By Rodger Hardy
Deseret News
PROVO, Utah — A desire to gain a richer experience in attending a Mormon temple led Val W. Brinkerhoff to begin researching the symbols in temple architecture and their meaning.
The church doesn't dictate or speak much about the meaning of architectural symbols, which must instead come from the scriptures, words of the prophets and personal revelation, Brinkerhoff said during his address at Brigham Young University on Sept. 23.
The address, "Finding Meaning in Sacred Architecture," was part of the David M. Kennedy Center lecture series.
Church members don't have a book to explain the symbols to them, but temple architects do, he said.
An associate professor of photography at BYU, Brinkerhoff said the symbols are there to teach and to be interpreted personally. His quest to learn more about religious symbolism in sacred structures has taken him to some 40 countries the past six years, often with students in BYU's "Sacred Places" project. He also interviewed several LDS temple architects.
An author and co-author, the last three of his seven books of photography and writing have centered on ancient and modern religious symbolism, including LDS temples. Many of the symbols are found as universal patterns in religious edifices, not just LDS temples, he said.
They are often Christ-centered, and dovetail into doctrinal themes. Patterns include symbolic uses of numbers and shapes, and space and time, along with light and color that transcends from dark to light as the edifice ascends.
"Temples are mountains, a type of altar," he said, which symbolizes eternal progression. Altars are often at the top.
Three-tiered altars in early LDS temples — the Kirtland, Nauvoo and Salt Lake temples — were patterned after three stone altars church founder Joseph Smith discovered at Adam-ondi-Ahman, an LDS historic site in Missouri, Brinkerhoff said.
The altars represent the priesthood of God, he said.
Pillars in temples and other religious buildings are another pattern found around the world. Generally, he said, they represent covenant-making and surround where covenants are made.
"They mark, separate and guard sacred places," he said.
Once Brinkerhoff finds a pattern, he backs it up with scriptural references.
"I look at the scriptures in a whole new way," he said.
Common numbers in scripture and sacred architecture include the numbers 12, 13, 50, 40 and eight. The number eight, for example is found repeatedly in the Bible and the Book of Mormon, he said. For example, eight pillars are found around ancient baptismal fonts; 8 is the age at which LDS children are baptized; and eight was the number of days before a Jewish baby boy was circumcised. The octagon in architecture often symbolizes eternal truth.
"So many churches use it, especially in Germany," Brinkerhoff said.
When he first discovered patterns in numbers, he began doing a lot of counting when he attended the temple.
"As I looked more at visual (things) I began to learn more about the gospel," he said.
Another pattern refers to space and time as represented in LDS temples with earth stones, moon stones, sun stones and stars; also in the way patrons move through the temple. Still another is the opposing spiral, which represents complementary opposition, such as the sun and the moon and men and women.
Color is also symbolic. As an example, he cited the celestial room in the Mount Timpanogos Temple in American Fork, Utah, which displays the colors of the Exodus reflected through its windows, including blue, purple, scarlet and gold.
Some symbols that originally represented goodness were usurped in the 1850s and now represent evil, including the inverted pentagram, the swastika (originally an opposing spiral), the mark on the forehead and the number 13, he said.
e-mail: rodger@desnews.com