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Abstract
Background: From early ritual sites and sacred landscapes to religious sanctuaries and contemporary spaces for spiritual experience, rituality has consistently operated as a mechanism for organizing space, behavior, and perception, ultimately constructing spiritual experiences distinct from everyday life. Existing studies tend to discuss historical ritual spaces and contemporary healing spaces separately; consequently, systematic research on the historical continuity between them and the mechanisms of spatial translation is limited. Purpose: This study examines how ritual spatial mechanisms persist across different historical stages and spatial types and analyzes their translation paths and modes of expression in contemporary spaces for spiritual experience, revealing their contemporary value. Methods: Drawing on ritual theory, spatial phenomenology, and case studies, this study conducts a comparative analysis of historical ritual spaces, religious sanctuaries, and contemporary experiential spaces. It also establishes an analytical framework based on ritual behavior, spatial paths, sensory atmosphere, spiritual perception, and cultural meaning. Results: The findings show that the contemporary translation of rituality manifests in the continuous transformation of behavioral procedures, spatial paths, perceptual atmospheres, and mechanisms of spiritual experience. Ritual spaces across different historical periods construct extraordinary experiences through path progression, liminal transition, environmental staging, and bodily participation. Conclusion: Ritual demonstrates continuous and translational characteristics across the development of historical ritual spaces, religious sanctuaries, and contemporary spaces for spiritual experience. Its contemporary value lies in the reorganization and expression of ritual spatial mechanisms in new contexts. From the perspective of spatial translation, the established framework provides insights for the contemporary interpretation of the spiritual meanings of cultural sites and for the design of spaces for spiritual experience.
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