The Sacred and the Profane by Mircea Eliade

Source of book: I own this.

 

Just prior to the pandemic, my wife made the decision that she was at the point in her career where she needed additional challenges. When we married, she had one year of school left to get her RN. At the time, she wasn’t sure if she would be going on to get her BSN, but life made that decision for her. About a month after I gave notice at my job, prepared to hang out my own shingle, she got pregnant with our first child. So, instead of continuing with school, she cut back to part time night shift, and we found a rhythm that worked. 

 

Fast forward 20 years (all working night shift) and a total of 5 kids, and she was ready for a change. She enrolled in the BSN program at CSUB, and found herself in the midst of a pandemic, working long hours and studying on top of that. She is, to put it mildly, a badass. 

 

After the 18 month program, she graduated, then applied for and was hired as the ICU manager at a local hospital. 

 

Anyway, the reason I mention all that is that as part of her degree, she needed to take a class totally outside of her area of study. With a number of potentially fascinating choices, she ended up taking one on spiritual journeys - kind of a philosophy/religious studies crossover. The professor was well rated, and it turned out that had met him. He gave the homily at his dad’s gay wedding, which I played at, and I thought he did a great job. My wife enjoyed the class, so if you attend CSUB, consider this a recommendation. 

 

One of the core texts for the class was this book, The Sacred and the Profane by Mircea Eliade. I wasn’t particularly familiar with it, but I found our conversations about the class to be really fascinating. I also proof-read her big paper in the class (as I have since we started dating - that extra set of eyes is so helpful), and was intrigued enough to look for a used copy for her. Which I could borrow, of course. 

 

Eliade himself was a complex person, deeply flawed, controversial in his views then and now, yet hugely influential. 

 

To start with, he was Romanian, but left after the communist revolution, eventually becoming a US resident. He was fluent in at least five languages (the book is translated from the French), and passable in others. 

 

During World War Two, he became involved with Christian Fascist organizations, such as Iron Guard, but after the war disavowed politics, focusing on his academic pursuits. After his death, friends said that in private he rejected the elements of fascism he had previously embraced, but take that for what it is worth. 

 

Also worth considering in any discussion of European intellectuals of the time is that neither communism nor facism had been unveiled for the brutal and genocidal systems under Stalin and Hitler that they would eventually be understood to have been. In the context of the time, one tended to have to choose one or the other, and perhaps, like East Germany, end up suffering under both. 

 

His writings have been criticized for overgeneralization (which is probably true, but also true of any general theory of anything), and for a Western-centric bias (which is less true, in my view, but also all too common as the background assumption for mid-20th Century European thinkers generally.) 

 

So, I think in this case, while it is helpful to understand Eliade’s flaws as a person, you have to read his ideas for what they are, and address them on their own terms. Perhaps kind of like Wagner, another complex man who combined the highest aspirations of humankind with toxic beliefs and poor personal behavior. 

 

Whatever his political leanings then and later, I didn’t see anything particularly political in the book - unless you count the universalism of humanity and religion and a call for mutual understanding of our commonality to be political (it kind of is these days…) Certainly nothing I would recognize as fascist. I suppose a fascist could misappropriate lines from it, but they do that from the bible all the time too, which says more about fascists than about Christ. 

 

What there is that can be a bit off-putting is some outdated language, as will become obvious in the quotations. We would not, for example, use “primitives” for earlier humans, or see earlier cultures as “undeveloped.” But considering when this was written, I think Eliade leaned toward a more progressive view of other cultures than most of his time.

 

I suspect I will end up referring to this book and its ideas from time to time. It reminded me in a lot of ways of Joseph Campbell’s influential book The Hero With A Thousand Faces. It is useful not just for what the author says, but for the ways the ideas have influenced our own culture. 

 

From what I can tell, The Sacred and the Profane is somewhat a summary of Eliade’s main ideas, which are fleshed out in more detail in his more academic works. This book is understandable by a lay-person, at least one with some knowledge of philosophy and history and religion. It gives details and citations, but isn’t intended to be an exhaustive look at all of the examples. So, for any point, Eliade tends to cite the great monotheisms and a single example from other traditions - one from the Indigenous Americans, one from Eastern religions, one from Africa, for example. It’s an overview, not a detailed analysis.

 

The core idea is in the title - the idea that religious humans (which he means in the broadest sense, and includes plenty of people who are not religious but who retain the thought patterns from the past) divide reality into sacred and profane, and see the sacred as more “real” than the profane in some cosmic sense. In the four extended chapters in the book, he looks at specific areas in which this applies. First, in the idea of sacred space - those places where the sacred meets humanity. Second, in the realm of time, where festivals and rituals are reiterations of a past or even eternal event. Third, in the realm of nature, which covers both the sacredness of the natural world and the way rituals and symbolism and origin myths relate to nature. The final chapter addresses religious life - initiations, rites of passage, key ideas that pervade pretty much all religions, and more. 

 

I think the biggest surprise to me from reading this book was how well it describes my own experience as a religious person. Despite my years of deconstruction, my disillusionment with the theology I was raised on, and my embrace of scientific thinking, there is still a significant part of me that responds in a recognizably religious way - and very much along the lines Eliade describes in the book. 

 

So, perhaps, more than anything, this book gave me insight into myself, and my own spiritual journey. I resonate with a religious way of being, and I think Eliade’s point that most humans - including the secular ones - do too. 

 

As with any work like this, the best I can do is hit a few highlights and discuss a few ideas. The book is actually better organized and less rambly than I expected, and is a fairly easy read as far as philosophy-adjacent books go. 

 

The introduction in many ways gives a quick summary of the argument before getting into specifics in the chapters.

 

The first possible definition of the sacred is that it is the opposite of the profane. 

 

Eliade posits that the sacred is revealed to us (or understood by us to be sacred) in the form of “hierophanies” - a physical embodiment of the sacred. The object is not worshiped for what it is in the profane sense, but for what it represents - nay becomes in the sacred sense. This is anything from a sacred tree to the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist. 

 

This concept was helpful to me in putting into words some of my own beliefs. I believe other humans are sacred because they represent the divine to me. Nature is sacred to me because I believe it is the handiwork of the divine. And so on. In trying to explain to people why I still consider myself religious (and specifically a Christian) despite no longer believing in Evangelical doctrine, this is an important part of it. I feel connected to the divine, and my beliefs are a way of understanding my relationship to others and nature and my own psyche. 

 

The concept of sacred space also makes sense as to how most of us humans orient ourselves in the cosmos. The point where the sacred is revealed becomes the center of the universe. 

 

For it is the break effected in space that allows the world to be constituted, because it reveals the fixed point, the central axis for all future orientation. When the sacred manifests itself in any hierophany, there is not only a break in the homogeneity of space; there is also a revelation of an absolute reality, opposed to the nonreality of the vast surrounding expanse. The manifestation of the sacred ontologically founds the world. In the homogenous and infinite expanse, in which no point of reference is possible and hence no orientation can be established, the hierophany reveals an absolute fixed point, a center. 

 

One might say that this is theological meaning of the creation myth. “The earth was formless and void…” And also, perhaps, related to the way that astrophysicists explain the way an expanding universe makes every point in it feel like the middle. We are centered in our universe, not because there is a true center that all revolves around (like the geocentrists believed) but because the connection between the sacred/divine and us occurs here, and therefore, for us, we are centered where the divine/sacred meets us. 

 

Note that like literally everything else about religion, this can be turned from something good and helpful into toxic beliefs like “God only spoke to our people, and thus we can destroy everyone else.” Humans can do that with literally everything - turn it good or bad as they choose. Choose wisely…

 

The idea of sacred time makes a lot of sense too. At the most basic level, humans have always made time circular. The new year represents to every culture a new start in some way, even for non-religious people. The change of the seasons, the phases of the moon, the movement of the planets - there is rhythm in our universe, and we are still tied to that. 

 

In this chapter, Eliade contrasts truly circular approaches to time - those where the reenacted events of festivals or ritual essentially exist outside of historical time - they have always been happening, or at least since before the universe was as it is now - and the more “modern” religions where a historical (or at least located in historical time) event took place. This too, is everywhere around us, whether in the religious forms found in our holidays celebrating events in the life of Christ (or fill in your other sacred figure), or in our secular holidays and observances. 

 

I think that here too, there is a deep human need to feel connected to the past - indeed to the infinite past - to eternity. For me, this is something that I feel deeply, particularly since my connection to my immediate ancestors has been difficult at best for some time. Here is how Eliade describes it.

 

Every religious festival, any liturgical time, represents the actualization of a sacred event that took place in a mythical past, “in the beginning.” Religious participation in a festival implies emerging from ordinary temporal duration and reintegration of the mythical time reactualized by the festival itself. 

 

This is, in a way, why I say that I believe in God for the same reason I believe in music. And also why, by “reenacting” music I feel a connection with God. On a more secular note, it is why the old stories still fascinate us - why we watch Shakespeare plays about long-dead kings, and why Homer has never gone out of style. The whole chapter was enlightening in its treatment of ritual and observance. 

 

The third chapter addresses some truths that are very uncomfortable for Evangelicals (and Fundamentalists of all religions.) Many of the things I was taught about the origins of Judaism and Christianity turned out not only to be false in the light of archaeology, but false in light of the actual words in the Old Testament too. 

 

A concept that Eliade explores is how early religions tended to have the “close gods” - the ones that interacted with humans in everyday life. These were fertility gods and godesses, domestic, nature-oriented, for specific things. And these were the ones that were honored during normal times, during the normal rhythm of life. 

 

In contrast were the supreme beings - the god of gods, so to speak. This figure (or small group of gods in some cases) dwelt in the heavens. They were inaccessible, and generally let life go on as it always did. 

 

It was only when some existential threat - some catastrophe struck - that humans would appeal to the highest god. Eventually, in the great monotheisms, the high god is the one that stuck around, but then had to be somehow brought back close enough to earth (perhaps through an….incarnation?) so as to be accessible to humanity again. 

 

The Hebrews turned to Yahweh after historical catastrophes and under the threat of an annihilation determined by history; the primitives remember their supreme beings in cases of cosmic catastrophe. But the meaning of this return to the celestial god is the same in both cases: in an extremely critical situation, in which the very existence of the community is at stake, the divinities who in normal times ensure and exalt life are abandoned in favor of the supreme god. Seemingly, this is a great paradox: the deities that, among the primitives, took the place of the celestially structured gods were - like the Baals and Astartes among the Hebrews - divinities of fertility, of opulence, of fullness of life; in short, divinities that exalted and amplified life, both cosmic life - vegetation, agriculture, cattle - and human life. 

 

I mean, if you read the Hebrew scriptures to see what people did, rather than what the priests thought they should do, the above rings true. And really, we do the exact same thing in our increasingly secular society. We might honor our domestic gods, but in times of cultural upset like now, we call on our higher gods - capitalism, theocracy, and ethnic purity. 

 

Eliade goes on to explain that the sacred retains its power because of the structure of the universe, and the human need to see symbolism. I thought this line was excellent:

 

A religious symbol conveys its message even if it is no longer consciously understood in every part. For a symbol speaks to the whole human being and not only to the intelligence.

 

As with everything, this is true for good and evil. 

 

Another thing interesting about symbols is that they are almost never invented out of the whole cloth. Case in point: baptism. Eliade notes (with evidence, by the way) that the ritual of baptism predates not just Christ, but indeed Judaism itself. It is found all over the world, in various religious traditions. I remember running across a reference to it when I assisted on a case involving a Sikh temple back in my law school days. The specifics of the ceremony vary, but the meaning is strikingly similar - a rebirth. And thus it has been for millennia. 

 

We do not say that Judaism or Christianity borrowed these or similar myths or symbols from the religions of neighboring peoples. They had no need to; Judaism inherited both a religious prehistory and a long religious history, in which all of these things already existed. It was not even necessary that Judaism should have preserved one or another myth or symbol “awake,” in its integrity. It was enough if a group of images survived, even though only obscurely, from pre-Mosaic times. Such images and symbols were capable of recovering a powerful religious currency at any moment.

 

This is why I insist that ALL religion is by definition syncretistic. It ALL borrows vertically - from the past, and changes with time. And it also borrows horizontally - from its own and neighboring cultures. Which is why wars over doctrinal differences are usually symbols of a deeper war over ethnicity, culture, and power. (A minimal exploration of the Irish Troubles reveals their origin in English imperialism, rather than doctrinal differences.) So many of the symbols - the deepest layer of religion - are, as Eliade asserts, “the common property of mankind” - indeed, this is a truth acknowledged by the early church fathers in many cases. 

 

I will note another universal that Eliade describes - the desire to be “buried in native soil.” Do we not all feel this in some way? I myself prefer to be cremated or composted to burial, but whatever remains of me, I want to return to my own native soil, so to speak: the mountains and hills of my native California. 

 

Connected to the soil - the earth mother if you will - is the sacred tree. Is it surprising that the idea of the sacred tree is universal? It shouldn’t be. It is one of those ideas that is the common property of mankind, not merely of one doctrinal sect. 

 

[Note: I was raised with the fundamentally ludicrous idea that these universal symbols and stories were “proof” that our particular version of them was the “one true story” and that the rest were all corrupted versions. How did we know ours was the “real” one, even though it developed millennia after the others? Don’t ask that question. We just knew.]

 

In the final chapter, Eliade makes it clear that in order to truly understand the religious human, we have to expand beyond the familiar - Christianity and maybe a few others - and look at the whole of human belief now and in the distant past. Even understanding our present religions require knowledge of what they developed out of. 

 

What we find as soon as we place ourselves in the perspective of religious man of archaic societies is that the world exists because it was created by the gods, and that the existence of the world “means” something, “wants to say” something, that the world is neither mute nor opaque, that it is not an inert thing without purpose or significance. For religious man, the cosmos “lives” and “speaks.” The mere life of the cosmos is proof of its sanctity, since the cosmos was created by the gods and the gods show themselves to men through cosmic life.

 

This was one of those “bingo” moments for me, when I understood that at a deep level, I am a religious man. I think Eliade may be specifically talking about “primitive” religious man here, but he expands to all of us - and that includes the non-religious. Very few of us feel that life is truly without any meaning, that the universe is senseless in its existence. And, for that matter, the answer to the question of “why does the universe exist” cannot be an evasion along the lines of “why not?” which is the grownup equivalent of “because it does” like you might hear on any playground filled with five year olds. 

 

For many of us, we find in the divine - the sacred - an answer to the “why.” Note that this does not mean that we have to reject science - far from it. In fact, science and the study of origins only adds to the wonder of the universe. The “how” does not answer the “why,” but it has revealed to us a far larger - and more bizarre, diverse, and fascinating - universe than even our crazy imaginations could fathom. 

 

This leads in turn to a striking passage. While I disagree with Eliade that the difference is essentially urban/rural - I think it is far more of a mystic/intellectualist divide, or even an experiential/empathetic versus dogma divide - but I think his conclusion is solid. (And I have no illusion that the Middle Ages were better, but there is still a kernel of truth.)

 

As for the Christianity of the industrial societies and especially the Christianity of intellectuals, it has long since lost the cosmic values that it still possessed in the Middle Ages. We must add that this does not necessarily imply that urban Christianity is deteriorated or inferior, but only that the religious sense of urban populations is gravely impoverished. The cosmic liturgy, the mystery of nature’s participation in the Christological drama, have become inaccessible to Christians living in a modern city. Their religious experience is no longer open to the cosmos. In the last analysis, it is a strictly private experience; salvation is a problem that concerns man and his god; at most, man recognizes that he is responsible not only to God but to history. But in these man-God-history relationships there is no place for the cosmos. From this it would appear that, even for a genuine Christian, the world is no longer felt as the work of God.

 

This is why I have found that trying to talk about earth’s ecosystems with modern American Christians is near-impossible. As is talking about other humans as part of that ecosystem. The cosmos has been lost, and it is just about doctrine and theopolitical ideologies. Human experience, and the natural world are disposable. 

 

Moving on to the next topic, it was fascinating to see Eliade’s tour through the “born again” symbolism around the world. This is another area in which Evangelicals lie to us. There is nothing uniquely Christian about being “born again” - it is literally everywhere. 

 

All these rituals and symbolisms of passage, we must add, express a particular conception of human existence: when brought to birth, man is not yet completed; he must be born a second time, spiritually; he becomes complete man by passing from an imperfect, embryonic state to a perfect, adult state. In a word, it may be said that human existence attains completion through a series of “passage rites,” in short, by successive initiations.

 

And later:

 

Here we have a fact of the first importance: for all archaic societies, access to spirituality finds expression in a symbolism of death and a new birth. 

 

And, just as the idea of being born again predates monotheism by millennia, so too does its symbol - baptism. 

 

There is nothing new or unique here, and the path to transcending a tribalist religion is the recognize that fact and its implications - that the sacred has revealed itself to humanity at large, not just the founders of one particular tradition. (Likewise, secularists should recognize that religion isn’t some virus that spread in humanity from one place to another, but represents some universal part of our psyche. The problem isn’t religion per se, but other human flaws. Hence why atheistic groups have the same backbiting and dissension and tribalism that churches do - it’s a human thing.) 

 

Eliade then takes a look at modern times. The old religious ways of thinking have most certainly not gone away. Rather, they have taken on new forms. 

 

For, as we said before, nonreligious man in the pure state is a comparatively rare phenomenon, even in the most desacralized of modern societies. The majority of the “irreligious” still behave religiously, even though they are not aware of the fact. We refer not only to the modern man’s many “superstitions” and “tabus.” all of them magico-religious in structure. But the modern many who feels and claims that he is nonreligious still retains a large stock of camouflaged myths and degenerated rituals. 

 

He also notes that Communism is very much a religion - as did Raymond Aron in his book The Opium of the Intellectuals. (I would go one further and say that Communism in its heyday - Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot - was not merely a religion but a fundamentalist cult.) While not in the same level of detail as Aron’s tome, Eliade does hit the highlights: the way that Marxism looks strikingly like the eschatological myths of Mediterranean religion, with role of the anointed (the proletariat), the suffering leading to a future golden age, and so on. 

 

The book ends with a quick “chronological survey,” hitting some highlights of religious development around the world, full of sources to the point where it practically reads as a bibliography. 

 

There are a couple of lines that I thought were worth mentioning. 

 

First is his reference to Plutarch’s survey of religion from around 100 CE. Plutarch carefully cataloged the symbols and religious forms and concluded that there was a fundamental unity of religions. It is interesting that this sort of survey has been done by more or less secularist thinkers in many times and places, and more often than not, the person exploring the issue has found the similarities to be far greater than the differences. 

 

Related, though, is the problem posed for the gatekeepers of a particular religion: the need to justify with their religion, and only their religion has the revealed truth. 

 

This led to serious problems, because there were so many resemblances. For early Christian gatekeepers, the fact that the symbols had been clearly borrowed from earlier “mystery” cults and other pagan sources (and that includes Hell, by the way) had to be explained. 

 

Eliade lists four historical “explanations” that should be familiar to most of us steeped in the world of Christian Apologetics our whole lives. The one rarely used nowadays, but formerly popular was the idea that fallen angels came down to earth and mated with human women, leading to demons and idolatry. More popular now is the idea that I referenced above: that all other versions of the symbols and myths were “stolen” from the true faith, and made into counterfeits to fool humanity. Related is the third, that the pagan philosophers (such as Aristotle, who has influenced Western Christianity more than most people realize) stole their ideas from Moses et al. And finally, that since humans have the ability to reason (at least somewhat) in the absence of true religion, they came close to the truth on their own. 

 

The idea that perhaps revelation is more of a universal and less of a sectarian experience is of course unthinkable. Because that might open the whole can of worms: the reality that they may very well be wrong, and other people might be right. 

 

As I said, I just hit some highlights. Overall, the book is well organized, well thought out, well researched, and well stated.