The Lexicon
Symbols and the unseen
Sacred
The Sacred is the wholly other that breaks into ordinary life and sets a place, a time, or a soul apart. Eliade described the sacred as that which manifests itself, shows itself as something radically different from the profane, and named the moment of its breaking-through a hierophany. Wherever the threshold between worlds grows thin, wherever ground becomes holy, the Sacred has touched it.
To dwell in the sacred is to live within meaning rather than mere fact, to treat existence as a revelation and not an accident. Ritual, pilgrimage, and reverent attention are the ways the soul keeps itself oriented toward the centre. On the Atlas of mind, the Sacred marks the high places, the points where the numinous becomes manifest and the everyday is consecrated.
In their words
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 term hierophany.
By manifesting the sacred, any object becomes something else, yet it continues to remain itself, for it continues to participate in its surrounding cosmic milieu.
There is a correspondence of heaven with all things of the earth.