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Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) was a Romanian historian of religion, novelist, and philosopher of religion. His book The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion is central in his academic oeuvre, and was first published in English in 1961, translated from its original French. Other work by this author includes The Myth of the Eternal Return.
The Sacred and the Profane is an investigation into the universal structures of religious experience that are shared across all cultures. Eliade proposes that the central aspect uniting all religions is the experience of the sacred, a divine creative force. Experiences of the sacred emerge from hierophanies—manifestations of the sacred within the sphere of human life such as through ritual, the experience of a vision, or contact with a sacred object such as a stone or tree.
For ‘religious man’—whom Eliade calls ‘homo religiosus’— all aspects of life are opportunities for hierophany. As such, human life is not only a simple material existence but one in which all material things contain a transcendent essence connecting them to the divine. For Unlock all 51 pages of this Study Guide Plus, gain access to 8,900+ more expert-written Study Guides. Including features:
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