Are these spaces permanent, however? Ritual spaces and the operators who inhabit them change over time, so does the site change with them or is it discarded or abandoned when its (newer) use is obsolete? Michel Conan brought up an example of Niagara Falls (Conan, 6), whose dramatic presence was a destination for transcendental experience. Until the tourist industry ruined it and that transcendental experience moved out west to the national parks, where, probably for some, seeking out transcendental expectations came to happen elsewhere.

I had a thought sometime on this -- a site that is abandoned, decays, but is not reoccupied. Not until the memory of what was there disappears, physically and ephemerally from the minds of man. Not until the site has been overgrown by various 'things', not until the site has once again become a 'blank slate' despite its once prior state of being, can the site become usable again. By then, it is ready to be occupied by a structure of man.