Santeria
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Eliade tries to see this topic as more irrational than rational. He wants to figure out what “living God” meant to a normal person. At the start he goes to describe it as, “not an idea abstract notion, a mere moral allegory but a terrible power. Throughout the handout, he tries to come up with notions as to what it can exactly mean to people and therefore he develops the word hierophany.
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According to Eliade, hierophany is the manifestation of sacred. It does not mean anything above and beyond this. By this he means that there is nothing this term can further mean or in other words giving this term more meaning can lead to a wrong interpretation. This word just displays what a sacred object can mean or how does a ordinary object become an extraordinary object for the people. He comes up with this notion of “wholly other”, means that sacred is unlike anything else, its supernatural, its a reality but not a very evident one.
The simple reason why Eliade uses the term heirophany is because according to him there isnt any word which could clearly describe what sacred means. The first definition he comes up with is that sacred is not profane. In other words its not what the natural world see as ordinary, but something extraordinary. In his process of trying to distinguish between sacred and profane, he develops this terminology of hierophany. The whole idea behind this to come up with some sort of basic understanding as to what the sacred meant and if had to be described in definite words, what would it mean.
According to him every hierophany represents a paradoxical statement. For example, like the sacred stone not adored as a stone. By this he means that a stone maybe viewed as sacred only by the people who follow the Santeria religion whereas it will we viewed as just another stone by the people who dont follow this religion. In Santeria,