Sacred And Profane

Since the beginning of time, we have always been amused by nature and its extraordinary events. These events have been seen as holy and as actions of Gods, in this way the bases of religion were found. However, it is much more complex than that; we have reached the peaks of our inner spiritual states to feel and in a way see the sacred around us. It can be seen in miraculous happenings, in our overwhelming feelings toward something, and in many elements which we find unfathomable. The sacred, for the most part, lies at the physically and mentally unattainable, the profane on the other side, is a treatment of something which is considered as sacred but it is actually attainable. The sacred and the profane are philosophical notions contrary

While the sacred belongs to the extraordinary, to the holy spiritual, to the divine, the profane on the other hand is a part of the ordinary and everyday life. They should not be seen as good or bad, in fact they are both crucial elements in our life. According to Durkheim, religion is about the detachment of the sacred and the profane (“Sacred and Profane”, par.5). The sacred alludes to those aggregate representations which are separated from the society, or that which rises above the unexceptional of ordinary life. The profane, then again, is everything else, each one of those common events like our employment, insurance and so forth. Religion is the act of stamping and keeping up the separation between those two domains. Ceremonies, for instance, reaffirm the significance of the sacred by recognizing its separateness for example, when religious devotees appeal to a specific statue (“Sacred and Profane”,

Harry, a writer, who hasn’t written much, finds himself dealing with a deadly infection close to the mountains of Kilimanjaro. The time when he was suffering from an infection that caused him gangrene was the only time he was aware of his existence. While he starts to be aware that death is coming based on the vultures and hyenas that were circling around his camp, he reflects back to his memories. The same memories he starts regretting not to write. Most of those flashbacks involved snow and that’s what drives him closer to believing that this is where it all ends, close to the Snows of Kilimanjaro. His path to transform in another dimension was not easy, he had to find himself, himself as a writer and not some beggar that molests women. Through these significant experience of his, we can identify many elements of the sacred and the profane. In the story, the leopard that was mentioned serves as a representation of strength and grace, which contradicts Harry’s personality. “Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard” (Hemingway 1). In this phrase, Hemingway expresses the difficult journey to the House of God in which the leopard has reached immortality and grace. The journey of the leopard to the House of God is in contradiction with Harry’s life who had spent his life taking