Demystifying Wingit: a Javanese Concept in the Architecture of the Sacred

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-420-4_5How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Wingit; Javanese; Architecture; Interior; Sacred

Abstract

This paper is based on an ongoing research concerning Wingit in Javanese architecture and interior. Wingit is a Javanese concept associated with unseen spirits, and therefore regarded as a trace of animist-dynamist belief. However, in this research, Wingit is regarded as a concept related to aesthetics and pertains to spatial experience. This paper intends to demonstrate that Wingit is a concept that affects Javanese religious/sacred architecture as symbolic representation that involves multidimensional experience. The research integrates literature study and architectural analysis. This allows me to understand how Wingit is perceived as reflected by spatial practice, to trace how Wingit has been defined in Javanese context, and to understand Wingit as aesthetic experience. Examinations on the term Wingit in Old Javanese and Javanese dictionaries, as well as literary works, show that the concept denotes sadness, silence, stirring-awe and respect-inspiring. This indicates that Wingit is not necessarily a concept that designates that something or somewhere is being haunted. Further examination of the concept of Wingit suggests a potential to discuss it as an aesthetics category, as it shares some parallelism with Immanuel Kant’s discussion on the sublime. In addition, I also noticed that Wingit is associated with places considered sacred. These places are, to borrow a term by Mircea Eliade, hierophanies in architectural forms. I argue that Wingit is not a form of hierophany. Wingit is more akin to nominous, religious experience described by Rudolf Otto. Wingit is another layer of representation complimenting the architectural manifestation of the sacred.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Ega Dyas Nindita
AU  - Kemas Ridwan Kurniawan
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/06/26
TI  - Demystifying Wingit: a Javanese Concept in the Architecture of the Sacred
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Religious Architecture (ICRA 2024)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 46
EP  - 60
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-420-4_5
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-420-4_5
ID  - Nindita2025
ER  -