HIST 304 Sacred Places Unit 1

Sacred

"Things set apart and forbidden," (Durkheim), or a reality that exists beyond regular activities.

The Sacred two

A holy well from a monastic site on the island of Inishmurray off the coast of Ireland The religious person, the one who lives in a sacred cosmos, does make a distinction between different spaces. There is the recognition that Every sacred space implies a hierophany, an irruption of the sacred that results in detaching a territory from the surrounding cosmic milieu and making it qualitatively different.(Campbell, 26) Eliade's example as we just mentioned is the church: For a believer, the church shares in a different space from the street in which it stands. The door that opens on the interior of the church actually signifies a solution of continuity. The threshold that separates the two spaces also indicates the distance between two modes of being, the profane and the religious. The threshold is the limit, the boundary, the frontier that distinguishes and opposes two worlds-and at the same time the paradoxical place where those worlds communicate, where passage from the profane to the sacred world becomes possible. (Eliade, 25) Caves of Qumran on the western shore of the Dead Sea, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered Caves of Qumran on the western shore of the Dead Sea, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered Here is a similar observation from Joseph Campbell, the leading scholar on myth and the sacred in the late twentieth century: Just for example: I walk off Fifty first Street and Fifth Avenue into St. Patrick's Cathedral. I've left a very busy city and one of the most economically inspired cities on the planet. I walk into that cathedral, and everything around me speaks of spiritual mysteries. The mystery of the cross, what's that all about there? The stained glass windows, which bring another atmosphere in. My consciousness has been brought up onto another level altogether, and I am on a different platform. And then I walk out, and I 'm back on the level of the street again. (Campbell, 15) View of St. Stephen's Cathedral View of St. Stephen's Cathedral From Campbell again:A temple is a landscape of the soul. When you walk into a cathedral, you move into a world of spiritual images. It is the mother womb of your spiritual life-mother church. All the forms around are significant of spiritual value. Now, in a cathedral, the imagery is in anthropomorphic form. And in the caves [here he is referring to ancient cave art] the images are in animal form. But it's the same thing, believe me. The form is secondary. The message is what is important. (Campbell, 80)

Profane

A part of everyday life, separate from the holy and the sacred

Symbol

A representation but also indicating the presence or occurrence of something else.

The Sacred 3

A sacred place is something separate from the profane world. It holds a religious or spiritual significance that separates it from the surrounding space. But as Campbell and others make clear, it is your consciousness that experiences the sacred, and those who have that experience have to cultivate their spiritual consciousness. Meditations on the great myths that hold religious traditions together are the most common form of developing spiritual consciousness. The sacred place is in this world and at the same time a part of the other world. It can serve as a bridge between the two worlds, and it can represent or actually be the reality of the sacred world. This a problem that we will be confronted with throughout the course: the representation of reality as opposed to reality. Sorry, there are no easy answers to this problem. It represents the center or the focus of the universe. In its presence, there is order, structure, and harmony. It is as close to the sacred as you can come in this world. Stations of the Cross marker, Inishmurray Stations of the Cross marker, Inishmurray All of this can be seen according to Eliade as a "system of the world." Several principles are at work: 1.Sacred places are different from profane places (they are because of the presence, past or present, in some way, shape, or form, of a spirit force, usually thought of as the divine in western religious traditions). 2.There is always an entry point, a way to go from one world to the other. 3.There are symbols or rituals that help to mark this entry point and the passage from the profane to the sacred (rivers, trees, holy water founts, prayers, songs, chants). 4.As a part of the "system of the world" there is always an axis mundi that serves as the center of the world. Everything revolves around it; and to a certain extent is dependent upon it. Everything mentioned in 3 above isrelated to this.

Holy

A special quality of purity and goodness distinct from the profane; it is associated with the sacred, and often conferred by it.

Sacred time 3

Another example comes from Christian sculpture. Art historians justifiably consider Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475 1564) one of the best artists of the Renaissance. His Pietà (1498 1499) is a religious masterpiece that has moved and inspired admirers since its creation. (This was the only work that Michelangelo signed). Aside from the technical mastery he displayed in this work, Michelangelo achieved fame because he portrayed Mary as a young women, not an older, distraught mother whose thirty-three year old son was just taken down from the cross. Mary is young and beautiful, and at the same time serene and resigned. Michelangelo portrayed Mary at the time of the Annunciation, when an angel appeared to her with the message that she would carry Jesus. At that time she became aware of the burden that would be hers, and she accepted it, displaying a deep and moving human beauty. Heavy under the weight of her dead son, head down, left hand extended in an accepting manner, Mary of the Pietà is the ideal of the new humanism. What we have here is the eternal present. Mother and child, life and death, grief and serenity. It is all part of the human experience, here captured in stone. To put the beauty and sacred nature of this sculpture in a different perspective, we should recognize that it came about, as so much art has, through patronage. The patron, in this case a French Cardinal working through a Roman banker, contracted with Michelangelo to complete the sculpture in a year period for a specified sum of money. It took Michelangelo two years instead of the stipulated one, but he did create what is recognized as one of the most beautiful and sacred pieces of art every created. Without the financial support (patronage), who knows what would have happened to the struggling Michelangelo. We do know that for the rest of his career he depended on the patronage of Popes'Julius, Leo X, Clement VII, and Paul III. Before 1972 visitors to the Pietà , located in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, could literally stand next to the sculpture and feel the power of Renaissance humanism. Now they have to view it from a distance. In 1972 a man named Lazlo Toth took a hammer to the Pietà , seriously damaging it. After restoration officials placed it behind a bullet proof glass, where it is protected against future vandals. Toth's actions, more the product of individual psychopathy than social protest, speak to the ongoing emotional storm that religious art can provoke.

The significance of the Sacred

Another way to approach understanding sacred places is to ask why people visit them: •What are their expectations, hopes, and dreams? •Why would you, a relative, or friend seek out a sacred place? Answering these questions helps us to understand pilgrims and pilgrimages; they in turn help to further define sacred places. Our primary discussion of pilgrimages will be in Unit 15, but it is important to mention them now, because they offer one way of defining sacred places.

The scared 5

Artificial mountains have the same significance. The mounds of the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys are the most basic examples of this attempt to build an axis mundi. Heaps of earth are literally mounded together to build a temple that will bring cultures closer to the divine. More developed examples of this principle are the ziggurats of ancient Babylonia. More developed examples still are the pyramids of Egypt and Mesoamerica. All of these are cosmic mountains, whether natural or man made. Dwellings as well can be the axis mundi, and it makes no difference that there might be thousands or tens of thousands of centers of the world. The concept of imago mundi is also important for understanding sacred places, although most students of hierophany would probably agree that axis mundi is more common and more valuable for understanding manifestations of the sacred than imago mundi. Literally, an "image of the world," imago mundi refers to a representation of a cosmic reality. It can be physical or mental, mythological or concrete and specific. Often it is all of this combined. An imago mundi offers a blueprint or outline of all that is sacred for a specific culture. It might be as complex as an Aztec temple, which represents the different levels of reality, the cardinal directions, and the gods, or it can be as simple as a tent or a Hogan. Other goods examples of imago mundi are Navajo sand paintings and Buddhist mandalas. Navajo San Painting Navajo San Painting Eliade gives a brief but good description of a dwelling that can be both axis mundi and imago mundi. Since the habitation constitutes an imago mundi, it is symbolically situated at the Center of the World. The multiplicity, or even the infinity, of centers of the world raises no difficulty for religious thought. For it is not a matter of geometrical space, but of an existential and sacred space that has an entirely different structure, that admits of an infinite number of communications with the transcendent. (Eliade, 57) Let's summarize this discussion by referring to a quote from the French sociologist Emile Durkheim, who spent many years pondering the meaning of the sacred and how it differed from the profane: "In all the history of human thought there exists no other example of two categories of things so profoundly differentiated or so radically opposed to one another. The traditional opposition of good and bad is nothing beside this; for the good and the bad are only two opposed species of the same class, namely morals, just as sickness and health are two different aspects of the same order of facts, life, while the sacred and the profane have always and everywhere been conceived by the human mind as two distinct classes, two worlds between which there is nothing in common."(quoted in Nisbett, 81)

The sacred caves

Caves represent the opposite end of the axis mundi. We encounter them much less frequently than mountains in our course, but we should note at the outset their importance for many cultures. They first of all provided places of refuge from the elements and escape from enemies; they then became burial places. At the same time, they had mythical importance as the home of gods, spirits, and demons. Most importantly, they were a passage way between night and day, between this life (the profane) and a life that was starkly different (the sacred). In the United States, caves such as Carlsbad Caverns and Mamouth Caves have become National Parks. Closer to home, we can explore the Laurel Caverns and wonder about their significance for earlier cultures. A quote from a study of caves in Mesoamerica, here meaning Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras, succinctly describes their significance. "For Mesoamericans, caves had sacred qualities; they were viewed as entrances to the underworld, and the sun, moon, and even humans emerged from caves in the mythological past." (Carmack, Gasco, Gossen, The Legacy of Mesoamerica, 58)

Sublime

Elevation of thought, grandeur, beauty, at times more associated with art than with religion.

eliad wik

Eliade argues that religious thought in general rests on a sharp distinction between the Sacred and the profane;[85] whether it takes the form of God, gods, or mythical Ancestors, the Sacred contains all "reality", or value, and other things acquire "reality" only to the extent that they participate in the sacred.[86] Eliade's understanding of religion centers on his concept of hierophany (manifestation of the Sacred)—a concept that includes, but is not limited to, the older and more restrictive concept of theophany (manifestation of a god).[87] From the perspective of religious thought, Eliade argues, hierophanies give structure and orientation to the world, establishing a sacred order. The "profane" space of nonreligious experience can only be divided up geometrically: it has no "qualitative differentiation and, hence, no orientation [is] given by virtue of its inherent structure".[88] Thus, profane space gives man no pattern for his behavior. In contrast to profane space, the site of a hierophany has a sacred structure to which religious man conforms himself. A hierophany amounts to a "revelation of an absolute reality, opposed to the non-reality of the vast surrounding expanse".[89] As an example of "sacred space" demanding a certain response from man, Eliade gives the story of Moses halting before Yahweh's manifestation as a burning bush (Exodus 3:5) and taking off his shoes.[90] Origin myths and sacred time[edit] Eliade notes that, in traditional societies, myth represents the absolute truth about primordial time.[91] According to the myths, this was the time when the Sacred first appeared, establishing the world's structure—myths claim to describe the primordial events that made society and the natural world be that which they are. Eliade argues that all myths are, in that sense, origin myths: "myth, then, is always an account of a creation".[92] Many traditional societies believe that the power of a thing lies in its origin.[93] If origin is equivalent to power, then "it is the first manifestation of a thing that is significant and valid"[94] (a thing's reality and value therefore lies only in its first appearance). According to Eliade's theory, only the Sacred has value, only a thing's first appearance has value and, therefore, only the Sacred's first appearance has value. Myth describes the Sacred's first appearance; therefore, the mythical age is sacred time,[91] the only time of value: "primitive man was interested only in the beginnings [...] to him it mattered little what had happened to himself, or to others like him, in more or less distant times".[95] Eliade postulated this as the reason for the "nostalgia for origins" that appears in many religions, the desire to return to a primordial Paradise.[95] Eternal return and "Terror of history"[edit] Main article: Eternal return (Eliade) Eliade argues that traditional man attributes no value to the linear march of historical events: only the events of the mythical age have value. To give his own life value, traditional man performs myths and rituals. Because the Sacred's essence lies only in the mythical age, only in the Sacred's first appearance, any later appearance is actually the first appearance; by recounting or re-enacting mythical events, myths and rituals "re-actualize" those events.[96] Eliade often uses the term "archetypes" to refer to the mythical models established by the Sacred, although Eliade's use of the term should be distinguished from the use of the term in Jungian psychology.[97] Thus, argues Eliade, religious behavior does not only commemorate, but also participates in, sacred events: In imitating the exemplary acts of a god or of a mythical hero, or simply by recounting their adventures, the man of an archaic society detaches himself from profane time and magically re-enters the Great Time, the sacred time.[91] Eliade called this concept the "eternal return" (distinguished from the philosophical concept of "eternal return"). Wendy Doniger noted that Eliade's theory of the eternal return "has become a truism in the study of religions".[1] Eliade attributes the well-known "cyclic" vision of time in ancient thought to belief in the eternal return. For instance, the New Year ceremonies among the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians, and other Near Eastern peoples re-enacted their cosmogonic myths. Therefore, by the logic of the eternal return, each New Year ceremony was the beginning of the world for these peoples. According to Eliade, these peoples felt a need to return to the Beginning at regular intervals, turning time into a circle.[98] Eliade argues that yearning to remain in the mythical age causes a "terror of history": traditional man desires to escape the linear succession of events (which, Eliade indicated, he viewed as empty of any inherent value or sacrality). Eliade suggests that the abandonment of mythical thought and the full acceptance of linear, historical time, with its "terror", is one of the reasons for modern man's anxieties.[99] Traditional societies escape this anxiety to an extent, as they refuse to completely acknowledge historical time. Coincidentia oppositorum[edit] Eliade claims that many myths, rituals, and mystical experiences involve a "coincidence of opposites", or coincidentia oppositorum. In fact, he calls the coincidentia oppositorum "the mythical pattern".[100] Many myths, Eliade notes, "present us with a twofold revelation": they express on the one hand the diametrical opposition of two divine figures sprung from one and the same principle and destined, in many versions, to be reconciled at some illud tempus of eschatology, and on the other, the coincidentia oppositorum in the very nature of the divinity, which shows itself, by turns or even simultaneously, benevolent and terrible, creative and destructive, solar and serpentine, and so on (in other words, actual and potential).[101] Eliade argues that "Yahweh is both kind and wrathful; the God of the Christian mystics and theologians is terrible and gentle at once".[102] He also thought that the Indian and Chinese mystic tried to attain "a state of perfect indifference and neutrality" that resulted in a coincidence of opposites in which "pleasure and pain, desire and repulsion, cold and heat [...] are expunged from his awareness".[102] According to Eliade, the coincidentia oppositorum's appeal lies in "man's deep dissatisfaction with his actual situation, with what is called the human condition".[103] In many mythologies, the end of the mythical age involves a "fall", a fundamental "ontological change in the structure of the World".[104] Because the coincidentia oppositorum is a contradiction, it represents a denial of the world's current logical structure, a reversal of the "fall". Also, traditional man's dissatisfaction with the post-mythical age expresses itself as a feeling of being "torn and separate".[103] In many mythologies, the lost mythical age was a Paradise, "a paradoxical state in which the contraries exist side by side without conflict, and the multiplications form aspects of a mysterious Unity".[104] The coincidentia oppositorum expresses a wish to recover the lost unity of the mythical Paradise, for it presents a reconciliation of opposites and the unification of diversity: On the level of pre-systematic thought, the mystery of totality embodies man's endeavor to reach a perspective in which the contraries are abolished, the Spirit of Evil reveals itself as a stimulant of Good, and Demons appear as the night aspect of the Gods.[104] Exceptions to the general nature[edit] The Last Judgment (detail) in the 12th century Byzantine mosaic at Torcello. Eliade acknowledges that not all religious behavior has all the attributes described in his theory of sacred time and the eternal return. The Zoroastrian, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions embrace linear, historical time as sacred or capable of sanctification, while some Eastern traditions largely reject the notion of sacred time, seeking escape from the cycles of time. Because they contain rituals, Judaism and Christianity necessarily—Eliade argues—retain a sense of cyclic time: by the very fact that it is a religion, Christianity had to keep at least one mythical aspect—liturgical Time, that is, the periodic rediscovery of the illud tempus of the beginnings [and] an imitation of the Christ as exemplary pattern.[105] However, Judaism and Christianity do not see time as a circle endlessly turning on itself; nor do they see such a cycle as desirable, as a way to participate in the Sacred. Instead, these religions embrace the concept of linear history progressing toward the Messianic Age or the Last Judgment, thus initiating the idea of "progress" (humans are to work for a Paradise in the future).[106] However, Eliade's understanding of Judaeo-Christian eschatology can also be understood as cyclical in that the "end of time" is a return to God: "The final catastrophe will put an end to history, hence will restore man to eternity and beatitude".[107] The pre-Islamic Persian religion of Zoroastrianism, which made a notable "contribution to the religious formation of the West",[108] also has a linear sense of time. According to Eliade, the Hebrews had a linear sense of time before being influenced by Zoroastrianism.[108] In fact, Eliade identifies the Hebrews, not the Zoroastrians, as the first culture to truly "valorize" historical time, the first to see all major historical events as episodes in a continuous divine revelation.[109] However, Eliade argues, Judaism elaborated its mythology of linear time by adding elements borrowed from Zoroastrianism—including ethical dualism, a savior figure, the future resurrection of the body, and the idea of cosmic progress toward "the final triumph of Good".[108] The Indian religions of the East generally retain a cyclic view of time—for instance, the Hindu doctrine of kalpas. According to Eliade, most religions that accept the cyclic view of time also embrace it: they see it as a way to return to the sacred time. However, in Buddhism, Jainism, and some forms of Hinduism, the Sacred lies outside the flux of the material world (called maya, or "illusion"), and one can only reach it by escaping from the cycles of time.[110] Because the Sacred lies outside cyclic time, which conditions humans, people can only reach the Sacred by escaping the human condition. According to Eliade, Yoga techniques aim at escaping the limitations of the body, allowing the soul (atman) to rise above maya and reach the Sacred (nirvana, moksha). Imagery of "freedom", and of death to one's old body and rebirth with a new body, occur frequently in Yogic texts, representing escape from the bondage of the temporal human condition.[111] Eliade discusses these themes in detail in Yoga: Immortality and Freedom. Symbolism of the Center[edit] Main article: Axis mundi The Cosmic Tree Yggdrasill, as depicted in a 17th-century Icelandic miniature. A recurrent theme in Eliade's myth analysis is the axis mundi, the Center of the World. According to Eliade, the Cosmic Center is a necessary corollary to the division of reality into the Sacred and the profane. The Sacred contains all value, and the world gains purpose and meaning only through hierophanies: In the homogeneous and infinite expanse, in which no point of reference is possible and hence no orientation is established, the hierophany reveals an absolute fixed point, a center.[89] Because profane space gives man no orientation for his life, the Sacred must manifest itself in a hierophany, thereby establishing a sacred site around which man can orient himself. The site of a hierophany establishes a "fixed point, a center".[112] This Center abolishes the "homogeneity and relativity of profane space",[88] for it becomes "the central axis for all future orientation".[89] A manifestation of the Sacred in profane space is, by definition, an example of something breaking through from one plane of existence to another. Therefore, the initial hierophany that establishes the Center must be a point at which there is contact between different planes—this, Eliade argues, explains the frequent mythical imagery of a Cosmic Tree or Pillar joining Heaven, Earth, and the underworld.[113] Eliade noted that, when traditional societies found a new territory, they often perform consecrating rituals that reenact the hierophany that established the Center and founded the world.[114] In addition, the designs of traditional buildings, especially temples, usually imitate the mythical image of the axis mundi joining the different cosmic levels. For instance, the Babylonian ziggurats were built to resemble cosmic mountains passing through the heavenly spheres, and the rock of the Temple in Jerusalem was supposed to reach deep into the tehom, or primordial waters.[115] According to the logic of the eternal return, the site of each such symbolic Center will actually be the Center of the World: It may be said, in general, that the majority of the sacred and ritual trees that we meet with in the history of religions are only replicas, imperfect copies of this exemplary archetype, the Cosmic Tree. Thus, all these sacred trees are thought of as situated at the Centre of the World, and all the ritual trees or posts [...] are, as it were, magically projected into the Centre of the World.[116] According to Eliade's interpretation, religious man apparently feels the need to live not only near, but at, the mythical Center as much as possible, given that the Center is the point of communication with the Sacred.[117] Thus, Eliade argues, many traditional societies share common outlines in their mythical geographies. In the middle of the known world is the sacred Center, "a place that is sacred above all";[118] this Center anchors the established order.[88] Around the sacred Center lies the known world, the realm of established order; and beyond the known world is a chaotic and dangerous realm, "peopled by ghosts, demons, [and] 'foreigners' (who are [identified with] demons and the souls of the dead)".[119] According to Eliade, traditional societies place their known world at the Center because (from their perspective) their known world is the realm that obeys a recognizable order, and it therefore must be the realm in which the Sacred manifests itself; the regions beyond the known world, which seem strange and foreign, must lie far from the Center, outside the order established by the Sacred.[120] The High God[edit] See also: Sky father and Deus otiosus According to some "evolutionistic" theories of religion, especially that of Edward Burnett Tylor, cultures naturally progress from animism and polytheism to monotheism.[121] According to this view, more advanced cultures should be more monotheistic, and more primitive cultures should be more polytheistic. However, many of the most "primitive", pre-agricultural societies believe in a supreme sky-god.[122] Thus, according to Eliade, post-19th-century scholars have rejected Tylor's theory of evolution from animism.[123] Based on the discovery of supreme sky-gods among "primitives", Eliade suspects that the earliest humans worshiped a heavenly Supreme Being.[124] In Patterns in Comparative Religion, he writes, "The most popular prayer in the world is addressed to 'Our Father who art in heaven.' It is possible that man's earliest prayers were addressed to the same heavenly father."[125] However, Eliade disagrees with Wilhelm Schmidt, who thought the earliest form of religion was a strict monotheism. Eliade dismisses this theory of "primordial monotheism" (Urmonotheismus) as "rigid" and unworkable.[126] "At most," he writes, "this schema [Schmidt's theory] renders an account of human [religious] evolution since the Paleolithic era".[127] If an Urmonotheismus did exist, Eliade adds, it probably differed in many ways from the conceptions of God in many modern monotheistic faiths: for instance, the primordial High God could manifest himself as an animal without losing his status as a celestial Supreme Being.[128] According to Eliade, heavenly Supreme Beings are actually less common in more advanced cultures.[129] Eliade speculates that the discovery of agriculture brought a host of fertility gods and goddesses into the forefront, causing the celestial Supreme Being to fade away and eventually vanish from many ancient religions.[130] Even in primitive hunter-gatherer societies, the High God is a vague, distant figure, dwelling high above the world.[131] Often he has no cult and receives prayer only as a last resort, when all else has failed.[132] Eliade calls the distant High God a deus otiosus ("idle god").[133] In belief systems that involve a deus otiosus, the distant High God is believed to have been closer to humans during the mythical age. After finishing his works of creation, the High God "forsook the earth and withdrew into the highest heaven".[134] This is an example of the Sacred's distance from "profane" life, life lived after the mythical age: by escaping from the profane condition through religious behavior, figures such as the shaman return to the conditions of the mythical age, which include nearness to the High God ("by his flight or ascension, the shaman [...] meets the God of Heaven face to face and speaks directly to him, as man sometimes did in illo tempore").[135] The shamanistic behaviors surrounding the High God are a particularly clear example of the eternal return. Shamanism[edit] Overview[edit] A shaman performing a ceremonial in Tuva. Eliade's scholarly work includes a study of shamanism, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, a survey of shamanistic practices in different areas. His Myths, Dreams and Mysteries also addresses shamanism in some detail. In Shamanism, Eliade argues for a restrictive use of the word shaman: it should not apply to just any magician or medicine man, as that would make the term redundant; at the same time, he argues against restricting the term to the practitioners of the sacred of Siberia and Central Asia (it is from one of the titles for this function, namely, šamán, considered by Eliade to be of Tungusic origin, that the term itself was introduced into Western languages).[136] Eliade defines a shaman as follows: he is believed to cure, like all doctors, and to perform miracles of the fakir type, like all magicians [...] But beyond this, he is a psychopomp, and he may also be a priest, mystic, and poet.[137] If we define shamanism this way, Eliade claims, we find that the term covers a collection of phenomena that share a common and unique "structure" and "history".[137] (When thus defined, shamanism tends to occur in its purest forms in hunting and pastoral societies like those of Siberia and Central Asia, which revere a celestial High God "on the way to becoming a deus otiosus".[138] Eliade takes the shamanism of those regions as his most representative example.) In his examinations of shamanism, Eliade emphasizes the shaman's attribute of regaining man's condition before the "Fall" out of sacred time: "The most representative mystical experience of the archaic societies, that of shamanism, betrays the Nostalgia for Paradise, the desire to recover the state of freedom and beatitude before 'the Fall'."[135] This concern—which, by itself, is the concern of almost all religious behavior, according to Eliade—manifests itself in specific ways in shamanism. Death, resurrection and secondary functions[edit] According to Eliade, one of the most common shamanistic themes is the shaman's supposed death and resurrection. This occurs in particular during his initiation.[139] Often, the procedure is supposed to be performed by spirits who dismember the shaman and strip the flesh from his bones, then put him back together and revive him. In more than one way, this death and resurrection represents the shaman's elevation above human nature. First, the shaman dies so that he can rise above human nature on a quite literal level. After he has been dismembered by the initiatory spirits, they often replace his old organs with new, magical ones (the shaman dies to his profane self so that he can rise again as a new, sanctified, being).[140] Second, by being reduced to his bones, the shaman experiences rebirth on a more symbolic level: in many hunting and herding societies, the bone represents the source of life, so reduction to a skeleton "is equivalent to re-entering the womb of this primordial life, that is, to a complete renewal, a mystical rebirth".[141] Eliade considers this return to the source of life essentially equivalent to the eternal return.[142] Third, the shamanistic phenomenon of repeated death and resurrection also represents a transfiguration in other ways. The shaman dies not once but many times: having died during initiation and risen again with new powers, the shaman can send his spirit out of his body on errands; thus, his whole career consists of repeated deaths and resurrections. The shaman's new ability to die and return to life shows that he is no longer bound by the laws of profane time, particularly the law of death: "the ability to 'die' and come to life again [...] denotes that [the shaman] has surpassed the human condition".[143] Having risen above the human condition, the shaman is not bound by the flow of history. Therefore, he enjoys the conditions of the mythical age. In many myths, humans can speak with animals; and, after their initiations, many shamans claim to be able to communicate with animals. According to Eliade, this is one manifestation of the shaman's return to "the illud tempus described to us by the paradisiac myths".[144] The shaman can descend to the underworld or ascend to heaven, often by climbing the World Tree, the cosmic pillar, the sacred ladder, or some other form of the axis mundi.[145] Often, the shaman will ascend to heaven to speak with the High God. Because the gods (particularly the High God, according to Eliade's deus otiosus concept) were closer to humans during the mythical age, the shaman's easy communication with the High God represents an abolition of history and a return to the mythical age.[135] Because of his ability to communicate with the gods and descend to the land of the dead, the shaman frequently functions as a psychopomp and a medicine man.[137] Eliade's philosophy[edit] Early contributions[edit] In addition to his political essays, the young Mircea Eliade authored others, philosophical in content. Connected with the ideology of Trăirism, they were often prophetic in tone, and saw Eliade being hailed as a herald by various representatives of his generation.[7] When Eliade was 21 years old and publishing his Itinerar spiritual, literary critic Şerban Cioculescu described him as "the column leader of the spiritually mystical and Orthodox youth."[7] Cioculescu discussed his "impressive erudition", but argued that it was "occasionally plethoric, poetically inebriating itself through abuse".[7] Cioculescu's colleague Perpessicius saw the young author and his generation as marked by "the specter of war", a notion he connected to various essays of the 1920s and 30s in which Eliade threatened the world with the verdict that a new conflict was looming (while asking that young people be allowed to manifest their will and fully experience freedom before perishing).[7] One of Eliade's noted contributions in this respect was the 1932 Soliloquii ("Soliloquies"), which explored existential philosophy. George Călinescu who saw in it "an echo of Nae Ionescu's lectures",[146] traced a parallel with the essays of another of Ionescu's disciples, Emil Cioran, while noting that Cioran's were "of a more exulted tone and written in the aphoristic form of Kierkegaard".[147] Călinescu recorded Eliade's rejection of objectivity, citing the author's stated indifference towards any "naïveté" or "contradictions" that the reader could possibly reproach him, as well as his dismissive thoughts of "theoretical data" and mainstream philosophy in general (Eliade saw the latter as "inert, infertile and pathogenic").[146] Eliade thus argued, "a sincere brain is unassailable, for it denies itself to any relationship with outside truths."[148] The young writer was however careful to clarify that the existence he took into consideration was not the life of "instincts and personal idiosyncrasies", which he believed determined the lives of many humans, but that of a distinct set comprising "personalities".[148] He described "personalities" as characterized by both "purpose" and "a much more complicated and dangerous alchemy".[148] This differentiation, George Călinescu believed, echoed Ionescu's metaphor of man, seen as "the only animal who can fail at living", and the duck, who "shall remain a duck no matter what it does".[149] According to Eliade, the purpose of personalities is infinity: "consciously and gloriously bringing [existence] to waste, into as many skies as possible, continuously fulfilling and polishing oneself, seeking ascent and not circumference."[148] In Eliade's view, two roads await man in this process. One is glory, determined by either work or procreation, and the other the asceticism of religion or magic—both, Călinescu believed, where aimed at reaching the absolute, even in those cases where Eliade described the latter as an "abyssal experience" into which man may take the plunge.[146] The critic pointed out that the addition of "a magical solution" to the options taken into consideration seemed to be Eliade's own original contributions to his mentor's philosophy, and proposed that it may have owed inspiration to Julius Evola and his disciples.[146] He also recorded that Eliade applied this concept to human creation, and specifically to artistic creation, citing him describing the latter as "a magical joy, the victorious break of the iron circle" (a reflection of imitatio dei, having salvation for its ultimate goal).[146] Philosopher of religion[edit] Anti-reductionism and the "transconscious"[edit] By profession, Eliade was a historian of religion. However, his scholarly works draw heavily on philosophical and psychological terminology. In addition, they contain a number of philosophical arguments about religion. In particular, Eliade often implies the existence of a universal psychological or spiritual "essence" behind all religious phenomena.[150] Because of these arguments, some have accused Eliade of over-generalization and "essentialism", or even of promoting a theological agenda under the guise of historical scholarship. However, others argue that Eliade is better understood as a scholar who is willing to openly discuss sacred experience and its consequences.[151] In studying religion, Eliade rejects certain "reductionist" approaches.[152] Eliade thinks a religious phenomenon cannot be reduced to a product of culture and history. He insists that, although religion involves "the social man, the economic man, and so forth", nonetheless "all these conditioning factors together do not, of themselves, add up to the life of the spirit".[153] Using this anti-reductionist position, Eliade argues against those who accuse him of overgeneralizing, of looking for universals at the expense of particulars. Eliade admits that every religious phenomenon is shaped by the particular culture and history that produced it: When the Son of God incarnated and became the Christ, he had to speak Aramaic; he could only conduct himself as a Hebrew of his times [...] His religious message, however universal it might be, was conditioned by the past and present history of the Hebrew people. If the Son of God had been born in India, his spoken language would have had to conform itself to the structure of the Indian languages.[153] However, Eliade argues against those he calls "historicist or existentialist philosophers" who do not recognize "man in general" behind particular men produced by particular situations[153] (Eliade cites Immanuel Kant as the likely forerunner of this kind of "historicism").[154] He adds that human consciousness transcends (is not reducible to) its historical and cultural conditioning,[155] and even suggests the possibility of a "transconscious".[156] By this, Eliade does not necessarily mean anything supernatural or mystical: within the "transconscious", he places religious motifs, symbols, images, and nostalgias that are supposedly universal and whose causes therefore cannot be reduced to historical and cultural conditioning.[157] Platonism and "primitive ontology"[edit] According to Eliade, traditional man feels that things "acquire their reality, their identity, only to the extent of their participation in a transcendent reality".[86] To traditional man, the profane world is "meaningless", and a thing rises out of the profane world only by conforming to an ideal, mythical model.[158] Eliade describes this view of reality as a fundamental part of "primitive ontology" (the study of "existence" or "reality").[158] Here he sees a similarity with the philosophy of Plato, who believed that physical phenomena are pale and transient imitations of eternal models or "Forms" (see Theory of forms). He argued: Plato could be regarded as the outstanding philosopher of 'primitive mentality,' that is, as the thinker who succeeded in giving philosophic currency and validity to the modes of life and behavior of archaic humanity.[158] Eliade thinks the Platonic Theory of forms is "primitive ontology" persisting in Greek philosophy. He claims that Platonism is the "most fully elaborated" version of this primitive ontology.[159] In The Structure of Religious Knowing: Encountering the Sacred in Eliade and Lonergan, John Daniel Dadosky argues that, by making this statement, Eliade was acknowledging "indebtedness to Greek philosophy in general, and to Plato's theory of forms specifically, for his own theory of archetypes and repetition".[160] However, Dadosky also states that "one should be cautious when trying to assess Eliade's indebtedness to Plato".[161] Dadosky quotes Robert Segal, a professor of religion, who draws a distinction between Platonism and Eliade's "primitive ontology": for Eliade, the ideal models are patterns that a person or object may or may not imitate; for Plato, there is a Form for everything, and everything imitates a Form by the very fact that it exists.[162] Existentialism and secularism[edit] Behind the diverse cultural forms of different religions, Eliade proposes a universal: traditional man, he claims, "always believes that there is an absolute reality, the sacred, which transcends this world but manifests itself in this world, thereby sanctifying it and making it real".[163] Furthermore, traditional man's behavior gains purpose and meaning through the Sacred: "By imitating divine behavior, man puts and keeps himself close to the gods—that is, in the real and the significant."[164] According to Eliade, "modern nonreligious man assumes a new existential situation".[163] For traditional man, historical events gain significance by imitating sacred, transcendent events. In contrast, nonreligious man lacks sacred models for how history or human behavior should be, so he must decide on his own how history should proceed—he "regards himself solely as the subject and agent of history, and refuses all appeal to transcendence".[165] From the standpoint of religious thought, the world has an objective purpose established by mythical events, to which man should conform himself: "Myth teaches [religious man] the primordial 'stories' that have constituted him existentially."[166] From the standpoint of secular thought, any purpose must be invented and imposed on the world by man. Because of this new "existential situation", Eliade argues, the Sacred becomes the primary obstacle to nonreligious man's "freedom". In viewing himself as the proper maker of history, nonreligious man resists all notions of an externally (for instance, divinely) imposed order or model he must obey: modern man "makes himself, and he only makes himself completely in proportion as he desacralizes himself and the world. [...] He will not truly be free until he has killed the last god".[165] Religious survivals in the secular world[edit] Eliade says that secular man cannot escape his bondage to religious thought. By its very nature, secularism depends on religion for its sense of identity: by resisting sacred models, by insisting that man make history on his own, secular man identifies himself only through opposition to religious thought: "He [secular man] recognizes himself in proportion as he 'frees' and 'purifies' himself from the 'superstitions' of his ancestors."[167] Furthermore, modern man "still retains a large stock of camouflaged myths and degenerated rituals".[168] For example, modern social events still have similarities to traditional initiation rituals, and modern novels feature mythical motifs and themes.[169] Finally, secular man still participates in something like the eternal return: by reading modern literature, "modern man succeeds in obtaining an 'escape from time' comparable to the 'emergence from time' effected by myths".[170] Eliade sees traces of religious thought even in secular academia. He thinks modern scientists are motivated by the religious desire to return to the sacred time of origins: One could say that the anxious search for the origins of Life and Mind; the fascination in the 'mysteries of Nature'; the urge to penetrate and decipher the inner structure of Matter—all these longings and drives denote a sort of nostalgia for the primordial, for the original universal matrix. Matter, Substance, represents the absolute origin, the beginning of all things.[171] Eliade believes the rise of materialism in the 19th century forced the religious nostalgia for "origins" to express itself in science. He mentions his own field of History of Religions as one of the fields that was obsessed with origins during the 19th century: The new discipline of History of Religions developed rapidly in this cultural context. And, of course, it followed a like pattern: the positivistic approach to the facts and the search for origins, for the very beginning of religion. All Western historiography was during that time obsessed with the quest of origins. [...] This search for the origins of human institutions and cultural creations prolongs and completes the naturalist's quest for the origin of species, the biologist's dream of grasping the origin of life, the geologist's and the astronomer's endeavor to understand the origin of the Earth and the Universe. From a psychological point of view, one can decipher here the same nostalgia for the 'primordial' and the 'original'.[172] In some of his writings, Eliade describes modern political ideologies as secularized mythology. According to Eliade, Marxism "takes up and carries on one of the great eschatological myths of the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean world, namely: the redemptive part to be played by the Just (the 'elect', the 'anointed', the 'innocent', the 'missioners', in our own days the proletariat), whose sufferings are invoked to change the ontological status of the world."[173] Eliade sees the widespread myth of the Golden Age, "which, according to a number of traditions, lies at the beginning and the end of History", as the "precedent" for Karl Marx's vision of a classless society.[174] Finally, he sees Marx's belief in the final triumph of the good (the proletariat) over the evil (the bourgeoisie) as "a truly messianic Judaeo-Christian ideology".[174] Despite Marx's hostility toward religion, Eliade implies, his ideology works within a conceptual framework inherited from religious mythology. Likewise, Eliade notes that Nazism involved a pseudo-pagan mysticism based on ancient Germanic religion. He suggests that the differences between the Nazis' pseudo-Germanic mythology and Marx's pseudo-Judaeo-Christian mythology explain their differing success: In comparison with the vigorous optimism of the communist myth, the mythology propagated by the national socialists seems particularly inept; and this is not only because of the limitations of the racial myth (how could one imagine that the rest of Europe would voluntarily accept submission to the master-race?), but above all because of the fundamental pessimism of the Germanic mythology. [...] For the eschaton prophesied and expected by the ancient Germans was the ragnarok--that is, a catastrophic end of the world.[174] Modern man and the "Terror of history"[edit] According to Eliade, modern man displays "traces" of "mythological behavior" because he intensely needs sacred time and the eternal return.[175] Despite modern man's claims to be nonreligious, he ultimately cannot find value in the linear progression of historical events; even modern man feels the "Terror of history": "Here too [...] there is always the struggle against Time, the hope to be freed from the weight of 'dead Time,' of the Time that crushes and kills."[176] According to Eliade, this "terror of history" becomes especially acute when violent and threatening historical events confront modern man—the mere fact that a terrible event has happened, that it is part of history, is of little comfort to those who suffer from it. Eliade asks rhetorically how modern man can "tolerate the catastrophes and horrors of history—from collective deportations and massacres to atomic bombings—if beyond them he can glimpse no sign, no transhistorical meaning".[177] Eliade indicates that, if repetitions of mythical events provided sacred value and meaning for history in the eyes of ancient man, modern man has denied the Sacred and must therefore invent value and purpose on his own. Without the Sacred to confer an absolute, objective value upon historical events, modern man is left with "a relativistic or nihilistic view of history" and a resulting "spiritual aridity".[178] In chapter 4 ("The Terror of History") of The Myth of the Eternal Return and chapter 9 ("Religious Symbolism and the Modern Man's Anxiety") of Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries, Eliade argues at length that the rejection of religious thought is a primary cause of modern man's anxieties. Inter-cultural dialogue and a "new humanism"[edit] Eliade argues that modern man may escape the "Terror of history" by learning from traditional cultures. For example, Eliade thinks Hinduism has advice for modern Westerners. According to many branches of Hinduism, the world of historical time is illusory, and the only absolute reality is the immortal soul or atman within man. According to Eliade, Hindus thus escape the terror of history by refusing to see historical time as the true reality.[179] Eliade notes that a Western or Continental philosopher might feel suspicious toward this Hindu view of history: One can easily guess what a European historical and existentialist philosopher might reply [...] You ask me, he would say, to 'die to History'; but man is not, and he cannot be anything else but History, for his very essence is temporality. You are asking me, then, to give up my authentic existence and to take refuge in an abstraction, in pure Being, in the atman: I am to sacrifice my dignity as a creator of History in order to live an a-historic, inauthentic existence, empty of all human content. Well, I prefer to put up with my anxiety: at least, it cannot deprive me of a certain heroic grandeur, that of becoming conscious of, and accepting, the human condition.[180] However, Eliade argues that the Hindu approach to history does not necessarily lead to a rejection of history. On the contrary, in Hinduism historical human existence is not the "absurdity" that many Continental philosophers see it as.[180] According to Hinduism, history is a divine creation, and one may live contentedly within it as long as one maintains a certain degree of detachment from it: "One is devoured by Time, by History, not because one lives in them, but because one thinks them real and, in consequence, one forgets or undervalues eternity."[181] Furthermore, Eliade argues that Westerners can learn from non-Western cultures to see something besides absurdity in suffering and death. Traditional cultures see suffering and death as a rite of passage. In fact, their initiation rituals often involve a symbolic death and resurrection, or symbolic ordeals followed by relief. Thus, Eliade argues, modern man can learn to see his historical ordeals, even death, as necessary initiations into the next stage of one's existence.[182] Eliade even suggests that traditional thought offers relief from the vague anxiety caused by "our obscure presentiment of the end of the world, or more exactly of the end of our world, our own civilization".[182] Many traditional cultures have myths about the end of their world or civilization; however, these myths do not succeed "in paralysing either Life or Culture".[182] These traditional cultures emphasize cyclic time and, therefore, the inevitable rise of a new world or civilization on the ruins of the old. Thus, they feel comforted even in contemplating the end times.[183] Eliade argues that a Western spiritual rebirth can happen within the framework of Western spiritual traditions.[184] However, he says, to start this rebirth, Westerners may need to be stimulated by ideas from non-Western cultures. In his Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries, Eliade claims that a "genuine encounter" between cultures "might well constitute the point of departure for a new humanism, upon a world scale".[185] Christianity and the "salvation" of History[edit] Mircea Eliade sees the Abrahamic religions as a turning point between the ancient, cyclic view of time and the modern, linear view of time, noting that, in their case, sacred events are not limited to a far-off primordial age, but continue throughout history: "time is no longer [only] the circular Time of the Eternal Return; it has become linear and irreversible Time".[186] He thus sees in Christianity the ultimate example of a religion embracing linear, historical time. When God is born as a man, into the stream of history, "all history becomes a theophany".[187] According to Eliade, "Christianity strives to save history".[188] In Christianity, the Sacred enters a human being (Christ) to save humans, but it also enters history to "save" history and turn otherwise ordinary, historical events into something "capable of transmitting a trans-historical message".[188] From Eliade's perspective, Christianity's "trans-historical message" may be the most important help that modern man could have in confronting the terror of history. In his book Mito ("Myth"), Italian researcher Furio Jesi argues that Eliade denies man the position of a true protagonist in history: for Eliade, true human experience lies not in intellectually "making history", but in man's experiences of joy and grief. Thus, from Eliade's perspective, the Christ story becomes the perfect myth for modern man.[189] In Christianity, God willingly entered historical time by being born as Christ, and accepted the suffering that followed. By identifying with Christ, modern man can learn to confront painful historical events.[189] Ultimately, according to Jesi, Eliade sees Christianity as the only religion that can save man from the "Terror of history".[190] In Eliade's view, traditional man sees time as an endless repetition of mythical archetypes. In contrast, modern man has abandoned mythical archetypes and entered linear, historical time—in this context, unlike many other religions, Christianity attributes value to historical time. Thus, Eliade concludes, "Christianity incontestably proves to be the religion of 'fallen man'", of modern man who has lost "the paradise of archetypes and repetition".[191] "Modern gnosticism", Romanticism and Eliade's nostalgia[edit] In analyzing the similarities between the "mythologists" Eliade, Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung, Robert Ellwood concluded that the three modern mythologists, all of whom believed that myths reveal "timeless truth",[192] fulfilled the role "gnostics" had in antiquity. The diverse religious movements covered by the term "gnosticism" share the basic doctrines that the surrounding world is fundamentally evil or inhospitable, that we are trapped in the world through no fault of our own, and that we can be saved from the world only through secret knowledge (gnosis).[193] Ellwood claimed that the three mythologists were "modern gnostics through and through",[194] remarking, Whether in Augustan Rome or modern Europe, democracy all too easily gave way to totalitarianism, technology was as readily used for battle as for comfort, and immense wealth lay alongside abysmal poverty. [...] Gnostics past and present sought answers not in the course of outward human events, but in knowledge of the world's beginning, of what lies above and beyond the world, and of the secret places of the human soul. To all this the mythologists spoke, and they acquired large and loyal followings.[195] According to Ellwood, the mythologists believed in gnosticism's basic doctrines (even if in a secularized form). Ellwood also believes that Romanticism, which stimulated the modern study of mythology,[196] strongly influenced the mythologists. Because Romantics stress that emotion and imagination have the same dignity as reason, Ellwood argues, they tend to think political truth "is known less by rational considerations than by its capacity to fire the passions" and, therefore, that political truth is "very apt to be found [...] in the distant past".[196] As modern gnostics, Ellwood argues, the three mythologists felt alienated from the surrounding modern world. As scholars, they knew of primordial societies that had operated differently from modern ones. And as people influenced by Romanticism, they saw myths as a saving gnosis that offered "avenues of eternal return to simpler primordial ages when the values that rule the world were forged".[197] In addition, Ellwood identifies Eliade's personal sense of nostalgia as a source for his interest in, or even his theories about, traditional societies.[198] He cites Eliade himself claiming to desire an "eternal return" like that by which traditional man returns to the mythical paradise: "My essential preoccupation is precisely the means of escaping History, of saving myself through symbol, myth, rite, archetypes".[199] In Ellwood's view, Eliade's nostalgia was only enhanced by his exile from Romania: "In later years Eliade felt about his own Romanian past as did primal folk about mythic time. He was drawn back to it, yet he knew he could not live there, and that all was not well with it."[200] He suggests that this nostalgia, along with Eliade's sense that "exile is among the profoundest metaphors for all human life",[201] influenced Eliade's theories. Ellwood sees evidence of this in Eliade's concept of the "Terror of history" from which modern man is no longer shielded.[202] In this concept, Ellwood sees an "element of nostalgia" for earlier times "when the sacred was strong and the terror of history had barely raised its head".[203] Criticism of Eliade's scholarship[edit] Overgeneralization[edit] Eliade cites a wide variety of myths and rituals to support his theories. However, he has been accused of making over-generalizations: many scholars think he lacks sufficient evidence to put forth his ideas as universal, or even general, principles of religious thought. According to one scholar, "Eliade may have been the most popular and influential contemporary historian of religion", but "many, if not most, specialists in anthropology, sociology, and even history of religions have either ignored or quickly dismissed" Eliade's works.[204] The classicist G. S. Kirk criticizes Eliade's insistence that Australian Aborigines and ancient Mesopotamians had concepts of "being", "non-being", "real", and "becoming", although they lacked words for them. Kirk also believes that Eliade overextends his theories: for example, Eliade claims that the modern myth of the "noble savage" results from the religious tendency to idealize the primordial, mythical age.[205] According to Kirk, "such extravagances, together with a marked repetitiousness, have made Eliade unpopular with many anthropologists and sociologists".[205] In Kirk's view, Eliade derived his theory of eternal return from the functions of Australian Aboriginal mythology and then proceeded to apply the theory to other mythologies to which it did not apply. For example, Kirk argues that the eternal return does not accurately describe the functions of Native American or Greek mythology.[206] Kirk concludes, "Eliade's idea is a valuable perception about certain myths, not a guide to the proper understanding of all of them".[207] Even Wendy Doniger, Eliade's successor at the University of Chicago, claims (in an introduction to Eliade's own Shamanism) that the eternal return does not apply to all myths and rituals, although it may apply to many of them.[1] However, although Doniger agrees that Eliade made over-generalizations, she notes that his willingness to "argue boldly for universals" allowed him to see patterns "that spanned the entire globe and the whole of human history".[208] Whether they were true or not, she argues, Eliade's theories are still useful "as starting points for the comparative study of religion". She also argues that Eliade's theories have been able to accommodate "new data to which Eliade did not have access".[209] Lack of empirical support[edit] Several researchers have criticized Eliade's work as having no empirical support. Thus, he is said to have "failed to provide an adequate methodology for the history of religions and to establish this discipline as an empirical science",[210] though the same critics admit that "the history of religions should not aim at being an empirical science anyway".[210] Specifically, his claim that the sacred is a structure of human consciousness is distrusted as not being empirically provable: "no one has yet turned up the basic category sacred".[211] Also, there has been mention of his tendency to ignore the social aspects of religion.[52] Anthropologist Alice Kehoe is highly critical of Eliade's work on Shamanism, namely because he was not an anthropologist but a historian. She contends that Eliade never did any field work or contacted any indigenous groups that practiced Shamanism, and that his work was synthesized from various sources without being supported by direct field research.[212] In contrast, Professor Kees W. Bolle of the University of California, Los Angeles argues that "Professor Eliade's approach, in all his works, is empirical":[213] Bolle sets Eliade apart for what he sees as Eliade's particularly close "attention to the various particular motifs" of different myths.[213] French researcher Daniel Dubuisson places doubt on Eliade's scholarship and its scientific character, citing the Romanian academic's alleged refusal to accept the treatment of religions in their historical and cultural context, and proposing that Eliade's notion of hierophany refers to the actual existence of a supernatural level.[59] Ronald Inden, a historian of India and University of Chicago professor, criticized Mircea Eliade, alongside other intellectual figures (Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell among them), for encouraging a "romantic view" of Hinduism.[214] He argued that their approach to the subject relied mainly on an Orientalist approach, and made Hinduism seem like "a private realm of the imagination and the religious which modern, Western man lacks but needs."[214] Far right and nationalist influences[edit] Although his scholarly work was never subordinated to his early political beliefs, the school of thought he was associated with in interwar Romania, namely Trăirism, as well as the works of Julius Evola he continued to draw inspiration from, have thematic links to fascism.[37][59][215] Writer and academic Marcel Tolcea has argued that, through Evola's particular interpretation of Guénon's works, Eliade kept a traceable connection with far right ideologies in his academic contributions.[37] Daniel Dubuisson singled out Eliade's concept of homo religiosus as a reflection of fascist elitism, and argued that the Romanian scholar's views of Judaism and the Old Testament, which depicted Hebrews as the enemies of an ancient cosmic religion, were ultimately the preservation of an antisemitic discourse.[59] A piece authored in 1930 saw Eliade defining Julius Evola as a great thinker and offering praise to the controversial intellectuals Oswald Spengler, Arthur de Gobineau, Houston Stewart Chamberlain and the Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg.[59] Evola, who continued to defend the core principles of mystical fascism, once protested to Eliade about the latter's failure to cite him and Guénon. Eliade replied that his works were written for a contemporary public, and not to initiates of esoteric circles.[216] After the 1960s, he, together with Evola, Louis Rougier, and other intellectuals, offered support to Alain de Benoist's controversial Groupement de recherche et d'études pour la civilisation européenne, part of the Nouvelle Droite intellectual trend.[217] Notably, Eliade was also preoccupied with the cult of Zalmoxis and its supposed monotheism.[218][219] This, like his conclusion that Romanization had been superficial inside Roman Dacia, was a view celebrated by contemporary partisans of Protochronist nationalism.[52][218] According to historian Sorin Antohi, Eliade may have actually encouraged Protochronists such as Edgar Papu to carry out research which resulted in the claim that medieval Romanians had anticipated the Renaissance.[220] In his study of Eliade, Jung, and Campbell, Ellwood also discusses the connection between academic theories and controversial political involvements, noting that all three mythologists have been accused of reactionary political positions. Ellwood notes the obvious parallel between the conservatism of myth, which speaks of a primordial golden age, and the conservatism of far right politics.[221] However, Ellwood argues that the explanation is more complex than that. Wherever their political sympathies may have sometimes been, he claims, the three mythologists were often "apolitical if not antipolitical, scorning any this-worldly salvation".[222] Moreover, the connection between mythology and politics differs for each of the mythologists in question: in Eliade's case, Ellwood believes, a strong sense of nostalgia ("for childhood, for historical times past, for cosmic religion, for paradise"),[83] influenced not only the scholar's academic interests, but also his political views. Because Eliade stayed out of politics during his later life, Ellwood tries to extract an implicit political philosophy from Eliade's scholarly works. Ellwood argues that the later Eliade's nostalgia for ancient traditions did not make him a political reactionary, even a quiet one. He concludes that the later Eliade was, in fact, a "radical modernist".[223] According to Ellwood, Those who see Eliade's fascination with the primordial as merely reactionary in the ordinary political or religious sense of the word do not understand the mature Eliade in a sufficiently radical way. [...] Tradition was not for him exactly Burkean 'prescription' or sacred trust to be kept alive generation after generation, for Eliade was fully aware that tradition, like men and nations, lives only by changing and even occultation. The tack is not to try fruitlessly to keep it unchanging, but to discover where it is hiding.[223] According to Eliade, religious elements survive in secular culture, but in new, "camouflaged" forms.[224] Thus, Ellwood believes that the later Eliade probably thought modern man should preserve elements of the past, but should not try to restore their original form through reactionary politics.[225] He suspects that Eliade would have favored "a minimal rather than a maximalist state" that would allow personal spiritual transformation without enforcing it.[226] Many scholars have accused Eliade of "essentialism", a type of over-generalization in which one incorrectly attributes a common "essence" to a whole group—in this case, all "religious" or "traditional" societies. Furthermore, some see a connection between Eliade's essentialism with regard to religion and fascist essentialism with regard to races and nations.[227] To Ellwood, this connection "seems rather tortured, in the end amounting to little more than an ad hominem argument which attempts to tar Eliade's entire [scholarly] work with the ill-repute all decent people feel for storm troopers and the Iron Guard".[227] However, Ellwood admits that common tendencies in "mythological thinking" may have caused Eliade, as well as Jung and Campbell, to view certain groups in an "essentialist" way, and that this may explain their purported antisemitism: "A tendency to think in generic terms of peoples, races, religions, or parties, which as we shall see is undoubtedly the profoundest flaw in mythological thinking, including that of such modern mythologists as our three, can connect with nascent anti-Semitism, or the connection can be the other way."[228] Literary works[edit] Generic traits[edit] Many of Mircea Eliade's literary works, in particular his earliest ones, are noted for their eroticism and their focus on subjective experience. Modernist in style, they have drawn comparisons to the contemporary writings of Mihail Sebastian,[229] I. Valerian,[230] and Ion Biberi.[231] Alongside Honoré de Balzac and Giovanni Papini, his literary passions included Aldous Huxley and Miguel de Unamuno,[27] as well as André Gide.[7] Eliade also read with interest the prose of Romain Rolland, Henrik Ibsen, and the Enlightenment thinkers Voltaire and Denis Diderot.[7] As a youth, he read the works of Romanian authors such as Liviu Rebreanu and Panait Istrati; initially, he was also interested in Ionel Teodoreanu's prose works, but later rejected them and criticized their author.[7] Investigating the works' main characteristics, George Călinescu stressed that Eliade owed much of his style to the direct influence of French author André Gide, concluding that, alongside Camil Petrescu and a few others, Eliade was among Gide's leading disciples in Romanian literature.[4] He commented that, like Gide, Eliade believed that the artist "does not take a stand, but experiences good and evil while setting himself free from both, maintaining an intact curiosity."[4] A specific aspect of this focus on experience is sexual experimentation—Călinescu notes that Eliade's fiction works tend to depict a male figure "possessing all practicable women in [a given] family".[232] He also considered that, as a rule, Eliade depicts woman as "a basic means for a sexual experience and repudiated with harsh egotism."[232] For Călinescu, such a perspective on life culminated in "banality", leaving authors gripped by the "cult of the self" and "a contempt for literature".[4] Polemically, Călinescu proposed that Mircea Eliade's supposed focus on "aggressive youth" and served to instill his interwar Romanian writers with the idea that they had a common destiny as a generation apart.[4] He also commented that, when set in Romania, Mircea Eliade's stories lacked the "perception of immediate reality", and, analyzing the non-traditional names the writer tended to ascribe to his Romanian characters, that they did not depict "specificity".[233] Additionally, in Călinescu's view, Eliade's stories were often "sensationalist compositions of the illustrated magazine kind."[234] Mircea Eliade's assessment of his own pre-1940 literary contributions oscillated between expressions of pride[26] and the bitter verdict that they were written for "an audience of little ladies and high school students".[58] A secondary but unifying feature present in most of Eliade's stories is their setting, a magical and part-fictional Bucharest.[6] In part, they also serve to illustrate or allude to Eliade's own research in the field of religion, as well as to the concepts he introduced.[6] Thus, commentators such as Matei Călinescu and Carmen Mușat have also argued that a main characteristic of Eliade's fantasy prose is a substitution between the supernatural and the mundane: in this interpretation, Eliade turns the daily world into an incomprehensible place, while the intrusive supernatural aspect promises to offer the sense of life.[235] The notion was in turn linked to Eliade's own thoughts on transcendence, and in particular his idea that, once "camouflaged" in life or history, miracles become "unrecognizable".[235] Oriental themed novels[edit] One of Eliade's earliest fiction writings, the controversial first-person narrative Isabel şi apele diavolului, focused on the figure of a young and brilliant academic, whose self-declared fear is that of "being common".[236] The hero's experience is recorded in "notebooks", which are compiled to form the actual narrative, and which serve to record his unusual, mostly sexual, experiences in British India—the narrator describes himself as dominated by "a devilish indifference" towards "all things having to do with art or metaphysics", focusing instead on eroticism.[236] The guest of a pastor, the scholar ponders sexual adventures with his host's wife, servant girl, and finally with his daughter Isabel. Persuading the pastor's adolescent son to run away from home, becoming the sexual initiator of a twelve-year-old girl and the lover of a much older woman, the character also attempts to seduce Isabel. Although she falls in love, the young woman does not give in to his pressures, but eventually allows herself to be abused and impregnated by another character, letting the object of her affection know that she had thought of him all along.[237] One of Eliade's best-known works, the novel Maitreyi, dwells on Eliade's own experience, comprising camouflaged details of his relationships with Surendranath Dasgupta and Dasgupta's daughter Maitreyi Devi. The main character, Allan, is an Englishman who visits the Indian engineer Narendra Sen and courts his daughter, herself known as Maitreyi. The narrative is again built on "notebooks" to which Allan adds his comments. This technique Călinescu describes as "boring", and its result "cynical".[237] Allan himself stands alongside Eliade's male characters, whose focus is on action, sensation and experience—his chaste contacts with Maitreyi are encouraged by Sen, who hopes for a marriage which is nonetheless abhorred by his would-be European son-in-law.[237] Instead, Allan is fascinated to discover Maitreyi's Oriental version of Platonic love, marked by spiritual attachment more than by physical contact.[238] However, their affair soon after turns physical, and she decides to attach herself to Allan as one would to a husband, in what is an informal and intimate wedding ceremony (which sees her vowing her love and invoking an earth goddess as the seal of union).[233] Upon discovering this, Narendra Sen becomes enraged, rejecting their guest and keeping Maitreyi in confinement. As a result, his daughter decides to have intercourse with a lowly stranger, becoming pregnant in the hope that her parents would consequently allow her to marry her lover. However, the story also casts doubt on her earlier actions, reflecting rumors that Maitreyi was not a virgin at the time she and Allan first met, which also seems to expose her father as a hypocrite.[233] George Călinescu objected to the narrative, arguing that both the physical affair and the father's rage seemed artificial, while commenting that Eliade placing doubt on his Indian characters' honesty had turned the plot into a piece of "ethnological humor".[233] Noting that the work developed on a classical theme of miscegenation, which recalled the prose of François-René de Chateaubriand and Pierre Loti,[237] the critic proposed that its main merit was in introducing the exotic novel to local literature.[233] Mircea Eliade's other early works include Șantier ("Building Site"), a part-novel, part-diary account of his Indian sojourn. George Călinescu objected to its "monotony", and, noting that it featured a set of "intelligent observations", criticized the "banality of its ideological conversations."[233] Șantier was also noted for its portrayal of drug addiction and intoxication with opium, both of which could have referred to Eliade's actual travel experience.[65] Portraits of a generation[edit] In his earliest novel, titled Novel of the Nearsighted Adolescent and written in the first person, Eliade depicts his experience through high school.[7] It is proof of the influence exercised on him by the literature of Giovanni Papini, and in particular by Papini's story Un uomo finito.[7] Each of its chapters reads like an independent novella, and, in all, the work experiments with the limits traced between novel and diary.[7] Literary critic Eugen Simion called it "the most valuable" among Eliade's earliest literary attempts, but noted that, being "ambitious", the book had failed to achieve "an aesthet

The unial

Here is another example of sacred time that most of you have probably not heard of. The uinal comes from the Maya calendar, and refers to the sacred cycle of 20 named days. Thirteen of these uinals equal the Maya ritual calendar of 260 days, called the tzolkin. Think of the uinals as months in the yearly calendar of the tzolkin. To make our point, each day of the uinal is associated with a Maya god, and the word uinal has the same root as the Maya word for man. Thus, god, man, time, become bundled. In fact time and man begin at the same time according to Maya mythology. In the Book of Chilam Balam, a collection of Maya stories written in the Spanish colonial period, the birth of the uinal is described in his way: Aztec Calendar Aztec Calendar "Of the birth of the uinal, Which was before the awakening of the world occurred, And it began to run, By itself, Alone This was the birth of the uinal And the occurrence of the awakening of the world. There was finished heaven And earth And trees And stones. Everything was born Through our Father Who is God, then; Who is holy. (From Markman and Markman, 98-104) Mayan calendrical systems would provide the basis for subsequent cultures in Mesoamerica. The justly famous Aztec calendar is the best example. You may remember hearing much more about the Maya concepts of sacred time and the uinal in 2012. It did not cause as much commotion as the new millennium did in the late 1990s, but many sources were hyping the end of times, predicted for December 21, 2012, as the Maya long count came to an end. The Greek words for time help us understand the above from a slightly different perspective. We know time as chronos. This is the second, minute, hour, day. This is how we measure time, by the ticking of the clock and the turning of the calender. Time is also kairos. This is when all of life stands still, when eternity is encompassed in the moment, when there is no past or future but when all is bundled up in one. Kairos, then is a type of eternal present. Sacred places and sacred times support each other. Both are essential to the course of history. In Unit 2, we analyze how and why landscapes, especially mountains, express qualities of the sacred.

Magic

Human intervention, control of nature

The Sacred 4

Just about any vertical object-a tree, tent pole, shaft, spire, column-can be an axis mundi. The image shows a stone stelae of the Mayan site of Copan as an example. Despite the diversity of possible objects, mountains are the most easy too identify type of axis mundi. This is natural since they reach upward toward the heavens. They are perceived as paths to the divine, as steps to a cosmic reality. The mountains then connect heaven and earth, and lord over all the surrounding ground. We develop this idea much more fully in the next unit, and mention it throughout the course, but it is worthwhile to introduce the subject now. Some of these mountains dominate the landscape, literally casting their sacred shadow for miles. Mt. Everest and Mt. Denali are the most dramatic examples of axis mundi. Mt. Sinai, where Moses received the Torah from God, is a sacred mountain, even though the precise location of this mountain is not agreed upon. (Mt. Jubal in southern Palestine is often identified as Mt. Sinai, partly because Emperor Justinian encouraged the building of the Monastery of St. Catherine there in the sixth century.) Mt. Zion has even more cosmological significance for Judaism. Zion is usually identified as a hill in Jerusalem. It has come to symbolize all of Jerusalem and Palestine, as the center of Jewish being. Golgotha has a similar cosmological significance for Christians. It is not a mountain but a small hill outside of Jerusalem on which Christ was crucified. Physically Golgotha has little majesty. Cosmologically its significance cannot be underestimated. All of Christian theology is built around the sacrifice that took place on Golgotha

Hierophany

Manifestation of the sacred.

The significance of the sacred 2

Pilgrimage is the general term used for making special trips to sacred places. Here is a list of the most common reasons why people make pilgrimages. 1.The hope or expectation for divine/miraculous intervention for yourself or for others. The power of the sacred (expressed through or as a part of the place) can heal physical and mental problems. 2.Atonement for sins or transgressions. The belief that the visit to the place can compensate for past offenses. 3.The fulfillment of a promise. During times of crisis we often ask for divine intervention, and make promises to do certain things, such as visit a specific sacred place. 4.Some religions have specific expectations that you visit sacred places. Islam has the hajj, making the pilgrimage to Mecca, as one of its five obligations. For Christians a visit to the Holy Land is a strong desire. 5.The pursuit of a vision quest. 6.Even for non believers, sacred places have the power to attract visitors. Tourists will go to St. Peters in Rome or Notre Dame in Paris because they are so important to western civilization. 7.The desire to experience the mysterium tremendum. It is much easier to touch the divine in a place that the divine has touched. 8.To further knowledge and understanding of religious/cultural traditions. To restate this, sacred places are sacred because: they give a special knowledge; they lead to visionary experiences; they ease the connection with the founders of religious traditions; they cure illnesses; they help atone for sins; most importantly, in one way or another, they convey a sense of awe, urgency, and mystery -they are a part of the mysterium tremendum.

Sign

Representation, manifestation of something else.

Sacred time

Sacred time helps to reinforce sacred space. For religious people, time has a sacred element that is apart from secular time. Much like sacred spaces are interruptions of secular space, sacred time breaks up secular time. There are three types that we can mention: 1.The mythical recreation of the beginning (and at times the end) of the world. There is a sacred cycle of time that usually follows the seasons but is symbolic of something much deeper and meaningful-the actual creation/recreation of the world. For peoples with sophisticated calendrical systems, such as the Aztecs, who inherited their understanding of time from the Maya, there was a precise calendrical cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. When Spaniards arrived in 1519, it was the Age of the Fifth Sun. In other words the world had been recreated five times, and the priests believed that the current time was destined for destruction. El Greco (1541-1614), born in Greece but painted in Spain, is known for his elongated, ethereal paintings. Here is the Burial of Count Orgaz, painted in 1586. El Greco "(1541-1614), born in Greece but painted in Spain, is known for his elongated, ethereal paintings. Here is the "Burial of Count Orgaz," painted in 1586." 2.Religious time that has a more specific historical starting and ending point. Judaism historically began when God made himself known to Moses. Judaism has ceremonies that are repeated throughout the year, but these are not actually repetitions of the historical acts of the Jewish experience. Christianity experiences time in the same way. The birth, death, and resurrection of Christ are the central points of the Christian calendar. They are remembered and celebrated each year, but the actions are only symbolic. The great exception here is the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the living body and blood of Christ, not just a symbolic representation. This distinction is of major importance, and has to be kept in mind when evaluating Catholic sacred places. 3."The Eternal Present" makes the problem of time even more complex. This is an idea borrowed from art history, and suggests a combination of the above. That which is here-or represented to be here-was always present and will always be here. There is a timeless quality to the eternal present.

Miracle

Sign from God.

Manifestations of the Sacred

Silence, Distance, and Mystery are essential to understanding the manifestations of the sacred. So are Magic and Miracles. Magic conveys the idea of something beyond the ordinary, the manipulation of the natural by some unnatural power. It is in this sense that it approaches the numinous. It is not the numinous but it can be a reflection of it, or an introduction to it. Magic, as you might expect, is a controversial subject, and is often treated as something apart from mainstream religions. A Tawa Kachina, an example of dolls that are sacred to the Hopi A Tawa Kachina, an example of dolls that are sacred to the Hopi Miracles. Miracles should be distinguished from magic. Miracle comes from the Latin miraculum, which means awe or objects of wonder. In most religious traditions, miracles are a sign from God, a manifestation of his power and purpose, generally for the good of humankind. Miracles are marvels of God, showing his power, and also showing that there is something beyond the worldly. When saints, prophets, and holy ones perform miracles, it is not because of their power (in contrast to the power of a magician) but the power of God working through them. When God gives them the power to perform miracles, he validates that they are working in his name. Magic is different because it does not require a source in God, and it is generally separate from a religious tradition, and condemned by or not recognized and accepted by religion. Shiprock Shiprock Silence, emptiness, mystery, and magic and miracles all are qualities that are expressed in different ways in sacred places. They can be found in different mixes and balances, and together they have the ability to make the numinous come alive. Artist often see them as elements of the sublime. The sublime is an expression of the highest, loftiest ideals. It is an expression of the capabilities of humans that takes us to a level beyond ourselves. In this way, we can see it as an artistic version of the mysterium tremendum.

Imago Mundi

The cosmos represented in the world.

Numinous

The essence of the divine.

Sacred time 2

The religious and the picture, with which we have so far been concerned as forms of religious expression, involve a time factor that might conveniently be described as 'the eternal present.' The divine image presents the deity in an eternal state of being, so that the worshipper contemplates his god or goddess as immediately existent. In other words, the image of a deity either presumes an eternity that transcends the dimension of Time, or it ignores the temporal categories of 'past' and 'future' by its serene assumption of the absolute nature of the 'presentness' of divine being. This element of timelessness is most notably manifest in Christian religious art in portrays of the crucified Christ. The Crucifixion, which was a historical event, having a beginning and an ending in Time, is presented in the crucifix as an eternal happening-historical Time is, as it were, stopped, in a timeless moment, and Christ hangs forever nailed and dying on the Cross. Likewise also with the Pieta' or 'Vesperbild'-the dead Christ, taken down from the Cross, lies for eternity in the lap of his sorrowing Mother. (Brandon, 328 329) As the quote demonstrates, the best example is the crucifix in Christian art. The crucifixion took place in a definite historical context during a defined time, but the crucifixion (and the cross which represents it) has not changed through time. It is the same timeless act, with the same timeless implications for Christians.

Holy vs the sacred 2

Thibaud goes on to make the point that the Vatican is referred to as the "Holy See," and the week before Easter "Holy Week." They are not the "Sacred See" and "Sacred Week." We can add that the Bible is usually referred to as the "Holy Bible," not the "Sacred Bible." From these definitions and the discussion above I would suggest that the fundamental, basic point of the sacred is the idea of being separate and distinct in an unequivocal way. There is a boundary, a door, a threshold that has to be passed in order to arrive at the sacred. Furthermore, and most importantly, the sacred is a reality, a quality, essence, being that has its own distinctive qualities. The holy is usually an expression of the sacred. This can be in places, people, things, or actions. The holy then is something that is definable, usually visible, and touchable in a more concrete way than the sacred. The sacred s more abstract, although not necessarily less real. The holy helps to make the abstract quality of the sacred more real. In your discussion you can voice your opinion on whether these definitions make sense. The holy and sacred can also have a civic element, which we will discuss in Unit 14.It can also have a professional one. The Oath of Hippocrates, taken by all who receive their Doctor of Medicine degree begins "I do solemnly swear by whatever I hold most sacred, that I will be loyal to the profession of medicine and just and generous to its members."

The sacred one

This is an iconostasis, from a Greek church in Morgantown. It separates the sacred (altar) from the profane. He makes a fundamental point when trying to explain the differences between earlier societies, whether they be nomads or agriculturalists, and modern ones, living in cities and working in factories and modern bureaucracies. He says that the former "live in a sacralized cosmos," and the latter in a "descralized cosmos." (17). If we understand these two concepts we will be well on our way to understanding sacred places. Religious men and women, those who give meaning to sacred places, have no doubt that life is sacred. They believe in an absolute reality beyond themselves and this world. It transcends them, meaning that it goes beyond them and is separate and apart, but at the same time, in a paradoxical way, it can also be present everywhere, even in them. One way to understand this is to think of reality on two planes: the earth and all of its obvious material quality, and that which is beyond the earth and embodies the divine. It is possible to think of a third plane, that which is below the earth and generally houses that which is evil. These planes, however, can merge, which makes the problem much more complex and difficult to understand. The first point that Eliade makes is that traditional religious people make a distinction between different types of space. The simple example that he uses is the church. Religious people when they see a church recognize it as something special from the space around it. Nonreligious people do not make the distinction. It is simply another building, like a restaurant, civic building, school, or office. These spaces all have different functions or purposes, but they are all secular, and thus all broadly similar. The secular person does not see one as representing something beyond this world. A sports enthusiast might be more excited about seeing a football stadium than a school, but does not attach cosmic significance to the stadium.

expressions of the sacred

We continue our introductory discussion by turning our attention to manifestations of the sacred. •How is it expressed in places? •How do we see it and feel it? •What makes it something real, and tangible? Theories of art help to explain. Borrowing from Otto again, we can say that sacred places have at least three characteristics. As you review these think of the sacred places that you have visited, and see how they apply. Which ones do you believe are the most dominant or powerful? There are three immediately obvious characteristics of the manifestations of the sacred. A Mandala, common to many Buddhist traditions, and especially popular in Tibet. A Mandala, common to many Buddhist traditions, and especially popular in Tibet. 1.Silence. Even in places crowded with pilgrims and visitors the silence is noticeable. In a paradoxical sense, the deeper the silence, the louder it is. The familiar phrase that "silence is deafening" applies. In the deepest silence the awe, fear, and energy of the mysterium tremendum becomes real. 2.Empty Distance. This quality of the sacred is closely associated with silence. As a consequence, deserts and mountains, with the vast open spaces that open up before them, are ideal places for sacred places. Otto's words are useful here: "Empty distance, remote vacancy, is, as it were, the sublime in the horizontal. The wide stretching desert, the boundless uniformity of the steppe, have real sublimity, and even in us Westerners they set vibrating chords of the numinous along with the note of the sublime...The imperial tombs of the Ming emperors at Nanking and Peking are, perhaps, the strongest example of this, including, as they do, in their plan the empty distances of an entire landscape. Still more interesting is the part played by the fact of void or emptiness in Chinese painting. There it has almost become a special art to paint empty space, to make it palpable, and to develop variations upon this particular theme."69 3.Mystery. This is more difficult to define, since it has multiple meanings. Generally mystery refers to something hidden, secret, difficult to penetrate and understand. It has wide ranging religious connotations, and most religions emphasize "mysteries" that can only be approached or understood through revelations and/or special rituals or liturgies. The ultimate understanding of mystery usually comes from faith.

The holy

We now turn to some passages from Rudolf Otto (1869 1937), a theologian and philosopher who wrote The Idea of the Holy (1923). Eliade in The Sacred and the Profane begins his work by referring to Otto, but substitutes "sacred" for "holy." Otto makes it clear that the holy is not just an ethical quality, something that is morally good and recognized as such. In modern usage it often takes on that meaning, but originally (and for us) it means something more. Here is what Otto has to say: "Let us consider the deepest and most fundamental element in all strong and sincerely felt religious emotion. Faith unto salvation, trust, love-all these are there. but over and above these is an element which may also on occasion, quite apart from them, profoundly affect us and occupy the mind with a wellnigh bewildering strength. Let us follow it up with every effort of sympathy and imaginative intuition wherever it is to be found, in the lives of those around us, in sudden, strong ebullitions of personal piety and the frames of mind such ebullitions evince, in the fixed and ordered solemnities of rites and liturgies, and again the atmosphere that clings to old religious monuments and buildings, to temples and to churches. If we do so we shall find we are dealing with something for which there is on only one appropriate expression, 'mysterium tremendum.' The feeling of it may come sweeping like a gentle tide, pervading the mind with a tranquil mood of deepest worship. It may pass over into a more set and lasting attitude of the soul, continuing, as it were, thrillingly vibrant and resonant, until at last it dies away and the soul resumes its 'profane', non religious mood of everyday experience. It may well burst in sudden eruption up from the depths of the soul with spasms and convulsions, or lead to the strangest excitements, to intoxicated frenzy, to transport, and to ecstasy.(Otto, 12 13)

The holy vs the sacred

What are the differences between the sacred and holy? The above discussion lacks the precision that would make it easy to answer this question. In addition, the terms are often used indiscriminately, without attempts at definition. In other words, they are used as synonyms, one appearing as good as the other to describe a special place with religious meaning. Even when academics do try and be precise, their efforts can fail. Read the following passages from a popular French encyclopedia of religion as an example: Sacred From the Latin sacer. A concept that is the opposite of the "profane," a reality that exists beyond man and elicits respect, a reverential awe, a fervor. It is a powerful superior force; this force is often personalized as a divinity. The idea of the sacred is fundamental to all religions because it gives it a force, a particular energy. (Thibaud, 236) Holy From the Latin sanctus, pure, religious. Attributed to a person, a place or an object, the word holy sanctifies, from the point of view of the profane, the members of a religious community. All religions have holy places that attract pilgrims. The center of temples, the inner sanctum that only the high priest can enter, is generally the most sacred place called the "holy of holies." It is in the "holy of holies" that the Hebrews conceal the tabernacle, where the ark of the covenant is placed. (Thibaud, 239)

The holy 2

What is at work here? The mysterium for Otto is the "wholly other...or that which is quite beyond the sphere of the usual, the intelligible, and the familiar, which therefore falls quite outside the limits of the 'canny', and is contrasted with it, filling the mind with blank wonder and astonishment."26 To restate this, the mysterium is that which is hidden but can still be known in a direct, intimate way. While it is hidden it is real, palpable, something that is a part of life. The tremendum carries other, multiple meanings. Otto gives three distinguishing characteristics of the tremendum. Mysterium Tremendum, Snake Handlers Mysterium Tremendum, Snake Handlers 1.Awe. The tremendum is the sense of awe, literally of amazement and wonder. 2.Fear. Along with this is a sense of dread and fear, the feeling there is a power out there that we have no control over but has control over us. 3.Energy or Urgency. These can be described as "vitality, passion, emotional temper, will, force, movement, excitement, activity, impetus." 23

Sacred

devoted or dedicated to a deity or to some religious purpose; consecrated.

Axis Mundi

in certain beliefs and philosophies, is the world center, or the connection between Heaven and Earth.

Mysterium tremendum

overwhelming mystery

Holy

specially recognized as or declared sacred by religious use or authority; consecrated: