When the sacred manifests itself in any hierophany, there is not only a break in the homogeneity of space; there is also a revelation of an absolute … - Mircea Eliade

"Yet it is worth noting that in this example we never witness a complete desacralization of the world, for in the Far East what is called the "esthetic emotion" still retains a religious dimension, even among intellectuals. But the example of the miniature gardens shows us in what direction and by what means the desacralization of the world is accomplished. We need only imagine what an esthetic emotion of this sort could become in a modern society, and we shall understand how the experience of cosmic sanctity can be rarefied and transformed until it becomes a purely human emotion — that, for example, of art for art's sake."

The crises of modern man are to a large extent religious ones, insofar as they are an awakening of his awareness to an absence of meaning.

The celestial god is not identified with the sky, for he is the same god who, creating the entire cosmos, created the sky too. This is why he is called Creator, All-powerful, Lord, Chief, Father, and the like. The celestial god is a person, not a uranian epiphany. But he lives in the sky and is manifested in meteorological phenomena — thunder, lightning, storm, meteors, and so on. This means that certain privileged structures of the cosmos — the sky, the atmosphere — constitute favorite epiphanies of the supreme being; he reveals his presence by what is specifically and peculiarly his — the majesty (majestas) of the celestial immensity, the terror (tremendum) of the storm.