Time, Sacred

Sacred time is, in the strictest sense of the term sacred, time set apart. It is time that is separated from profane, everyday time, distinguished by its connection with the deeper, holy, extraordinary experience of life. Sometimes described as “the breaking forth of the eternal in time,” the experience of sacred time has been conceived variously as a presence in which the past and future collapse into an “Eternal Now,” or the complete conflation of past, present, and future into something that might be referred to as timelessness or the collapse of time. It includes notions of a sense of time “bending” or “stretching,” particularly during private or public rituals; accompanying psychological or physical trauma; or resulting from deep encounters with an extraordinary event, object, or being. The experience of sacred time neither necessarily suspends nor eradicates “common” time. There are, however, instances where cultic beliefs regarding either a cosmic or individual end-time include an enlightenment that takes place outside of time, or where the ritual or spontaneous experience of the eternal includes an experience of the transcendence of time. An iconic experience of this transcendence of common time is represented, for example, where Buddhist iconography depicts the Buddha as sitting under a bo tree just before his enlightenment, then as having disappeared from under the bo tree upon his enlightenment, and finally as sitting under the bo tree again upon his decision to return to work toward the enlightenment of the world.

For the nonbeliever, the concept of sacred time is as a study in religious anthropology. For the believer, it is a study in piety. Whereas none are exempt from the biases of their own concepts of time to render a purely scientific assessment of sacred time, rigorous studies of sacred time do seek to avoid either religious or secular doctrinarism.

Whether grounded in philosophical or religious commitments, the main aspects of sacred time broadly include “cosmic sacred time” or the understanding of sacred time as it relates to the origins and ends of the universe, and “human sacred time” or the historical experience of human communities with their calendars of ritual time including feast, fast, and worship.