Super Short Summary

The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion by Mircea Eliade explores the universal structures of religious experience across cultures, proposing that the core aspect of all religions is the experience of the sacred through hierophanies—manifestations of the divine in daily life. Eliade examines how religious individuals interact with the sacred in space, time, nature, and the life/death cycle, demonstrating how these experiences shape a meaningful existence in contrast to a purely materialistic view.