civil registry, in addition to a bank headquarters and a station station. police. At times, the organization has received harsh criticism for obtaining public services in exchange for political support during the government that Marcelino García Barragán seconded, making it a powerful institution outside and within the country.
His 'sci – fi' interpretation of religious architecture has been extended to other of his buildings in Mexico City, Cancun or Los Angeles. The temple that houses the Californian city, a kind of kitsch version of the buildings dedicated to the divinities of Ancient Greece, witnessed the arrest of Naasón Joaquín García last summer. The current leader of La Luz del Mundo was charged with 26 serious crimes of child pornography, sexual abuse of minors and human trafficking.
2. Lotus Yogaville (Virginia, USA)
This paradise for yogis took the form of a lotus in honor of the name that forms its initials, Light Of Truth Universal Shine (Temple to the Light of Universal Truth). It was the residence of the spiritual leader Swami Satchidananda until his last days. Swami began the initiatory journey through his native India and Sri Lanka until receiving the invitation of the artist Peter Max to visit the United States in 1966. There he would establish himself as a yoga teacher, gaining popularity after his acclaimed speech in Woodstock . "The heavenly sound that controls the entire universe" were his words to inaugurate the festival, according to the New York Times in his ephemeris. An ideal slogan to attract the faithful among musicians and celebrities during the turbulent seventies, which in the midst of euphoria of sitares and aroma of incense would wrap the spiritual leader in the formation of his first religious community in eastern Manhattan after obtaining nationality.
Years later, Swami would realize his dream of creating an ashram in a vast area of Buckingham County (Virginia), a Hindu monastery where to meditate and promote a cultural environment linked to yoga and vegetarianism that his followers must strictly follow (alcohol and drugs are also not allowed). The temple works began in 1982, after building a dirt dam and a 10-acre lake. The costs amounted to $ 2 million, which was covered by tithes and donations from the community.
On his website it is described in all kinds of details how the guru prepared his building plan with the architect Jim Jagadish McCabe. One of the most striking points was the elaboration of a "mystical cement" that would fill the temple's meditation chamber with "positive vibrations". Among its ingredients, in addition to precious pieces, gold, silver, holy water and sacred earth brought from places around the world, they say they have included a piece of lunar soil.
Its characteristic lotus shape houses twelve plywood beams, one for each petal and altar that represents the main world religions. It is their way of underlining the non-monotheistic character of the community, in which its members can continue practicing their own religion after entering the center. As a colophon, a dome of gold leaf, blue neon and pink glass mosaics, very fragile and forged in Italy. The central altar and red granite sculptures were sculpted by artisan workshops in the Indian region of Tamil Nadu, while the side pulpits are made of Kerala rosewood. On the esplanade, a 50 m2 pond connects the temple with the reception buildings.
Its opening ceremony on July 20, 1986 could not be more up to the task. In this article The Washington Post meticulously recounts all kinds of attractions that accompanied the two days of celebration, which included Awami himself dressed in a saffron robe pouring holy water on the temple from his helicopter.
Bhagavan Antle, a mystical magician and operator of wild animal parks in the US, now topical for the Netflix documentary Tiger King , led a hot procession down the James River to the Lotus temple made up of Bengal tigers, a baby elephant, jugglers with fire torches and pipers. Among the 3,000 people who attended the event, celebrities such as singer Carol King, Paul Winter or artist Peter Max or actors Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern did not want to miss this mystical 'bacchanalia' at its premiere. This video proves it.
3. Palmar de Troya (Seville)
Those who have seen the documentary series of the same name from Movistar + will attest - and never better said - to this bizarre chapter in our spiritual history. An example of how reality can far exceed fiction: who could guess that alleged appearances of the Virgin Mary to four girls in the Utrera district could lead to the formation of a heretical division of the Catholic Church with the papacy included.
The origin of everything goes back to the sixties, when Clemente Domínguez and Manuel Alonso, accountant for an insurer and lawyer by profession, decided to make profitable this 'miraculous' place, transforming it into the headquarters of the Order of the Carmelites of the Holy Face. . To do this, the first thing they did was buy the estate with the donation of 16 million made by the Baroness of Castillo de Chirel, after cajoling her with the visions, stigmas and messages from heaven that Clemente received.
Later they undertook long trips abroad, creating seats of their religious doctrine and collecting enough funds - the largest was that of a family from Wisconsin, owner of a chain of household appliances - to develop what would become the Sacred in 1978, Apostolic and Catholic Palmarian Church. The Palmerians were postulated as the authentic Catholic Church, since they considered that the Roman had departed from the true faith. That same year, Clemente Domínguez would proclaim himself as the new Pope Gregory XVII, after having been crowned by Jesus Christ himself in a vision, he claimed, as the legitimate successor of Paul VI.
With the construction of the Basilica Cathedral of Our Mother of the Palmar Coronada, Domínguez made the desire to have his own Vatican come true. Visible from the road that leads from Écija to Seville, the works that cost around 100 million euros - borne by donations from the faithful and apartment sales - would not be fully completed until 2014.
The Renaissance plan and invoice reminiscent of its Italian "enemy", houses an area of 3,500 square meters - the Basilica of San Pedro has 23,000 m2 - and is protected by a four-meter-high concrete wall that protects the temple from curious people to the entire temple. It has a dozen domes and a palm garden on the esplanade that leads to the temple.
The complex also includes several residences for the Palmarian pontiff and his court. At the entrance of the basilica, there is a portico flanked by a series of figures representing the saints canonized by the Palmerian church. Among them, Don Pelayo, San José Antonio Primo de Rivera, "San Francisco Franco" or San Adolfo Hitler . The video shown below allows an aerial view of the municipality in the heart of the Seville countryside.
4. Luciferino Temple Seeds of light (Quindío, Colombia)
“Do not continue to endure needs and live as you always dreamed of luxuries and pleasures. I advise him so that you sell your soul to the devil correctly and that your pact is successful. Many people have done it and today they live differently ”. What could be an announcement for sale by words is the welcome message that its founder Víctor Damián Rozo blurts out those interested in joining the Luciferian Church Seeds of Universal Light.
Self-proclaimed as the representative of Lucifer on Earth and the most famous sorcerer in Latin America, Rozo explains on his website the initiation process that any future candidate of the order must go through. After passing the tests, you must pay $ 20 to request a barcode that will be implanted - or tattooed - and thus prove yourself as a soldier of Lucifer in the battle of Armageddon that will happen during the end of the world.
This apocalyptic organization has been operating since 2015 in Quimbaya, a small municipality in west central Colombia, despite the fights with the Catholic priests in the area for ending the esoteric practices of their church. The journalist Andrés Páramo , in an interview he conducted with Rozo for the Vice publication, recounted the difficulties of accessing this building dedicated to Satan. Located on the outskirts of the municipality on a farm owned by its leader, he had to raffle three houses, two private pools, a garden riddled with giant plastic mushrooms and goblins, in addition to a dozen German shepherds who guard the farm. At the end of the road, there is a temple with the capacity to house 450 people, recognizable by a black gate and two large inverted crosses.
Son of shamans from Armenia, capital of Quindío, Rozo began to advertise his "spiritual gifts" on social networks while working in shoe stores. His great mission, to unseat 'the great harlot', as he himself refers to the church Paramo describes the syncretic sensation that entering this temple implies, as a reflection of the multiple beliefs in which its founder moves: from Catholicism and Christianity to indigenism, going through all kinds of spiritualistic practices, such as reading letters or rituals Santeria.
Páramo points out how the temple maintains the original internal design of a Catholic church, visible on the two paths of benches for the faithful who lead to the altar. The decoration, however, is a display of satanic iconography, with red as the predominant color and an inverted pentagram on the floor. The walls are flanked by torches that hold beast arms and a giant figure of the devil guards the altar holding a trident with his hand. It represents a faun sitting on the throne making the horned sign with the fingers of the other hand to all the faithful who gather in their rituals.
5. Headquarters of Scientology on the West Coast (Los Angeles, USA)
This religious movement that has famous faces like Tom Cruise, John Travolta or the singer Beck among its ranks, opened in 1976 the doors of its most emblematic temple in Los Angeles. Located at 4833 Fountain Avenue, it is popularly known as The Big Blue, referring to the cyan blue paint on its facade that blurs the border with the sky.
And it is that this building with a vee-shaped floor plan, and nods to Soviet architecture, imposes just by looking at it. In the center of its three modules stands a sign almost two meters high that clears any doubt about the institution it houses. On the roof, the logo of Scientology seems to levitate, a golden eight-pointed cross that symbolizes the different parts that an individual goes through in his life. A network of security cameras and bike-mounted guards preserve the secrecy of this property of more than 46 thousand square meters.
Remodeled in 2010 by the Gensler studio, authors of the offices of The Washington Post or the Shanghai Tower, its interior has a bookstore, a chapel, a purification center, large meeting rooms and the Pacific café where you can buy sandwiches and bars of big wave. The organization's center on the American West Coast, it also houses the Sea Organization to which the most dedicated members of the church belong.
This 1929 building was designed by architect Claud Beelman to house the Cedars Hospital in Lebanon for Jewish patients suffering from tuberculosis. Considered one of the architects of the art deco route in downtown Angeleno - the Roosevelt and Eastern Columbia buildings are an example of this - Beelman built this cement mass originally in white and in perspective, applying the principles of modern aesthetics that reduce ornamentation for the benefit of functionality.
"When the (Scientology) church started buying land on Hollywood Boulevard, most of the other investors had fled and the street belonged to fugitives, street vendors, and homeless people." In her New Yorker column, journalist Dana Goodyear describes how Scientology took advantage of the impoverishment of the land to acquire multiple properties and expand its real estate network. In the case of the Beelman building, the disbursement was reduced to five million dollars. "Tourists arrived in coaches, saw the Paseo de la Fame and returned directly to the bus. The Church of Scientology was one of the few things that got going; Often in those days, his was the only lights on at dusk, "Goodyear notes.
Scientology acquired a long list of historic buildings from Hollywood's golden age, in keeping with that mythology of ancient glamor in which it had developed. The famous Château Élysée on Franklin Avenue was the first of them. This 1927 building, emulating a 17th-century castle in French Normandy, was designed by Arthur E. Harvey as a luxury residence for movie stars, including Bette Davis and Ginger Rogers. In 1973, it was acquired by the Scientologist Church for 1.5 million dollars to host its 'Celebrity Center', a hotel for artists, politicians and business leaders. Currently, according to the real estate portal Curbed, his assets in Hollywood could amount to $ 400 million.
Founded in 1953 by the American science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986), Scientology proclaims itself as a religion “that deals with the spirit; not simply of the body or the mind ", maintaining that man is an immortal spiritual being" much more than a product of his environment or his genes ".
Listed as a sect in France, the HBO documentary Going Clear brought to light numerous irregularities and alleged crimes surrounding this community of 10 million devotees worldwide. Based on Lawrence Wright's Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same title, the series chronicles gruesome episodes linked to a forced disconnection of its members from their families, the creation of internment camps and forced labor, child exploitation, tax evasion ... as repeated accusations they have received throughout its history.
On the architectural level, on the other hand, that kitschy air of his buildings has generated great defenders, in Goodyear's words, for being "a visually stimulating mix of the old Hollywood scenery and the seventies".
6. Rajneeshpuram (Oregon, USA)
A micro country within a macro country. The spiritual commune led by Bhagwan Shri Rajnísh, later known as Osho, developed in the state of Oregon the dream of any cult: to live in a self-sufficient way, in absolute secrecy and without giving accounts to anyone. Rajneeshpuram managed to rise as a prosperous city with an annual population of 5,000 inhabitants, tripling during the summer festivals with people traveling from Australia, South America, Europe and Asia.
A flesh and blood shangri-la built southeast of Portland, near a town called Antelope. With a checkbook, the Rajneeshees managed to take political control of a town that viewed with suspicion the arrival of these enlightened people from India, recognizable by their red clothes and wild festivities. To expand their chimera, they acquired a 260 km2 ranch for almost $ 6 million, almost 30 times its estimated value at the time. When justifying their sources of income, Ma Anand Sheela, the movement's personal secretary, confessed in an interview to El País that "they were simply good for business."
And they must have been, since Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (1931–1990) always made it clear that austerity would not be exactly a principle on which to base his worldwide conquest of spirituality. Rather the complete opposite. Thousands of volunteers eager to be part of the great work of Osho worked during days from sunrise to sunset to transform an arid scree of 25,000 hectares in record time. An urban fantasy that housed several restaurants, a hotel, a casino and a nightclub, hairdressers, schools and even a small airport. In addition to a large garage to house the seventeen Rolls-Royce of its leader, its own armed police, a fire department and an administrative headquarters.
A model town in appearance with as many services as dirty rags to its credit, revealed in the Wid Wild Country series produced by Netlix in 2018. The documentary by the Way brothers tells how behind its garlands of flowers, messianic tones and perennial smiles would hide the authorship of the first bioterrorist attack in US history. The community dome intoxicated 750 people by pouring salmonella on the salad buffet of an Oregon restaurant chain. His goal is to disable voters who could prevent Rajneeshees candidates from winning the Wasco County elections and thus take judicial control over their territory.
Smuggling, sexual abuse, attempted murder ... were some of the charges that supported the community and ended its activities with the abandonment of the country of Osho in 1985. Two decades later, it became the Washington Family Christian Summer Camp Ranch, which has schools, swimming pools and a water park. Closed to the general public, only members of the Young Life teen spiritual program can access its facilities.
7. Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum (San José, California)
The origin of this secret organization is as diffuse as the teachings that its story encompasses. An eclectic mix that fuses the philosophy of Hinduism, Judaic mysticism, alchemy, occultism or paracelsic medicine, referring to the influence of the stars in medicine. "There is a legendary and a modern history of the order," declared Raymond Bernard, Rosa Cruz's supreme legacy, a few decades ago, alluding to the beginnings of an order that for many was born in the 17th century under the legend of founder Christian Rosenkreutz.
For some scholars, on the other hand, the figure of the German would be rather symbolic, tracing the true Rosicrucian thought to the secret fraternities of 115 BC, which transmitted the laws and purposes of life in Ancient Egypt. Unraveling its history, subjected to a cyclical existence made up of periods of 108 activity and 108 dormancy, is as complicated and hermetic as bringing together all the lodges and chapters of the world in which they manifest themselves under the acronym AMORC (Ancient and Mystical Order de la Rosa – Cruz).
But due to its design and peculiarity, it is worth making a stop at the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum. A few kilometers from Silicon Valley, this neoclassical building was built in 1966 to house the collection of ancient and mystical objects by Harvey Spencer Lewis. Author of esoteric literature, Lewis (1883–1939) deliberately undertook the mission of founding the Rosicrucian order in America to develop his spiritual investigations and theorem for the new continent. In parallel, he made numerous trips through Egypt, the Holy Land and Italy, promoting AMORC donations to finance archaeological excavations such as that of Amarna, where Akhenaten built his city.
Lewis would establish the Rosicrucian Oriental Egyptian Museum for the first time in 1927 on one of the floors of the administrative building of the Order of Saint Joseph. Decades later and in the face of the considerable increase in the collection, his son ordered the construction of a building in the Rose Garden neighborhood inspired by the ancient Egyptian city of Karnak. To the unmistakable halo of its papyriform columns - recognizable by its papyrus flower-shaped capital - are added statues and fountains tiled with Egyptian symbols, as well as a planetarium, a labyrinth, and a library on Egyptian history.
Among its extensive catalog - more than 4,000 artifacts from ancient civilizations, the largest collection on ancient Egypt in the United States - four human mummies stand out in addition to mummified cats and fish. Nor could a gallery dedicated to utensils and equipment for alchemy be missing. Open to the public, with the entrance they give you a passport and a led flashlight with which to discover the hidden messages distributed by the museum.
8. Shakaden Reiyukai Temple (Tokyo, Japan)
This brutalist mass seems to challenge the laws of gravity with its complex structure of reinforced concrete and steel. Built in 1975 by Takenaka Corporation, the authors of the acclaimed DISC innovation complex in Tokyo and the Osaka stadium, from above it looks like a long shadow over the city. This is the result of a pyramidal surface of 4,700 m2 that places three visible floors and another six underground. A kind of spaceship that houses the largest headquarters of the Reiyukai organization in the Japanese capital.
Inside, an eight-meter Buddha carved from camphor wood presides over the so-called Kotani hall, a room with a capacity for 3,500 people and a ceiling covered by coffered plates and lights. It has a tank with 400 tons of drinking water to use in an emergency (without specifying what nature). Both the facade and the roof of the building have dark granite elements, and was inspired by the eccentric constructions of the Japanese architect Seiichi Shirai , author of the Shoto Museum and the Noa Building.
Reiyukai or the 'Society of Friends of the Spirits' is a modern Japanese religion that emerged as a secular split from Buddhism in the 1920s . Founded by a family of carpenters, it is based on the practice of the Lotus Sutra, which preach faith in karma and interdependence between beings, as well as the worship of ancestors and spirits.
Proclaimed on its website as "an international, non-profit association, whose purpose is to interest and encourage people, regardless of color, nationality or religion, in building a just and peaceful world", it currently has more than Four million followers concentrated mainly in Japan but abroad. In Spain, the Reiyukai community has existed since 1978.
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