Beyond the Ordinary: Thin Places

By Phillip James Tabb, Ph.D
April 2025

Thin places, where the ordinary world yields to something more, a realm beyond our everyday experience. Thin places are locations or settings where a thin veil exists between the earthly world within which we live and the heavenly spiritual world that possess an energy that is qualitatively different. Thin places are often referred to as sacred places, holy places, sanctuary places, vital places, soulful places, serene places, or charged places. They function in secular or religious ways. They possess certain energies and have characteristics that are guided by self-evident principles underlying the spiritual imagination and source experience whether they are found in nature or the built environment. Simply, they are “spiritual experiential thresholds.”(1) This begs the questions: what makes a place, a PLACE, and what make a thin place, THIN?(2)

Ancient Origins

The concept of thin places is purported to date around 500 B.C. in Celtic Great Britain; however, prehistoric monuments constructed much earlier have thin place characteristics and functions. Thin places were part of pagan belief systems existing before the Celts. Many of the stone monuments built then formed experiential connections between certain terrestrial locations on Earth and the celestial heavens beyond them. It is likely the functions of thin places can be traced back further to earlier Stone Age megaliths, where the cosmological world was seen to contain divine motions and mysteries of the stars, planets, and other celestial bodies. They also measured time, marked agricultural cycles, helped understand the dwelling places of the gods, and formulated creation myths and stories of our beginnings. It is believed that some physical places on earth are closer to energy centers, energy lines, or mystical spots than others. Memorials, made by human beings, have been marking these energy spots for millions of years. Places like the Isle of Iona, Newgrange, Stonehenge, and Glastonbury Chalice Well and Gardens are among these ancient thin places.

Figure 1 is an image from the 1435 A.D. Early Renaissance fresco of the Annunciation by Fra Angelico. Like much Renaissance art depicting the Annunciation, there is an architectural element, in this case, a column, between the archangel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary that serves to separate the heavenly (with the expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden) and earthly realms with Mary in her chair. This column is a symbol of the thin place veil. A stream of light emanates from the sun, passes through the arched thin place occupied by Gabriel, and arrives at the heart of Mary. This represents a graphic depiction of a thin place experience and what Franciscan Richard Rohr calls “the edge,” or the edge of the inside.(3)

Thin Place Characteristics

Contemporary inquiries have ignited many scholars, sparking both secular and religious interests. More recently, investigations into awe and serene emotional responses have revealed scientific explanations of experiences and even neuroscience associated with thin places. Understanding the extraordinary difference between ordinary and thin places is important in identifying the characteristics that seem to charge places and help enable transcendent experiences. The prime thin place characteristics are as place-containers as defined by veils, and as charged by extraordinary elicitors.

As a container, it is the three-dimensional placemaking characteristics and properties of the physical site that give form to the experience. This includes its external appearance and design, bounding, shape, scale, and substantial, material qualities, and sense of place.

As a veil, it creates separation between the two worlds and becomes thin and experientially reachable. The veil is not necessarily physical in the corporeal sense, but rather is existential becoming increasingly transparent or porous. Figure 2a.

As an extraordinary elicitor, thin places tend to contain a natural, social, cultural, historic, symbolic or physical subject or energy that supports nourishing, stimulating, and/or transformative experiences, such as the Northern Lights, and beautiful sunset, or serene landscape, or skylight colors on a church wall. Figure 2b.

Another characteristic of thin places, according to Michael Brill, is they showed that a sacred, or in his words, a “charged” site, could contain a common set of fundamental characteristics by which the sacred was revealed.(4) This energy can be sensed and felt, and some places are more charged than others. Further, Brill suggests that thin places possess certain characteristics that are common to all places, and that mythic places have a charge and seem to carry and reveal important meaning, including a narrative capacity. Charged places are thin places that are near, stirring, vast, or serene, and carriers of narratives, on the verge of transformation. Emotion research shows us that thin places create a number of numinous experiences in which awe and serenity are central emotions.

The Numinous Experiences

The numinous is defined as arousing spiritual or religious emotion. It was brought into contemporary theory by Rudolf Otto in 1917 where he characterized these emotional responses as elicited by fascination (potent charm), mystery (astonishing wonder), and/or terror (overwhelming power).(5) These experiences are produced by psychologically powerful and spiritually profound moments: mystery that confronts and mystery that invites. According to Murray Stein, the psychological explanation for numinous experiences and the unconscious contents are found in physical objects, rituals or sounds as phenomenal projections.

In a 2018 publication of research by Yaden, Kaufman, Hyde, Chirico, Gaggioli, Zhang, and Keltner, they developed a six-factor scale for measuring awe emotion.(6) This scale included time, self-loss, connectedness, vastness, physiological (physical sensations), and accommodation. Self-diminishment is the reduction of salient aspects of self, such as one’s own body or its size relative to the thin place. Connectedness refers to feelings of other people and environments beyond the self, such as feeling part of a community, a particular place or “other.” Perceptual vastness is beyond measure and is much larger than the self and things that one does not fully understand.

Serenity is defined as sustained inner peace. Serenity and its relationship to emotion theory, health and wellness and spirituality first appeared in the nursing literature in the mid-1960s when it was identified as an important outcome for terminally ill patients. It focused on persons facing emotional stress, physical illness or even death. According to Kay Roberts and Cheryl Aspy, positive emotions increase cognitive flexibility and openness, and create a reservoir of resilience. In addition, in everyday occurrences, they support a healthier cardiovascular system.(7)

Thin places are found at the scales of entire cities, central squares, historic places, memorials, parks, streets, and monuments. The Siena Campo is a good example of a city civic space that functions as a thin place. The square was arranged in the twelfth century and was used as an open marketplace. The center has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The physical place-defining characteristics make it an urban oculus that includes its powerful positive space. The two images in Figure 3 are taken from the Campo del Siena and show diametrically opposed elicitors of awe-driven and serenity-driven solicitors – the Palio di Siena and a quiet social gathering in the center of the square.

Thin Place Examples

Significant architecture can offer examples of thin places with public programs and uses that are often larger in scale. Building types like museums, libraries, chapels, cathedrals, stadiums, memorials, airport terminals, and institutional buildings are typical among the more significant building types. Most often these significant buildings are unusual, unique, impressive, and striking as they elicit awe. Built in 2012, the Twilight Epiphany Skyspace is one of the many incredible structures created by James Turrell. It is located on the Rice University Campus in Houston, Texas. In the Twilight Epiphany Skyspace, there is a juxtaposition of the LED colored light on the underside of the pavilion roof and the changing quality of the natural sunrise and twilight. Every day at sunrise and sunset the lights come on within the pavilion. The complement of the deliberate LED lights and the changing sky color creates a captivating and transforming visual experience. The pavilion acts as a protected space and refuge and the roof oculus functions as a svelte veil between observers and the movement of color and light. The tapered upper side of the roof canopy slopes gently down and outward around the perimeter and dips downward near the center. The cantilevered oculus opening is engineered with a carbon steel knife edge of about 1/16” that minimizes the interior and exterior surfaces of the roof creating a very thin veil. Figure 4b.

The National September 11 Memorial and Museum in New York City together is another good example of a thin place that works to express both awe and serenity. The tower is uplifting and optimistic functioning as a historic place marker. The two pools, echoing the Twin Towers, are in direct contrast to the levity of the One World Trade Center building, with its grounding and reverent-soulful descent of water in the pool. The 30-foot granite pool walls and waterfalls form a boundary for the disappearing water. Designed by Michael Arad and Peter Walker, they conceptualized the design as “reflecting absence.“(8) The blackened pool is certainly mysterious, otherworldly and emotionally powerful, Figure 5a. The darkness, emptiness and unknown qualities of the 911 pools are not unlike the mysteries of the black holes found in outer space, Figure 5b.

Thin places readily occur in nature, such as with mountain tops, the Grand Canyon, the Northern Lights, or an ocean sunset. They also occur at the urban design scale, such as the Campo di Siena, which offers opportunities for great numbers of people to congregate. Thin places occurring at the architectural scale contribute to pro-individual benefits through interactive building wellness strategies, pro-social benefits through fostering social interactions and healthy public spaces, and pro-environmental benefits through protection from negative climatic effects and positive interactions with nature. The landscape design scale offers opportunities at varying scales and for specific design strategies to incorporate health and wellness benefits that range from the aesthetic and wellness qualities of experiencing the natural environment to engagement with healing gardens and land art installations. This includes forest bathing, incorporation of foodscapes, and purpose-built healing gardens.

Our ancient ancestors were hunter-gatherers whose lives were intertwined in the wilderness with endless grasslands, dense forests, and vast stretches of green landscapes. As humans, we have deep inside us an instinctual connection with an understanding that health and wellness can be sourced from nature. The experience of what is called an “awe walk” and a “wild awe” are both safe and exhilarating and can be positive for health and wellness. Although not a new concept, forest bathing emerged in Japan in the early 1980s by the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries as shirin-yoku literally meaning “taking in nature” where taking in the qualities of the forest, its atmosphere, or in a broader sense experiencing all of nature, is a wellness emersion process.(9)

Referring back to the original questions posed in this article, the first question, exactly what is a thin place, and the second, what are the environmental and placemaking characteristics that render them thin? A thin place is a location or moment where the veil between the physical and spiritual realms feels exceptionally close, fostering a sense of heightened connection and emotion. What makes it thin is a function of the power, quality and closeness of the elicitor.

Careful design and sensitive planning can preserve existing as well as create new thin places. Finally, there are positive outcomes resulting from the numinous, awe, serene, and the charged nature of thin place experiences. The relationship between place, spirituality and wellness continues today as people still seek healing of body, emotions, mind and spirit in special settings and at home. What is more magical for a three-year old than making a wish and blowing out candles on a birthday cake? This, too is a thin place experience.(10)

Ultimately, thin places remind us that the extraordinary exists within and beyond the ordinary. A question Eric Weiner ponders, “Why isn’t the whole world thin? Maybe it is, but we are too thick to recognize it. Maybe thin places offer glimpses not of heaven but of earth as it really is, unencumbered. Unmasked.”(11)

References:

1. Tabb, Phillip James, Thin Place Design: Architecture of the Numinous, (New York, NY: Routledge, 2023), p. 1.

2. Ibid, p. 3.

3. Rohr, Richard, (Accessed September 5, 2021), https://cac.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/4-ON-THE-EDGE-OF-THE-INSIDE.pdf

4. Brill, Michael, Using Place-Creation Myth to Develop Design Guidelines for Scared Space, Self-published, September 25, 1985.

5. Otto, Rudolf, The Idea of the Holy, (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1958), p. 30.

6. Yaden, Kaufman, Hyde, Chirico, Gaggioli Zhang & Keltner, “The Development of the Awe Experience Scale (AWE-S): A multifactorial measure for a complex emotion,” (Accessed October 4, 2021).

7. Roberts, Kay & Cheryl Aspy, Development of a Serenity Scale, (Accessed August 20, 2022) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/15347724_Development_of_the_Serenity_Scale.

8. Arad, Michael & Peter Walker, Architect and 9/11 Memorial Both Evolved Over the Years, (Accessed September 12, 2021) https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/arts/design/how-the-911-memorial-changed-its-architect-michael-arad.html.

9. Olszewska-Giozzo, Agnieszka, Neuroscience For Designing Green Spaces, (London, UK: Routledge, 2023), pp. 180-181.

10. Tabb, Phillip James, Thin Place Design: Architecture of the Numinous, (New York, NY: Routledge, 2023), pp. 180-181.

11. Weiner, Eric, “Where Heaven and Earth Come Closer,” (Accessed February 3, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/travel/thin-places-where-we-are-jolted-out-of-old-ways-of-seeing-the-world.html.

Phillip James Tabb, Ph.D. is an author, professor emeritus, architect, urban designer and presently resides in the thin place community, Serenbe, Georgia which he designed. He received his Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Cincinnati, Master of Architecture from the University of Colorado, and Ph.D. in the Energy and Environment Programme from the Architectural Association in London.