ABSTRACT
The mythic and symbolic sacred is camouflaged and unrecognized in the modem profane. This unrecognizability and the conscious rejection of the sacred by modem culture have resulted in impoverished dangerous forms of Westem provincialism. The West is desperately in need of renewal. Eliade proposes that modems can achieve this cultural, spiritual, and philosophical renewal through creative hermeneutics, by rediscovering essential symbolic and mythic stmctures, and through a creative encounter and dialogue with the mythic, sacred other.
