The Frosthall
The Frostian Temple · the House of the Cold
The Frosthall is the Frostian house of worship — the temple, church, and cathedral of the faith. From the portable Tabernacle of Ice of Borën and the great First Frosthall of King Sigmund the Cold at Wintermere to the soaring Ice-Vault cathedrals of the The Hibernal Renaissance, the Frosthall has always been built to embody, in stone and ice and light, the whole faith of the Cold.
The Form: The Ice-Vault
The classic Frosthall is built on a hexagonal plan (the The Sixfold Star), oriented so the worshipper faces north (toward the The White Horizon). Its great achievement is the Ice-Vault — a high, ribbed ceiling of pale stone and crystal “like the inside of a glacier,” through which cold blue light falls. Frosthalls are built of white stone, glacier-marble, and clear ice (in the far north, whole chapels are carved from living glacier-ice and renewed each winter).
The Parts
- The North Door — the great entrance, surmounted by the Sixfold Star; worshippers make the The Frostmark on entering.
- The Snow-Nave — the long body where the people gather, often kept deliberately cold.
- The Stilling-Aisles — side spaces for private The Stilling before the saints’ shrines and relics.
- The Cold Altar — the focus, at the north end: a table or block of white stone or clear ice where the The Cold Communion is consecrated. Above or behind it is the blank white panel signifying the unseen Stillness.
- The Rime-Tabernacle — the niche of ice or silver where the consecrated Snow-bread is reserved, with its blue ever-lamp.
- The Frost-Font — the basin of consecrated cold water for the The Frostmark, usually near the North Door.
- The Lectern of the Rime — for the reading of the scripture.
- The Aurora-Windows — windows of blue and aurora-tinted glass, casting cold-colored light.
- The Spire — the tall, tapering spire “like a frozen fountain” or an icicle, drawing the eye upward to the White.
Furnishings and Art
Frosthalls are adorned with the Four Living Frosts, images of Connor Frost, Wenna, and the The Rimebound Saints (richly so in the Glacial iconostasis; more sparely among the Reformed), the seasonal colors, and the cold-toned Bell of Frost that rings the The Hours of Frost.
Theology of the Space
The Frosthall is built to make a soul cold, still, and clear: its cold air quiets the body, its blank white altar-panel turns the heart to the unseen Stillness, its upward spire and northward orientation lift the gaze to the The White Horizon, and its hush invites the The Stilling. “The Frosthall is a glacier made by hands, that the warm soul may step out of the fevered world into a foretaste of the kept country.”