It would be frightening to think that in all the cosmos, which is so harmonious, so complete and equal to itself, that only human life is happening randomly, that only one's destiny lacks meaning. - Mircea Eliade
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