What is holy we all sense, even if we do not always manage to put it into words. No doubt the concepts run together: spiritual, of the soul, transcendent, holy, sacral… Perhaps it is not even worth interpreting each term etymologically, as long as we feel what is meant. We can distinguish three basic steps: we call spiritual those things that lie within the reach of matter yet stand closest to its limits, sacral those that serve consecrated purposes, and finally holy those that are wholly beyond worldly norms, even when they can be experienced in the world.
But what is the profane? As we understand it, profane is what is worldly, material, relative in nature, and also common, even irreverent, coarse, crude or uninitiated. Interestingly, the profane exists not in itself but in its position relative to holiness. Fan is all that falls within the circle of holiness, and pro-fan all that lies outside this circle, hence not hallowed, not religious, and so uninitiated.
The hallowed and the not-holy are set against each other, the one measured by the other. Let us ask the question: can the holy exist without the profane, and could there be a non-holy without holiness? Just as hatred is regarded as a state deficient in love, would the profane, too, be merely a deficient holiness? Perhaps it is worth distinguishing the holy from the profane not only by their origin but also by their nature and their aim. What is holy serves the aims of holiness, whereas the profane serves those of the not-holy.
And yet, like light and shadow, the two phenomena accompany each other. In the golden cultures of the archaic world view, profaneness was dwarfed beside the living pulse of the sacred holiness of the universe. But times change, and although popular opinion thinks in terms of humanity's history of development, others see it as a history of decline. What seems certain is that we have slowly slid from the universal validity of holiness into the field of the profane.
In place of the archaic paradigm's vision of fullness there first appeared figurative speech, myth, which, embedded in some story, sought to portray the events of the universe and man's calling. Myth may not convey precise data, but it transmits right knowledge: virtue may wrestle with the shadow, but in the end it always wins, and man does well to serve the light. In this age there was still hardly any room for the profane, but when the religious world view assumed the dominant role, the polarity of good/evil appeared, and then the dreaded notion of sin and damnation. True, these still reflected holiness, though more threateningly than encouragingly.
Then, when the religious world view began to be crowded out by the scientific paradigm with its fundamentalism, holiness began its slow death. Perhaps that is why Nietzsche said that God is dead… – but people forget to quote the words …and we have killed him.
Yet the world goes on changing, and more and more people feel the absence of holiness. It is not the mythical past or blind bigotry that they miss, but the noble way of seeing that recognises holiness. Man, world, God – in every element of the universe the presence of universal holiness ought to be discovered.
In the beginning man's vision had one pole: only the holy existed. Then, in inner discord, the universe split in two, into holy and profane. It was as if the split wanted to bury holiness beneath itself, so that only the profane would remain. But the spiritual turn of the age is reversing the trend, and holiness seems to be triumphing once more. The reawakening sacrality is now doubly so: the universe is holy by its very nature, and even its image mirrored in man's consciousness is enfolded in an aura of holiness. So in place of the profane, and even in place of holy and profane, there remains: Holy and Holy…