Mircea Eliade
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THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE THE NATURE OF RELIGION by Mircea Eliade Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask A Harvest Book Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. New York CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 8 CHAPTER I Sacred Space and Making the World Sacred 20 CHAPTER I1 Sacred Time and Myths 68 CHAPTER Ill The Sacredness of Nature and Cosmic Religion 116 / CHAPTER IV Human Existence and Sanctified Life 162 CHRONOLOGICAL SURVEY The "History of ReligWus" as a Branch of Knowledge 216 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 234 INDEX 244 The extraordinary interest aroused all over the for example; it was not an idea, an abstract notion, a world by Rudolf Otto's Das Heilige (The Sacred), pub- mere moral allegory. It was a terrible power, manifested lished in 1917, still persists. Its success was certainly in the divine wrath. due to the author's new and original point of view. In- In Das Heilige Otto sets himself to discover the char- stead of studying the ideas of God and religion, Otto acteristics of this frightening and irrational experience. undertook to analyze the modalities of the religious, He finds the feeling of terror before the sacred, before experience. Gifted with great psychological subtlety, and the awe-inspiring mystery (mysterium tremendum), the thoroughly prepared by his twofold training as theo- majesty (majestas) that emanates an overwhelming logian and historian of religions, he succeeded in de- superiority of power; he finds religious fear before the termining the content and specific characteristics of fascinating mystery (mysterium fascimms) in which religious experience. Passing over the rational and perfect fullness of being flowers. Otto characterizes all speculative side of religion, he concentrated chiefly on these experiences as numinous (from Latin numen, god), its irrational aspect. For Otto had read Luther and had for they are induced by the revelation of an aspect of understood what the "living God" meant to a believer. divine power. The numinous presents itself as something 64wholly other" (gam adere), something basically and It was not the God of the philosophers~ofErasmus, 8 10 The Sacred and the Profane Introduction 11 totally different. It is like nothing human or cosmic; WHEN THE SACRED MANIFESTS ITSELF confronted with it, man senses his profound nothing- ness, feels that he is only a creature, or, in the words in Man becomes aware of the sacred because it which Abraham addressed the Lord, is "but dust and itself, shows itself, as something wholly differ- ent from the profane. To designate the act of manifes- ashes" (Genesis, 18, 27). m. The sacred always manifests itself as a reality of a &on of the sacred, we have proposed the term hiero- wholly different order from "natural" realities. It is phony. It is a fitting term, because it does not imply true that language naively expresses the tremendurn, or further; it expresses no more than is implicit the majestas, or the mysterium fascinans by terms bor- in its etymological content, i.e., that something sacred rowed from the world of nature or from man's secular shows itself to us.' It could be said that the history of mental life. But we know that this analogical terminol- religions-from the most primitive to the most highly ogy is due precisely to human inability to express the developed-is constituted by a great number of hiero- ganz andere; all that goes beyond man's natural expe phanies, by manifestations of sacred realities. From the rience, language is reduced to suggesting by terms taken most elementary hierophany-e.g., manifestation of the from that experience. sacred in some ordinary object, a stone or a tree-to After forty years, Otto's analyses have not lost their the supreme hierophany (which, for a Christian, is the value; readers of this book will profit by reading and incarnation of God in Jesus Christ) there is no solution reflecting on them. But in the following pages we adopt of continuity. In each case we are confronted by the same a different perspective. We propose to present the phe- mysterious act-the manifestation of something of a nomenon of the sacred in all its complexity, and not only wholly different order, a reality that does not belong to in so far as it is irrational. What will concern us is not our world, in objects that are an integral part of our the relation between the rational and nonrational ele- natural "profane" world. ments of religion but the sacred in its entirety. The first The modem Occidental experiences a certain uneasi- possible definition of the sacred is that it is the opposite ness before many manifestations of the sacred. He finds of the profane. The aim of the following pages is to illus- it difficultto accept the fact that, for many human beings, trate and define this opposition between sacred and the sacred can be manifested in stones or trees, for profane. 'Cf. Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, New York, Sheed Ward, 1958, pp. 7 ff. Cited hereafter as Patterns. 12 The Sacred and the Profane Introduction 13 example. But as we shall soon see, what is involved is profane is often expressed as an opposition between real not a veneration of the stone in itself, a cult of the tree and unreal or pseudoreal. (Naturally, we must not expect in itself. The sacred tree, the sacred stone are not to find the archaic languages in possession of this philo- adored as stone or tree; they are worshipped precisely sophical terminology, real-unreal, etc.; but we find the because they are hierophies, because they show some thing.) Thus it is easy to understand that religious man thing that is no longer stone or tree but the sacred, the deeply desires to be, to participate in reality, to be satu- ganz andere. rated with power. It is impossible to overemphasize the paradox repre- Our chief concern in the following pages will be to sented by every hierophany, even the most elementary. elucidate this subject-to show in what ways religious By manifesting the sacred, any object becomes something man attempts to remain as long as possible in a sacred else, yet it continues to remain itself, for it continues to universe, and hence what his total experience of life participate in its surrounding cosmic milieu. A sacred proves to be in comparison with the experience of the stone remains a stone; apparently (or, more precisely, man without religious feeling, of the man who lives, or from the profane point of view), nothing distinguishes it wishes to live, in a desacralized world. It should be said from all other stones. But for those to whom a stone at once that the completely profane world, the wholly reveals itself as sacred, its immediate reality is trans- desacralized cosmos, is a recent discovery in the history muted into a supernatural reality. In other words, for of the human spirit. It does not devolve upon us to show those who have a religious experience all nature is by what historical processes and as the result of what capable of revealing itself as cosmic sacrality. The, changes in spiritual attitudes and behavior modem man cosmos in its entirety can become a hierophany. has desacralized his world and assumed a profane exist- The man of the archaic societies tends to live as much ence. For our purpose it is enough to observe that as possible in the sacred or in close proximity to con- desacralization pervades the entire experience of the secrated objects. The tendency is perfectly understand- nonreligious man of modem societies and that, in con- able, because, for primitives as for the man of all pre sequence, he finds it increasingly difficult to rediscover modem societies, the sacred is equivalent to a power, the existential dimensions of religious man in the archaic and, in the last analysis, to reality. The sacred is saturated societies. with being. Sacred power means reality and at the same time enduringness and efficacity. The polarity sacred- 14 The Sacred and the Pro fane Introduction 15 only to the history of religions or to sociology; they are TWO MODES OF BEING IN THE WORLD not the object only of historical, sociological, or ethno- The abyss that divides the two modalities of expe- logical study. In the last analysis, the sacred and profane rience~sacredand profane~willbe apparent when we modes of being depend upon the different positions that come to describe sacred space and the ritual building of man has conquered in the cosmos; hence they are of the human habitation, or the varieties of the religious concern both to the philosopher and to anyone seeking experience of time, or the relations of religious man to to discover the possible dimensions of human existence. nature and the world of tools, or the consecration of It is for this reason that, though he is a historian of human life itself, the sacrality with which man's vital religions, the author of this book proposes not to confine functions (food, sex, work and so on) can be charged. himself only to the perspective of his particular science. Simply calling to mind what the city or the house, nature, The man of the traditional societies is admittedly a homo tools, or work have become for modern and nonreligious religiosus, but his behavior forms part of the general man will show with the utmost vividness all that dis- behavior of mankind and hence is of concern to philo- tinguishes such a man from a man belonging to any sophical anthropology, to phenomenology, to psychol- archaic society, or even from a peasant of Christian om.