Tan, Nguon Ly

TA: Shayani, Sahba

October 9th, 2014
Hierophany, Axis Mundi, Imago Mundi
In the Sacred and the Profane, Mircea Eliade discusses the importance of hierophany, or
the manifestation of the sacred, higher being, because for a religious man, the occurrence of a
hierophany is what consecrates a profane, chaotic space into a sacred, cosmic space. When a
space is consecrated by a hierophany, it becomes sacred and a reality that divides a
homogeneous space. Eliade claims that religious people view hierophany as the marker of a holy
space because only in these spaces can they acquire communication with the divine and
orientation in the chaos of homogeneity (23). For instance, after Jacob dreamed about angels
and the Lord at Haran, the hierophany of the angels and the Lord marked the place as sacred, as
the house of God and the gate of heaven (26). A hierophany, or appearance of a higher
being, reveals a fixed point and the center of the world where contact with the divine is
possible.
People also seek to settle and live at these sacred spaces because of the belief that such
spaces is where there is a break or opening to the heaven and communication with god is
believed to be possible. This connection of the earth to the heaven and underworld is referred to
as the axis mundi. Axis mundi is a break in the homogeneous space that people believe to be the
vertical Link between Heaven and Earth, such as Babylonian ziggurat, the copper pole of the
Kwakiutl, and the cosmic pole of the Arunta tribe, the Achilpa (41). Axis mundi can exist on
different scales, as a country, city, and sanctuary. For instance, Palestine, Jerusalem, and the
Temple were considered to be the centers of the world. Axis mundi can also be in the form of

cosmic mountains, pole, and even ladder. It is apparently that to settle near the axis mundi is
ideal for religious believers since it is the place closest to heaven and god. The case of the
Achilpa supports the idea that axis mundi is the focus of the world where only the territory
around it is habitable. The Achilpa carried the cosmic pole everywhere with them because they
believed it allowed them to live in a real, harmonious world. Without the pole, their world was
believed to be in catastrophe, and they would willingly die without it. The cosmic pole was
considered by the Achilpa as the pillar, or axis mundi, that supports their world and link them to
the divine.
Religious people also establish sacred space by creating microcosm of the world, or
imago mundi. Imago mundi, or the recreation of the world from a central point, has cosmogonic
value because this image of the world demonstrates a superabundance of reality an irruption
of the sacred into the world (45). Religious believers build Imago mundi because settling in a
territory is equivalent to founding a world (47). These people believe that order comes from the
higher beings and by repeating or rebuilding the creation of the god, they then can live in a
cosmos. For example, in Bali, people searched for a natural intersection when they built a new
village. The construction that stretched outward from the central point of this intersection was an
imago mundi. They believed that the intersection of two roads will help to divide their village
into four horizons of the universe. The cosmic world was thus further replicated by having a
ceremonial house in the center of the village. The center had a roof that represented the heaven.
The world of the dead would be on the end of the same perpendicular axis. This recreation of a
cosmological order was consecration. A temple can also be an imago mundi, such as the mens
house in New Guinea. The sacred stone of a village in Ceram was also believed to symbolize
the heaven. Overall, imago mundi is referred to as the rebuilding of a miniature cosmic order.