sacred

laziness

profane

is a privileged moment of communal unity.

privileged moment[s] of communal unity as Bataille says.

is all about unconditionals. The profane is all about conditionals.

The sacred is all about unconditionals... the profane is all about conditionals. (Taleb)

is that with which an encounter can transform the individual who comes to feel in touch with something otherworldly in character.

For him, encounters with the sacred can transform the individual because they believe that, as Pals writes, they 'feel in touch with something otherworldly in character... they feel they have brushed against a reality unlike all other they know, a dimension of existence that is alarmingly powerful, strangely different, surpassingly real and enduring' (165).

 always manifests itself in a (profane) object, forming a reality of a wholly different order from 'natural' realities'.

For Eliade, this would seem to represent a shift in experiential modes. According to Eliade, 'the sacred always manifests itself as a reality of a wholly different order from 'natural' realities'. An object that manifests the sacred 'becomes something else' it 'is transmuted into a supernatural reality'. On the other hand, from the perspective of the outside observer (as well as from the perspective of the believer, according to Eliade), the believer is still worshipping an 'object' 'the sacred is always manifested through some thing.' For Eliade this represents an essentially unresolvable paradox: the absolute somehow becoming 'limited and relative'. This paradox Eliade refers to as the 'dialectic of the sacred' and he considers this dialectic to apply to every hierophany: 'this paradoxical coming-together of sacred and profane, being and non-being, absolute and relative, the eternal and the becoming, is what every hierophany . . . . reveals'. The Christian understadning of the 'paradox of the incranation' Eliade sees as an explicit formulation of this dialecic.

is that sphere in which nothing is mundane, just as nothing is sacred in the mundane.

In the mundane, nothing is sacred. In sacredness, nothing is mundane. Dogen

is always set apart as superior, powerful, forbidden to normal contact, and deserving of great respect. Profane things are the opposite... they belong to the ordinary, uneventful, and practical routine of everyday life.

For Durkheim the sacred and profane are separate, Pals writes that Durkheim believed '[s]acred things are always set apart as superior, powerful, forbidden to normal contact, and deserving of great respect. Profane things are the opposite... they belong to the ordinary, uneventful, and practical routine of everyday life' (99). This dichotomy is common in Western religious traditions but is less pronounced in many Native American and traditional African faiths.

is a thing which to encounter is to feel like one has brushed against a reality unlike all others, a dimension of existence that is alarmingly powerful, strangely different, surpassingly real and enduring.

, when it manifests itself, ontologically founds the profane world. It creates an infinite expanse in which no point of reference is possible and hence no orientation can be established. It is there that it reveals an absolute fixed point, a profane center.

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. Mircea Eliade

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