Fabled by the Daughters of Memory -Part Nine

‘And, Cod, says he with mugger’s tears: Would you care to know the prise of a liard? Maggis, nick your nightynovel! Mass Tavener’s at the mike again! And that bag belly is the buck to goat it!’

- James Joyce, ‘Finnegans Wake’, 1939.

The tavern keeper’s dream continues, but the reference here is also to John Taverner, (c. 1490 – 1545), composer of many masses by adapting secular songs into?sacred?music. Westron Wynde?for instance is an early 16th-century?song?whose?tune?was used as the basis, cantus firmus, fixed melody, for one of his Masses:

Westron wynde when wyll thow blow

the smalle rayne downe can Rayne

Cryst yf my love were in my Armys

And I yn my bed Agayne.

Polyhymnia,? the one of many hymns, muse?of sacred poetry, and sacred?hymn, her name deriving from the Greek poly, many, and hymnos, praise. She is depicted as very serious, attentive, reflecting and contemplative, and frequently holding a finger to her mouth, attired in a long?cloak?and?veil, resting her elbow upon a pillar. According to Diodorus Siculus?(c. 90 BC – c. 30 BC): ‘Polyhymnia, because by her great praises she brings distinction to writers whose works have won for them immortal fame'. As one of the Muses, she was the daughter of Zeus?and of the?Titaness Mnemosyne, Memory.

Polyhymnia features in Dante's, (c, 1265 - 1321), ‘Paradise’. Beatrice Portinari, (1265 - 1290), is gazing up at the stars while Dante?gazes upon her bright face and joyful eyes, and then he too looks into the stars and observes one overwhelming?and dazzling glow that Beatrice informs him is Christ himself. And in virtue of the fact that Dante has been fortified by all he has thus far seen Beatrice encourages Dante now to look upon her smile, which he describes as a Paradise unto itself and which defies description. Beatrice then encourages Dante to look around to observe the other beauties that this sphere has to offer:

‘Ope thou thine eyes, and mark me: thou hast seen

Things, that empower thee to sustain my smile’.

?????I was as one, when a forgotten dream

Doth come across him, and he strives in vain

To shape it in his fantasy again,

When as that gracious boon was proffer'd me,

Which never may be cancel'd from the book,

Wherein the past is written.?Now were all

Those tongues to sound, that have on sweetest milk

Of Polyhymnia and her sisters fed

And fatten'd, not with all their help to boot,

Unto the thousandth parcel of the truth,

My song might shadow forth that saintly smile,

flow merely in her saintly looks it wrought.

And with such figuring of Paradise

The sacred strain must leap, like one, that meets

A sudden interruption to his road.

The Virgin Mary is here, and as Dante gazes upon this fiery star another light streaks through the sky and circles her, singing. This light identifies himself as the angel Gabriel, come to lead Mary in procession back to the highest sphere, where Christ is. The rest of the stars sing Mary’s name in praise, the fixed stars, the firmament, the most high region of the starry spheres, home to all of the Church Triumphant, or all souls in Heaven. And for a second time Dante gets a glimpse of Christ, now as the head of his Church. Dante’s fortified vision that is even able to endure Beatrice’s smile indicates that his knowledge of God has increased and he can now thereby take in much greater understanding of indirect revelation and soon will be able to gaze directly upon God.

Gustave Doré, 'The White Rose of Paradise', 1868

What does any of this really mean? How much of it resonates with the facts of human experience? From whence derive such notions as that of the holy or of the sacred? Etymology, as usual, is not of much assistance. Sacred, from Latin?sacer, set off, or restricted, a person or thing was determined to be sacred when it was exceptional or outstanding in some way, and yet the term sacred has been employed from an extensive assortment of perspectives and given a variety of descriptive and evaluative connotations by scholarly researchers that wish to interpret the material that is presented by anthropology and the history of religions. But among such differing interpretations some common characteristics have been discerned in the sacred, as it is understood by individuals and collectives that participate in it, that is to say, it is separated from the common or profane world, it gives expression to the ultimate and entire value and meaning of life, it is the eternal reality that is acknowledged to have been prior to being known and to be known in a way that differs markedly from that through which common or profane things are known.

Closely akin to?sacer?is?numen, a mysterious power, God, and the term numinous has come to be employed as a description of the sacred to indicate its power before which humanity responds with fear and trembling. In addition to the bifurcation between the sacred and the profane the former also incorporates a basic bifurcation between pure and impure, unpolluted and polluted. In ancient Rome the term?sacer?could mean that which would pollute someone or something that came into contact with it in addition to that which was prescribed for divine use. Similarly the Polynesian taboo referred to that which is not free for common use, for instance someone or something especially blessed in virtue of being full of power, or perhaps it may be an accursed thing like a cadaver, but whatever was taboo had special restrictions round about it given that it was replete with extraordinary energy that could destroy anyone unprotected with such special power themselves. The sacred in such a case is whatever is uncommon and may include both generating and polluting forces, but there is also the pure and impure bifurcation whereby the sacred is identified with the pure and the profane is identified with the impure. The pure state is that which generates health, vitality, good fortune, and longevity, while the impure state is that characterized by weakness, infirmity, bad fortune, and death. To procure purity means to enter into the sacred realm which can be achieved through?purification rituals or through the fasting, continence, and meditation of?the ascetic life, and upon a person becoming pure he or she steps into the domain of the divine and has left behind the profane, impure world that is subject to decay, a transition frequently marked by a ritual act of rebirth.

Which brings us to our first philosophical perspective wherein all of this is seen in a totally different and one might say levelheaded, truer to the facts, light. David Hume, (1711 - 1776), ?for whom the foundations of morality lay with sentiment or feeling and not with reason, (a view beset with problems but I will not go into them here) presented a kind of virtue ethics whereby the sort of things for which our moral sentiments have application, the things of which we either approve and disapprove, are not particular actions or events but rather in the long run we ultimately judge the?character?of a person, whether they are a virtuous or a vicious person, and the fundamental feature of virtues is '..the possession of mental qualities, 'useful' or 'agreeable' to the 'person himself' or to 'others'.' As a result, certain character traits commonly deemed virtues by the major religions of the time are deemed vices in accordance with Hume's theory, indeed, he refers to such so-called virtues, for instance self-denial and humility,?as monkish virtues:

'Celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude, and the whole train of monkish virtues; for what reason are they everywhere rejected by men of sense, but because they serve to no manner of purpose; neither advance a man's fortune in the world, nor render him a more valuable member of society; neither qualify him for the entertainment of company, nor increase his power of self-enjoyment? We observe, on the contrary, that they cross all these desirable ends; stupefy the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper. We justly, therefore, transfer them to the opposite column, and place them in the catalogue of vices...'

Hume quite clearly believed that there were some serious misapprehensions at the time as to what counts as virtue as opposed to vice. For instance, Hume endeavoured to defend, contrary to many religious teachings, that a certain amount of luxury is virtuous, indeed pride itself is a virtue, ?an 'indirect passion', one indicative of self-valuing and moral virtue?and contributing positively to our sense of who we are and especially so with regard to our moral identity.

Whereas:

'Every one?that is?proud in heart?is?an abomination to the LORD:?though?hand?join?in hand, he shall not be unpunished.

-'Proverbs', 16:5.

Rembrandt, 'Reading Monk', 1661

However it is understood, be it as being, or power, or a realm, the sacred is certainly taken by those of a religious frame of mind to be at the heart of existence and to have a transformative effect upon on their lives and destinies, the realm of which calls upon words such as transcendent, (beyond human experience, something of a rum notion), holy, ultimate being or reality, divine, mystery or mystical, purity or perfection. Among scholars the term has acquired a technical status in connection with the study and interpretation of religions. But again, from whence derives the concept? In the early 20th century the term predominated in the comparative study of religions, as for instance with Nathan?S?derblom, (1866 - 1931), conjecturing that the pivotal notion of religion was holiness and that the distinction between the sacred and the profane was foundational to every real religious life (though the word real, like truly, when applied as an adjective in certain contexts should arouse our suspicions, as, for instance, the truly religious). Rudolf Otto, (1869 - 1937), theologian and historian of religions, put forth a characterization of?the religious person’s experience of the numinous, a mysterious, awesome presence inspiring, well, awe, and dread, and enchantment, which he asserted could not be derived from anything other than an a priori sacred reality (but when describing our experiences is there not always the possibility of mis-describing them or misunderstanding their nature?) Others that have employed the notion of sacred as an important hermeneutic term at this time included émile Durkheim, (1858 - 1917), sociologist, and Max Scheler, (1874 - 1928), psychologist-philosopher. For Durkheim sacredness designated those things in society that were forbidden or set apart and since these sacred things were set apart by society then, he concluded, the sacred force was society itself. Scheler took a different view on the nature of the sacred, arguing that the sacred, or the infinite, was not bound by the experience of a finite object, for while he disagreed with Otto’s assertion that the holy is experienced through a radically different kind of awareness, he agreed with Otto that the awareness of the sacred is not merely the consequence of conditioning social and psychological forces.

Otto was critical of Friedrich Schleiermacher, (1768 - 1834), 19th-century Protestant theologian, for being too subjective in his definition of religion as 'the consciousness of being absolutely dependent on God', and which prompted this retort from Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel, (1871 - 1831):

'... if religion in human beings only grounded itself in a feeling, a feeling with no further determination than that of a feeling of absolute dependence, then the dog would be the best Christian, for the dog feels this feeling most strongly and lives principally within it. The dog would also have a feeling of salvation, whenever it gained satisfaction from a bone'.

Nonetheless Otto was indebted to Schleiermacher in working out the idea of the holy, while S?derblom made known his dependence upon the scholarship of the?history of religions, and Durkheim had access to two decades of scholarship concerning nonliterate peoples, some of which were reports of genuine fieldwork. Scheler united the interests and concerns of an empirical scientist with a philosophical effort that followed in the tradition of 19th-century attempts to relate human experiences to the concept of a reality or an essence that undergirds human thoughts and activities. Following in their wake many historians of religions have endorsed the notion of the sacred and of sacred events, places, people, and acts as being pivotal in religious life if not indeed the essential reality in religious life. For instance, Gerardus?van der Leeuw, (1890 – 1950), and W. Brede Kristensen,?(1867 – 1953), phenomenologists of religion, have considered the sacred or the holy as pivotal and have organized the material in their systematic works around the transcendent object and human subject of sacred or cultic activity, in addition to considering the forms and the symbols of the sacred. Friedrich Heiler, (1892 – 1967), and Gustav Mensching, (1901 – 1978), historians of religion, organized their material according to the nature of the sacred, its forms and structural sorts. Significant contributions to the analysis and elaboration of the sacred have been made by?Roger Caillois, (1913 - 1978), sociologist, and by?Mircea Eliade,?(1907 – 1986), historian of religions.

Positive and negative responses to the sacred in virtue of the fact that the sacred contains notions both of a positive, creative power and a danger that requires stringent prohibitions abound, and hence the common human reaction is both fear and fascination. Otto elaborated his understanding of the holy from this basic ambiguity, only the sacred can fulfill man’s deepest needs and hopes, (he says), thus, the reverence that humanity shows to the sacred is composed both of trust and terror. On the one hand, the sacred is the boundary of human striving both in the sense of that which meets human frailty and that which prohibits human activity, on the other hand, it is the boundless and unlimited possibility that draws humankind beyond the restricting structural temporal-spatial features that are constituents of human existence.

Salvador Dali, 'Her Child is of the Holy Spirit', 1964

In addition to an ambivalence in an individual’s response to the numinous aspect of the sacred the restrictions, the taboos, can be expressive of the creative power of the sacred, and Caillois has expatiated upon the social mechanism of nonliterate societies, in which the group is split into two complementary subgroups or moieties and the taboos and the necessary interrelationship of the moieties are then interpreted as expressions of sacredness. Whatever might be sacred and restricted for one group is free for the other group, and in a variety of ways, for instance, in supplying particular goods, food, indeed even wives, each group is dependent upon the other for rudimentary necessities, and here the sacred is perceived to be manifested in the order of the social/physical universe, in which these tribal members reside. To disturb or agitate such an order or natural harmony would be sacrilege indeed, and the perpetrator would be met with severe chastisement. In such an understanding of the sacred a person is, by nature, one of a pair, he or she is at no time ever entire as a solitary unit. The experience of reality is as one of prescribed relationships, some of which being vertical, hierarchical relationships, others being horizontal, corresponding relationships.

A further ambiguity of great significance is that the sacred manifests itself in concrete forms that are also profane, for while the transcendent mystery is perceived and acknowledge in a specific concrete symbol, act, idea, image, person, or community, the unconditioned reality is manifested in conditioned form. Eliade has sought to explicate this dialectic of the sacred, by virtue of which the sacred may be observed in virtually any kind of form in religious history, a stone, an animal, the sea. The ambiguity of the sacred assuming profane forms in addition implies that albeit every system of sacred thought and action differentiates between those things it regards as sacred or as profane, not every people discover the sacred manifested in the same form, and what is profane for some is sacred for others.

The sacred is manifested in myths, sounds, ritual activity, people, natural objects, and it is through retelling the?myth that?the divine action that was undergone in the beginning is repeated, for the repetition of the sacred action symbolically mirrors and replicates the structure and power that established the world originally. It is in this manner essential to know and preserve the eternal structure through which humanity has life for it is the very paradigm and fount of power in the present. The recognition of sacred power in the myth is connected to the notion that sound itself has creative power, especially special,?sacred sounds that oft are words, for instance the name of a god, divine myth, a prayer, or hymn, and oft most sacred sounds are those that do not have a common meaning, for instance, the Hindu?om,?the Buddhist?o? ma?i padme hū?,?or the Jewish and Christian hallelujah.?And closely related to verbal expressions of sacred power are activities done in worship, in?sacraments, sacrifices, and festivals, and part of the significance of religious ritual is that within the domain of the sacred all things have their place. In order for human existence to flourish let alone continue it must needs correspond as nearly as permissible to the divine pattern, that is to say, destiny, or will. And alternate religious traditions have alternate theological and philosophical formulations of the meaning of sacraments. In Roman Catholic Christianity a?sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace, while in Brahmanic Hinduism a?samskara?or sacrament is a sacred act that perfects a person the climactic conclusion of which is a sequence of?sa?skāras in a spiritual rebirth, a symbolic second birth. In both of these cases the sacred action forms the basis for and inaugurates the relation between the worlds of humanity and of the divine.

Other sacred activity includes initiation, sacrifice, and festival, initiation rites among nonliterate societies both exposing and establishing the world view of the participants. The initiate learns the eternal order of life as proclaimed in the myth. Life is viewed essentially as the work of supernatural beings, and the initiate in this ritual is taught this secret of life and how to gain access to divine benefits, he or she learns the taboos and is frequently given a sacred mark, for instance, circumcision, tattoo, or incisions, to express physically that he or she is part of the sacred or original community. In other religions, with Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism for instance, an initiate to a special holy and frequently monastic community within the larger religious community is designated by an alteration in nomenclature and attire that they put on, denoting his or her special relation to the sacred.

In?festivals and sacrifices two religious functions are frequently united, to deliver new potential and capability, that is to say, energy, and life, for the world, and secondly to purify this corrupted, desecrated and besmirched existence. Religious festivals operate through a return to?sacred time anterior to the ordered and organized existence that the majority of people diurnally experience, that is to say, profane time. Sacred calendars provide the opportunity for the profane time to be rejuvenated periodically in the festivals. These occasions symbolically repeat the primordial chaos before the beginning of the world; and just as the world was created in the beginning, so in the repetition of that time the present world is regenerated. The employment of masks and the suspension of normal taboos express the unstructured, unconditioned nature of the sacred, while dancing, running, singing, processions, all of these are methods and approaches for re-creation, for invigorating the primordial power of life. Ritual performance and enactment prompts strength, vigour and potentiality into two directions, it concentrates such into one location, time, and occasion, and it releases such into the everyday stream of events through its self-profusion, the primordial pulsation reverberates throughout existence, while the new energy allays and eliminates the old, drained and weakened, polluted energy and cleanses the cramped and confining, blocked and claggy conduits of life.

One of the most significant forms through which humanity has access to the sacred is in the?sacrifice, the central procedure of which is the use of a victim or substitute to serve as a mediator between the sacred and profane worlds. The sacrifice, sacrificium,?the making sacred is a consecration of an offering through which the profane world has access to the sacred without being annihilated by the sacred, rather the sacrificial object or victim is annihilated through serving as a unique, particularly exceptional conduit between these two realms. In sacrificial rites it is vital to duplicate the original or divine deed, and in virtue of creation being variously conceived in different religious traditions, different forms are preserved, be it the burning or crushing of the corn mater, the trampling of soma?stalks, the slaughter of the lamb that is without blemish, the blood spilling of a sacred person, such as the firstborn, and so on, all of which amounts to the same in effect, all that is required is ceremonious solemnity, a sequence of actions performed in a prescribed order, a belief that it means something, that something is being accomplished.

In addition sacredness is manifested in sacred officials, for instance priests and monarchs, in specially designated sacred places, for instance temples and images, and in natural?objects, for instance the sun, mountains, or trees. The?priest?is a special agent in the religious cult, his ritual actions represent the divine action. Similarly, the?monarch?or emperor or empress is a special mediator between heaven and earth and has been called by such names as the son of heaven, or an arm of god. Certain persons may be consecrated, so specific?places are designated as the gate of heaven, and temples and shrines are recognized by devotees as places where special attitudes and restrictions prevail because they are the abode of the sacred. Likewise, certain?images of God and sacred books are taken to be uniquely powerful and true (see above) or pure expressions of divine reality. The image and the temple are, in traditional societies, not simply creations by individual artists and architects, they are reflections of the sacred essence of life, and their measurements and forms are rendered precise through sacred communication from the divine sphere. In this same context, natural objects may be permeated with sacred power. The sun, for instance, is the embodiment of the power of life, the source of all human consciousness, the central point for the eternal rhythm and order of existence. Or, a river, such as the Nile for the ancient Egyptians and the Ganges for the Hindu, lends witness to the potency of life incarnated in geography. Sacred mountains, for instance, Sinai for Jews, Kailāsa for Hindus, Fujiyama for Japanese, were especial locations of divine power, law, and truth.

The sacred, definitionally speaking, infuses all dimensions of life, but within the type of religious apprehension that is expressed in sacred myth and ritual, however, there is a special focus upon time, place, that is to say, the cosmos, and active agents, that is, heroes, ancestors, divinities. When existence is observed in terms of the bifurcation of sacred and profane, which assumes that the sacred is wholly other than, yet necessary for, diurnal existence, it is essential to recognise and to get in touch with the sacred. In periodic festivals men and women celebrate sacred time, a sacred?calendar?demarcates the intervals of man’s and woman's life, and these sacred festivals provide the pattern for productive and exuberant living. Seasonal sacred calendars are especially important in predominantly agricultural societies, for in the very order of nature, people recognise that different seasons have their distinct values, and such differences are celebrated with spring festivals, when the world is re-created through ritual expressions of generation, and harvest festivals, of thanksgiving and of protecting the life force in germens for the following spring. Time is here thought of as cyclical, and one’s life is marked by those rituals in which one continually returns to the divine source.

Similarly, the myths and rituals mark off the world or cosmos into location that have especial sacred significance, the territory in which one resides is real insofar as it is in contact with the divine reality, and within this territory is life, beyond it is chaos, danger, and demons. Throughout most of history the sacred world was coextensive with a particular territory, and one could speak literally of Christian lands, the Jewish homeland, the Muslim world, the place of the noble people, Aryavarta for the Hindu, or the central kingdom, China for instance. Consecrating one’s possession of land with certain rituals was equivalent to establishing an order with divine sanction. In?Vedic?ritual, for instance, the setting up of a fire altar in which the god Agni, fire, was present was the establishment of a cosmos on a microcosmic scale. And once a cosmos is established there are certain?places?that are especially sacred. Certain rivers, mountains, groves of trees, caves, or human constructions such as temples, shrines, or cities provide the gate, the ladder, the navel, or pole between heaven and earth. Such a sacred place is that which both permits the sacred power to flow into existence and delivers order and stability to life.

Divine or?heroic activity is another dimension of the sacred whereby decisive action is undergone by creative or protective agents, and one’s spiritual ancestors are not necessarily biologically defined ancestors, perhaps not even be human, but they are the essential forces upon which survival depends and can be embodied in animal proficiencies, that is to say, longevity, rebirth, magical abilities, in the ways of the ancients, or through a special hero who has provided present existence with material and spiritual betterment and perks. If the notion of sacred manifestation is extended to include the social relationships, especially taboos, in a community, then communal relations can be perceived as a dimension through which the sacred is manifested. Here human values are sacralized by social restraints that prescribe, for instance, with whom one can eat or whom one can marry or indeed whom one may do away with. A pre-requisite for the establishment of a community is that of the forming of certain relationships, and these relationships are sacred when they take on the burden of the power of ultimate, eternal, cosmic force. For instance, the consecration of a monarch or emperor or empress in traditional agricultural societies was the establishment of a system of allegiance and order for society, and by expanding the notion of sacralization to incorporate human reorganization of experience within the context of any absolute norm, the sacred can be observed in such dimensions of life as history, self-consciousness, aesthetics, philosophical reflection or conceptualization. Every one of these modes of human experience can become the creative force whereby some people have become real and attained the most profound understanding of themselves.

Critical problems emerge once phenomenologists of religion employ the notion of the sacred as a universal term for the basis of religion while differing in their estimation of the nature of the sacred manifestation. Otto and van der Leeuw hold albeit in different formulations that the sacred is a reality that transcends the apprehension of the sacred in symbols or rituals, and the forms or ideograms through which the sacred is expressed are secondary and are simply reactions to the wholly other. Kristensen and?Eliade, on the other hand, took the sacred reality to be accessible through the particular symbols or ways of apprehending the sacred. Thus, Kristensen places great stress upon how the sacred is apprehended, and Eliade describes different modes of the sacred, while Otto looks beyond the forms and in the direction of a meta-empirical source.

A further problem is the continuing question of whether or not the sacred is a universal category, for there are certainly religious expressions from various parts of the world that quite evidently manifest the type of structure of religious awareness hitherto characterised. It is particularly suited for some aspects in the religion of nonliterate societies, the ancient Near East, and some popular devotional aspects of Hinduism. However, a pressing question arises with regard to the usefulness of this structure in interpreting a large part of Chinese religion, the social relationships or dharma of Hinduism, the endeavours to attain superconscious awareness in Hinduism through yoga, Jainism, Buddhism through zen, some forms of Daoism, and some contemporary or modern options of total commitment that, nonetheless, rebuff the notion of an absolute source and ultimate objective essentially different from human existence. If one takes the notion of sacred as something above, beyond, different from the religious structure dominated by divine or transcendent activity, then this implies that the notion of sacredness should not be limited to that structure, and therefore some scholars have regarded it as confusing to employ the notion of sacred as a universal religious quality, for it has been accepted by many religious people and by scholars of religion as referring to only a single albeit significant kind of religious consciousness.

The 20th-century dialogues concerning the nature and manifestation of the sacred includes other approaches than those of scholars in the comparative study of religions. For instance,?Sri Aurobindo, (1872 – 1950), Hindu mystic-philosopher, discourses upon the supreme reality as the Consciousness-Force, and?Nishida Kitaro, (1870 – 1945), philosopher, expresses his apprehension of universal reality as that of absolute Nothingness.?Martin Heidegger, (1889?– 1976), philosopher, speaks of the holy as that dimension of existence through which there is the illumination of the things that are, though it is no absolute Being prior to existence; rather it is a creative act at the point of engaging the Nothing. 'Das Nichts selbst nichtet'. Nothing noths itself. In contrast, Karl Barth, (1886 –?1968), Protestant theologian,?rebuffs philosophical reflection or mystical insight for apprehending the sacred, and contends rather that personal acceptance of God’s self-revelation in a particular historical form, Jesus Christ, is the place within which to embark upon any awareness of that which the philosophers designate ultimate.

Sociologists studying religion have, since Durkheim, normally identified the sacred with social values that claim a supernatural foundation, but nonetheless the sacred has been identified primarily as discoverable in the social occasions or festivals that disrupt the common social order, according to Caillois, or as the reinforcing of social activities that secure a given social structure, according to Howard Becker, (b. 1928 -). During the 1960s, however, the usual definition of religion as those sacred activities which laid claims to a transcendent source was interrogated and challenged by certain scholars of an empirical bent. Thomas Luckmann, (1927 –2016), sociologist, for instance, has described the sacred in contemporary society as that 'strata of significance to which everyday life is ultimately referred', and this definition includes such themes as 'the autonomous individual' and 'the mobility ethos'.

'Cantique', 1926, Constant Montald

Concerning the sacred in the present age, the quandaries and issues of defining and inquiring into religion hitherto discussed are already expressive of the changes and deviations in contemporary consciousness with regards to the sacred, for both the physical and social sciences have presented to modern humans a new image of themselves and methods and techniques for bettering their present lives. The recognition of rational and critical perspectives for estimating the assertions of religious authorities in Europe since the 18th century, in addition to the advancement of historical criticism and a sense of historical relativism, has contributed to the affirmation of a human as fundamentally a secular person. The once absolute authorities in the West, be it the Bible, or priests, or rabbis, or whatever, are no longer the chief sources for one’s self-identity. To an ever enlarging extent the cultures in the East are also experiencing a loss of their traditional authorities. There are some endeavours undergone to re-sacralize contemporary cosmology, history, and personal experience by extending the scope of religious concerns to secular areas such as politics, economics, personality development, and art, and by modifying theological perspectives, ethical norms, and liturgical forms to incorporate new modes of expression and to explore and test new styles of living.

An important 20th-century development in religious life has been the easy flow of information between religious communities on different continents that has delivered up an opportunity for experimenting with religious forms from outside of the traditionally acceptable forms within a culture. During the 1950s and 1960s, for instance, yoga and zen meditation were serious religious options for some Westerners and a form of experimentation for large numbers, and the concern to experiment with personal experience and with styles of living during the 1960s in the West has itself been regarded as a significant religious expression by a number of analysts. These years witnessed a great deal of exploration in exotic experience with psychedelic drugs, many endeavours to establish new communities for group living in communes albeit few lasted beyond a year, and a deviation in the values of middle class youth from a concern for personal economic security to social and experiential concerns. One might indeed consider such recent activities as endeavours to recapture the experience of the sacred.

Throughout the past hundred years a number of philosophers and social scientists have asserted the disappearance of the sacred and predicted the demise of religion. A study of the history of religions shows that religious forms change and that there has never been consensus with regard to the nature and expression of religion. Whether or not humanity is at present in a new situation for developing structures of ultimate values radically different from those provided in the traditionally affirmed awareness of the sacred is a vital questionm though any suggestion that a radically different kind of reality is possible is, of course, palpable nonsense for those to whom the sacred already has been manifested once and for all time in a distinct and singular form.

Which brings us to our second philosophical perspective wherein all of this is reduced and whittled down to a totally different and one might say more straightforwardly explicable understanding of all that has been covered hitherto, from Arthur Schopenhauer, (1788 - 1860):

'We know that man is in general superior to all other animals, and this is also the case in his capacity for being trained. Mohammedans are trained to pray with their faces turned towards Mecca, five times a day; and they never fail to do it. Christians are trained to cross themselves on certain occasions, to bow, and so on. Indeed, it may be said that religion is the chef d’oeuvre of the art of training, because it trains people in the way they shall think: and, as is well known, you cannot begin the process too early. There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity. For as in the case of animals, so in that of men, training is successful only when you begin in early youth'

'The Bewitched Man'?('The Devil's Lamp'), c. 1798, Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, scene from a play by?Antonio de Zamora, 'The man bewitched by force' ('El hechizado por fuerza') in which the protagonist, Don Claudio, believes that he is bewitched and that his life depends on keeping a lamp alight.

For the past hundred years or so we have witnessed philosophers and social scientists making claims upon the matter of the expiration of the sacred while in addition forecasting the downfall and dissolution of religion, but studies into the history of religions have demonstrated clearly enough that religious systems and structures transform and undergo modification and that there has never been any concession concerning the nature of religion nor the manner of its expression. But a question lingers, it may be supposed, as to whether or not humanity at present enjoys a new condition and state of affairs for developing structures of ultimate values that radically differ from those provided in the traditionally endorsed awareness of the sacred, but really what is missing here is a bit more depth to the discussion, a profounder exploration of what the sacred actually means, for us, and of its mode of operation.

In the 'Phenomenology of Spirit', subsection 'The Moral View of the World', Hegel introduces the sacred while considering Immanuel Kant's, (1724 - 1804), third postulate of morality, a necessary condition for its fulfilment, namely God, though rather than focussing upon its derivation or its interpretation he embarks upon its rational reconstruction. Pivotal to Hegel's account is a distinction he makes between specific duty and pure duty, whereby, as a moral consciousness, an individual will discover that he or she must act in a particular situation, whereby that which is right and correct for him or her to do is determined by his or her specific duties. Consider for instance Jean-Paul Sartre's, (1905 - 1980), recounting of a story of a student who asked him for advice as he was torn between two paths, to stay with his mother, or to join the army and fight the Germans to avenge his brother, who had been killed, and to defend France. He has obligations to his mother, to his dead brother, to his countrymen and women. However, albeit the moral consciousness may accept that these specific duties make a certain course of action right and correct for him or her in his or her particular state of affairs, he or she may nonetheless feel that this course of action is still not his or her pure duty, whereby pure duty is taken to be that which would be right for him or her to do if he or she were free of his or her specific duties. For instance, (not Hegel's example, I am assuming this is the kind of thing he has in mind), his or her specific duties make it right and correct that he or she should provide for his or her family, while his or her pure duty is to give a larger percentage of his or her income to charity. Or tithes to his or her church. Duty is a slippery notion. Anyway, the moral consciousness finds itself in a quandary, torn in two directions, feeling that it is being restrained in some manner from doing what is its pure duty by the particularity of the state of affairs within which it finds itself, and hence it may question the validity of the specific duties which apply to it by virtue of being in that state of affairs. At the same time the moral consciousness is aware that that state of affairs is one to which it belongs and it acquiesces in the realisation that it is not at liberty to perform its pure duty alone. As Hegel explains:

'The moral consciousness as the simple knowing and willing of pure duty is, in the doing of it, brought into relation with the object which stands in contrast to its simplicity, into relation with the actuality of the complex case, and thereby has a complex moral relationship with it. Here arise, in relation to content, the many laws generally, and in relation to form, the contradictory powers of the knowing consciousness and of the non-conscious. In the first place, as regards the many duties, the moral consciousness in general heeds only the pure duty in them; the many duties qua manifold are specific and therefore as such have nothing sacred about them for the moral consciousness. At the same time, however, being necessary, since the Notion of ‘doing’ implies a complex actuality and therefore a complex moral relation to it, these many duties must be regarded as possessing an intrinsic being of their own'.

The moral agent finds him or herself clearly in a disagreeable and troublesome state of affairs, for on the one hand, in virtue of being a particular individual, he or she can see well enough that he or she has specific duties, for instance to family, or to his or her friends, while on the other hand, and from a standpoint more universal, he or she is aware that it would be better if he or she were free to do his or her pure duty, for instance give more money to charity, pay more tithes to the church. The dilemma is that moral world-view must needs be grounded upon that which is obligatory about specific duties, but how can this be when it seems that they go against the competing demands of pure duty? Hegel's contention is that the moralist introduces God who sanctifies these specific duties by so arranging the world that they are quite as effective at delivering the good as pure duties are:

'Thus it is postulated that it is another consciousness which makes them [i.e. the specific duties] sacred, or which knows and wills them as duties. The first holds to pure duty, indifferent to all specific content, and duty is only this indifference towards such content. The other, however, contains the equally essential relation to ‘doing’, and to the necessity of the specific content: since for this other, duties mean specific duties, the content as such is equally essential as the form which makes the content a duty. This consciousness is consequently one in which universal and particular are simply one, and its Notion is, therefore, the same as the Notion of the harmony of morality and happiness ... This is then henceforth a master and ruler of the world, who brings about the harmony of morality and happiness, and at the same time sanctifies duties in their multiplicity'.

The moral consciousness, upon having postulated God by this means, can then feel liberated from the demands of pure duty in virtue of the fact that its role can be restricted to the observance of specific duties:

'Duty in general thus falls outside of it into another being, which is consciousness and the sacred lawgiver of pure duty'.

Kant, recall, held to a deontological moral theory whereby the rightness or wrongness of an action does not depend upon its consequences but upon whether it fulfills one's duty. Happiness does not come into it, albeit one would expect some kind of reward, if I may so put it in a way that Kant might not approve, some kind of satisfaction from knowing one has done one's duty. Hegel, however, has led the Kantian into an ambivalent one might eeven say amphibological position concerning the matter of the relation between satisfaction, contentment or whatever, and virtue. For on the one hand the moral consciousness is aware it has not performed its pure duty, and so feels wretched and unworthy, not deserving of being happy with itself, while on the other hand, it maintains the belief that God will see that such failure is not its fault, for it has done what is right in the particular state of affairs it was in, and hence it can anticipate forgiveness and at least some portion of well-being. Hegel thus brings to the fore three pivotal features of Kant’s moral argument for God, that is to say, that the moral consciousness treats the moral law as commanded by God given that God sanctifies the specific duties, that it sees God as helping us to realise the existence of a good world, God so arranges things that one's specific duties lead to the realization of the highest good, and that it relies upon God’s sagacity to argue for a connection between virtue and contentment, satisfaction, happiness, or whatever:

'[God] is thus the holy lawgiver (and creator), the beneficent ruler (and sustainer), and the just judge'.

Elihu Vedder, 'Girl at Shrine', 1874

Thus we can see how sacralization can operate in accordance with diurnal human experience (compare Durkheim's society as a sacred force) but in his 'Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion' Hegel digs deeply in order to discover how the sacred and the secular can be reconciled through philosophy. The ordinary conception of religion is of something central to existence, the solution discoverer to all problems, whereby in religion one withdraws oneself from what is temporal, and religion is for one's consciousness that realm wherein all the enigmatic knots of the world are unravelled, all the contradictions of far reaching reaching and deeply digging thinking have their meaning disclosed, and where the voice of the heart's pain is rendered dumb, a realm of eternal verities, of eternal quietus, of eternal peace. To discourse in general terms, it is through thought, concrete thought, or, to put it more precisely, it is by reason of their being Spirit that the human is human, and from human as Spirit proceed all the many developments of the sciences and arts, the interests of political life, and all those conditions that refer to humanity’s freedom and will.

Nonetheless all such manifold forms of human relations, activities, and pleasures, and all the ways in which these are intertwined. all that has value and dignity for humanity, all wherein he or she searches for his or her happiness, his or her glory, and his or her pride, (see Hume above), discovers its ultimate centre in religion, in the thought, in the mind of, and in the feeling of God.?Therefore God is the beginning and the end of all things, for just as all things proceed from this point just so all return back to it again. God is the centre that breathes life and quickening into all things and that which animates and preserves in existence all the various forms of being. In religion humanity places itself in a relation to this centre in which all other relations concentrate themselves, and in so doing it rises up to the highest level of consciousness and to the region which is free from relation to what is other than itself, to something which is absolutely self-sufficient, the unconditioned, what is free, and is its own object and end.

Such in any case is the general perception, sensation, consciousness, or however we may designate it, of religion. Hegel then proceeds to consider, examine, and comprehend its nature, beginning with the conflict between the sacred and the secular:

'In the relation in which religion, even in its immediacy, stands to the other forms of the consciousness of man, there already lie germs of division, since both sides are conceived of as in a condition of separation relatively to each other. In their simple relation they already constitute two kinds of pursuits, two different regions of consciousness, and we pass to and fro from the one to the other alternately only. Thus man has in his actual worldly life a number of working days during which he occupies himself with his own special interests, with worldly aims in general, and with the satisfaction of his needs; and then he has a Sunday, when he lays all this aside, collects his thoughts, and, released from absorption in finite occupations, lives to himself and to the higher nature which is in him, to his true essential being. But into this separateness of the two sides there directly enters a double modification'.

As we have seen, while the secular takes possession of knowledge the sacred reduces to simple feeling (Otto's numinous and so on). Thus both sides have developed themselves entirely in their opposition, for on the side of religion the heart is filled with what is divine, but without freedom, or self-consciousness, and without consistency in regard to what is determinate, this latter acquires on the contrary the form of contingency. Consistent connection of what is determinate belongs to the side of knowledge, which is at home in the finite, and moves freely in the thought determinations of the manifold connections of things, but can only produce a system that is without absolute substantiality, without God.?The religious side gets the absolute material and purpose, but only as something abstractly positive. Knowledge has taken possession of all finite material and drawn it into its territory, all determinate content has fallen to its share, and yet although it gives it a necessary connection, it is still unable to give it the absolute connection. Since finally science has taken possession of knowledge, and is the consciousness of the necessity of the finite, religion has become devoid of knowledge, and has shriveled up into simple feeling, bereft of content, an empty elevation of the spiritual to the eternal. But it can affirm nothing regarding the eternal, for all that could be regarded as knowledge would be a drawing down of the eternal into the sphere of the finite, and of finite connections of things. As Hegel said:

'... when two aspects of thought, which are so developed in this way, enter into relation with one another, their attitude is one of mutual distrust. Religious feeling distrusts the finiteness which lies in knowledge, and it brings against science the charge of futility, because in it the subject clings to itself, is in itself, and the 'I' as the knowing subject is independent in relation to all that is external.?On the other hand, knowledge has a distrust of the totality in which feeling entrenches itself, and in which it confounds together all extension and development. It is afraid to lose its freedom should it comply with the demand of feeling, and unconditionally recognize a truth which it does not definitely understand. When religious feeling comes out of its universality, sets ends before itself, and passes over to the determinate, knowledge can see nothing but arbitrariness in this, and if it were to pass in a similar way to anything definite, would feel itself given over to mere contingency. When, accordingly, reflection is fully developed, and has to pass over into the domain of religion, it is unable to hold out in that region, and becomes impatient with regard to all that uniquely belongs to it'.?

Sacred and secular regard each other as adversaries, and now that the opposition has arrived at this stage of development, where the one side, whenever it is approached by the other, invariably thrusts it away from it as an adversary, the necessity for an adjustment then eners in, of such a sort that the infinite shall appear in the finite, and the finite in the infinite, and no longer shall either form a separate realm. This amounts to the reconciliation of religious, genuine simple feeling with knowledge and intelligence, a reconciliation that must correspond with the highest demands of knowledge, and of the Idea, (the underlying rational basis of reality that has existed eternally)?for these can surrender nothing of their dignity. And yet just as little can anything of the absolute content be relinquished and that content be brought down into the region of finiteness, and when face to face with it knowledge must relinquish its finite form.

Such is the progressive growth of the antitheses only in the form in which they have not yet developed into actual philosophy, or in which they still stand outside of it. Reconciliation between the sacred and secular is to be found through morality, as Hegel explains:

'This contradiction cancels itself in Morality, that the principle of freedom has forced its way into secular life; and since secular life so constructed is itself in conformity with the Notion, reason, truth, eternal truth, it is a freedom which has become concrete, the rational will. It is in the organization of the State that the Divine has passed into the sphere of reality; the latter is penetrated by the former, and the existence of the secular element is justified in-and-for-itself [i.e., known to itself], for its basis is the Divine Will, the law of right and freedom.?The true reconciliation whereby the Divine realizes itself in the region of reality is found in moral and legal life in the State; this is the true disciplining of the secular life. The institutions of morality are divine, are holy, not in the sense in which what is holy is opposed to what is moral, as when it is held that celibacy represents what is holy as opposed to family life, or voluntary poverty as opposed to active acquisition by one’s own efforts, to what is lawful. In the same way blind obedience passes for being something holy; while, on the contrary, what makes morality is obedience in freedom, free, rational will, the obedience of the subject in respect of what is moral.?In morality the reconciliation of religion with reality, with the secular life, is an actual and accomplished fact'.?

Hegel identifies three stages of religious development, naive religion, secular enlightenment, and philosophy. In so far as thought begins to place itself in opposition to the concrete, the process of thought then consists in carrying through this opposition until it reaches reconciliation, a reconciliation that is philosophy. So far?philosophy is theology, it sets forth the reconciliation of God with Himself and with Nature, and demonstrates that Nature, Other-Being, is divine, that it partly belongs to the very nature of finite Spirit to rise into the state of reconciliation, and that it partly reaches this state of reconciliation in the history of the world. ?This religious knowledge thus reached through the Notion is not universal in its nature, and it is further only knowledge in the Spiritual Community, and?thus is acquired in reference to the Kingdom of God three stages or positions, the first position that of immediate naive religion and faith, the second that f the Understanding, of the so-called cultured, of reflection and Enlightenment, and finally, the stage of philosophy. Philosophical knowledge harmonizes such discord, reason and religion are thereby reconciled if it can be demonstrated of religion to be in all its manifold forms necessary, and to rediscover in revealed religion the truth and the Idea. ?But this reconciliation is itself merely a partial one without outward universality, and philosophy forms in this connection a sanctuary apart, and those who serve in it constitute an isolated order of priests, who must not mix with the world, and whose work is to protect the possessions of truth.

Hegel concludes:

'How the actual present-day world is to find its way out of this state of disruption, and what form it is to take, are questions which must be left to itself to settle, and to deal with them is not the immediate practical business and concern of philosophy'.

To thee before the close of day

Creator of the world we pray

That with thy wonted favour, thou

Wouldst be our guard and keeper now.?

From all ill dreams defend our sight

From fears and terrors of the night;

Withhold from us our ghostly foe,

That spot of sin we may not know.?

O Father, that we ask be done,

Through Jesus Christ, thine only Son,

Who, with the Holy Ghost and thee,

Doth live and reign eternally.

THE END

Notes to ‘Finnegans Wake’ quotation:

1. mugger: the broad-nosed crocodile of India; and crocodile tears, false tears.

2. liard: a small coin formerly current in France, of the value of the fourth part of a sou. Hence, a coin of small value; and liar.

3. nick: to say nay to, deny; to jot down, record.

4. nighty: pertaining to night.

5. taverner: one that keeps a tavern, one who frequents taverns (obsolete);

And John Taverner: 16th century English musician, composer of many masses (by adapting secular songs into?sacred?music).

6. on the make: intent on profit or advancement; also, intent on winning someone's affections; seeking sexual pleasure; improving, advancing, getting better: and mike, to loiter; a rest, a period of idleness; to 'hang about', go away, escape;?microphone?(Colloquial).

7. buck: man, a dashing fellow.

8. to get it: to receive a punishment, scolding, etc.

'The Statue of Polyhymnia', Charles?Meynier, (1763 or 1768 – 1832)

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