"The Basic Ideas of Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane"

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People worship the Gods because they affect us, usually in a positive way. If the Gods existed but had no contact with us, no one would care about them: why pray for a good harvest to a God who had nothing to do with the earth? Religion exists because the Gods do act in our world. Eliade suggests that the Gods do not just do things but they show us what to do and, often, how to do them. The Gods establish a paradigm, an open-ended model, for people to follow. For example, when the Gods created the world, they established a cosmos; every time humans plant crops or build a house they are, in some way, repeating the cosmogony because they are bringing order to a space. Where there was scrub land there is now a field of corn; where there was an empty space there is now a house of people who venerate the Gods. When they follow the paradigm, they are creating sacred space, that is, a place which reflects the ordered cosmos of the Gods; this is distinct from profane space, that is, space in which the Gods are unknown or not venerated. Often people use a ritual to highlight the fact that they are repeating the cosmogony and that they are marking off sacred space. How it might this apply in our culture? Take an example. The average JCU student taking RL 101 is eighteen or nineteen years old. If you have a room in a dormitory or apartment, you started the school year with a vacant space. If you have a room at home, think of when you first moved into that room and the space was empty. What did you do with it? You created a space which reflects your own values. You chose certain furniture to use but rejected others; you arranged the furniture in a particular way; you chose certain items to decorate the room but rejected others. If you have a grandparent living with you at home, the average visitor to your home would probably have little trouble distinguishing your room from your grandparent's. Your room will reflect your values; you have created it in your image and likeness. In the same way, groups of people (nations, tribes, religious communities) create a cosmos to reflect the values they hold important. For "primitives" and religious communities, these are the values they received from the Gods. As noted above, a cosmogony is a paradigm. Since it is open-ended, it can be extended indefinitely. For example, for pious Jews, Israel is the Holy Land, within which is Jerusalem, the Holy City, and within Jerusalem is the Wailing Wall, clearly a more holy location than the secular parts of the city. All these are sacred places but of different intensities. The essence of a sacred place is that it puts one in contact with the Gods. Sacred places are sacred because they were consecrated (made sacred) by a "hierophany," that is, the manifestation of a higher being. (The manifestation of a God is a theophany; all theophanies are hierophanies but not the reverse, for example, the apparition of an angel would be a hierophany but not a theophany.) The place where the hierophany occurs becomes a sacred place. Sometimes the hierophany is unexpected. For example, the Bible says that the Israelite patriarch Jacob once dreamt of a ladder going up to heaven; when he awoke, he declared that place where he slept to be a sacred place because a hierophany occurred there. He
called the place Beth-el, that is, "House of God" (Genesis 28:10-22). One finds many examples of these kinds of hierophanies in which people had visions or auditions of Gods in or near (what became) sacred forests, sacred trees, sacred lakes, sacred mountains, and the like. Sometimes the hierophany is invited. For example, if goodly numbers of Roman Catholics move into a certain area, the local diocese will establish a parish in that area and then build and consecrate a church there--that is, they will do prayers and blessings, celebrate Mass, and thereby invoke a theophany. During this first Mass, they consecrate a Tabernacle to hold the reserved Eucharist where they believe that Christ is present in a special way. Thus when Roman Catholics enter the church, they consider themselves in the presence of God in a way that is not true outside the church building. People who are in a sacred place will exhibit different behavior than they do in other (profane) places. For example, a Roman Catholic might shout out a greeting to a friend in the parking lot, but they would not do so in the middle of the church itself. In the Genesis 28 story, Jacob also called the place where he slept the "gate of heaven," because in that place he came in contact with the world of the divine. This illustrates a key feature of sacred space: a sacred place is a threshold, that is, a point where one can cross over from the common (profane) world of everyday life to a sacred world. This sounds rather unusual, but we experience a similar kind of thing every day. For example, the doorway to a classroom is a threshold; in the hall you can act more freely than you can inside the classroom. Or again, when you cross the threshold of your own room, you enter a space with where different values apply than in the classroom or the living room of your home. Religious examples of this are the threshholds of churches, synagogues, or temples. Individual families sometimes reflect the religious nature of their homes by putting a mezzuzah or cross or even a small holy water font on one of the door posts. These signs remind those who enter that this house (and family) is dedicated to God; thus, inside this house certain values are maintained no matter what may go on outside. Part Two: Sacred Time The creation of the world is the great cosmogonic paradigm, the most important thing the Gods ever did and the model for all which we should do. This cosmogony, although a spatial creation, also took place at a certain "time." Hence, we find the notion of sacred time. The term for sacred time is chairos, while the term for "normal" (profane, quotidian) time is chronos. When the Gods created space, they also created time. First of all, time could not begin until those things which measure it came into existence; likewise when space disappears, it will be the end of time. This at first seems strange to us because we have separated time from space; we consult watches or calendars, not the sun or the moon, to gauge time. But if we think about it, we realize how closely the two are related. For example, a year is not 365 days; in fact, a year is almost six hours longer which is why there is need for an extra day every four years (leap year). A year is actually the time it takes the earth to orbit the
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"The Basic Ideas of Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane"

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