Sacred vs. Profane Reading


I focused on a reading entitled, “The Power of Ritual: The Creation of Sacred Time and Space in a Profane World,” by Brett McKay and Kate McKay. In this reading, it focused primarily on the sacred world and profane world and what the difference is. I chose this topic because we talked a lot about the sacred and profane throughout the semester and I wanted to learn more about what the differences were. As well as this, I used this concept a lot in my final paper and so I wanted to look more into the topic for that reason as well. The authors reference Eliade, which was the reading that we did in class, about how the sacred and profane are the “two modes of being in the world.” The sacred is more of a representation of more of a fascinating different order of our lives compared to the profane which is more natural and a part of our everyday lives. I like to think of it in terms of religion where sacred is more religious and focuses on the holy whereas the profane is not religious. Interestingly enough the article talks about how a religious human would believe that the profane is unreal and can lead to a state of nonbeing whereas a nonreligious person believes that mystery or other more out of the box orders are not real. I find this to be an interesting differentiation between the two because I think that one can transition from the profane world to the sacred world and back to the profane world. As well as this I believe that you need both pieces to learn all there is to learn about the world and to grow as an individual. I see this in a lot of films especially the ones we looked at in class. You can tell when a person is in the profane world vs. the sacred world because of the environment and the way that the visuals present it. The main reason for writing this article that I read was that the authors wanted to explain how to enter stronger rituals that benefit you. I think that having a good background of these two concepts can really benefit one with any spiritual activity that they want to pursue in the future.

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