Crowned

The crowned (opposite with Profane) is a concept allowing a group or an human society to create a spiritual and/or moral separation binary between various elements which compose it, define it or represent it (objects, acts, ideas, values…), or ternary: between what concerns the human world, which is rejected by it because Tabou, and what is protected because concerning the divine one from it, crowned. The dichotomy crowned/layman does not rest on any etymological base.

  • Sacré étymologiquement means object of worship which can be mythological or theological i.e. religious or ideological, i.e. not monk.
  • Is profane étymologiquement what is located out of the temple. Crowned and layman at least in common have the fact of being able to be a not monk.
To distinguish for example a sacred music from a profane music is nona direction: any music supposes a religious devoted control or layman where crowned is always undoubtedly source of inspiration.

Definition of the concept

In the beginning, the term is used in the human groups based on initiation or the revelation to describe the components and founders of them, as all that is connected to them (demonstrations, organizations, etc). For example, in the majority of the religions crowned indicates all that milked with the divine one, with its demonstrations on ground and the Clergé which organizes its worship.

In the Christianity, the expression crowned the indicates in particular the Eucharistie.

This concept is used today in a more general way in other contexts: a nation can define as crowned its principles founders; a company can define as crowned some of its values; etc The contemporary anthropologists say besides that the concept of crowned is too fuzzy to be able to be used in the study of the Religion S - even if they continue to work above.

The elements of crowned are generally regarded as untouchable: their handling, even in thought, must obey certain ritual well defined. Not to comply with these rules, to even act in their opposition, is generally regarded as a Péché or real crime or symbolic system: it is what one names a Sacrilège. The worst of the sacrilege is the Profanation, which is defined like the introduction of profane elements into a crowned enclosure (real or symbolic system).

Let us note that the concept of “ crowned ” is not in all the companies.

What is crowned it is the respect of the life. Spirituality it is the respect of essence: to like the life, to like all the lives. | Bruno San Marco

For Durkheim, the religious representations are in fact of the collective representations: the gasoline of the monk can be only crowned, any other phenomenon does not characterize all the religions. Crowned, collective and impersonal being, thus represents the company itself.

the crowned things are those which the prohibited S protect and insulate, and the things Profane S being those to which these interdicts apply and which must remain with the variation of the first . the relation (or opposition, ambivalence) enters Sacré and Layman is the gasoline of the religious fact . | Emile Durkheim

Crowned according to Mircéa Eliade

Hiérophanies

“One could say”, written Mircea Eliade, “that the history of the religions, of most primitive with most elaborate, is consisted an accumulation of Hiérophanie S the modern Westerner tests certain a faintness in front of certain forms of manifestations of crowned: it is difficult for him to accept that, for certain human beings, crowned can appear in stones or trees. However, it is not a question of a veneration of the stone or tree in themselves. The crowned trees are not adored as such; they are it precisely only because they are hiérophanies, because they “show” something which is neither stone nor tree, but crowned, the ganz anderes . ”

And Eliade to add:

One will never insist enough on the paradox which all constitutes hiérophanie, even most elementary. While expressing crowned, an unspecified object becomes other thing, without ceasing being itself, because it continues to take part in its surrounding cosmic medium. A crowned stone remains a stone; apparently (more exactly: from a point of view) nothing profanes does not distinguish it from all the other stones. For those to which a stone appears crowned, its immediate reality actually transmutes on the contrary supernatural .

But except these considerations on the aspect duel of the crowned object, Eliade, in spite of a considerable work dedicated to the subject, says, on the other hand, never nothing on probable nature “this other thing”, invisible, which irradiates, indeed, of the object in question. As for the forces which determine the layman “to become a hiérophanie, or ceased being it at a given time”, Eliade recognizes explicitly that “the problem exceeds the competence of the historian of the religions”.

As, force is to note, with Daniel Dubuisson, as the approach eliadienne, taking into account its land incapacity to define “which principles, which rules, which mechanisms govern the provision and the organization” of this phenomenon, leads the historian of the religions on a dead end.

What we can affirm at present, starting from work of Eliade, in connection with the hiérophanies and of the forces who emanate from the crowned thing, it is that they exist, that they act, without more.

The relational nature of the hiérophanies

“The only thing which one can validly affirm” in connection with crowned, written Eliade, “it is that he is opposed to the layman”.

According to Albert Assaraf such an explanation remains basically with the periphery of the phenomenon. “As much, he says, to explain fire - as the aristotelicians did it formerly - by opposing it to water; ground, by opposing it to the air…”

Always according to this author, the great error of Eliade - error from which the series will rise from above mentioned dead ends - is precisely there, in its attempt to explain crowned by opposing it to the layman, like if crowned and layman were two different entities that nothing can bring closer whereas crowned and layman rise from a common phenomenon: namely propensity that have the signs to bind and to untie the men.

It is because of our innate predisposition, says it, to classify the objects of the world according to a scale of force, that a simple stone ends up indicating something of " all autre" that itself. And this " all autre" , it is the bond; it is the quantity of ligative energy which is released from a sign at a given time of its history.

Even Eliade, points out Albert Assaraf, is not without admitting implicitly the relational origin of crowned:

There remains, written Eliade, of the privileged places, qualitatively different from the others: native landscape, the site of the first loves, or a street or a corner of the first foreign city visited in youth. All these places keep, even for the man the most frankly not-monk, an exceptional, “single” quality: they are the “holy places” of its private universe, as if this being not-monk had had the revelation of another reality that in which it takes part by his daily existence .

“Aren't native Landscape”, “site of the first loves”, “a street or a corner of the first foreign city visited in youth”, there quite simply objects of initial attachments only the human spirit places very high on a vertical imaginary scale?

It appears urgent to recall, by reading these lines, that the experiment of crowned is that of the transcendence: the opening on the absolute. It is obvious that such a concept cannot be defined since finished does not have the capacity to describe the infinite one. As Rene Guénon underlined it, one can have recourse only to one negative formula: " the infinite one is what does not have a limite". To affirm that the nature of crowned is mysterious would be a pleonasm. As it is easy to understand as Mircéa Eliade had to use an approximate comparison while evoking what is only one feeling of the concept of crowned. A confusion is it possible when the eminent historian of the religions adds: " Le Monde is not a Chaos but a Cosmos (...) this divine work always keeps a transparency, it reveals spontaneously the multiple aspects of crowned. The Sky reveals directly, " naturellement" , the infinite distance, transcendence of the god. The Earth, it also is transparent: it is presented in the form of mother and a universal feeder. The cosmic rates/rhythms express the order, the harmony, permanence, fruitfulness. As a whole, Cosmos is at the same time a real, alive and crowned organization: he discovers at the same time the methods To be it and of the sacralité."

To conclude this short intervention, the work of Mr Albert Assaraf, of which the title Crowned, a quantifiable force? an assimilation of qualitative with quantitative, could advantageously be entitled is the Light announces darkness?

Current use

The term is sometimes used by extension, possibly by unbelievers, to qualify values which appear essential with a Civilization (example: the respect of the property is a crowned thing , etc).

It appears in this direction in the Marseillaise (national anthem of France) with the 6th verse:

Love crowned of the Fatherland Lead, supports our arms avengers! Freedom, Most cherished liberty, Engagements with your defenders!

Notes and bibliography

crowned Rene Guénon, " The reign of the quantity and signs of the temps" ED. Gallimard 1994.

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