Comparing Mircea Eliade's The Sacred And The Profane

When reading The Sacred and the Profane by Mircea Eliade the reader is forced to question many of their ideas about religion and what exactly is sacred and profane according to their own personal and religious experiences. Sacred meaning “devoted or dedicated to a deity or to some religious purpose; consecrated” (“Sacred”). Also profane which means, “characterized by irreverence or contempt for God or sacred principles or things; irreligious” (“Profane”). When looking at what qualifies as a sacred or profane experience two sections of the reading stick out, the first being entitled “Annual Repetition of the Creation” and the second titled “Woman, Earth, and Fecundity” while the reader can agree or disagree with either or both of these sections, …show more content…
The beginning of the section talks about the sacred power of women as bearers of life it was also interesting to read about the beginnings of the idea of Mother Earth because of women and their jobs cultivating food and how that translated to religion (Eliade 145). I begin to disagree with Eliade when he discusses the idea of marriage as a scared experience. Eliade uses examples like how in religions the idea of creation comes from the “Sky-God and Mother Earth which brings together the heavens and the earth and why human marriage is regarded as an imitation of the cosmos hierogamy” (Eliade 145). With my personal experience as a gay male is where I begin to disagree with the point that Eliade is making. Eliade is making the point that the marriage between a man and a woman is the only way that a marriage could be sacred. I personally believe that my marriage between myself and my partner could also be a sacred experience. I agree with Eliade that the union of two people is a sacred experience and coming together could be equivalent to a cosmic creation; however, I believe this experience could be had by all couples and is not just exclusively for a man and