Mircea Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane: the Nature of Religion was interesting to read. I derived from it that the Sacred is that which is otherworldly, and that our ‘natural’ world is profane. Eliade writes “it is easy to understand that religious man deeply desires to be, to participate in reality, to be saturated with power.” I wasn’t quite sure what Eliade was trying to say with this though. Was he trying to say that man wants to be with the sacred which is power, or that man wants to be with the sacred because it entails power?
I liked the use of basic examples of experience and point of view regarding things such as a sacred stone or tree. A sacred stone from the profane point of view is just a stone, and from the sacred point of view it is, well, sacred. I believe this also plays in to how one experiences the sacred and the profane, profane is familiar, whereas sacred pushes a person to see beyond the surface, It reminds me of how people deal with people, there is a surface layer yet as we get to know others we find that there is more beneath the physical view. If we could glimpse or attempt to perceive/be aware of what is sacred we would be better able to identify the sacred.
Something else that Eliade points to that I found neat was the concept of the profane world, never as purely profane, yet holds a hint of the sacred. I don’t think I’ve seen this point of view presented before. Some could say that this world is nothing but profane, which leaves little hope, however to say that there is a touch of sacred within profane leaves plenty of hope. This ties in with our film ‘Apocalypse Now’ because when there seemingly is an apocalypse going on, there is peace within chaos. The Cambodians (?) that live with Kurtz enjoy life there, even though there are dead bodies, decapitated heads and men draped with machine guns and ammo.
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