“These thirty years, and more, that I've spent among exotic, barbaric, indomitable gods and goddesses, nourished on myths, obsessed by symbols, nursed and bewitched by so many images which have come down to me from those submerged worlds, today seem to me to be the stages of a long initiation. Each one of these divine figures, each of these myths or symbols, is connected to a danger that was confronted and overcome. How many times I was almost lost, gone astray in this labyrinth where I risked being killed... These were not only bits of knowledge acquired slowly and leisurely in books, but so many encounters, confrontations, and temptations. I realize perfectly well now all the dangers I skirted during this long quest, and, in the first place, the risk of forgetting that I had a goal... that I wanted to reach a "center".”
Mircea Eliade
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“The crude product of nature, the object fashioned by the industry of man, acquire their reality, their identity, only to the extent of their participation in a transcendent reality.”

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“In virtue of this, the artisan is a connoisseur of secrets, a magician; thus all crafts include some kind off initiation and are handed down by an occult tradition. He who 'makes' real things is he wh...”

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“The Experience of Sacred Space makes possible the "founding of the world": where the sacred Manifests itself in space, the real unveils itself, the world comes into existence.”

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“Man becomes aware of the sacred because it manifests itself, shows itself, as something wholly different from the profane. To designate the act of manifestation of the sacred, we have proposed the ter...”

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“For those to whom a stone reveals itself as sacred, its immediate reality is transmuted into supernatural reality. In other words, for those who have a religious experience all nature is capable of re...”

Mircea Eliade