Light Does Not Come From Light, But

Do What He Will, He [the Profane Man] Is An Inheritor. He Cannot Utterly Abolish His Past, Since He Himself Is A Product Of His Past. He Forms Himself By A Series Of Denials And Refusals, But He Continues To Be Haunted By The Realities That He Has Refused And Denied. To Acquire A World Of His Own, He Has Desacralized The World In Which His Ancestors Lived; But To Do So He Has Been Obliged To Adopt An Earlier Type Of Behavior, And That Behavior Is Still Emotionally Present In Him, In One Form Or Another, Ready To Be Reactualized In His Deepest Being.

When The Sacred Manifests Itself In Any Hierophany, There Is Not Only A Break In The Homogeneity Of Space; There Is Also A Revelation Of An Absolute Reality, Opposed To The Nonreality Of The Vast Surrounding Expanse. The Manifestation Of The Sacred Ontologically Founds The World. In The Homogenous And Infinite Expanse, In Which No Point Of Reference Is Possible And Hence No Orientation Can Be Established, The Hierophany Reveals An Absolute Fixed Point, A Center.

Man Becomes Aware Of The Sacred Because It Manifests Itself, Shows Itself, As Something Wholly Different From The Profane.

A Religious Phenomenon Will Only Be Recognized As Such If It Is Grasped At Its Own Level, That Is To Say, If It Is Studied As Something Religious. To Try To Grasp The Essence Of Such Phenomenon By Means Of Physiology, Psychology, Sociology, Economics, Linguistics, Art Or Any Other Study Is False; It Misses The One Unique And Irreducible Element In It - The Element Of The Sacred.

Whether Religion Is Man-made Is A Question For Philosophers Or Theologians. But The Forms Are Man-made. They Are A Human Response To Something. As A Historian Of Religions, I Am Interested In Those Expressions.