Sacred is the Opposite of Profane

ELIADE CH1-2

Hierophany is the manifestations of sacred realities. Through hierophany trees and stones are not just trees and stones but the sacred. It provides the passage from the profane to the sacred world. For example, mountains and temples become the important symbol of the connection between heaven and earth, man and God.

The "Center of the World" must be founded on a sacred foundation. The Center is a fixed point in which it is equivalent to the creation of the world. The "Center of the World" symbolizes the "religious experience of the nonhomogeneity of space" and the "revelation of an absolute reality." When establishing in a new territory or house, man transforms the place into a cosmos through the ritual repetition of the cosmogony, which is the gods' continuous victory over the absolute evil: the dragon/snake. Man constructs and consecrates their universe to be the "replica of the paradigmatic universe created and inhabited by the gods." The sacredness "fixes the limit and establishes the order of the world." The conclusion is that religious man sought to live as near as possible to the center of the world, and through the continuous repetition of the primordial act does the man's world becomes apprehensive as the world.