Sacred Place-Making in Contemporary Lithuanian Native Faith

Abstract

This article examines how contemporary Native Faith sacred places are created in Lithuania. It argues that such places are not simply inherited from the pre-Christian past or rediscovered as naturally sacred but are actively produced through material marking, repeated ritual use, landscape care, and symbolic association with reconstructed Baltic tradition. Drawing on participant observation, community materials, public communication, and relevant scholarship, the article discusses selected examples that illustrate different modes of sacred place-making, including hillforts, alkakalniai, stone altars (aukurai), roofed sanctuaries, sacralized stones, planted groves, archaeoastronomical complexes, and deliberately created mythological landscapes. Particular attention is given to the role of the aukuras as a visible, material center of ritual practice through which contemporary communities mark sacred space and articulate claims to continuity with the pre-Christian past. The Lithuanian case shows that sacred place-making today involves both the reactivation of historically resonant locations and the deliberate creation of new sacred environments shaped by ritual practice, memory, and cultural imagination.