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"Sacred" as a prehistoric adjective...
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gorseddphungus
185 posts

Sacred = Pragmatic
Aug 08, 2005, 22:37
I agree about the books mentioned before.
Especially Origins of the Sacred should be compulsory in schools.

Right now I can recall a hill or two still having the name Mount Sacred somewhere in Europe. Names are often curious but in many cases like the mentioned hill (and unluckily for us modern cynics), the Romans testify to the respect shown by the barbarians, their use as pilgrimage sites etc. The phenomenon is a global one. Any quick look at uncivilized societies also coincides in this aspect.

As opposed to modern (western) thinking, pre-literate cultures (nowadays and in the past), in anthropological terms, do not distinguish between 'sacred' and 'profane' as we do (or as the first christians did for that matter). Here we are all, as modern cynics in our post-nuclear age, trying to delimit whether ancient monuments or topographical features were sacred or not, comfortably sitting with free time to type literature on computers generated by electricity, when it is clear that any of us born again and exposed for a couple of months to a harsh life in the open and the fickle desires of nature would believe that the ground where we are next going to build our hut IS sacred (for fear of impending disaster) and that the hills that surround us and that reluctantly let the first rays of the sun every day ARE in fact sacred (for fear that our miserable crops will not grow).

Sacred = pragmatic.
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Re: "Sacred" as a prehistoric adjec... (tuesday)		 Replies:
Re: Sacred = Pragmatic (nigelswift)
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