Archetype: A universal symbol. According to Jung, archetypes are "universal psychic tendencies or 'primordial images' of a 'collective unconscious' that, when given individual or cultural forms--in dreams, art, or literary expressions such as myths and fairy tales, and later, literature--became universally familiar human motifs." "For [Eliade] archetypes are 'sacred paradigms' or 'exemplary models' that characterize the sacred or transcendent aspect of life that springs from primordial 'myth time'--archetypal time--as opposed to the profane aspect of life, that which is dominated by material things and linear time" (Leeming 27)

Axis mundi: The "central pivot of the earth or of the entire cosmos" ("Axis Mundi")

Cosmogony: The creation of an ordered world

Cosmos: An ordered world

Chaos: A disordered world

Consecrate: To make sacred

Hierophany: The "act of manifestation of the sacred," that is, "that something sacred shows itself to us" [italics in the original] (Eliade, Sacred and the Profane 11)

Imago mundi: Image of the world (Eliade, Sacred and the Profane 42)

Lingam: The phallus; in archetypal imagery, "all images whose length exceeds their diameter (towers, mountain peaks, snakes, knives, lances, and swords) [are seen] as male or phallic symbols" (Guerin, et al. 128)

Mons veneris: Literally, the mountain of Venus; a reference to the pubic mound; in mythology, the sacred mountain is the mons veneris of the earth.

Numen: Latin for divine will or power; used to refer to a local power or spirit ("numen, n.")

Omphalos: The navel of the earth

Profane: That which is ordinary, without order, chaos, the secular world (Eliade, Sacred and Profane 20; Eliade, Patterns 1)

Puer aeternus: Literally, the divine child; the child who grows to be a hero in the hero myths (Leeming 105)

Sacred: That which is ordered, transcendent, the cosmos as it was created, the religious (Eliade, Sacred and the Profane 20; Eliade, Patterns 1)

Theophany: A "visible manifestation to humankind of God or a god" ("Theophany")

Threshold: The boundary between the sacred and the profane

Trickster: Tricksters are "figures of play" (Leonard and McClure 247) whose "playfulness can carry with it serious, even tragic or transcendent, overtones. . . . embodying all the infinite ambiguities of what it is to be alive in the world" (Leonard and McClure 250). The trickster "'combines in his nature the sacredness and sinfulness, grand gestures and pettiness, strength and weakness, joy and misery, heroism and cowardice that together form the human character'" (Erdoes and Ortiz qtd. in Leonard and McClure 250).

Yoni: the womb; in archetypal symbolism, "all concave images (ponds, flowers, cups or vases, caves, and hollows) [are seen] as female or womb symbols" (Guerin, et al. 128)