The British Museum is filled with objects that were once sacred to one culture or another. Until recently, the move into a museum setting disenchanted such artefacts. Their new surroundings effectively deadened the mysterious spiritual power they had enjoyed when displayed in a shrine, be it a cult site, a sanctuary or a Christian church. But this is changing: I was startled when, visiting the London venue one afternoon, a group of visitors drifted past and paused briefly to genuflect and cross themselves before a stone statue of a Huastec goddess from Mexico. This divinity, ancient and obscure, still possessed spiritual meaning for them.
Curators are newly sensitised to such visitors’ beliefs: claims for repatriation of ancestral items have prompted the recognition that their spiritual energy is intrinsic to their meaning. Exclusionary terms – “idolatry”, “unbeliever” – are now, thankfully, dead letters; the word “pagan” has new value, and respect is the guiding principle.
