Response to The Sacred and the Profane: Sacred Space and Making the World Sacred
“It is obvious, for example, that the symbolisms and cults of Mother Earth, of human and agricultural fertility, of the sacrality of woman, and the like, could not develop and constitute a complex religious system except through the discovery of agriculture; it is equally obvious that a preagricultural society, devoted to hunting, could not feel the sacrality of Mother Earth in the same way or with the same intensity. Hence there are differences in religious experience explained by differences in economy, culture, and social organization – in short, by history.” -Mircea Eliade
In this discussion of religious space, and sacred space in general, Eliade makes some noteworthy points that can be applied to a modern conceptoion of virtural space. In the above quotation, Eliade notes that the differences between the agricultural society and the hunting society lead to different forms of worship, and indeed different understandings of what is sacred. The hunters probably saw mother earth as more of a giver, blessing people with food for hunting, and shelter for warmth. All someone needed to do to be sacred was to take what was given, and be thankfull. The agrarian on the other hand probably saw mother earth as more of a partner, something which could be used to help people be sacred. Knowing that Mother earth provides potential, and people can utilize that potential for human progress (farming techniques, seasonal interpretation, astorological analysis, etc) must have instilled a cooperative attitude, and lead to sacred signs and spaces being analyzed and interpreted, as opposed to just being accepted at face value. In one example, Eliade notes that early hunting societies used to find sacred spaces by letting one of their oxen go free for a certain ammount of time, and deciding on the space based on where they later found and sacraficed the oxen, thus letting nature decide where they would worship. As we know from Egyptian history, later agrarian societies took signs from the earth (such as patterns in the sky), interpreted them by giving them personal meaning, and decided on the location of sacres spaces based on the interpretation. Many scoff at the seemingly primative nature of these decisions, but dont we still use techiques such as this to determine our sacred spaces? Putting a church on top of a hill, or chosing to give birth at one location rathrr than another are both decisions based on our interpretation of the sacred value certain locations have. So long as we percieve ouselves as working with nature, our sacred spaces will always be somewhere in the “real” world. However, what heappens when we as a global society start to turn away from Mother Earth, and start to see ouselves as the sources of what is sacred. Advances in technology, medicine, philosophy, etc have given us the edge over Mother Earth, and indeed we chose to create our own sacred space outside the realm of Her control. One example of this kind of space: Virtural Reality. In an effort to seperate ouselves from what now seems more like a burdon than a partner, we may have developed a new form of the sacred in reality that seems far removed enough to provide comfort, and still give us acess to the spiritural/real/true nature outside understanding. How exactly this will pan out has yet to be seen, but we at least know that our societal, cultural, and economic connection with the earth will lead us to new interpretations of what is sacred.
