MIRCEA ELIADE (1907-1986)

1957: The Sacred and the Profane

The sacred is the “wholly other”

Different from Otto(relation between rational and irrational)  Eliade

aims to find the elements of the sacred in its entirety
Sacred: The opposite of the profane.
Man first aware of the sacred existence b/c it shows itself as something
wholly different from the profane
Hierophany- how we see the sacred manifests itself, how the sacred
shows itself to us.
The sacred stone isn’t adored and praised as a stone but they
are worshipped because they are hierophanies, they show something
that isn’t a stone anymore, but the SACRED, =the GANZ ANDERE
People whom a stone shows itself as sacred, its immediate
reality is altered into a supernatural reality aka people who have a
religious experience for them all nature is capable of revealing itself
as cosmic sacrality.
 Cosmos become a hierophany

Das Heilige (The Sacred) – 1917

Analyzed modes of religious experience
In the sacred  set to find the characteristics of religion, a frightening
and irrational experience
Experiences feeling of terror before the sacred, the mystery, the
superior majesty, the mystery,  characterizes all these experiences
as the NUMINOUS (Latin numen= God) b/c they are brought on by the
realization that some type of divine power exists
The numinous presents itself as something, Ganz Andere - the
“wholly other”, of a different realm
Human isn’t able to express g.z. all that goes beyond mans
natural experience,

Hierophany: a manifestation of the sacred; the sacred manifests itself

as something wholly different from the profane.
When the sacred manifests itself in any hierophany, there isn’t
only a break in the homogeneity of space but a revelation of an
absolute reality., opposed to the nonreality of the surrounding
expanse.
In the homogenous and infinite space, where any point of
reference isn’t possible, resulting in the fact that no ORIENTATION can
be established  hierophany reveals an absolute fixed point, a center.

Archaic: Eliade emphasizes the root or the

basis, or origin of something

T.S. ELLIOT – 20TH century

In “Four Quartets” says “ humankind cannot bear too much reality”

trying to be in reality, which is always moving
Eliade – believes archaic people crave reality, have physical contact
with it
Reducing experiences to something else

Phenomenology:
Phenomenology =the experience = me to object of what it really
means
Pay attention to experiencing of things, and forget desire
IMMANUEL KANT (1780’S)
Understand knowledge, know cause and effect because science
depends on the cause and effect
Kant’s solution and eliade isn’t there, as we experience things we’re
shaping its all in our head, we are actively shaping our experience
Kant believes we can’t get to the NUMEN= thin in itself, real thing
We can’t get to the numenon because brain is always
interefering, shaping what we seee
Kant and Eliade agree on phenomenology – can’t get at what the
sacred is really thinking, objectively get the truth of the sacred.
Numinous, numen: divine, powerful sacred; overwhelming sense of
holy

AXIS MUNDI:
Universal or cosmic pillar; the axis of the universe; the center of the
world around which everything revolves and by which the different
realms of the universe are connected

Cosmogony: birth order, birth of the cosmos the way things came to be
Ab origine – towards the beginning, at the origin
Ilud tempus: a mythical time before time
Imago mundi: the model of the world as it looks
In illo tempore: time before history, mythic transcendent time

SACRED SPACE

Ontology: pertaining to that which is real, that which exists

For the believer of the sacred, the door that opens on the interior of
the church shows a solution of continuity. The THRESHOLD that
separates the two spaces shows the distance between the 2 modes of
being, the profane and the religious
The threshold- the limit, the boundary, the frontier that distinguishes
and opposes 2 worlds and at the same time where the passage from
the profane to the sacred world becomes possible.
A ritual function falls tot eh threshold of human habitation, and
this is why threshold = object of great importance.
The threshold, the door SHOW the solution of continuity in space
immediately and concretely, great religious importance because
they’re symbols and vehicles of passage from 1 space to the other.

When theres no need for theophany or hierophany – some sign suffices

to indicate thee sacredness of the place s
Sometimes the sign, filled with religious meaning introduces an
abosute element and ends relativity and confusion. -> Something that
doesn’t belong to this world is manifested apodictically and shown an
orientation or found a course of conduct
When NO SIGN manfifests itself, it’s Provoked – evocation performed
show what place is fit to receive the sanctuary which leads to
evocation of scared forms for the immedgiate purpose of forming an
oreination in the homogeneity of space.
A sign is asked to put an end to the tension caued by relativitiy,
disoreientation,  to reveal an absolute point of support.

In reality, the ritual by which he construcsts a sacred space is

successful if the measure to which it reproduces the work of the gods
For the religious man 0 every world is a sacred world

Cosmos and Chaos

To us, religious man sought to live as close as possible to the center of
the world
Wants his house to be at the Center of the World and to
reproduce the universe.
A universe comes to birth from its center, universe developed from a
core central point
The center= a place where a break in plane occurs, where space
becomes sacred, hence preeminently real. A creation implies an
irruption of the sacred into the world
The sacred follows that EVERY CONSTRUCTION OR FABRIACATION HAS
THE SCOMOGONY AS PARADIGMATIC MODEL.