“The days were shorter, meek and barren. It rained constantly, as if to signal the grave beginnings of a ritual, and we, as the last members of the tribe, did not know how to separate the profane from the sacred.” WinterRitualSymbolismMythic ImageryThe Sacred And The Profane Book:The Rider on the Bridge Source: The Rider on the Bridge
“Every world is the work of the gods, for it was either created directly by the gods or was consecrated, hence cosmicized, by men ritually reactualizing the paradigmatic act of Creation. This is as much as to say that religious man can live only in a sacred world, because it is only in such a world that he participates in being, that he has a real existence. This religious need expresses an unquenchable ontological thirst. Religious man thirsts for being. His terror of the chaos that surrounds his inhabited world corresponds to his terror of nothingness. The unknown space that extends beyond his world – an uncosmicized because unconsecrated space, a mere amorphous extent into which no orientation has yet been projected, and hence in which no structure has yet arisen – for religious man, this profane space represents absolute nonbeing. If, by some evil chance, he strays into it, he feels emptied of his ontic substance, as if he were dissolving in Chaos, and he finally dies.” The Sacred And The Profane Author:Mircae Eliade