Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“In cultural scenes during which the participants interact and consume food, for example, or even execute other human beings or immolate themselves, these acts exist in relation to the scene as a whole and are not therefore violations of sacred deferral. Rituals are scenes, but the originary scene is not (yet) a ritual, and it is its constitution as such that provides us with the originary model of the sacred as the “intention” of the deferral of appropriation, which from the perspective of the participants cannot have been at first the object of a human intention, since no prior model of the ultimate scenic configuration existed. But to consider the scene (which will become the basis of a ritual in which its unfolding is intended from the outset) as providential in itself is to view it as the intentional object of the sacred, hence to attribute to the sacred the quality of intentionality by which we define the human. Intentionality is not simply will, but the will to produce a certain effect, not out of “instinct” but as an at least potentially thematized reality. But we cannot assume that the deferral originally effected by the “sense of the sacred” was performed in anticipation of the constitution of the human community that our hypothesis proposes as its result.”

— Eric Gans, On Providence · Saturday, August 26th, 2023 · Chronicles of Love & Resentment