The Temple Burns

by Anna Luisa Daigneault

To let go completely is one of the most visceral ways to change. The Temple’s purpose was to physically anchor human sorrows, and it was destined to burn before our eyes.

The Temple was made of intricately detailed wood. Its elegant arches and its design’s sweeping upward motion defied the harsh, stinging reality of the desert. The Temple was built despite a complete lack of electricity and water in the area: every mechanism, object and element that went into its construction had to be intentionally brought to the location. Thousands of hours and innumerable liters of sweat and tears had been offered throughout the planning and erecting of this monumental structure. Its architect had agonized over every last detail. On the day before the festival opened to the public, I saw him collapse in the dust at the foot of the beloved structure, shielding his eyes from the wind and sun as he stared at the Temple, contemplating its sacred geometry of intersecting lines.

I visited the Temple each day of the Burning Man festival. In the mornings, its silhouette pierced the desert landscape like a surreal skeleton from an ancient site of worship. Under the hot sun, the Temple stood proudly like a testament of human will and ingenuity, incomprehensibly existing in the middle of the alkaline Black Rock Desert. At night, it was lit up to resemble an awesome pinnacle of light stretching up and out into the surrounding darkness, turning party-goers into momentary pilgrims as they paused in their travels between geodesic domes, in order to write down their painful thoughts and regrets onto the temple pillars. By the end of the weeklong festival, the entire ground level of the structure was covered in people’s scrawls, graffiti and curlicues. Some of the messages left by Burners were as simple as “I’m sorry, Dad,” or “I never meant to hurt our kids,” and others were entire manifestos of people’s lives and elaborate descriptions of situations where they felt they had done wrong. The result was bewildering and intensely humbling. Walking through those pillars and being confronted by 50 000 people’s pain expressed in plain view, I realized that the sorrow people carry with them is a very real weight, and each of us struggles to be free from very similar burdens.

On the last night of the event, those 50 000 pilgrims gathered around the Temple, just after sunset. The crowd became hushed as Druids dressed in white cloaks and circus performers on stilts carried large torches towards the Temple. They sang a low, mantra-like song as they lit the four corners of the structure. The wooden pillars caught on fire and plumes of smoke rose into the desert air. As the blaze overtook the whole building, everyone sat in absolute silence. Fire shot up, licking the air, and its light filled the entire night sky. For several minutes, people felt the enormity of this act - no one dared to speak, or even breathe. The Temple glowed, sparked and churned loudly as it burned. Its fragile body was leaping with flames. This delicate yet powerful image became the symbol of an unforgettable lesson in impermanence.

Finally, the structural integrity of the building gave way, and the Temple of Forgiveness collapsed in one single, graceful movement, and all the people exhaled their trapped breath in one simultaneous sigh of release. They were free.