The Genealogy of the Sacred: Invention, Self-Deception, Plurality and Power

This article aims to trace the genealogy of the sacred through four interconnected movements, asking: how does a protective structure of meaning invert into an instrument of structural power? It argues that the sacred originated as a psychological and social instrument of comfort against the terror of mystery, chaos and death. Drawing on Eliade, Otto and Malinowski, the article reconstructs the sacred as a protective structure of meaning. It then traces a decisive inversion: the instrument created to comfort vulnerable subjects was captured by institutional and political authorities, becoming a master rather than a servant. Using Feuerbach’s theory of projection and Fromm’s analysis of enslavement to one’s own creations, the article argues that the sacred exemplifies a dialectic in which the servant becomes the lord. The third movement examines the structural and psychological conditions of self-deception, drawing on Berger and Luckmann’s dialectic of externalisation, objectivation, and internalisation, Foucault’s analysis of power and truth, and Freud and Nietzsche’s accounts of illusion and forgotten metaphor. The fourth movement explores the plurality of the sacred, arguing through Girard that this plurality is not merely sociological but structurally violent, and examines how sovereign power captures and weaponises the sacred through Schmitt, Agamben and Althusser. Engaging with Charles Taylor’s challenge to the genealogical project, the article concludes that reclaiming human agency requires not destroying the sacred but recognising it as a human projection, transforming it from a master commanding sacrifice into a servant of meaning, ethics and solidarity.