Eliade and the sacred
It is not sufficient for us when talking theory of religions without discussing Eliade’s thoughts. Eliade has big merit in spreading comparative religion study in US that make today the study of comparative religion become popular. Number of professor who interest to study of religion from US’s universities increases every time, which than encourage them to develop study of religion by making research about religious and its consequence in the world. Without him, may be US have not scholar like Clifford Gertz today. The most important thing from Eliade is his thesis about the sacred and symbol of myth of archaic religion which become very important things to understand religions.
Many scholars believe that Eliade is genius peoples. He can speak many languages, like Hindi, German, France, and English fluently, which help him in studying of religion from different cultures. This point diverge Eliade from Durkheim, Mark, and Freud, because they did not support their theories with wealth data from different culture. I the other hand, Eliade believe that religion cannot be understood by reductionist approach. Religion is complex phenomena, it told about past and know, also not only physiological and social construction. However, basically religion have similar pattern that is relationship between the sacred and profane. On the contrary, the sacred and profane concepts here are not similar with Durkheim theory. Eliade saw the sacred/supernatural is not result, but he cause of all existence. In the other hand, Durkheim states that the sacred is product of human mind and purpose for social interests. For Eliade, the sacred appears for human life as manifestation of God. God manifest himself for all human cultures in history stages. That makes almost all culture have system of believe close together, if we find differentiation of the sacred that just because of the different experience of recipients. Root of religion is worship to the sacred, human is profane being. So, human needs to nearer his/her live to the sacred for perfect his life.
Eliade also saw that symbol is very important. Human can understand the sacred when it manifest in the world. Thus, symbol of the sacred is close to human life, such as stone, tree, animal, desert, forest and so forth. It becomes the sacred because of supernatural power or God appear in that thing. Eliade calls that phenomenon as “theophany”, from theo=God, phany=appear. He saw that in archaic eras, the sacred is vital for their societies. The sacred is center for religious and cultural activities. It center for worship, ritual, sacrifice, and human interaction. In many cultures, this sacred center is marked with a pole, pillar or some other vertical object that plunge into the ground and rises up to the sky to join the great regions of universe: heaven, earth, and the underworld. Signs and myth is the main structure of symbolism in religion. Until now, symbol is used by mayor religious, like Islam has ka’bah as symbol of the sacred, or Jews has wailing stone as symbol of the sacred, etc.
What Eliade done is not only add new perspective for us in understanding religion comprehensively, but also give an alternative of thinking. Reductionist theory from Freud, Marx, and Durkheim were not sufficient to apprehend religion as complex phenomena. Perhaps many cultures have same root, but we need facts of that. Actually, Eliade also fall to the reductionist approach, but he concludes his theory after making comparative study to different religions.[]
