Portable Temple Part 2
How To Build Your Own Portable Gnostic Mass Temple
The Construction Of The Fire Altar
The Fire Altar is a simple double-cube construction, painted black, and covered with an altar cloth. We constructed our double-cube altar with cubes 18 inches on a side with 1/2 inch plywood, using interior 2x2 construction-grade pine posts to hold the assembly together.
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Parts List • 4 1/2" Ply sheets 18"x18" (Note the measurements for the 17" and 17 1/2" cuts need to be adjusted given the thickness of the material you use.) |
After cutting the wood, you should assemble the sides first. The sides consist of four 17"x17 1/2" sides with the 17" posts. The measurements provide for a little overlap at the corner joins; see the diagram below.
When the four corners are assembled, the whole opening should be 17" tall and 18"x18" in size.
Then, assemble the top and bottom:
When assembled, this will form a cube 18" on a side. Assemble two, paint black.
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Note: One difficulty we have had with the fire cubes is chipping of the paint during transport. We have tried various coatings and the like with various amounts of success. Part of the problem was the selection of materials; 1/2" ply chips and splinters on the edges. Part of the problem is inherent in transporting the cubes 15 miles each way to the site. What we at LVX Oasis wind up having to do is to touch up the black cubes with spray paint just before each mass. Best to keep a supply of cheap spray paint on hand just in case. |
The Water Altar
The water altar consists of a pillar that was donated by one of our members, and a 36" circular piece of wood painted with a flower pattern. The two pieces are separate; they are attached on site with Velcro.
During transport, the circular top of the water altar is covered with bubble wrap; this is to protect the flower pattern.
The base pillar is a fiberglass pillar prop.
Assembling
the Tomb
The Tomb and the Shrine support pieces are all constructed using eleven 1/2" copper pipes 10 feet in length. These pieces are cut to form the shrine and tomb framework. The shrine is 7' tall, as is the tomb; this allows the entire setup to fit inside a room with an eight foot ceiling. Further, by cutting the pipes 7' in length, the leftover 3' pieces can be used to form the tomb. In this way, there is no wasted copper pipe.
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Parts List • 8 3' copper pipes
(1/2" diameter) |
The tomb itself consists of four 7' copper poles and eight 3' copper poles, connected using eight "T" pipe connectors and eight "L" elbow connectors.
The joins are assembled with one "tee" and one "elbow" per corner:
With
the LVX tomb, each of the corners are assembled as
shown in the diagram left. The top and the bottom
are mirror images of each other--one side should have
the "T"s pointing up, the other side with
the "T"s pointing down. (Best to assemble
this without permanently fastening the joints to see
what I mean.)
Once you have the "T" and "elbow" joints assembled, drill holes in the pipes, one at each point where the pipe and joints meet, and connect using a #6/32 machine screw.
| Note: Unless you can precision drill the holes using a drill press and guarantee the alignment of the holes are all the same from pipe to pipe, you must mark each of the corners after the screws are inserted. That's because at times, people may disassemble the whole tomb assembly, and you won't be able to reassemble the pipes because the holes won't match up. I used a Drummel tool and an etcher attachment to edge into each corner a designation as to which pipe end, tee and elbow goes with each. |
Once the corners are assembled, you should tighten all of screws on both the top and bottom, except two. Those two that should be left just "finger tight" are on opposite corners of the top of the tomb. These screws are how you can disassemble the top to slide on and remove the tomb veils.
The tomb veils themselves are made of black cloth, seven feet tall and approximately six feet wide. The front tomb door are two seven by three foot pieces. All five tomb cloth pieces have three inch loops sewn into one end in order to slip them over the tomb pipes. The veil hangs, rather than attaching to the bottom pipes. (The extra material allows the tomb to have a bit of a "gather", and makes it less "fragile" than attempting to stretch material from the top to the bottom and from front to back.)
Once the tomb material is added to the top, the seven foot pipes are slipped in (and are not screwed in, but are held by gravity and friction), and the hole assembly is tilted upright. Safety pins are used to pin the corners of the cloths together from top to bottom.