kara walling blog 13

outside sources: Mircea Eliade ideas on the nature of religion
12/1/09

Eliade believes that religious behavior is not only an imitation of, but also a participation in, sacred events, and thus restores the mythical time of origins. In class we talked about sacrament, which means something that is a mystery to us. A sacrament is a sign of something sacred and hidden and a sign of the ultimate reality of the world. Throughout explainging his ideas of religion Eliade refers to a religious person as homo religiousus, which I have never heard of so I thought that was interesting how he added his own language to describing religion. It was also interesting to find out about his interests in cross-cultural parallels and unities in religion. Because our culture is so ingrained in its ways, I like to read about different cultures and their religious beliefs. This is one think I really enjoyed about the presentation in class. Individually you get a chance to look at a piece of art and learn more by researching and analyzing, and as a whole you were able to sit back and enjoy what others looked up. There were only a few presentations I was already familiar with, and the rest were interesting to learn about and to compare to what we're used to in everyday life.