Scan barcode
apleiades17's review against another edition
4.0
"Omul nu va deveni el însuși decât în clipa în care va fi în întregime demistificat, si nu va fi cu adevărat liber decât după ce–l va fi ucis pe ultimul zeu."
lalexvp's review
3.0
Eliade (1907-1986), a Romanian novelist and historian/philosopher of religion, is one of the world's most celebrated experts on religion and a must read for anyone interested in the topic. Nic describes him as an academic much like his predecessors in that he believes Christianity to be the highest from or religious thought, but who arrived at this conclusion through secular and widespread study rather than a simple Bible-bashing and brainwashing train of thought. He was in a unique position, being directly in the middle of a transition in how academia viewed religion - perhaps even the catalyst for the transition.
"The Sacred and the Profane", originally written in French (as Eliade was completely fluent in 5 languages) in the 1950's is one of his most basic and introductory works for those interested in the study of religion. The book is split into four sections (with a lovely section at the very end providing a chronological survey to the history of religions as a branch of study, much appreciated by historians like myself):
1. Sacred Space and Making the World Sacred:
Eliade begins by defining sacred as the opposite of the profane, generally described using terms which are also used to describe the natural. The reality of the sacred, however, is a world completely different from the world of the "natural", meaning of this world; the sacred manifests itself in unnatural, extraordinary forms - hierophanies. The sacred is considered to be the true reality to religious man and it is this reality, this true existence, which religious man strives to attain. Through hirophanies, the sacred reveals itself through a break in profane space and creates an absolute, fixed point. This point - generally symbolized by a pillar or other object which reaches towards the sky - becomes the central point of communication with the divine. Around this point of sacred access, religious man builds his world using the cosmogony (the initial creation of the world) as a model in order to commemorate and reenact the original, divine transformation from chaos to cosmos. Therefore, through the act of establishment (a village around a sacred center or a sacred alter in the home), religious man chooses to keep order within the cosmos by choosing a sacred location which allows him to be constantly connected to the divine. In simpler terms, "in all traditional cultures, the habitation possesses a sacred aspect by the simple fact that it reflects the world" which was brought out of chaos by the divine. Interestingly, Eliade argues that multiple breaks in space (i.e., multiple habitations of religious people) do not matter because it is a matter of existential space, not geometric, which is most important and that communications with the transcendent can occur wherever a hirophany has made a space sacred.
2. Sacred Time and Myths
For religious man, there are two types of time. One is profane and includes the "ordinary temporal duration" in which regular human acts without religious meaning occur. The other is sacred time, the primordial mythical time which may be made present through ritual. Most simply, "religious participation in a festival implies emerging from ordinary temporal duration and reintegration of the mythical time reactualized by the festival itself." This is able to happen because time as it was during the creation was necessarily sanctified by the presence of the divine. Therefore, by reenacting the creation or any other significant mythical occurrence, modern man can return to the contemporary time of the sacred. New Year celebrations, for example, commemorate the annual renewal of the cosmos during which participants return to the original, sacred time in which the cosmos was created. With each passing into sacred time, religious man becomes renewed and is able to begin life over again in rebirth. Through such renewal, religious man is able to recover and be reminded of the sacred dimension of his existence and fulfill his wish to live close to the ultimate reality, that is, the sacred. "The true sin is forgetting... It falls to the primordial myth to preserve true history, the history of the human condition; it is in the myth that the principles and paradigms for all conduct must be sought and recovered."
3. The Sacredness of Nature and Cosmic Religion
Nature is never only 'natural', but its own living, real, and sacred organism - the divines incorporated the sacred into the natural structure of the world. Therefore, nature is always venerated because it is sacred, not because it is nature. Universal symbolism of the natural - the infinite of the sky, the purifying power of water, the reverence for Mother Earth - is the "common property of mankind" simply because it is impossible to separate the natural and the sacred in any human society. Eliade goes into extreme detail describing the different ways each natural phenomenon has been symbolized by various cultures, but the gist of it is common sense for any educated person, at least - the cycles of life are revered for their cosmic renewal, Mother Earth is venerated as the life giver, the sky is venerated as the infinite and unreachable divine, and the moon and sun are rival powers representing the cosmos and chaos. Essentially, everything and anything natural is sacred because of its life giving properties and its inexplicable nature. It is sacred because it exists, which brings us to...
4. Human Existence and Sanctified Life
Religious man knows that the world exists because it was divinely created and its existence in and of itself means something - mankind, therefore, is sacred as is the entire cosmos. Mankind lives within the world as the world lives within him, and mankind lives in the profane as he lives in the sacred - all planes intersect and fold into each other to create one, sacred existence. The sacred elements and cycles that can be found in nature are copied by man, such as sexuality, generation-death-regeneration, eating, nesting, etc. Religious man commemorates these acts through various rituals, the most universal of which are the rites of passage. These rites mimic the ordeals of the mythical heroes and guide the souls of dead and living alike. For example, the initiation ordeals of men into proper manhood, of women into proper womanhood, which often include the symbolic death of the profane individual, the child, who is to be reborn into sacred wisdom. "By introducing him to the sacred, it obliges him to assume the responsibility that goes with being a man." Such wisdom pulls communities together while reminding man of their divine origins, and, with each symbolic death and resurrection, brings religious man closer to the divine.
So, what do I think?
Eliade points out that non-religious man (man whose life has been consciously desacrilized by the modern world) virtually cannot exist in a pure form because man cannot escape his religious ancestral roots by which he came to be. Most of us still ritually celebrate unions and new years', we still separate ourselves into distinct societies which make us impassioned, whether they be recreationaly, politically, or religiously motivated. There are so many innate traits which make up the human condition as a collective species that it really does make it impossible to imagine a purely non-religious life.
Yet for modern man, such as myself, it is easy to see how the religious aspects of everyday life can be washed away and forgotten. I have chosen to settle in my town because of the sacred qualities that it possesses - my town shares the same values that I do and, therefore, has brought me closer to self-awareness and happiness simply by proximity. I do stand in awe of the natural in all of its forms, many times including landscapes and objects which are man made.
If anything, this book provided me with a new lens through which to view the world and the choices that I have made within it, a lens which I thoroughly appreciate. I enjoy being reminded that the human experience is a common experience, both amongst myself and my peers as well as amongst myself and my ancestors. This connection is ultimately why I've chosen to take my future husband's last name as well, for the sake of a tradition which I feel emotionally and providentially tied to. Nothing has made me more irate recently than watching what the norm has become for modern Americans, in particular. I hate television, therefore I seem to have nothing to talk about with people. I refuse to put crap into my body, therefore social situations can be awkward for me if I choose to abstain. Mostly, I am just sick and tired of seeing people waste their lives away while sitting on their asses watching tv and eating fries because, honestly, I'm really surprised that natural selection has let people like that get this far - killing oneself through apathy is the most disgusting quality which possesses modern man and I refuse to align myself with it in any way, shape or form. I appreciate life much more fully when I am living beyond the material, beyond the convenience, and beyond the pointless, apathetic existence which so many have chosen.
My goal in life is simply to live happily while striving to make everyone I touch a little better off for it, and this book will ultimately fill a hole which my worldview lens has been missing for some time - living as religious man, but without the organized religion.
Some Questions I've Been Left With
How will we choose to make our wedding a sacred space for our guests?
Would Mecca be considered the center of the world, the axis mundi, for Muslims?
Eliade briefly argues that Christ was in both profane and sacred time during his life and, separately, that each church sermon counts as a festival-like regression into sacred time. He claims that time began anew for Christians with the birth of Christ and that the incarnation of God as Jesus made historical/profane time sacred, the whole of history a theophany. Then, Eliade decides that he doesn't have time to cover the "new valorizations of time and history" which Christianity brings and that such investigations belong to the history of philosophy. But I truly don't understand how Christianity fits into his model of sacred time at all, let alone into any of his other models, really...
Eliade argues that a sanctified sexual life is essentially a good thing and explains how many peoples have valorized and ritualized sexuality. Yet he doesn't touch on how this fits into early Christian thought that sex for enjoyment is a sin and that sex is something reserved for procreation alone - if sex is a sin, then are Christians capable of sex being a sacred, transhuman experience? Should they be able to?
In describing death and initiation rituals, Eliade states that "the man of primitive societies has sought to conquer death by transforming it into a rite of passage." But if we understand death to be part of the highest mythic order, which Eliade seems to argue in previous passages, then how can we apply the motive of "conquering" death to describe its ritual? To conquer death seems to me to be a profane concept, not something to be ritualized as part of the sacred cycle of life.
Finally, Eliade claims that from the Christian perspective, non-religion can be viewed as a second "fall" of man, but that "in his deepest being, he still retains a memory of it, as, after the first 'fall,' his ancestor retained intelligence enough to enable him to rediscover the traces of God." But did man truly rediscover the traces of God after the initial fall? If Christ was sent to save mankind millennia after the initial fall from grace, then Christ must have been sent because man needed to be saved. Eliade also states that after the second fall of man - the nonreligious - that humanity has fallen even further into the depths, into the realm of forgetting. But if Christ had successfully saved us, then wouldn't completely forgetting about God be impossible?
"The Sacred and the Profane", originally written in French (as Eliade was completely fluent in 5 languages) in the 1950's is one of his most basic and introductory works for those interested in the study of religion. The book is split into four sections (with a lovely section at the very end providing a chronological survey to the history of religions as a branch of study, much appreciated by historians like myself):
1. Sacred Space and Making the World Sacred:
Eliade begins by defining sacred as the opposite of the profane, generally described using terms which are also used to describe the natural. The reality of the sacred, however, is a world completely different from the world of the "natural", meaning of this world; the sacred manifests itself in unnatural, extraordinary forms - hierophanies. The sacred is considered to be the true reality to religious man and it is this reality, this true existence, which religious man strives to attain. Through hirophanies, the sacred reveals itself through a break in profane space and creates an absolute, fixed point. This point - generally symbolized by a pillar or other object which reaches towards the sky - becomes the central point of communication with the divine. Around this point of sacred access, religious man builds his world using the cosmogony (the initial creation of the world) as a model in order to commemorate and reenact the original, divine transformation from chaos to cosmos. Therefore, through the act of establishment (a village around a sacred center or a sacred alter in the home), religious man chooses to keep order within the cosmos by choosing a sacred location which allows him to be constantly connected to the divine. In simpler terms, "in all traditional cultures, the habitation possesses a sacred aspect by the simple fact that it reflects the world" which was brought out of chaos by the divine. Interestingly, Eliade argues that multiple breaks in space (i.e., multiple habitations of religious people) do not matter because it is a matter of existential space, not geometric, which is most important and that communications with the transcendent can occur wherever a hirophany has made a space sacred.
2. Sacred Time and Myths
For religious man, there are two types of time. One is profane and includes the "ordinary temporal duration" in which regular human acts without religious meaning occur. The other is sacred time, the primordial mythical time which may be made present through ritual. Most simply, "religious participation in a festival implies emerging from ordinary temporal duration and reintegration of the mythical time reactualized by the festival itself." This is able to happen because time as it was during the creation was necessarily sanctified by the presence of the divine. Therefore, by reenacting the creation or any other significant mythical occurrence, modern man can return to the contemporary time of the sacred. New Year celebrations, for example, commemorate the annual renewal of the cosmos during which participants return to the original, sacred time in which the cosmos was created. With each passing into sacred time, religious man becomes renewed and is able to begin life over again in rebirth. Through such renewal, religious man is able to recover and be reminded of the sacred dimension of his existence and fulfill his wish to live close to the ultimate reality, that is, the sacred. "The true sin is forgetting... It falls to the primordial myth to preserve true history, the history of the human condition; it is in the myth that the principles and paradigms for all conduct must be sought and recovered."
3. The Sacredness of Nature and Cosmic Religion
Nature is never only 'natural', but its own living, real, and sacred organism - the divines incorporated the sacred into the natural structure of the world. Therefore, nature is always venerated because it is sacred, not because it is nature. Universal symbolism of the natural - the infinite of the sky, the purifying power of water, the reverence for Mother Earth - is the "common property of mankind" simply because it is impossible to separate the natural and the sacred in any human society. Eliade goes into extreme detail describing the different ways each natural phenomenon has been symbolized by various cultures, but the gist of it is common sense for any educated person, at least - the cycles of life are revered for their cosmic renewal, Mother Earth is venerated as the life giver, the sky is venerated as the infinite and unreachable divine, and the moon and sun are rival powers representing the cosmos and chaos. Essentially, everything and anything natural is sacred because of its life giving properties and its inexplicable nature. It is sacred because it exists, which brings us to...
4. Human Existence and Sanctified Life
Religious man knows that the world exists because it was divinely created and its existence in and of itself means something - mankind, therefore, is sacred as is the entire cosmos. Mankind lives within the world as the world lives within him, and mankind lives in the profane as he lives in the sacred - all planes intersect and fold into each other to create one, sacred existence. The sacred elements and cycles that can be found in nature are copied by man, such as sexuality, generation-death-regeneration, eating, nesting, etc. Religious man commemorates these acts through various rituals, the most universal of which are the rites of passage. These rites mimic the ordeals of the mythical heroes and guide the souls of dead and living alike. For example, the initiation ordeals of men into proper manhood, of women into proper womanhood, which often include the symbolic death of the profane individual, the child, who is to be reborn into sacred wisdom. "By introducing him to the sacred, it obliges him to assume the responsibility that goes with being a man." Such wisdom pulls communities together while reminding man of their divine origins, and, with each symbolic death and resurrection, brings religious man closer to the divine.
So, what do I think?
Eliade points out that non-religious man (man whose life has been consciously desacrilized by the modern world) virtually cannot exist in a pure form because man cannot escape his religious ancestral roots by which he came to be. Most of us still ritually celebrate unions and new years', we still separate ourselves into distinct societies which make us impassioned, whether they be recreationaly, politically, or religiously motivated. There are so many innate traits which make up the human condition as a collective species that it really does make it impossible to imagine a purely non-religious life.
Yet for modern man, such as myself, it is easy to see how the religious aspects of everyday life can be washed away and forgotten. I have chosen to settle in my town because of the sacred qualities that it possesses - my town shares the same values that I do and, therefore, has brought me closer to self-awareness and happiness simply by proximity. I do stand in awe of the natural in all of its forms, many times including landscapes and objects which are man made.
If anything, this book provided me with a new lens through which to view the world and the choices that I have made within it, a lens which I thoroughly appreciate. I enjoy being reminded that the human experience is a common experience, both amongst myself and my peers as well as amongst myself and my ancestors. This connection is ultimately why I've chosen to take my future husband's last name as well, for the sake of a tradition which I feel emotionally and providentially tied to. Nothing has made me more irate recently than watching what the norm has become for modern Americans, in particular. I hate television, therefore I seem to have nothing to talk about with people. I refuse to put crap into my body, therefore social situations can be awkward for me if I choose to abstain. Mostly, I am just sick and tired of seeing people waste their lives away while sitting on their asses watching tv and eating fries because, honestly, I'm really surprised that natural selection has let people like that get this far - killing oneself through apathy is the most disgusting quality which possesses modern man and I refuse to align myself with it in any way, shape or form. I appreciate life much more fully when I am living beyond the material, beyond the convenience, and beyond the pointless, apathetic existence which so many have chosen.
My goal in life is simply to live happily while striving to make everyone I touch a little better off for it, and this book will ultimately fill a hole which my worldview lens has been missing for some time - living as religious man, but without the organized religion.
Some Questions I've Been Left With
How will we choose to make our wedding a sacred space for our guests?
Would Mecca be considered the center of the world, the axis mundi, for Muslims?
Eliade briefly argues that Christ was in both profane and sacred time during his life and, separately, that each church sermon counts as a festival-like regression into sacred time. He claims that time began anew for Christians with the birth of Christ and that the incarnation of God as Jesus made historical/profane time sacred, the whole of history a theophany. Then, Eliade decides that he doesn't have time to cover the "new valorizations of time and history" which Christianity brings and that such investigations belong to the history of philosophy. But I truly don't understand how Christianity fits into his model of sacred time at all, let alone into any of his other models, really...
Eliade argues that a sanctified sexual life is essentially a good thing and explains how many peoples have valorized and ritualized sexuality. Yet he doesn't touch on how this fits into early Christian thought that sex for enjoyment is a sin and that sex is something reserved for procreation alone - if sex is a sin, then are Christians capable of sex being a sacred, transhuman experience? Should they be able to?
In describing death and initiation rituals, Eliade states that "the man of primitive societies has sought to conquer death by transforming it into a rite of passage." But if we understand death to be part of the highest mythic order, which Eliade seems to argue in previous passages, then how can we apply the motive of "conquering" death to describe its ritual? To conquer death seems to me to be a profane concept, not something to be ritualized as part of the sacred cycle of life.
Finally, Eliade claims that from the Christian perspective, non-religion can be viewed as a second "fall" of man, but that "in his deepest being, he still retains a memory of it, as, after the first 'fall,' his ancestor retained intelligence enough to enable him to rediscover the traces of God." But did man truly rediscover the traces of God after the initial fall? If Christ was sent to save mankind millennia after the initial fall from grace, then Christ must have been sent because man needed to be saved. Eliade also states that after the second fall of man - the nonreligious - that humanity has fallen even further into the depths, into the realm of forgetting. But if Christ had successfully saved us, then wouldn't completely forgetting about God be impossible?
thelibraryskeeper's review
5.0
This was my first reading of The Sacred and the Profane. I thoroughly enjoyed the concepts of homo religiosus that Eliade makes his argument for. while there are some major gaping holes in his actual argument, the book was a great read.
amwsetford11's review
3.0
This book is a great survey of world religions and a deep look into the phenomenology of belief. However, the way eliade analyzes religion is contrived—not tethered to biology. This, I know, is a trait of his field. Nevertheless, I think it would be helpful to address the underlying evolutionary mechanisms in play. Biology, like physics, is a foundational truth that one must accept when putting together hypothetical narratives. When dealing with humans, one must always remember our evolutionary origins and how present functions are driven by ancient mechanisms to further the propagation of lineage. This is foundational. Although culture may seem like a confounding variable at times, a critical analysis giving evolutionary reasoning it’s due will on average be more objectively accurate compared to misguided conspiracy about the meaning of abstract cultural phenomena. I am not saying this is what eliade does, and on some level I don’t think he is in pursuit of the truth, but would prefer to operate within a contrived domain to then map his findings on objective truth. He talks about religious ideas in a religious language and it’s product is equal to that which is truth but only after intense intellectual acrobatics.
Religion itself is a cultural mechanism, which in turn is a biological mechanism. That Eliade fails to maintain this truth is a bit disappointing. Reminding us of the evolutionary function, while not being reductive, is necessary to understand the necessity of religion for man to operate in the world, to tether him to meaning.
The greatest concept to take from this work is that profane, desacralized man, is still religious despite his attempts to remove himself from formal practice. After all, “[man] cannot utterly abolish his past, since he is himself the product of his past.” Although not explicit in eliade’s work, it is clear that our genetic makeup is such that our minds tend to religious orientation. To function in society and to make sense of ones position in relation to others and the cosmos, religious traditions are still used, manipulating our chemistries and aligning them with each other.
Religion itself is a cultural mechanism, which in turn is a biological mechanism. That Eliade fails to maintain this truth is a bit disappointing. Reminding us of the evolutionary function, while not being reductive, is necessary to understand the necessity of religion for man to operate in the world, to tether him to meaning.
The greatest concept to take from this work is that profane, desacralized man, is still religious despite his attempts to remove himself from formal practice. After all, “[man] cannot utterly abolish his past, since he is himself the product of his past.” Although not explicit in eliade’s work, it is clear that our genetic makeup is such that our minds tend to religious orientation. To function in society and to make sense of ones position in relation to others and the cosmos, religious traditions are still used, manipulating our chemistries and aligning them with each other.
roxanacosmina's review against another edition
5.0
Oamenii de atunci încercau să trăiască într-o lume sacră, să trăiască în Realitate, nu în iluzia pe care hindușii o numesc Maya. Pentru ei totul revenea cumva la momentul Creației și, prin tot ce făceau, încercau să imite cosmogonia. Își doreau să fie contemporani cu zeii, să fie cu adevărat oameni. E adevărat că această imitare a dus uneori la lucruri fără sens sau odioase, dar ei, spre deosebire de noi, voiau să trăiască într-o lume pură, într-un timp ce se întoarce mereu la momentul Creației Universului, când lumea era cu desăvârșire pură.
https://adolescentacunasulincarti.wordpress.com/2015/07/05/sacrul-si-profanul-mircea-eliade-cat-de-mult-te-face-ignoranta-sa-pierzi/
https://adolescentacunasulincarti.wordpress.com/2015/07/05/sacrul-si-profanul-mircea-eliade-cat-de-mult-te-face-ignoranta-sa-pierzi/
rouennee's review against another edition
2.5
Problematizzare la secolarizzazione e la desacralizzazione dell’uomo moderno in questo modo becero e qualunquista solo un antropologo era capace di farlo
ynaa's review
4.0
Nu te-ai aștepta ca același om care a scris Maitreyi — despre care ai putea spune că a "trăit" chiar gândurile protagonistului — să scrie o carte ca asta.
În continuare sunt reticentă când vine vorba de stil, însă acum nu mai e beletristic, ci pură analiza asupra religiei. E de apreciat obiectivitatea cu care Eliade privește subiectul pe care-l explorează. Mult mai bine pusă la punct decât mă gândeam.
În continuare sunt reticentă când vine vorba de stil, însă acum nu mai e beletristic, ci pură analiza asupra religiei. E de apreciat obiectivitatea cu care Eliade privește subiectul pe care-l explorează. Mult mai bine pusă la punct decât mă gândeam.