Virtually Sacred: The Performance of Asynchronous Cyber-Rituals in Online Spaces

Abstract

This article explores how the design of sacred spaces and ritual performance are transformed in the move from offline to online contexts. A semiotic analysis of two websites—a Christian Virtual Church and a Hindu Virtual Temple—suggests the potential for demarcating distinct online sacred spaces, in a Durkheimian sense, in which devotees can engage in ritual activity. The article focuses on the performance of cyberpuja in the Virtual Temple and the posting of prayers in the Virtual Church. Interviews with the Web designers and an analysis of the sites suggest that the virtual is primarily conceived in terms of a simulation of the "real." Consequently these sites are envisaged in terms of conventional notions of sacred space and ritual performance, rather than as something radically new.