The Sacred and the Profane (pages 125-132)

"The Religious Experience of Life"

In this section, Eliade demonstrates that, via religious people's growing interest in the day-to-day hierophanies of life, "religious experience becomes more concrete, that is, more intimately connected with life" (126). The religious person begins to focus on the more accessible sacred realities of mundane existence. However, in so giving greater focus to daily life, the religious person "draws away from the celestial and transcendent god" (126).  "In discovering the sacredness of life, man let[s] himself be increasingly carried away by his own discovery; he [gives] himself up to vital hierophanies and [turns] from the sacrality that [transcends] his immediate and daily needs" (128). It is only in times of great cosmic distress that religious peoples turn to their creator gods for help. These are times when the gods and goddesses of daily life are made worthless by their role as "specialists," as those who can only "reproduce" and "augment" life, who are incapable of "saving" the cosmos in times of catastrophe when the "subtler, nobler, more spiritual powers of the Creator Gods" are required.

"Perenniality of Celestial Symbols"

Eliade then discuses the relationship between the sky and its impact on religious life. "In the religious life the sky remains ever present by virtue of its symbolism" (128). It both represents and is "the paradigmatic image of transcendence," and it "in turn infuses and supports a number of rites,...myths,...and legends" (128 & 129). Since for the religious person the cosmos is itself a record and reflection of the sacred reality of the "celestial supreme being," the sky's existence ("verticality" itself) is self-evidently necessitated in that its "dimension alone is enough to evoke transcendence" (129). The sky keeps the memory of the transcendent creator gods alive.



"Structure of Aquatic Symbolism"

According to Eliade, "the symbolism of the waters implies both death and rebirth" (130). Baptism is often a symbolic representation of water's power--its ability to destroy and recreate life. Immersion into water is equivalent to going back to pre-existence, to a time that precedes birth. Emersion from water is equivalent to regeneration, to becoming literally a "new man" (131). "The waters symbolize the universal sum of virtualities;...they precede every form and support every creation" (130). Water is simultaneously the degenerator and regenerator of life. It is formless and thus "the reservoir of all the possibilities of existence" (130).