You're listening to the ancient tradition. A Wonk Media production. Music provided by Joseph McDade. Here's your host, Dr. Jack Logan. Welcome to the ancient tradition. I'm your host,

Jack Logan. Great to have you with me today. It's another beautiful day, another wonderful day to

talk about comparative religion, which is exactly what

we're going to do. Before I jump in, though, I wanted to encourage you if you're a visual

learner to check out our companion website, the ancient tradition.com. Because if you go into show

notes and you scroll down a little bit, you'll find that there is a webpage that's dedicated

to every

single episode. And on there, we put a lot of pictures of the artifacts and the things that we've

been talking about. Sometimes we even put in diagrams to help better explain some of the things that

we're talking about. So I highly recommend that you check it out, at least once. I think you'll be

surprised by the great resource

that's there for you. With that, let's jump in. For the past couple of episodes, we've been talking

about the Hindu marriage ritual and how it's so intimately connected to the sacred center.

For example, we've seen that the marriage ritual itself takes place under the Mundap.

To most people, the Mundap might just look like a beautiful wedding canopy, but we know that

symbolically there's so much more there. It's like the baldaken in western churches or the

cella, the inner sanctum of ancient temples.

The architectural design of the Mundop, with its four-pillared canopy, seated on an elevated

platform, signals that this is the place where God dwells.

The architecture of the Mundap attests that the wedding itself is to be understood as

taking place, at least symbolically in the very heart of the cosmos, the holiest place in the cosmos,

the sacred center. And the symbolism doesn't stop with the structure itself. You know, every detail matters, like the symbols that are used during the wedding ritual.

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