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Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion

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In the "Sacred and the Profane", Mircea Eliade describes two fundamentally different modes of experience: the traditional and the modern. Traditional man or "homo religious" is open to experiencing the world as sacred. Modern man however, is closed to these kinds of experiences. For him the world is experienced only as profane. It is the burden of the book to show in what these fundamentally opposed experiences consist. Traditional man often expresses this opposition as real vs. unreal or pseudoreal and he seeks as much as possible to live his life within the sacred, to saturate himself in reality.According to Eliade the sacred becomes known to man because it manifests itself as different from the profane world. This manifestation of the sacred Eliade calls "hierophany". For Eliade this is a fundamental concept in the study of the sacred and his book returns to it again and again.

The "Sacred and the Profane" is divided into four chapters dealing with space, time, nature, and man. To these is appended a "Chronological Survey Of the History of Religions as a Branch of Knowledge."

In CHAPTER ONE Eliade explores the "variety of religious experiences of space". Modern man tends to experience all space as the same. He has mathematsized space, homogenizing it by reducing every space to the equivalent of so many units of measurement. What differences there are between places are usually due only to experiences an individual associates with a place not the place itself, e.g. my birthplace, the place I fell in love, etc.

But religious man does not experience space in this way. For him some space is qualitatively different. It is sacred, therefore strong and meaningful. Other space is profane, chaotic, and meaningless. Traditional man is unable to live in a profane world, because he cannot orientate himself. In order to gain orientation he must first have a center. The center is not arrived at by speculation or arbitrary decision but is given. A revelation of the sacred, a hierophany establishes a center and the center establishes a world because all other space derives its' meaning from the center.

CHAPTER TWO deals with sacred time. Here Eliade treats briefly material he covers at greater length in "The Myth of the Eternal Return". As with his experience of space, religious man experiences time as both sacred and profane. Sacred time, the time of the festival, is a return to the mythic time at the beginning of things, what Eliade calls "in illo tempore" (Latin: "at that time"). Religious man wishes to always live in this strong time. This is a wish to "return to the presence of the gods, to recover the strong, fresh, pure world that existed "in illo tempore". According to Eliade sacred or festive time is not accessible to modern man, because he sees profane time as constituting the whole of his life and when he dies his life is annihilated.

CHAPTER THREE is entitled "The Sacredness of Nature and Cosmic Religion." Here Eliade explains that for religious man nature was never merely "natural" but always expresses something beyond itself. For him the world is symbolic or transparent; the world of the gods shines through his world. The universe is seen as an ordered whole which manifests different modalities of being and the sacred.

Eliade goes on to explores certain key symbols of the sacred: sky, waters, earth, vegetation, and the moon. Within these categories Eliade gives special attention to Christian baptism and the Tree of Life. Needless to say, modernity is characterized by a desacralization of nature.

The FOURTH and final CHAPTER covers the sanctification of human life. Sanctification allows religious man to live an "open existence." This means traditional man lives his life on two planes. He lives his everyday life, but he also shares in a life beyond the everyday, the life of the cosmos or the gods. This "twofold plane" of human and cosmic life is aptly expressed in traditional man's experience of himself and his dwelling as a microcosm or little universe.

Much of this chapter deals with the triplet "body-house-cosmos" and with the meaning of initiations. Initiation is the way traditional man sanctifies his life. It contains a uniquely religious view of the world, because he considers himself unfinished or imperfect. Thus his natural birth must be completed by a series of second or spiritual births. This is accomplished by "rites of passage" which are initiations An initiation is a kind of birth, but it is always accompanied by death to the state left behind.

The excellence of "The Sacred and the Profane" lies in its' combination of brevity and startling depth of insight. Eliade writes with simplicity and clarity about matters of profound import to human life. This is scholarship at its' best: one pauses often, not caught in a tangle of verbiage but lost in wonder.

That the phenomenon of religious experience brooks no debate whatsoever. Eliade examines characteristics of this phenomenology, contrasting what humankind has experienced for tens of thousands of years with modern, stripped-down, rationalized religion. If nothing else, this book demonstrates what "modern" religions lack. The price they have paid in order to become modern deprives them of the underlying phenomena which have always empowered spiritual experience as a meaningful force in the past.

The chief point of the book is "to show in what ways religious man attempts to remain as long as possible in a sacred universe, and hence what his total experience of life proves to be in comparison with the experience of the man without religious feeling, of the man who lives, or wishes to live, in a desacralized world."

Eliade begins with hierophany, the event of the sacred manifesting itself to us, the experience of a different order of reality entering human experience. He presents the idea of sacred space, describing how the only "real" space is sacred, surrounded by a formless expanse. Sacred space becomes the point of reference for all other spaces. He finds that people inhabit a midland, between the outer chaos and the inner sacred, which is renewed by sacred ritual and practice. By consecrating a place in the profane world, cosmogony is recapitulated and the sacred made accessible. This becomes the center of the primitive world. Ritual takes place in this sacred space, and becomes a way of participating in the sacred cosmos while reinvigorating the profane world.

Next, Eliade considers sacred time and mythology. While "profane time" is linear, sacred time returns to the beginning, when things were more "real" than they are now. Again, ritual plays an important part. Time is regenerated by being created anew as rituals tie participants back to the sacred origins of the cosmos. Thus, the cycle of the year becomes a paradigm for community renewal and for replentishing the world from the sacred genesis.

He goes on to examine how a number of the elements of nature typically play into sacred experience. He considers water, the sacred tree, the home and the body. He notes that "No modern man, however irreligious, is entirely insensible to the charms of nature." Cosmic symbolism adds a new value to an object or action without removing the inherent values. Religious man finds within himself the same sanctity which he finds in the cosmos. "Openness to the world enables religious man to know himself in knowing the world--and this knowledge is precious to him because it is religious, because it pertains to being."

He concludes the book by considering the contrast between homo religiosus and profane man. Non-religious man finds that all things have been desacralized. This can be liberating, in that oppressive meanings have been removed--but also impoverishing as all actions and items have been deprived of spiritual significance. He speaks to the great loss of Christianity:

"The religious sense of the urban population is gravely impoverished. The cosmic liturgy, the mystery of nature's participation in the Christological drama, have become inaccessible to Christians living in a modern city. Their religious experience is no longer open to the cosmos. In the last analysis, it is a strictly private experience; salvation is a problem that concerns man and his god [sic]; at most, man recognizes that he is responsible not only to God but also to history. But in these man-God-history relationships there is no place for the cosmos. From this it would appear that, even for a genuine Christian, the world is no longer felt as the work of God.

This is a powerful book. It presents basic elements of religious experience, and allows the reader to notice where their lack can be felt in modern society and his own life. Eliade suggests no solutions to the problems which this consideration may raise. If one is inclined towards the Christian tradition, Matthew Fox's writings, particularly ORIGINAL BLESSING, may offer hope. For others, more exploration is required.

This is a fundamental text for religious scholarship and for living an examined life.

Eliade wastes no time trying to explain or define the experience of the sacred in terms of other disciplines (for instance, the sacred as psychological experience (Campbell) or the sacred as sociological phenomenon (Burkert)). Instead, he examines the sacred as sacred.

Eliade shows how sacred space and sacred time are supremely REAL space and time, permanent and eternal in opposition to the fluid space and time of the profane world. Homo religiosus re-enacts the primordial deeds of the gods in his rites and, indeed (unlike modern man), in all his acts, because only those primordial acts are truly real. Likewise, irruptions of sacred phenomena into profane space create sacred space, space which is created, which is eternal, which is real.

Read this book before undertaking any serious study of comparative religion. Read this book along with other classics about thought. Read this book and consider your own experience of the sacred. But whatever you do, read this book.

This eminently readable introduction to cross-cultural religious studies is one of the gems of my personal library. Eliade does not believe that "primitive" means "simple-minded" or "outmoded", hence, his discussions of "primitive" religious ideas are sympathetic and penetrating. The final section of the book skewers "modern" humanity's pretensions to having transcended the sacred. The appendix contains a succinct and iluminating chronology of the development of "history of religions" studies. If you always thought (along with most of the rest of the world) that "myth" simply meant "old superstition" or "false story"' this book has a few surprises in store for you. Just read it!

_The Sacred and the Profane_ by Mircea Eliade is a work that examines (or attempts to examine) the ontological meaning of religion and religious experience. It is an excellent, if highly abstract work that tries to explain what it means to actually be. Religious experience is that of knowledge of the sacred and the meanings attached to it. The sacred distinguishes itself from the profane by what Eliade terms a "hierophany" or manifestation of the sacred. The sacred indicates a break in profane existence, both in space and time. Space becomes sacred when it has a meaning above and beyond itself, and time becomes sacred when it hearkens back to man's primordial beginnings, rooted in myth. It symbolizes death and rebirth. _The Sacred and the Profane_ covers foundation ceremonies, ritual sacrifices, the "axis mundi", New Year's celebrations, the polarity between sun and moon, masculine and feminine, rites of initiation (such as baptism and its parallels in other religions), and modern man's fall into an almost completely profane world. Eliade, who was affiliated with a pro-fascist revolutionary group (whose slogan was "long live death!") in his native Romania, is hoping toward some type of spiritual revival. Religious man, contrary to modernist doctrines, actually looks for the deeper value in mere existential being, rooted in something above and beyond himself, the true nature of Reality. In the conclusion of _The Sacred and the Profane_ Eliade ponders why religion has fallen away in the West today. Religious man looked toward a hypothetical Golden Age, Garden of Eden, Elysian Fields, Paradise, etc, as something which had existed in the mythical past and to which fallen humanity would someday return. This consciousness has been lost from modern man, and Eliade considers this question to be beyond the realm of pure history, and perhaps a thing to be investigated by "even theologians."

This little book had a big impact on students of religious history and comparative religion, and paved the way for scientists attempting to deconstruct homo religiosus. Eliade jumps off from Rudolph Otto's Idea of the Holy, a pioneering work of comparative religion that characterized non-rational religious states experienced universally across world cultures. Eliade extends the comparative concept by describing how sacred impulses manifest themselves in space, time, nature, and human society, contrasting the religious viewpoint with that of the non-religious or profane person.

In general, Eliade sees religious man using the sacred as a way of orienting himself in the world and transcending the limitations of the individual life lived in a specific time and place. Non-religious people abjure the tools and consolations of religion, but since they are descended from religious cultures, much of their thinking and practice ends up being bastardized forms of religion anyway.

In the first chapter,"Sacred Space and Making the World Sacred," Eliade describes an Australian Aboriginal tribe, the Achilpa, who believe that their god Numbakula fashioned a sacred pole from the trunk of a gum tree and used it to climb into the sky. The Achilpa carry a replica of this sacred pole with them as they migrate through the desert to new sources of food and water. This pole literally becomes the center of their universe, and if this pole breaks, their world disintegrates. Two anthropologists reported seeing the sacred pole break. The tribe wandered aimlessly for a while, then lay down on the ground and waited for death to overtake them.

Sacred spaces become a way of organizing against primordial chaos, and it's only within this sacred space that religious man has a real existence. Whether it's a pole from a gum tree or Chartres Cathedral, the general principle is the same. Even non-religious people have special places that help orient them in time and space, such as the house they were born in, their elementary school, or the place where they first met their spouse.

Sacred time operates the same way: it focuses and orients human activity, and becomes a repeatable way of stepping out of chronological time. Aborigines, for example practice ceremonies that summon the gods to reveal their presence in the here and now. Aborigines also recreate their origin myths by traveling to the places where the gods sprung out of the ground. Entering into sacred time, Eliade says, is an attempt to return to an "eternal, mythical present." If you're not religious, you might turn to drugs, or sex, or work or hobbies - anything that allows you to escape from the death sentence of historical time.

To talk about the sacred in nature, Eliade invents the useful concept of hierophany, which is the revelation of the sacred through something else, anything from a stone or a tree up through a holy person or a god. For religious man, nature expresses something that transcends itself - a stone can represent absolute existence, the moon represents the cycle of birth, death and resurrection. The profane person needs nature too. Even with god out of the picture, nature can still symbolize beauty or harmony, or the perfect resting place - temporary stays against chaos and decay. For certain irreligious people, art can be used in a hierophanic manner to represent an eternal order that exists out of time (Keats' poem, Ode to a Grecian Urn is a lovely expression of this thought).

Eliade ends by taking us on a tour of various religious rituals. Initiation rites allow the old self to die and a new self to be reborn. Religious practices also ease the trauma of dying because you're only dying to your profane existence in this world, which to the believer isn't the real world anyway. The "real" world is the return to the timeless present created by the gods back in the days before human history. Eliade asserts that access to the spiritual life always entails death to the profane condition followed by a new birth. The Christian myth of Jesus rising from his tomb is but one manifestation of a universal human myth.

Religious or not, everybody wants at least temporary relief from primordial chaos, the burdens of individual consciousness and the inevitability of death. Since we're all pinned down in time and space by language, culture, temperament and genetic inheritance, we all need rituals that allow us to rise up and glimpse eternal order, harmony and peace. Eliade's great contribution is to demonstrate how the particular manifestations of religion, whether it's the Achilpa or the Methodists, spring from universal human needs.

I first discovered this book in college and it has become one of the most influential pieces of writing in my life. Eliade's extensive studies in comparative religion penetrates to the core of the human condition, our existence and constant search for meaning. This is a great book to open dialogue about the nature of religion, it's development, and evolution. If you are open to thinking outside of convention, Eliade will blow your mind. He makes the underlying connections between "what we do" and "why do we do it" obvious. For anyone who wants explore the ultimate "why" questions of life, this book is a great place to start. Eliade's ideas have constantly change the way I viewed religion and the world. Plus, the book is really short with big font. For anyone else looking for more on Eliade, his academic work covers volumes, literally.

Eliade's book picks up the thread from Rudolf Otto's The Idea of the Holy and attempts to explain the nature of the Sacred by pairing it with its opposite-- the profane.

This little book is a deceptively easy and quick read, but take the time to think it through carefully. He uses the oppositional pair sacred/profane to examine the notion of space, time, nature and human existence and it's worth spending the time to go back after each chapter and reconsider the chapter before it.

Bound with a chronological survey on the history of religion and a selected bibliography, a must have before trying to do further reading in religious thought.

The world contains two kinds of people: those who have read Mircea Eliade, and those who should do so as soon as possible. In one reader's humble opinion he is worth 3 of Lévi-Strauss and 6 of Carl Jung.

Growing up immersed in Romanian folkways and Orthodox ritual, he was living in the archaic world of myth and symbol, so it's no surprise that he writes about it so convincingly.
He went to India to study Yoga when few Europeans had even heard the word; and while he was there (to fill the long lonely evenings,) he learnt Sanskrit, Pali and who-knows-what-else. His scholarship has you reaching for the oxygen-mask: he seemed to have read everything related to his wide interests in at least 15 languages.
Though all but canonised in his native Romania, elsewhere he has fallen between two stools: too opinionated and subjective for the scholars, too scholarly for the public. But this hasn't stopped the pervasive spread of dummed-down versions of his ideas.

Eliade was one of those scholars (artists, poets) who keep returning to a stock of obsessions or key ideas, interpreting all and everything in their light. One such is the subject of this book: that distinction between the Sacred and the Profane, or holy things and ordinary things, so crucial for most ancient and religious cultures.
This is one of the of his best books to begin on (the other is "The Myth of the Eternal Return".) Nothing that I have ever read helps you more in understanding the fabulous lost worlds of pre-modern thought, so often disparaged and misconstrued out of ignorance.

This book represents a milestone in the academic study of religion. Read it! It is a classic. Eliade displayes rare genius in his analysis of the phenomona of religion