Sacred and the Profane

The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion by Mircea Eliade, translated by Willard R Trask, 232 pages

In The Sacred and the Profane, Eliade attempts an analysis of the religious worldview as it is expressed through ritual and symbolism across cultures.  In Eliade's analysis, the religious instinct is the product of man's thirst to know and experience the really real.  This results in attempts to connect with primal reality through rituals that recapitulate creation myths, as well as attempts to situate the individual in the cosmos by the construction of symbolic microcosms in the forms of cities, temples, homes, and bodies.  For religious believers, then, the world is itself invested with innate meaning and significance.  Even for secularized moderns who consciously reject any form of supernaturalism, intimations of transcendence are often felt through the meaning of rituals, especially those of initiation, and the mystery of place, especially as experienced in the beauty of nature.