Mircea Eliade uses many terms in and from several languages in his classic book, The Sacred and the Profane [Harvest/HBJ, 1959], which applied Rudolf Otto's theory of numinosity to a variety of religious phenomena. It deals with aspects of religion and thus is really rather narrower than the title, "The Nature of Religion," might suggest. Here is a selection of his vocabulary that may be unfamiliar to students (who no longer have routinely taken Classical languages like Latin and Greek, let alone Arabic). This is based on a shorter list compiled by my colleagues Lisa Raskind and Gunar Freibergs at Los Angeles Valley College. Words used as foreign words are in italics, English words and coinages are not.
| ab initio | from the beginning (Latin) |
| ab origine | at/from the beginning (Latin) |
| aiones, aeva | eons, ages (Greek & Latin) |
| anthropo-cosmic | human-universal (Greek) |
| anthropophagy | eating people, cannibalism (Greek) |
| autochthony | orgin or birth in the land itself (Greek) |
| axis mundi | center of the world, cosmic pillar (Latin) |
| cipher | a code (cf. decipher) |
| coincidentia oppositorum | coincidence of opposites (Latin) |
| conjugal | having to do with marriage, especially the sexual relationship of marriage |
| consecrate/sanctify | ritually render sacred |
| cosmogony | the mythic creation (birth) of the world (Greek) |
| cosmological | having to do with the universe, its structure |
| demiurge | ("people's worker") a creator deity or a subordinate, non-ultimate creator deity or being (Greek, from Plato's Timaeus) |
| desacralize | render or become unsacred (/profane) |
| epiphany | appearance, manifestation of anything, but especially something divine, as of the infant Jesus on January 6 (Greek) |
| existential | a subjective sense of reality or existence, having to do with Existentialism |
| fecundator | one who makes someone/thing else fertile (Latin) |
| ganz andere | wholly other (German) |
| gesta | exploits, deeds (Latin) |
| Hellenistic | the history, civilization, etc. of the Greek states and rulers from Alexander the Great (d. 323 BC) to the Roman conquest of Egypt (30 BC) |
| hic et nunc | here and now (Latin) |
| hierogamy | sacred marriage (Greek) |
| hierophany | appearance of the sacred (Greek) |
| historicism | the unfolding of history interpreted to reveal the meaning of human life, reality, good and evil, etc. and to provide a (relativistic) standard for value judgments |
| homogeneous | the same everywhere or throughout (Greek) |
| homologous | alike or parallel in function or origin (Greek) |
| homo religiosus | religious man (Latin) |
| hydrogeny | birth from water (Greek) |
| illud tempus | that time (Latin) |
| imago mundi | image, model, microcosm of the world (Latin) |
| imitatio dei | in imitation of the gods/God (Latin) |
| immolate | burn up, cremate |
| in aeternum | in eternity (Latin) |
| incommensurability | when two quantities, ideas, values, etc. cannot be interpreted or compared in terms of each other or in terms of anything else |
| in illo tempore | in that time (Latin) |
| in principio | in the beginning -- the first words of the Vulgate Bible (Latin) |
| in statu nascendi | in the process of being born (Latin) |
| irruption | breaking into (compare "eruption") |
| macrocosm | a large image, model, or counterpart (Greek) |
| marabout | North African dervish/mystic/ holy man (Arabic) |
| microcosm | a small image, model, or counterpart, corresponding to the macroscosm (Greek) |
| numen | the might of a deity, majesty, divinity (Latin), especially as interpreted by Rudolf Otto |
| ontology | the theory of existence or reality (Greek) |
| ontological | having to do with existence or reality (Greek) |
| ontophany | appearance of Being (Greek) |
| orbis terrarum | the circle of the lands (Latin) |
| paradigmatic | in the manner of an authoritative example (Greek) |
| Parmenidean | having to do with Being/existence (Parmenides) |
| parthenogenesis | virgin birth (Greek) |
| phenomenology | the description of appearances/phenomena/facts (Greek) |
| plenitude | fullness (Latin plenum) |
| post mortem | after death, sometimes a synonym for "autopsy" (Latin) |
| retrogression | movement backwards |
| sacrality | sacredness (Latin sacer) |
| sacralize | render of become sacred |
| sidereal | having to do with the stars (Latin sidus) |
| soteriological | having to do with salvation or a savior (Greek, sôtêr) |
| tellurian | having to do with the earth (Latin tellus) |
| templum | space, place, sacred place, temple (Latin) |
| terra mater | mother earth (Latin) |
| transmundane | beyond the world (Latin) |
| theophany | appearance of the divine, gods, or God (Greek) |
| uranian | having to do with the sky/heaven (Uranus in Latin, from Ouranos in Greek) |
| valence | degree of value or power |
| valorization | attribute or endow with value |
| Weltanschauung | idea of the world, world view (German) |
| ziggurat | Sumerian/Babylonian temple pyramid |
