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    Eliade Sacred Profane Intro and CH1 PDF

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    Timothy P

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    THE SACRED AND THE y prorane TIE NATURE OF RELIGION by Mircea Eliade ‘Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask A Harvest Boole « Harcourt, Ine Orowle Aas NowYrk Son Digs Teno London The extraordinary interest aroused all over the ‘world by Rudolf Otto's Das Heilige (The Sacred), pub- Tished in 1917, still persists, Its success was certainly due to the author's new snd original point of view. Tn- stead of studying the ideas of God and religion, Ovo undertook to analyze the modalities of the religious experience. Gifted with great psychological subtety, and thoroughly prepared by his twofold training 28 theo- logian and historian of religions, he succeeded in de- termining the content and speciic characteristics of religious experience. Passing over the rational and ‘speculative side of religion, he concentrated chiefly on its irrational aspect. For Otto had read Luther wr ad ‘understood what the “living God” meant to a believer. It was not the God of the philosophers—of Erasmus, 8 fo ample wa mt an eta hat en 4 tro morlepr,eearil poe a Jin the divine wrath. re ied In eli Ovo ethno dir he certo hs fh taal eres Hens eng of torr blr ha acre, ee thewetnpng stn (wron emer), sy (jt) al rent a orn tony ef pee nt li fr elie fecnane my (eyo fon) in wich to fs of flyer Os Saracen al "ccc mnie (hom a ume), tetany on of op af Chine poe Th unos post lng “aly oe" (ge ode) eng aly wd ° 10 The Sere end he Frofone totaly different. I i like nothing human oF cosmic confronted with it, man senses his profound nothing- pea, fels that he is ony a creature, or in the words in ‘which Abraham addressed the Lord, is “but dust and ashes” (Genesis, 18, 27). "The sacred always manifests itself as a reality of a wholly different order from “natural” reais. Tt is true that language naively expresses the tremendumy oF the mojesas, othe mysterum fascinans by terms bore rowed from the world of nature or from man's secular ‘meatal life But we know that this analogical terminol- ‘ogy is due precisely to human inability to expres the ‘ganz ender; all that goes beyond man’s natural expe- renee, language is reduced to suggesting by terms taken from that experience. “After forty year, Ot's analyses have not lost their value; readers ofthis book will profit by reading and reflecting on them. But in the following pages we adopt 4 diferent perpestive. We propose to present the phe- ‘nomenon of the sacred in ll ts eomplexty, and not only {nwo far siti irrational. What will concern us is not the relation between the rational and nonrational ele- ments of religion but the sacred in is entirety. The fst ‘pombe dfnition ofthe sacred is that it isthe opposite ofthe profane. The aim ofthe following pages isto ills trate and define this opposition between sacred and profane, Inuroducion ML [WHEN THE SACRED MANIFESTS ITSELF ‘Man becomes aware of the sacred bocause it sanifet isl, shows itself as something whelly differ- ent from the profane. To designate the act of manifes- tation of the sacred, we have proposed the term hiero- hany. It is a Siting trm, bocause it does anything further; it expresses no moro than i is {nits etymological content, i. that something sacred shous itself tows? Te could be said that the history of religions—from the most primitive to the most highly Aeveloped—is constituted by a great number of hieror phanies, by manifestations of excred realities. From the most elementary hierophany—e,, manifestation ofthe ‘acred in some ordinary abject, a stone or a tee—t0 the supreme hierophany (which, for a Christian, isthe incarnation of God in Jesus Christ) there is no solution of continuity. In each case we are confronted by the same rysterious act—the manifestation of comeing of a ‘wholly diferent order, a reality that does not belong to cour world, in objects that are an integral past of our natural “profane” world. ‘The modern Occidental experiences a certain uneas- ness before many manifestation ofthe sacred. He finds itditicalt to accept the fact that, for many human beings, the sacred can be manifesta in stones or tees, for Ct Me id, Pate in Compra Raion Kaw Yi, Sed {Ward GR pp. 7 Cd hear w Pater 12 The Sucred and the Profane ‘example. But as wo shall soon see, what is involved is rot @ veneration ofthe stone in itself, a cult ofthe tree in iteelf. The sacred txee, the sacred sione are not adored as stone or tree; they aro worshipped precisely Decause they are hierophanies, because they show some- thing that is no longer stone or tree but the sacred, the ‘pons andere. Tt is impossible to overemphasize the paradox repre- sented by every hierophany, even the most elementary. By manifesting the sacred, any object becomes something else, yet it continues to remain itself, for it continues to participate in its surrounding coemic milieu. A sacred stone remains a stone; apparently (or, more precisely, from the profane point of view), nothing distinguishes it from all other stones. But for those to whom a stone reveals itself as sacred, its immediate reality is trans ‘muted into a supernatural reality. In other words, for those who have a religious experience all mature is capable of revealing itself as cosmic sacrality. The ‘cosmos in ts entirety ean become a hierophany. "The man ofthe archaie eoceties tends to live as much ‘as possible inthe sacred or in close proximity to com secrated object. The tendeney is perfectly understand- able, because, for primitives as for the man of all pre- modem societies, the sacred is equivalent to a poter, ‘end, inthe last analysis to reality. Tho sacred is eaturated ‘with being. Saored power moans reality and at the same time endutingness and eflcacity. The polarity sacred Invodtion 18 ‘profane is often expressed as an opposition between real ‘and unreal ox psoudoreal. (Naturally, we must not expect to find the archaie languages in possession of this philo- sophical terminology, real-unreal, ete; but we find the thing.) Thus its easy to understand that religious man. deeply desires to be, to participate in reality, to be satu rated with power. ‘ur chicf concern in the following pages will be to lucidate this subject—to show in what ways religions ‘man attempts to remain as long as possible in a sacred universe, and honco what hia total experiance 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 deeacralized world. It should be said at once that the completely profane world, the whelly ecacralizod cosmos, isa recent discovery inthe history ‘of the human eprit. It does not devolve upon us to show by what historieal processes and as the result of what changes in spiritual attitudes and behavior modern man thas desacralized hie world and assumed a profane exist fence. For our purpose it is enough to observe that Aesacralization pervades the entre experience of the ‘nonreligious man of modern societies and that, in com sequence, he finds it increasingly dificult to rediscover the existential dimensions of religious man in the archaic VA The Sacred and the Profane ‘two MopES OF BEING IN THE WORLD “he syst vide the two models of emp sionosneed an profane wil be appre when we Sout dese eed pce ordeal building of fhe human bbitaons othe veretin of tho rlgoas ‘paren of time, o he reltons of religous man to aurea the world of tos, or the coseration of mane fuels te sncraiy wit wich ms tal fen (on yk a an be aa Simply calling wo mind win the cy ote hous mata, eer hve ume fr ner and nomaligons wean wil howe ith to not vividness al that die Angus such woman om @ an Delong 10 ay trehae nocny or even fsm « pena af Chinn Europe. For em conedowseay pysologeal act PetMngy sas and sais in rom oly an oremnic ‘enomenon however chit ay al be encumbered By tabu Cinporngy for execpt prwlar rules for wating pepe” frig tome sean behavior Shuapoved by total morality) Bat forthe pet, Soc an acts never singly piyiloial i yore mom a scromonts tht yeoman wit the Te lize that sacred and pro- "Tho wader wil ery soon rain that fone avetro moses af bing in he wl, to existential ane need by ta te our of Bs history. ‘Tuco mutes of being inthe world aze not of conern Iniroduction 18 only to the history of religions or to sociology; they are ‘ot the object only of historical, sociological, or ethno- logical stady. Inthe last analysis, the sacred and profane modes of being depend upon the diflerent positions thet rman has conquered in the cosmos; hence they are of oncern both to the philosopher and to anyone seeking to diseover tho possible dimensions of human existonce. {is Sor this reseon that, though he ie a historian of religions, the author of this book proposes not to enfine himself only tothe perspective of his particular science. ‘Tho man of the traditional societies is admittedly a homo religiosus, but his behavior forms part of the general Ipchavior of mankind and hence is of eoncera ta philo- sophical anthropology, to phenomenology, to peychol- oy. ‘The better to bring out the specific charactoriatia of 1ife in a world capable of becoming sacred, I shall not hesitate to cite examples from many religions belonging to different periods and cultures. Nothing can tako the place of the example, the concrete fact. Tt would be wse- less to discuss the structure of sacred space without showing, by particular examples, how such a space is ceonetacted and why it becomes qualitatively different from the profane space by which it is surrounded. I shall select such examples from among the Mesopo- tamians, the Indians, the Chines, the Kwakiutl and other primitive peoples. From the historicocultural point of view, such a juxtaposition of zeligious data pertaining 16 There nd the Profene se far removed in time and pace i ot wie ‘ere danger. Fo thre slays the of falling hak ino the eros ofthe nineeeth extry and, p= ‘Sealy, of believing with Tylor Frazer tat th fenton ofthe buan do natzal phennmens is Ahifore. But he progres scompised in earl ey ogy and in the istry of religions bas shown tht {Sie bot always tv, nt a's eins to nate tre often conlitond by hs clare and ewe, fly, hy iar. : Bot the import hing fr ou prpse is bring ut the opie characteristic of the religious e=p- Snes: ratber than to show is merous vations and {be diferencs cased by hioy. Ro womevhat si inorder obtain a bter grap of the poate phenme- to, we shld have recourse fo mats heterogeneous ‘Etnglen ends by ide with Homer an Dante, quote inde, Chins, and Mexican poem; that soul tke Int eideraon not only pete: pontng a histor- {Sl common Jemoiaaor (Home, Vrg, Dass) but loo cea tat ae dependent upon oie etic, Fro the pit af vow of Ierarybiory, sch juste positon ar tobe viewed wih suicion; but hey ae Tall too jet isto dsr the pone plenomenon uch i we prope fo chow te exeataldierece Tewera poate language and th ataran language of everyday ite Iurotucéon AT Our primary concern is to present the specie dimensions of religious experience, to bring out the

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