Deep-ish Dive Into Eliade's Concept of "Sacred Space"

    Eliade asserts that the religious are primarily driven by three things: to recreate the accomplishments of god, to ensure a point of origin to communicate with god, and "to live in a real and effective world" safe from chaos (Eliade 1957 p.28). Much of sacred space is characterized by how religious people imitate god's establishment of the world. For the religious, any act of homebuilding or societal expansion is an act of consecration—you found the cosmos just as god did. Societal expansion may entail the violent removal of others from a space. In the Hebrew Bible, Joshua "utterly destroyed all that breathed" in the kingdoms surrounding Israel to protect the Israelites under god's command (Joshua 10:1-43). This parallels how "the rebels against the work of the gods" were killed by the gods during the founding of the cosmos; again, religious people imitate the gods (Eliade p.48). Similarly, European imperialists and settlers treated Native Americans like a threat to Christianity. Colonists from Spain often cite god as a motive for their imperial expansion. Canaanites and Indigenous American groups are minions of chaos from the perspective of religious, imperial forces, and through destroying them, they recreate the divine work of the gods.

    The religious need an origin point where communication with the heavens is possible. Eliade calls this an "image of a universal pillar," an axis mundi, that is placed at the center of the world across many different religious cultures. It is crucial for the religious to have an axis mundi because it connects them to the gods in heaven—it gives them the possibility of transcendence. And it's important to be able to communicate with god; Jacob was only able to found Bethel because God contacted him through an axis mundi and authorized the land as a sacred space (Genesis 28:10-19). The religious want to be as close to god as possible so that he can keep them safe and guide their decisions. A common axis mundi symbol is a mountain. It's a piece of the earth that pierces the heavens and fosters communication with the divine. I've been trying to identify axis mundi in my own profane life. There aren't any mountains in San Antonio, but the Trinity Tower could be seen as a sacred pillar that connects the earth with the sky, and maybe the electric currents from the outlets in my dorm room travel towards heaven!

    I've been struggling to interpret Eliade's assertion that the religious want to live in sacred space because they want to live "in objective reality" (Eliade p.28). He could mean religious myths are objective truth, and since the religious subscribe to these truths, they are living in objective reality. He might also mean that religion institutes a sense of order in an otherwise bewildering world. If you're profane, you're "paralyzed by the never-ceasing relativity" of the world, but if you're religious, your only fear is what's outside god's protection (Eliade p.28). As a profane man, I agree that "human beings cannot live in chaos," and most of what I do in my everyday life is ensure my own safety (Eliade p. 34). 

Image: Deborah King