CONSECRATION. As a cross-cultural concept, consecration refers to the practice of investing particular objects with extraordinary religious significance. The significance of any single instance of consecration depends in good part on the type of object consecrated. Places and buildings are made into habitations for spiritual beings; higher powers enliven icons and food; kings and hierarchs are recognized as maintainers of a higher order on earth. Yet despite the diversity of both consecrated objects and the traditions from which their religious meaning derives, most instances of consecration reveal some basic structural resemblances. First, an act of consecration is at root a creative act. It is a deliberate attempt to alter the environment, to establish in the visible world some definite, concrete means for fruitful interaction with the divine. Second, a consecrated object, now represented as a link to higher reality, is often itself understood to be transformed—purified or...