The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion

As Eliade writes, “For religious man, nature is never only ‘natural’; it is always fraught with religious value” since it is a manifestation of the essential structures of the world as imbued by the gods (116). This chapter is about exploring the sacred relationship humans have with nature, and how naturally occurring hierophanies serve as representations of the fundamental structure of reality for religious man.

The phenomena present in nature reveal to religious man that reality is imbued with an essential order and logic—it is “not a chaos but a cosmos” (116). As such, all objects manifest an underlying sacred essence which transcends their superficial existence as stone, tree, river etc.: “the gods manifested the different modalities of the sacred in the very structure of the word” (119).

Religious relationships with the celestial vault, or sky, exemplify this logic. Because of the natural appearance of the sky—infinite and transcendent in its vastness above the earth—“‘most high’ spontaneously becomes an attribute of divinity” (118), and a great majority of cultures locate their divinities as living within this transcendent zone of the heavens. “The cosmos…is so constructed that a religious sense of the divine transcendence is aroused by the very existence of the sky” as a natural phenomenon (119).

Just as the appearance of the sky leads to specific cross-cultural beliefs about the domain of the gods, these beliefs coupled with meteorological phenomena lead to cross-culturally apparent narratives. Since the divine dwells in the sky, meteorological phenomena such as thunder, lightning, and storms are further manifestations of divine presence. Many cultures hold the sky god as the creator of the Earth. In several narratives, after the act of the creation of the earth the highest god retreated to a position above all things in the sky, becoming a “deus otiose” (122), or remote god. In some cultures they “leav[e] a son or demiurge on earth to finish the act of Creation” (122), or in others partner with an Earth mother and are therefore a “fecundator” (inseminator) of the Earth through rain (122).

The development of mythologies around the remoteness of the supreme creator, making space for the advent of other deities, represents a historical development and leads to “man’s increasing interest in his own religious, cultural and economic discoveries” (125). For instance, as cultures advance towards agriculture, earth goddesses representing fecundity become more prominent. From here “other religious forces come into play— sexuality, fertility, the mythology of woman and of the earth, and so on” (126). Divine powers become more “concrete” and “accessible” (126), transforming the landscape of religious life. As such, mythologies represent the values of cultures, and ecological and cultural conditions combine to create belief.

Having completed a discussion of the sky, Eliade discusses the religious significance of water. Waters symbolize “the sum of all the possibilities of existence” (130) with emergence from water representing birth and origin, and immersion in water representing death and “regression to the preformal” (130). Cosmogonies often begin with emergence from water, representing the formlessness before being.

These symbolic values of water are drawn from the form and nature of water itself, with these symbolic values cross-culturally representing “what can be completely revealed only through aquatic symbolism” (131). Although these symbols preceded it, the early Christian Church “did not fail to exploit certain pre-Christian and universal values of aquatic symbolism, although enriching them with new meanings connected with Christ” (132), particularly through baptism.

The rite of baptism has deep symbolic ties throughout Christianity. These include representation of battle with the sea monster Leviathan, recapitulation of the Flood in Genesis which destroyed nearly all life on Earth, and a return to the state of Adam before the Fall. These are all in coherence with more archaic symbolisms of water as the ultimate cleanser and creative repository. Judaism and Christianity inherited these universal symbolisms, and early Church fathers in some cases extended these natural symbolisms to incorporate new Christian doctrines. Such an extension was necessary, since the essential meaning of symbols is always constant: “history cannot basically modify the structure of an archaic symbolism. History constantly adds new meanings, but they do not destroy the structure of the symbol” (137).

Eliade then discusses the symbolism of earth. Across archaic religions, the earth is seen as a primordial mother goddess, or “terra mater” (138): “That human beings are born of the earth is a universally disseminated belief” (140). This informs both human belief in the creative power of the earth and belief in human emergence from particular places, or “autocthony”—nativity to the earth—which is important in sacred land claims (140). The belief in Earth as the cosmic mother also informs cross-cultural customs of human mothers giving birth lying on the ground: “microcosmic versions of a paradigmatic act performed by the Earth” (142). Similarly, customs of lying the infant and the dying man on the earth enforce connections between the individual and their landscape. Rituals of partially burying people in the earth to confer its regenerative power in case of sickness, or in initiation rites, also exist.

In some religions, mother Earth conceives life alone. In others, she couples with a male sky god, as mentioned above. In these religions, such as Ancient Greece’s myth of Zeus’ union with Hera, the human marriage ritual is set paradigmatically after the myth narrative. “Ritual orgies for the benefit of crops” (146) likewise play upon the cosmic connection between sexuality and generation.

Beliefs focused on the Earth exemplify religious attention to natural birth/death cycles. Everywhere, the cosmos is clearly bound up in a cycle of death and regeneration—days, seasons, and human generations all play this out. Therefore, it is natural for religious man to believe in life after death: “the mystery of the inexhaustible appearance of life is bound up with the rhythmical renewal of the cosmos” (148). In several religions, this cosmic cycle is represented by the symbol of the sacred tree, an analogy for all existence in its cycles of birth and death. In several cultures’ myths, fruits of this tree represent immortality.

Some final examples of natural hierophanies are the moon and sun. Beliefs associated with the moon connect to its appearance as a light in darkness and its phases. These myths use it to symbolize the concepts of cosmic darkness, prenatal existence, or the “phases of life” and metaphysical modes of existence. The sun, on the other hand, “although always in motion, remains unchangeable” (157). As such it usually represents autonomy, power, sovereignty and intelligence. In many mythologies the prototypical hero is synthesized with the sun as an eliminator of darkness. These two brief examples showcase the fundamental argument of this chapter, that the specific form of transcendent natural phenomena structure cross-culturally apparent sacred beliefs via their qualities.