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 Re: Ritual 234 messages | Select a forum: |
| > Sacred is a personal perception dependent on a chosen, adopted or enforced belief system. OK, so much for it having no meaning for you... I guess you're saying it refers to something for some people, but you don't agree with that something. Subtle but important difference. > Sacredness disperses with disbelief. One definition of it does - again, I don't think sacredness has to imply blind belief. There's the argument, as ever, that the weight of this connotation is such that the word has been corrupted for other uses (such as the one I was trying to get across), and we should just not use it to save confusion. Well, I think our vocabulary would wither pretty quickly if we took this as a rule. Context is all. Aboriginal languages are usually heavily polysemic - many meanings contained within single words. Hell, all languages contain polysemy to some extent. I think the reason "primitive" languages can withstand a greater weight of polysemy is that their oral cultures means communication is always places within the context of, at least, the body. Often - and especially for important communications regarding sacred matters - the context includes the rhythm and melody of song, visual media such as body paint and rock carvings, the behavioural medium of ritual, etc. The written word, in its barest plain text form that we're dealing with here, lacks all of this. Hair-splitting ensues. However, I think this happens more than it needs to as we're so used to dictionary-definition one-to-one semantic correspondences that we've lost a lot of the appreciation for context that oral cultures possessed. I think the problem here is that the way I think Paulus used the word "sacred" isn't even in the dictionary, even though it expresses something that has a certain currency among more than just a few people. I think its main common meanings are "sacrosanct, inviolable" and more generally "set apart, special". To say everything's special - to the everyday mind - is pretty nonsensical. However, there are states of consciousness - well documented, and probably experienced by most people here at least once or twice, thanks to Albert Hoffman and Mother Nature - where precisely the sense of numinosity and specialness that only "sacred" things have in everyday life DOES imbue EVERYTHING. A shorthand for this is often "All is sacred". Usually the context keys you in to the fact that this is being referred to, though there's sometimes a tendency to ignore the context cues, apply another sense of the word, and declare the statement to be nonsense. Reply | with quote | Posted by gyrus 13th January 2006ce 20:29 In reply to: Re: Ritual (PeterH) |
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