The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion

For a religious person, “the existence of the world ‘means’ something, ‘wants to say’ something [. . .] the cosmos ‘lives’ and ‘speaks’” (165). Since man “forms part of the gods’ creation [. . .] it follows that his life is homologized to cosmic life” (165). This chapter “attempt[s] to understand the existential situation of one for whom these homologies [between cosmos and individual life] are experiences and not simply ideas” (166)— in which life itself is a hierophany, and can be performed in a sacred mode.

Because life itself is a hierophany, all aspects of life are capable of being sacralized. As such, this chapter follows from the previous: just as all aspects of the natural world can be interpreted for their sacred meaning, so too can man’s natural life. Even automatic bodily functions have sacred analogies, such as the equation “of the belly or womb with the cave, of the intestines to a labyrinth, of breathing to weaving” (169). Such “anthropo-cosmic homologies” (169) are “ciphers of various existential situations” (169) or interpretations of the meaning and function of human bodies and beings. From such homologies, bodily functions such as sexual activity or eating are transformed into sacraments like marriage or taking the Eucharist. These acts transcend physiological reality and become “mystical rites” (171) connecting human action with the order of the cosmos. Even acts that secular society sometimes deems mundane or vulgar, such as sexual intercourse, take on a sacred dimension, and can be “lived on a different, a transhuman, plane” (171).

Alongside the anthropo-cosmic homology, the “house-body-cosmos” (172) homology is important in archaic cultures. In this structure, the body is structurally equated to a house, which is equated to the cosmos. For instance, the spine of the body becomes the pillar of the house, which is the axis mundi of the universe. Through this process, “man cosmicizes himself [. . . ] reproduc[ing] on the human scale the system of rhythmic and reciprocal conditioning influences that characterize and constitute a world” (173). Furthermore, these homologies allow humans to infer at all levels of existence “openings” (174) through which to access the divine. For instance, the eye of the body, window of the house, and celestial dome or sun of the cosmos are all analogous portals to perceive the inherent order of the universe via centrally shared functions.

Secular cultures have done away with these sacred valences of the body and domicile, and overall live in a cosmos that “has become opaque, inert, mute; it transmits no message, it holds no cipher” (178). As such, even for a “genuine Christian” who lives in a secular society which does not understand reality as laden with cosmic significance, “the world is no longer felt as the work of God.” (179)

As the body and the house are subject to cosmic homologies, so too is the passage of human life knit into a cosmic structure by “rites of passage” (184), ritualized initiations which accompany the transformation of the person from one stage of life to another. These rites occur at important moments of a person’s development, such as the moment of their transition from birth into status as a human, adolescence to adulthood, single into married life, or death into status as a corpse. Such rites are required for the social acceptance of a person in their assigned role, and help people to manage the tension and crises such events can precipitate via prescribed ritual structures.

Alongside offering a framework to manage the existential crises of identity transition, particular rites of passage, such as initiation, show that “man of the primitive societies does not consider himself ‘finished’ as he finds himself given on the natural level of existence” (187) but must instead strive to exist on a higher plane of life. In such rites of passage, “primitive man undertakes to attain a religious ideal of humanity, and his effort already contains the germs of all the ethics later elaborated in evolved societies” (187-8).

Initiations are the prototypical rite of passage, and have a distinct phenomenology. Initiation necessarily includes the acquisition of previously secret knowledge: “the initiate [. . .] is a man who knows” (188). This knowledge is of a metaphysical nature, containing “sacred secrets: the true names of the gods, the role and origin of the ritual instruments” (188), and requires a symbolic death of the old self and birth of a new self. These ceremonies always begin with the separation of the initiate from their family and their symbolic death in the solitude of the wilderness, a cave etc. They undergo torture, mutilations or scarification/tattooing which symbolize the acts of demons or ghostly ancestors upon them and mark them out from the rest of their community, and are then “reborn” with a new name, new identity etc. Such a procedure “reveals to the novice the true dimensions of existence; by introducing him to the sacred, it obliges him to assume the responsibility that goes with being a man” (191-2).

Initiations into secret societies for women do not have the same format, though they share in the common structure shared between all initiations: “a deep religious experience. It is access to sacrality” (193). For women, initiation begins when they have their first period, at which they, like boys, are secluded in a dark place and initiated into the secrets of womanhood by female elders. This differs slightly from male rites, which are usually done with groups of boys around the same age, instead of individually with females at the event of menstruation. The secrets of these female societies are “always concerned with birth and fertility” (194).

Another common structure among initiations is the process of symbolic death and rebirth. Like many other rituals this book covers, this is modelled on the cosmogony, as “initiatory death reiterates the paradigmatic return to chaos” (196) before creation, and initiatory birth allows the creation of a new “‘blank page’ of existence” (195). Such incorporation of death into the ritual structure of initiation also reveals religious man’s desire “to conquer death by transforming it into a rite of passage” (196). Like initiatory death, real death is only “death to profane life” (196) and becomes regarded as “the supreme initiation [. . .] the beginning of a new spiritual existence” (196).

Initiatory birth “imp[lying] death to profane existence” (199) is common to “highly evolved religions” (199) as well, for example in the belief that a birth into enlightenment in the Buddhist tradition equals the abandonment of one’s previous parenthood, a new metaphorical parenthood in the Buddha, and a new identity. Similarly, within Alexandrian Christianity, Paul referred to his converts as “sons” in the faith. In some cases, these rebirths occurred through ritual—as in archaic societies and Christian baptism—in others, through doctrine and mental practice (e.g. Buddhism).

Eliade has so far demonstrated the ubiquity of fundamental aspects of religious belief across human cultures. In his words, “whatever the historical context in which he is placed, homo religiosus always believes that there is an absolute reality, the sacred, which transcends this world but manifests itself in this world [through hierophany]” (202). He now turns to the condition of the sacred and profane in the modern world.

As Eliade writes, “It is only in the nonreligious societies of the West that nonreligious man has developed fully” (203). Such a man “refuses transcendence [. . .] accepts no model for humanity outside the human condition [and believes he] makes himself” (202-3) instead of being made by and subservient to the sacred. However, Eliade argues that this is not the default position of humanity. Instead, it is only possible through a gradual process of desacralization from more “natural” religious belief. Such beliefs in fact remain with secular man in diminished form via superstitions, taboos, myths and rituals. Cinema, secularized sacraments such as marriage and New Year’s, and political systems/activist movements still bear out these deeper religious forms and functions. Many modern institutions also bear out initiatory structures, such as psychoanalysis, which asks the patient to “descend deeply into himself” (208), or the trials and tribulations typical of a person’s “birth” into a career path.

In short, Eliade argues that all people, even the non-religious, are still the inheritors of religious man’s vast psychic and cultural history. Their subconscious lives always bear a mythic or “religious aura” (210). This is because religion and myths have a transcendental logic and origin, transcending the realm of individual existence, and are therefore appealed to in moments of existential crisis.