The archaeological sacred
Culture starts with the originating worship. It is the worship which celebrates and rhythms the difference between nature and the culture. However archaic it is, the worship rite is archaeological praxis of humanization. It is about continuing here and now and efficiently acting again and again the sacral bio-cosmic drama which guarantees ultimately the ontological consistency. Worship brings ritually up to date the original drama and the victory of life over death. The first human praxis is already sacral praxis. The specific human living is dialectically conquered through this praxis. Without the originating `magic', there would never have been something like `science'! In its manner the rite introduces cleavage and division in nature. The tool is initially something ritual.
In the beginning is the cosmic life. In a universal ‘hiero-gamy’ it generates all the living beings. So goes the original sacred drama that the myth celebrates permanently through time and whose rite brings up to date an infinite effectiveness. It goes on with the fascination of a vital force inexhaustibly active and effective, permanently victorious of degradation and death. It goes on with the frightening of a possible risk of exhaustion and degradation, possibly starting from a human disproportion.
Archaeologically “crowned” is lived like the guaranteeing one of the density to be it always threatened of losing and “liquidation” in the “layman”. The effort of man will thus be to bring the being tirelessly back into its sacral center where it must ‘reload’ his force. For that various worship techniques are created.
The sacred is active source of the symbol. It informs in its depths the symbolizing powers at the root of any symbolized symbol. And with the symbol begins the human efficiency over the world.
The rite structures the space, the time, the being and the coherent action of men. So are the rites of passage which govern becoming personal and with the social functions. So are the rites of the vegetation which give rise to agriculture. So are the totemic rites which govern the domestication of animals. So are the rites of the fire without which the metallurgy would never have started.
Man as a quantifier and measurer of the world is physically magic! Léonardo da Vinci registers it perfectly in the proportion of the square and the circle. As of Egyptian and Greek Antiquity the golden section gives the key of its harmony. And the `modulor' of Le Corbusier defines its postural dynamics.
One of the large cuts contemporary to the emergence of the human difference is that which takes place between the pure one and the impure one. This originating sacral division crosses the world vertically and marks its radical axiology. It is about a lot more than simple `qualities'. It(s about forces, and these sacral forces can be actively antagonistic, clashing and fighting. The pure one must be victorious.
The sacral force determines and governs the ontological levels. But force always signifies conquest, on a basis of a permanent threat. Because sacral force can be lost! There is an astonishing perception of the fundamental entropy of the world! Sacral entropy is identically ontological entropy! There has to be an upstream dynamics.
Other big differences will arise up from this originating antinomy between pure and impure; for example the difference between fault and sin, between shame and repentance…
Contemporary to the emergence of man there is also the taboo. It marks and protects the great difference without which the human one would not be. Taboo forbids. At the same time it affirms. He is ‘no’ in the middle of ‘yes’. It reveals the deep and fundamental prohibition of a yes without a no, the prohibition of a kinship without a distance, the prohibition of an encounter without a difference, the prohibition of an intensity without a gaping. The place of the taboo is always in a node of sacral intensity, where the sky and the ground meet dangerously and where the original drama is acting with more intensity.
Very important is the node of originating bio-cosmic sexuality, the sacral mystery par excellence. But taboo is found everywhere there is life. Life in its sacral divine or celestial source: totem, ancestors, women, priest, kings, chiefs, wizards… Life in its extremes: deaths, spirits… The threatened life: solstices, eclipses, diseases, heroes, hunters, founders… Life in regeneration: menstrual cycle, healer, initiation, circumcision… Intense moments of the life: festival, birth, death, sowing, harvest… Places of vital concentration: ‘omphalos’, sex, caves, sacred stones, sacred trees, temples…
It is in the sacrificial rite (latin: sacrum facere) that the sacral crisis reaches its climax. From its most antiquated forms up is replayed this crisis without which the human reality would not be. Here appears the deep sacral dialectics, the crossing of negation towards the ‘other’ one. Good is destroyed so that the best can be. Value is destroyed so that in its gaping appears another and greater value. Life is sacrificed to overcome death. In the extreme rupture occurs a more extreme plenitude. The sacrifice actualizes this mysterious dialectics through which the putting to death becomes victorious of this death itself.
In this acting again where life passes through death to live again more immortal, man emerges with the unconscious knowledge of the originating victory. Its cult, as primitive it may be seen, participates of the original ‘bio-gony’ and brings its effectiveness up to date.
The sacrifice, in all its forms, testifies of this unconscious knowledge that life can be fully life only through a `sacrificial negation'. You find always the deeply humanizing dynamics of negation: outdistance, difference, no, not yet, not immediately, further, higher… A negative space opens. The sacred one is founder of such a dialectically antithetic space, a space of call and provocation. In this space, the emptiness is more relevant than fullness.
Culture arises through emptiness, in the gaping of what is useful. The prehistoric tool of the Acheulean period which one calls `almond' is from the start on different as the other rollers found in nature. It is `sign' of culture, signs of humanity. It was incontestably manufactured in the sight of a technical utility. Its shape looks logical. You can explain it and even justify it. This form could only be that. In fact it is much more. This form in `drop of water' is harmonious. It is beautiful. There is a ‘plus’ just for nothing. Just for the pleasure. Just for ‘culture’!
This mysterious ‘more’ comes from ’less’. It arises in the gaping of usefulness. It comes in the negation. It comes in the difference. Its value comes from elsewhere.
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