The Nature of the Sacred

Stonehenge, photo by Stefan Kühn, 28 Aug. 2004, Wikipedia Religious historian Mircea Eliade has argued that religious peoples of the past identified two kinds of space, which Eliade defines as sacred space and profane space. Sacred space is ordered, the cosmos, connected to the transcendent. The creation of a sacred space is a cosmogony, an ordered world. Profane space is ordinary, without order, chaos, the natural physical world (Eliade, Sacred and Profane 20). Often visitors to the great cathedrals in Europe feel a sense of awe as they entered. The cathedrals, with their vast ceilings, were meant to impress on visitors the majesty of God and the smallness of humanity.

Some common sacred places include waters, landforms, trees, gardens, forests, and blessed isles or magic realms (Leonard and McClure 328). The pool of Bethesday, mentioned in the New Testament (John 5.2-9); Lourdes in France; Mount Ararat, where Noah's Ark landed; Mount Olympus; Yggdrasil in the Norse myths; the Garden of Eden; and Avalon in the Arthurian legends are all examples of sacred places.

Not all places are sacred for religious reasons. Washington, D.C. is filled with sacred spaces: The White House, the Capital Building, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the Vietnam Wall Memorial. After the battle of Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln consecrated (made sacred) that place with this simple, but profound speech:

Battle of Gettyburg. Lithograph by L. Prang & Co., 1887.
Library of Congress: LC-USZC4-1178
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate--we cannot consecrate--we cannot hallow--this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Hierophany

A hierophany is the "act of manifestation of the sacred." In a hierophany, "something sacred shows itself to us" [italics in the original] (Eliade, Sacred and the Profane 11). A sacred object, then, transcends its ordinary physical self to become an expression of the sacred, something beyond the limits of time and space, beyond the natural to the supernatural (Eliade, Sacred and the Profane 12). When Moses is tending his father-in-law's sheep and sees a bush burning, yet not consumed, he approaches it and is warned "the place whereon thou standest is holy ground" (KJV, Exodus 3.1-5). The bush becomes a hierophany. In the New Testament, Paul equated the Christian's body with the temple of the Holy Spirit, suggesting that, for Christians, every moment of life is spent in sacred space and time; the Christian is a hierophany (I Corinthians 6.15-20).

Theophany

A theophany is "a visible manifestation to humankind of God or a god" ("Theophany"). In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna reveals himself to Prince Arjuna in all of his awesome wonder, "a multiform, wondrous vision, with countless mouths and eyes and celestial ornaments, brandishing many divine weapons. . . . wearing divine garlands and garments, anointed with divine perfume" and filled with light like "a thousand suns" (Leonard and McClure 217-8). On Mount Sinai, just before receiving the Ten Commandments, Moses asks to see the glory of God. God tells Moses to hide in a cleft in a rock, but he can only see God from behind because no one could look on God's face and live (Exodus 33.18-23). Zeus often appeared to humans, particularly women, in other forms, coming as a shower of gold to Danaë in her chamber and as a bull to Europa. He, also, was too awful in his appearance for human eyes. Zeus swore an oath to Semele, mother of Dionysus, telling her she could have whatever she asked. Influenced by jealous Hera, she asked to see Zeus in all his glory, and she died in his unveiled presence.

Qualities of Sacred Space

Omphalos at Delphi. Photo by De'Lara Stephens, Mar. 2006
The omphalos represented the navel of the world, its exact center. Because a sacred space reflects the cosmological order, it is always viewed as the center of the universe and represents an imago mundi, or image of the world (Eliade, Sacred and the Profane 42). A religious temple, as an imago mundi, "reproduces the universe in its essence" (Eliade, Myth of the Eternal Return 17). The primary reason medieval scholars were so resistant to the heliocentric universe was due to their religious view of the world. Since God had created the earth for humanity, and since humanity was at the center of God's plan for the universe, it was logical that the earth must, therefore, be at the center of the universe.

Oftentimes, the center of a sacred space becomes an axis mundi, the "central pivot of the earth or of the entire cosmos" ("Axis Mundi"). For Christians, the cross of Christ is such a center; for the Norse, the world-tree Yggdrasil; for the Japanese, Mount Fugi. The center is the place of "absolute reality" (Eliade, Myth of the Eternal Return 17), connecting the world of time and space to the transcendent world of eternity and infinity (Eliade, Images and Symbols 40).

In addition to being a center of the universe, a sacred space returns the devotee to the "beginning," to the time of creation, into sacred time, a repetition of the original creative act (Eliade, Myth of the Eternal Return 20-1). Even our culture celebrates the resurrection of time. Every year ends with Father Time and introduces the New Year baby, so that each year is a cycle of birth, death, and re-birth.

The boundary between the sacred and the profane marks a threshold. In hero myths, the hero crossing this boundary enters into the sacred space. Sacred spaces are, also, often oriented to the four directions, the pole star Polaris (toward which the earth's axis points), or to other celestial objects.

Works Cited

"Axis Mundi." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions. Ed. John Bowker. Oxford UP, 2000. Oxford Reference Online Premium. Web. 15 July 2006.

Eliade, Mircea. Images and Symbols: Studies in Religious Symbolism Trans. Philip Mairet. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991.Print.

---. Patterns in Comparative Religion. Trans. Rosemary Sheed. New York: New American, 1974. Print.

---. The Myth of theEternal Return or, Cosmos and History. Trans. Willard R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1971. Print.

---. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. Trans. Willard R. Trask. San Diego: Harvest, 1987. Print.

Leonard, Scott and Michael McClure. Myth & Knowing: An Introduction to World Mythology. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2004. Print.

"Theophany." The Concise Oxford English Dictionary. Ed. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson. Oxford UP, 2004. Oxford Reference Online Premium. Web. 15 July 2006.

HUM 2130 World Mythology