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

thus an easy symbol of chaos. But since we cannot live without water, its chaos is a
prelude to cosmos, and there are numerous myths in which the hero or an entire people
cross water to reach a promised land, such as the Israelites passing through the Red Sea.
Basically, when people enter water, they return to chaos and thus their current forms
(e.g., slaves in Egypt) dissolve into chaos, but when they emerge from the water, they
come out as part of a cosmos (a free people). In ancient Christianity, baptism was often
by immersion, that is, one went completely under water, signifying a destruction of the
old (pagan) forms, presaging a rebirth into a cosmic form as a Christian. Anyone, of
course, could see that the waters from Father Sky impregnate Mother Earth. The notion
of a fountain of youth, waters which restore lost youth and potency, is a good example of
an aquatic hierophany.
Associated with this are the many rites of cleansing used in religion.
These are the great, universal hierophanies, but there are many lesser but still important
hierophanies. For example, the most important gift the Gods can give is life, and few
things show life more than plants. Even today, when we know a lot about the science of
botany, we can still be amazed how tiny seeds produce full-grown plants. Any plant can
be a hierophany, but, since we have seen that myths convey truths about the Gods, it is
common in myth to find some kind of sacred plant, such as the plant of youth in
theMesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh or the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil in the biblical Garden of Paradise. The moon is a hierophany of fertility.
Not only does its waxing and waning show a constant pattern of birth, growth, decline,
death, and rebirth, the moon also goes through a monthly cycle as does a woman's
menstrual cycle, and menstruation is a sign that a girl has now become physically a
woman, that is, that she can bear children, an important event in the life of a primitive
tribe where births were not taken for granted.
Finally, stones can also be hierophanies -- not so much pebbles but rather sizeable masses
of rock, for example, sacred mountains or pyramids or even something like Stonehenge.
Stones have solidity and power and they do not change. To be sure, geologists tell us that
a mountain range will eventually be eroded to the ground, but, in the light of human life
span, it is unchangeable. Since the Gods are usually free from the changes and
vicissitudes of human life, stones seem like a good hierophany for them, as the popularity
of sacred stones in primitive religions proves.
Eliade's final point that since traditional cultures understand the natural world to contain
hierophanies, they try to live their lives in harmony with this world. They can see a
sacred dimension in many daily acts, such as cooking, eating, hunting, sexual activity,
farming, and the like. This does not mean that these activities are any less demanding or
pleasing for them than they are for us, but rather that primitive peoples realize that these
acts are more than just human acts; for example, farming provides food for life as the
farmer works with Father Sky and Mother Earth to produce the plants which give us life.
People may even build their homes to reflect the natural world; for example, there are
societies which have huts with holes in the roof, symbolizing the small opening at the top