A Personal Universe

"Poetry remakes and prolongs language;
every poetic language begins
by being a secret language, that is,
the creation of a personal universe,
 of a completely closed world.
The purest poetic act seems to
re-create language from an
inner experience that …
reveals the essence of things."

- Mircea Eliade (1907 - 1986)
Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy

Sacred Tree

"The sacred tree,

the sacred stone

are not adored

as stone or tree;

they are worshipped

precisely because

they are hierophanies,

because they show

something that is

no longer stone

or tree but sacred,

the ganz andere

or 'wholly other.'"

- Mircea Eliade (1907 - 1986)
Myths, Dreams and Mysteries

Art, World, Transcendence

“In kindergarten we drew three daffodils that

had just been picked out of the yard;
and while I was drawing,
my sharpened yellow pencil and the
cup of the yellow daffodils
gave off whiffs just alike.
That the pencil doing the
drawing should give off the
same smell as the flower it
drew seemed part of the art lesson.
Children, like animals, use all their
senses to discover the world.
Then artists come along and
discover it the same way, all over again.”
— Eudora Welty
Author / Photographer
(1909-2001)

“In one way or another,
the Cosmos we inhabit -
human body, house, territory,
world - communicates from
above with another
level which is transcendent.”
— Mircea Eliade
Philosopher
(1907-1986)