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The Sacred and The Profane: The Nature of Religion

The Sacred and The Profane: The Nature of Religion
By Mircea Eliade

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Product Description

A noted historian of religion traces manifestations of the sacred from primitive to modern times, in terms of space, time, nature and the cosmos, and life itself. Index. Translated by Willard Trask.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #22411 in Books
  • Published on: 1987-10-23
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 256 pages

Customer Reviews

Sacred and the Profane 5
Years ago, I was assigned this book in one of my university classes. I number it in my most memorable and personally influential works that I have ever read. At the time, I had just begun to study archaeology and had very little understanding of the concept of ethnocentricism. My personal way of thinking was very black and white. The only real experience that I had with the dichotomies of the sacred versus the profane at that point was my own experiences.

The Sacred and the Profane gave me an entirely different perspective. I began seeing how others saw religion, spirituality, ritual, and symbolism in slightly different ways. How certain experiences could be interpreted in a variety of ways to become personal and cultural beliefs. I also noticed how these beliefs permeated into everyday life. So began my interests in spirituality, symbolic dichotomies, and the varied beliefs of others.

Whew.5
Yes, the sacred and the profane is discussed here. And guess what? They make sense. It's no secret, just sociology. Good sociology, too, none of your Discovery-Channel, sixth-tier, make every middle class viewer look down on those that are different from a Durkheim-style-deviance-arrogance and pray that they can forget just how screwed up they are kind of stuff. The good stuff. The meat, the bone and the marrow. Unapologetic, yet refined and in no way obscene. Great read. Well written, and, I can only assume, well-translated.

Be warned: The cover image on Amazon is not the one that comes on the book!!! The book you get from Amazon is a new-age style cover photograph of some half-photographed "natives" playing with a circle of candles. The nifty little negative portrait of the Triune God should have stayed. It was much more appropriate to the content.

A marvelous work5
I read this book with a great excitement. It tells people about essence of our religion. In my opinion, this book is quite good companion for religious comparison study.