Philosophy 33 March 31, 2001

         From the beginning of time man has exhibited a drive to find the "Answer" to the Ultimate Question of Live the Universe and Everything¹ . For many groups the impetus of this drive is momentum toward what man is “destined for”, or “has the potential to become”. In many many other groups however, this drives manifests in the “return to” or “reachievement of” what we were. As if man once were perfect, or at least more perfect than now, and the drive is to return to the “Ideal”. This could be a "return to the womb" or a "return to the garden". Ancient peoples as well as modern have integrated this goal of “recapturing the Ideal” in their minds by integrating it into their day to day lives. One layer of this integration is the use of the designation of the “sacred” and the “profane” pertaining to both objects and spaces. The modern definition of “profane” has come to be “to treat something with abuse of contempt or irreverence”² . For the sake of my arguments here, I will use the term “secular” in it’s place. Secular means “of or relating to the worldly or temporal; not overtly religious” or in effect “non-sacred”. A few interesting background questions that I am often drawn to ask myself in considering these issues are "Is this past perfection pure myth, an unattainable ideal?" and “Was man ever “perfected” in the first place?” The first question reminds me of the person who is slave to their memories of their “first”...whether it be the first sexual experience, or the first feeling of intoxication with wine, that first ecstatic religious experience, or that first explosion of emotional love - they spend the rest of their lives chasing the “first” feeling –sadly they are never able to attain it. The second question is one that has been nagging at the back of my own mind the more I study philosophy. Alas these questions are not within the scope of this paper.

         Please note that my perspective in the examples given here are drawn from my own Judeo/Christian/eclectic experience. However I believe that all my points and examples will stand the test of evaluation within the parameters of the expectations of this paper and this class.
                 
          Mircea Eliade studies the differences between the sacred and the secular in exquisite detail in his book “The Sacred & The Profane – The Nature of Religion” In his opinion the Sacred and Secular are diametrically opposed states. The Sacred is the state that is wholly not secular. The Sacred is an existential, experiential state that isn’t so much irrational as it is beyond rational. The Sacred cannot be apprehended through typical sense perception, it is revealed through some sort of special circumstance. This special circumstance allows the revelation of profound significance, a new quality heretofore unseen. This action of the revelation of the sacred is termed “Hierophany”. Literally: “Something sacred shows itself to us”³ This revelation can be an application to the environment (nature, the sea), an object [elemental hierophany] (a tree or building), or even a person (Jesus Christ at Transfiguration or God in the Burning Bush). The hierophany transmigrates the sacred into our physical world.
                  “we are confronted by the same mysterious act – the manifestation of something of a wholly different order,
                   a reality that does not belong in our world.”⁴
This transmigration is empirical in nature, and we are forced to regard something profoundly differently because it no longer fits with our knowledge of reality. If the receiver of the hierophany is a person, then the person will experience a change in perspective, or perhaps even a life changing event. The experience is qualitative in nature. Feelings of awe, external majesty, or internal insignificance manifest.A new person with a new awareness is born. If the hierophany is elemental, then a transubstantiation occurs and the object becomes a sacred duality – a double identity is created. The object remains its true self (secular), but has an attribute of the sacred integrated into it – it becomes dualistic in nature, simultaneously sacred and secular - paradox. If it is a locale that experiences hierophany, then it rises to the position of sacred space. It is the link between earth and heaven, between the sacred and the secular and is a portal through which man may traverse these two modes.. The most familiar response of man both modern and ancient to the acknowledgement of a sacred space is to build a church on it. A Church/Temple is a profound example of the sacrality of space. The passing through the portal of the church signifies entry into the realm of the sacred. Reality is altered, we are in the presence of God, or the Eternal, our lives begin and extend from here.

         The Secular is everything else.

         To be honest, in Eliade’s view, the secular is a bit more than everything else, it’s also chaos. He feels that what is revealed to be sacred is actually reality, and that the secular is meaningless. To illustrate this we must look at bit more closely at his definition of hierophany. In the world of the secular, life is continuous, unwrinkled, unchanging, homogeneous with no qualitative differences in its parts. When the hierophany occurs, the point of qualitative difference is established and the sacred becomes the reference point for everything else. It is the point of the beginning of the world.
         
          The presence or location of a hierophany is often indicated by a “Sign”. Signs are more typically related to elemental hierophanies. Signs are omens or wonders that occur in any number of ways, but probably the most evident today is the spontaneous experience, commonly called “Miracle”. For example, the spontaneous healing of illness at a particular locale would then by virtue of the event alone, designate the locale to be a sacred place. People respond to it even today. If you don’t believe it, ask the tourist board of Portugal how many people pilgrimage to Fatima hoping for a miracle from ‘The Virgin”. Pilgrims come in throngs to the tiny, muddy puddle of water in Lourdes in France to bathe in hopes for a cure for their ailments. These cures still occur just often enough to keep the hierophany in place and the sacred space confirmed. Other ways that hierophanies operate to reveal objects or even people to be sacred are: through the assignment of a historical event to an object, through signs of faith by assignment or by means of an invocation from an authority figure.. Everyone knows what the cross represents. Even non-religious people know. But again, the duality of nature is present. Any two pieces of wood tied together “becomes” a representation of the cross of Jesus Christ even if it’s just two pop-sicle sticks. A piece of palm tree on the frond is a tree, but when held in your hand on palm Sunday, becomes the harbinger of the horrible events to follow during Passion tide for a Christian. That little incense burner that you bought at the garage sale for $0.50, becomes sacred when you do the research and find that it is the image of a Bodhisattva. The acquisition of knowledge gives sign to hierophany – sacred nature is revealed. That piece of matzo is just a cracker until it is inside the Afie Komen during the Passover Seder. Priests/Rabbi’s/Monks/ Teachers/Moms/Dads all individuals who represent the Higher Forces for us earthlings. They are the guides by which the sacred is nurtured and sometimes created, and by which our focus on the journey back to “the garden” or to the “ideal” is facilitated and maintained. Priests bless objects, sometimes they sprinkle Holy Water (blessed water) on them, sometimes they invoke the sign of the cross over them. At this point, the items change identity. They transmigrate to the realm of the sacred. Catholic folklore used to hold that if you wore a medal called a “Scapular” and if it was blessed, you would attain heaven on the Thursday after you died. [editorial note: the Church did away with this notion about 20 years ago, what about the people who made it to heaven on Thursday? Were they booted out?] A Rabbi blesses a couple who have lived together for 15 years, and as of the day of the blessing, a new sacred entity is created. That entity is: US. There is still he and she, but the sign is US, and the symbol of the sign is a gold ring. All these things change their identity based on signs and symbols. They experience hierophanies, and are revealed to be sacred.

          An obvious question arises: “If a secular object can become sacred, then can a sacred object become secular?” The first example that I used above is a permanent elemental hierophany. By this I mean that the state of sacredness is permanent and cannot be changed. Stone Henge and the Ring Monument at Avebury are also examples of permanent elemental hierophany. However there is also a level of elemental hierophany that is temporary. Let us revisit my examples of the assignment of historical events to objects in order to render them sacred as a launching point for discussion of the question. Remembering that objects, once made sacred through hierophany and sign attain a dualistic nature - a simultaneously sacred and secular nature. Once again we examine the cross, any two pieces of wood tied together “becomes” a representation of the cross of Jesus Christ. Even if it’s two pop-sicle sticks. When you untie the sticks, you once again have two pop-sicle sticks. Secular to sacred to secular. A piece of palm tree on the frond is a leaf, but when held in your hand on palm Sunday, becomes the harbinger of the horrible events to follow during Easter Season for a Christian. After the prayers are over on Palm Sunday, everyone leaves the palm fronds on a table, and they are discarded. Secular to sacred to secular. That piece of matzo is just a cracker until it is inside the Afie Komen during the Passover Seder. The day after Passover, it is again a cracker that tastes particularly nice with some peanut butter and jelly. Secular to sacred to secular. There is no extended sacredness of these objects unless they are kept in their sacred environments.

          There are many examples of ways for the sacred to return to the secular. Two methods come to mind. Method one: church buildings need to be replaced periodically either due to industrial advancements for remodeling or as a result of natural disaster. During this time the Authority Figure, the Priest/Rabbi, “de-sanctifies” or desacralizes the building. In effect they return the sacred building to the secular world. What was once a quality ripple, a reference point of true reality in the homogeneity of the secular space disappears completely into the chaos of the secular. Only to return when the new church or temple building is consecrated anew. Method two is integrated with Church Season, and it is not a permanent change to the secular, but it truly is a return to the pure homogeneity of the secular. I’m intimately acquainted with this method because I grew up with it as a practicing Roman Catholic during the first 30 years of my life. There is a set of rites and rituals that go on in the Church during this time of year, culminating in solemn remembrance of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. [editorial note: the Church year begins here, with the sacrifice completed, not at the birth of Jesus] Starting on Palm Sunday, devotees attend Mass and hold palm fronds in their hands, to remember the joyful entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem. The looming in the back of the devotees minds and shadowing the festivities is the knowledge that in less than a week, Jesus will be dead. On the following Friday, Good Friday (traditionally the day designated as the anniversary of Jesus death) there are elaborate rituals (always at night). During these rituals, all lights are extinguished, even the single candle that is always burning in any Catholic church. The statues are covered, the altar is stripped of all coverings, and the Tabernacle (a small “temple” as it were atop the altar where the blessed bread and wine for mass are kept) is stripped and left open and empty. This is strong symbolism that what was here is now gone. The church has been returned to the secular. For the three days, corresponding to the days Jesus is said to have spent in the tomb, all Catholic churches all over the world are returned to the secular. There is nothing sacred in them. They are empty buildings The services performed on Easter Sunday, (Resurrection Sunday), are simply and completely the re-sacralization of the building, and are tantamount to the reestablishment of the sacred point of reference for the world. The church calendar begins anew. And so we see a recreation of “the beginning” of the world. This is the second and last reference to the mythology of “the beginning” that I will make in this paper. The exploration of that point would be an essay all by itself.

          According to Eliade, Religious Man is drawn to the sacred. Men who experience the sacred are inexorably drawn back to the realm of the sacred and want to stay there as long as they possibly can because if man is in the realm of the sacred, then man IS sacred. And to be sacred is to exist. Sacredness and Being are inseparable. A common element of the Church/Temple sort of sacred space is the elevation of the physical attitude. The body is drawn upwards to the heavens, the home of God. The cosmos. For thousands of years God(s) was up in the sky, death/was down below, and there was earth in the middle. The goal was to be reunited or rejuvenated or reborn in the image of God(s). To be one with the beginning of the Universe. Modern science has desacralized the cosmos. We know what is up there, we know how it works, and we know that at least to date, none of the astronauts has seen God while they were up there. There are two significant developments born from this desacralization of the cosmos. One is that God’s home has moved down to earth. In the trend of the Christian spirit of a Personal God. God no longer dwells in the heavens, but is here with us in direct relationship, side-by-side, on a daily basis. This would be a strongly anthropological answer because the mythology of man often generates to suit his circumstance. The second development is that with a desacralized cosmos, God’s home does not exist, so perhaps God itself does not exist. If God does not exist than the sacred cannot exist, and what ever was sacred returns to the homogeneous state of secular chaos mentioned on page 2-3 of this paper. Finally, if there is no sacred, then man as a sacred being cannot exist and we end up with a society of people who live wholly in the secular world. Without sacred space, or hierophany. The impact of this might be the increasing crime rates, the difficulty of implanting morality into our children or even the decline of ethics in business while monetary wealth has almost achieved the status of sacred. All of which we are experiencing in the 21st. century.

          The existence of the sacred is bound to the realm of subjective reality. We cannot empirically prove except by faith its existence or non-existence. That being said certainly not all experiences of the sacred are “more of gravy than of grave”⁵ or are merely psychological delusion. We can most definitely use objective examples to bolster our argument in favor of the existence of the sacred. One way is to compare what God makes [Nature designs] to what man makes. Now that it’s Springtime, look out any afternoon and see the volume of little flying machines (birds) in the trees. They are perfect for what they are meant for. They leave no residue of their existence to clutter the space they inhabited. They are a positive esthetic. Nimble, gentle, breathtakingly beautiful. When they land on a tree limb they do it with grace and finesse rarely if ever breaking it off when they lite. (ok, exception being the Albatross, even God has a sense of humor!) Men build airplanes. They are ugly. They spill toxants into the air, they do not disappear when they are used up. They are clumsy, mechanical space fillers. Compare the delicate feather to the sheet of aluminum. The answer is: these are sacred creatures, and to observe them is to enter the realm of the sacred. Another example: every now and then I come across someone who wants to see God because they just don’t “get it:. I suggest to them that they should first start by figuring out who they themselves are and how they fit in. I suggest that they go to the beach and watch the waves for awhile, especially at high tide. Then try to make the waves stop. I suggest that they go to the mountains so far that they can see the stars. Look at them, for a long time, then try to catch one. In the state of profound insignificance one can apprehend the sacred and experience it.

          A few years ago I had the opportunity to visit Sedona. There is a rock formation there in the shape of a bowl. In the bowl is the sacred space. You would have to be dead to not perceive it. My husband sensed it and he isn’t the least bit spiritually inclined. Others must have thought so too, because there is a little church erected there in this bowl. In the bowl the rock formations seem to look like faces..young ones, old ones, smiling ones, sad ones. It is a timeless space. The whole back wall of the church is made of glass, but the building faces the wrong direction! Yes the view out the windows is lovely especially at sunset, across a huge open valley, but the sacred is outside and behind you. That is where the magical sacred place is. That is the place where existence begins. That is the place where you are sacred. Not inside the church at all. These are three examples of the most sacred of spaces. Places where we are 100% aware of our own insignificance, and at the same time in 100% communication with the Profound. How can we experience the sacred in our daily lives?
Easy...
Stop. Look. Listen

Bibliography
The Sacred & The Profane – The Nature of Religion; Mircea Eliade (c. 1957)
Symbols of Transformation; C.G. Jung, Second Edition with corrections (c.1967)
The Masks of God, Occidental Mythology; Joseph Campbell
The Holy Bible, New International Version, Zondervan Bible Publishers (c. 1983)
The Holy Bible – New American Standard, Benziger Inc. (c.1970)
The New American Bible
Tanakh – the Holy Scriptures; Jewish Publications Society (c. 1985)
A History of God, Karen Armstrong, Alfred A Knopf Inc, (c.1993)
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams, LongMeadow Press, (c. 1979)
Miriam Webster Online Dictionary

¹ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, p113

² Miriam Webster Dictionary Online

³ Sacred & the Profane, p11

⁴ The Sacred & The Profane p11

⁵ The Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

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