Mircea Eliade - The Sacred and the Profane
“…access to spiritual life always entails death to the profane condition, followed by a new birth”.
Eliade, M. (1959) The Sacred and the Profane, Harcourt, Inc, USA, p201
"The Sacred and the Profane" by Mircea Eliade is a fascinating exploration of the nature of human religious experience. Eliade examines the ways in which people across cultures and throughout history have understood the sacred and the profane, and how these categories have shaped their lives and societies. One of the strengths of this book is Eliade's ability to bring together insights from a wide range of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, psychology, and history. He draws on examples from diverse religious traditions, including Animism, Shamanism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, to illustrate his arguments, which allows him to offer a nuanced and multi-layered analysis that is both intellectually rigorous and deeply insightful.
One of the key insights of this book is that the sacred and the profane are not simply opposites or binary categories, but are rather part of a complex and dynamic interplay between the transcendent and the immanent. Eliade argues that the sacred is characterized by a sense of timelessness and eternity, whereas the profane is characterized by the temporal and the mundane. However, he also shows how the profane can be transformed into the sacred through ritual and symbolic action, and how the sacred can be integrated into everyday life through the creation of sacred spaces and objects.
"For religious man, nature is never only 'natural'; it is always fraught with a religious value. This is easy to understand, for the cosmos is a divine creation; coming from the hands of gods, the world is impregnated with sacredness. It is not simply a sacrality communicated by the gods, as is the case, for examples, with a place or an object consecrated by the divine presence. The gods did more; they manifested the different modalities of the sacred in the very structure of the world and of cosmic phenomena”. (p116)
Eliade covers many aspects of human existence and our experience of the world, including sacred spaces, sacred time, nature and the cosmos and the sanctified life. An aspect of both sacred and profane importance that Eliade examines extensively, and which I found particularly interesting, is the lives of structures and buildings. Structures can be created specifically for sacred purposes, but they can also be profane spaces which in turn become sacred by being imbued with the lives of those who utilise them. The lives of generations can create a space sacred to ancestors, a blood sacrifice can imbue a structure with its own life or soul, rituals continually performed within a building can take it from a state of the everyday to a place of worship. Eliade talks about methods of homologising a building to the cosmos, referencing a Indian practice of using the knowledge of an astronomer to place the first stone to lie above a snake that supports the world. The master mason then drives a sharpened stake into the place where the serpent resides to fix its head, before laying the first stone directly above. This stone then becomes the exact centre of the world and the axis around which the house exists. The serpent symbolises chaos, the formless void, so beheading it, or fixing it’s head in place is an act of creation and of humanities dominion over the unknown.
He also examines the way sacred buildings take on the cosmological symbolism already present in both the natural world and in primitive habitations. The dwelling might also have a relationship to the human body itself with links between cosmos/dwelling/body; experiencing all three as scared spaces. For example the smoke hole in a primitive dwelling could be seen to create a passage to the heavens, a way to transfer from one plane to another. This relates to the eye of the human which acts as a conduit from the inner self to the exterior world. In later temples (eg the domes of cathedrals) can often be seen an ‘eye’ which sits open to the heavens allowing a window on the divine. Throughout the book he returns to the idea that all forms of cosmos – universe, temple, house, human body – have an upper “opening” which makes possible the passage from one existential situation to another. Humans pass from pre-life, to life, to death and to the after-life as the sun passes from darkness to light.
“…even when the celestial gods no longer dominate religious life, the sidereal regions, uranian symbolism, myths and rites of ascent and the like, retain a preponderant place in the economy of the sacred. What is “above” the “high”, continues to reveal the transcendent in every religious complex…this celestial symbolism in turn infuses and supports a number of rites (of ascent, climbing, initiation…), of myths (the cosmic tree, the cosmic mountain, the chain connecting earth with heaven)…The symbolism of the Centre of the World – whose immense dissemination we have seen – likewise illustrates the importance of celestial symbolism; for it is at centre that communication with the sky is effected, and the sky constitutes the paradigmatic image of transcendence.” (p128)
The Sacred and the Profane is a rich and illuminating book that offers valuable insights into the nature of human religious experience. Eliade's writing is clear and engaging, and his arguments are supported by a wealth of examples and evidence. I always enjoy Eliade’s work and this book is a must-read for anyone interested in the study of religion, anthropology, or cultural history.
