9 - The idea of the sacred

Summary

The terms “sacred” and “sanctity” have so far been left to whatever understandings readers have brought to them. It is time to develop a more explicit concept, and to explore its relationship to liturgy.

Sanctity defined

The sacred may be approached through consideration of a class of expressions in the last chapter called Ultimate Sacred Postulates. Examples include such familiar utterances as the Shema of the Jews, in abbreviated form, “Hear O Israel, the Lord Our God the Lord is One,” and in the Kalimat al Shahada of Islam, “I testify that there is no god but One God, and I testify that Mohammed is his prophet” (Lane-Poole 1911). Catholic equivalents are summarized in the Creeds, but are expressed at greater length in the canon of the Eucharist, particularly in the preface, the closing doxology and the words of institution (see John Miller 1959: 183ff., 272ff.). The rituals of the Maring, and those of many other societies, probably including a great majority of non-literate peoples, are lacking in such formal credos, but the postulation of the persistence of deceased ancestors as sentient beings is implicit in the formal, stereotyped addresses to them that precede all sacrifices. Sioux doxologies accompanying the smoking of sacred pipes may also fall short of being formal credos, but are more explicit in expressing Ultimate Sacred Postulates than are Maring addresses to ancestors, establishing as they do the pervasiveness of Wakan-Tanka, the “Great Spirit,” or “Great Holiness” (J. Brown 1954: 314, passim) and the existence of the spiritual beings associated with the six directions.