“The New Anthropological Spirit”, the result of research in the field of human sciences, reveals that all functions that animate the human being, although sometimes seem contradictory, such as reason and imagination, sacred and profane, conscious and unconscious, are actually complementary and integrated in human consciousness. Thus, modern man is not only a toolmaker and a rational conceptual language user (Homo sapiens sapiens), but also a Homo symbolicus, capable of expressing himself through symbols. This means that he can develop a metalinguistic language, the language of myths.
From a psychological standpoint, our species has not evolved for 40,000 years, and despite the obvious differences in skin color, eyes, and hair, humanity is one species (Homo Sapiens or Homo Religiosus) that emerged from various mutations that started millions of years ago. The essential characteristic of this Homo sapiens is that they consciously make the existence of the sacred relevant; in fact, thanks to the awakening of their sacred function – the only function capable of perceiving reality. On higher levels of reality – man has become sapiens and could free himself from the material or perceptible plane. Thanks to his consciousness becoming vertical, man could connect previously separate levels of reality and give meaning to what he observed. He gained awareness of the existence of a dimension “completely different” from the perceptible one. Therefore, it can be said that Homo sapiens has a religious character in the sense in which Leroi-Gourhan understands religion, namely, as “a set of preoccupations that seem to transcend the material order”.
Homo sapiens or Homo religiosus is the result of the emergence of a new state of consciousness, one that can comprehend the sacred.
This quest inherent to man is the need to understand things from within, beyond the apparent. Since man transforms the world into images, it can be determined, with Gilbert Durand, that symbolic imagination is the “golden foundation of humanization”.
Homo Sapiens or Homo Religiosus The consciousness that enables the expression of the sacred is active imagination, the matrix (template) of symbolic language and overall artistic creation.
The actualization of symbolic imagination introduces man into a new universe of images in which it is possible to access a holistic or global view of the world. Macrocosmic experiences are no longer external or “foreign” to him, but represent the experience of those who have found themselves in the midst of a whole. Thus, the magical-religious experience allows for the transformation of the human being into a symbol.
Sacred geography is the connection, it is the articulation, the “joint” that connects man with the sky and the earth and enables conscious communication with different levels of reality.
According to Mircea Eliade, for man in ancient societies, “the very fact that he lives in the world has the value of religion. This means that he lives in a world created by supernatural beings and that his village or his house are images of the cosmos.” He is connected to the mythical geography and with the very origin of existence. From the world’s perspective, ancient ontology identifies “reality” primarily with power, life, fertility, abundance, but also with everything that is unusual, unique, in other words, with everything that exists in an authentic way or represents a world of exceptional existence, because sacredness carries meaning, it is, first and foremost, the main expression of reality.
The adoption of vertical consciousness is not only reflected in material changes but especially in a new perception of the world. The vertical dimension allows the actualization of the axis of the world and the thread of life that connects levels of reality and signifies the “center”. It becomes, therefore, the essential preoccupation for humans. Sanctuaries, cities, or houses were built in a specific relationship to the center that connects them because without such a center, without orientation, neither space nor time are “inhabitable”. Space oriented around a center becomes a diminished model of the universe. Stars and seasons revolve and fertilize the place that has become a living. The universe.
The role of sacred geography.
According to traditional beliefs, humans experience the sacred and connect with the universe through sacred geography, which unites space and time and aims to reproduce the configurations of the celestial world on Earth. These connections between heaven and earth were celebrated at geographically specific locations where they together created a truly consecrated space.
This space can be compared to an infinite network whose nodes are connections, points of union or “hierogamy” (sacred marriage) between heaven and earth. Thus, each ancient city was one of these magical nodes, one of these connections, and constituted a structural element of sacred geography.
This marriage between different planes of existence was celebrated at certain privileged moments that were determined by the establishment of the calendar. The goal of the calendar was to give life and movement to space by connecting it with the cosmic rhythm. As a result, time also became sacred and enabled the reunion and the universe.
Accordingly, sacred geography is a holy space-time that functions like an interworld, allowing access to various planes of cosmic existence.
With the help of sacred geography, traditional societies established a series of correspondences, enabling the connection of earthly consciousness with the celestial.
The entire sacred geography consists of a “world image” contained in the mythical revelation that forms the core of traditional society’s beliefs.
Despite their diversity, all mythical stories convey a convergent image of the universe. As Mircea Eliade aptly observed, each story carries within itself an image of the center of the world, a center that connects what is above with what is below, like an axis mundi through which everything lives and is interconnected.
In mythical geography, the sacred space is the real space par excellence. For the ancient world, myth is real because it narrates the manifestations of true reality. In such a pros Direct contact with the sacred is possible, which materializes in certain objects or appears in hierocosmic symbols (World Pillar, Cosmic Tree, etc.). In cultures that recognize the concept of three cosmic realms – Heaven, Earth, Underworld – the “center” is the point of intersection of these realms. It is precisely here that the penetration of levels and communication between these three realms is possible.
This is the image that Homo religiosus uses, thanks to its multivalent character, to penetrate ultimate reality. This is because this reality manifests itself in a contradictory way, in the form of paradox, eluding the linearity of the concept that symbolic language, i.e. the language of active imagination, has become a tool for the operative expression of the entire sacred geography.
“To understand the symbolism of temples and human dwellings means, above all, to understand the religious valuation of space; in other words, to know the structure and function of sacred space. This symbolism, these rituals, transform space…” or in which the construction of a temple or palace is foreseen, simultaneously in the imago mundi and in the center of the world.”
Symbolic imagination, a tool of sacred geography
Imagination, as a creative force that creates forms and representations of reality, therefore current ones, has the task of acquainting us with the realm of the battle, which is beyond the senses, and with the abstract, as Henry Corbin reminds us.
Active imagination allows us access to the interworld between the sensory and intelligible planes, i.e. to the very place of their interaction. Without this interworld, the articulation between the sensory and the intelligible is definitively blocked and its disappearance causes a catastrophe of the spirit that is deprived of its paradoxical place of active consciousness force, losing the ability to manifest concretely. It thus remains a passive agent and manifests itself exclusively in one of two ways, either sensory or abstract.
The imaginary world, the seat of active imagination, would appear as a world in which correspondences are realized. Symbols. It is the seat of the center of the world that connects different levels of reality. It is a place of coincidentia oppositorum, as a new state of understanding, neither allegorical nor phantom, but rather quite concrete. This state of being has been described by experts from the external world, and in Egypt it was symbolically represented by the figure of Osiris, a miraculous Being, the god of the dead and resurrection.
The imaginary world has the contradictory property of dematerializing sensory forms and giving form, but not material, to an intelligible reality to which it gives shape and dimension.
Traditional societies have always been familiar with the tripartite organization of the world, which has been made relevant again by Henry Corbin and can be represented as follows:
1. Intelligible world: pure intelligence of intelligible forms (which cannot be represented), Nous in Greek, Nun in Egypt.
2. Imaginary world: the world of the soul, forms that can be imagined, visible but not material, Psyche in Greek; world of deities-symbols; ačenje paradoksa.
3. Sensory world: the realm of material things, concrete forms, Soma according to the Greeks; the human world.
According to sacred geography, the material territory of traditional societies was arranged in accordance with the imaginary world, and their earthly homeland became true gates to eternity, a mirror between heaven and earth, i.e. a new place of paradox, a place of images.
Sacred geography has a hermeneutic role, “ta’wil” in 13th century Iranian philosophy: “to return something to its source”, its true reality, its heavenly land.
According to sacred geography, a concrete and temporary place becomes capable of entering into sacred space-time, enabling the appearance of the intelligible in this world. Sacred geography is a connection, it is an articulation, a “joint” that connects man with heaven and earth and enables him to consciously communicate with different levels of reality.
Cosmogonic myth, the bearer of the image of the world
The mythical story appears to be a manifestation of paradox. “A cosmogonic myth is a sacred means of expressing a particular view of the world in which all its parts work synchronously.”
“In traditional societies, people use myths to narrate how things came into being, ‘explain’ them, and indirectly answer another question: why they came into existence and why I came into this world?” Therefore, stories that speak about the creation of the world and human beings, cosmogonic myths, have always been something that all human societies referred to, a sort of model.”
“A cosmogonic myth explains how things transitioned from a virtual state to actual reality. It has become a model of the entire process of creation and transformation, as well as the entire formal structure of actualization of the fundamental powers of life. Cosmogonic myths explain how the primordial space was created, allowing the rest of the manifestation to be filled from the primordial times until now.”
“Cosmogonic myths also carry a sacred geography, in other words, a depiction of the world (imago mundi).” Geography is established because the imago mundi is built on Earth. The concrete realization of a worldview through the construction of houses, temples, or cities brings forth the original structures here and now. It connects humans with the archetype through the repetition of a mythical-ritual pattern that transcends the mundane space-time and makes it sacred.
Any study of the sacred geography of a society must rely on a fundamental cosmogonic myth, on orientation rituals that transfer their cosmic nature to the physical space, on a calendar that transforms linear time into sacred time, on the projection of their mythical geography onto physical geography, while also considering rites of passage or initiation that aim to connect individuals and communities with the spiritual archetype.
In the next issue: Consecration of space, founding of temples and cities.