ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the harsh irony and synchronicity of the sacred returning in an age of terror. What sense can we make of the sacred rising in this context? The chapter argues that terrorism is a demonic parody of the way in which the sacred is ‘exploding’ into consciousness. Terrorist cells and cults make use of the initiatory model as they induct adherents into their cause. This too is a parody of the way in which the sacred calls us to participate in its emergence. What we are witnessing are distorted and malign forms of the sacred, and discernment is required as the world experiences a new encounter with the holy. Derrida and Jung anticipated that religiousness would return in violence because it had been suppressed with violence. The religious, Derrida prophesied, would ‘interrupt history’ and ‘tear history apart’.
