Sacred contagion is the belief that spiritual properties within an object, place, or person may be passed to another object, place, or person, usually by direct contact or physical proximity. While the concept of sacred contagion has existed in numerous cultures since before recorded history, the term "sacred contagion" originated with French sociologist Émile Durkheim, who introduced it in his book The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.

An example of sacred contagion is chapters 11 through 15 in the Book of Leviticus found in the Bible and Torah. Leviticus specifies which animals are considered spiritually clean and unclean, and defines as unclean both women during menstruation and men after a nocturnal emission. The text gives many examples of sacred contagion brought about by contact with these spiritually unclean people and things.

The original meaning of the adjective profane (Latin: "in front of", "outside the temple") referred to items not belonging to the church, e.g. "The fort is the oldest profane building in the town, but the local monastery is older, and is the oldest building," or "besides designing churches, he also designed many profane buildings".

As a result, "profane" and "profanity" has therefore come to describe a word, expression, gesture, or other social behavior which is socially constructed or interpreted as insulting, rudeness, vulgarism, desecrating, or showing disrespect. Other words commonly used to describe profane language or its use include: cuss, curse, pejorative language, swearing, expletive, oath, bad word, dirty word, strong language, irreverent language, obscenity language, choice words, blasphemy language, foul language, and bad or adult language. In many cultures it is less profane for an adult to curse than it is for a child, who may be reprimanded for cursing.

The object holds within itself a series of meanings and values, both imminent and latent. The Berlin Wall, long standing as a symbol of closure, restriction and confinement, came down as a symbol of movement, release and freedom. The Berlin Wall embodies each and every one of these meanings, whilst latent within it stir the possibility of yet more, as now, unseen symbolic possibilities. In Roman law objects belonging to the Gods were ascribed as sacred. Sacred objects exist removed from the world of humans, being neither able to move amongst us through trade nor to be offered to us as security or pleasure. To move an object beyond the sphere of human law one must consecrate it. Inversely, those objects that were restored to human use must be profaned. The profane act diminishes the object in the eyes of the Gods. Sacrifice stands as the apparatus of this separation between sacred and profane objects. To sacrifice an object is to push it onward to a holy realm. To mediate its movement into the hands of the Gods. The Berlin Wall is every object that represents closure, it is also every object that represents release. The Berlin Wall has the capacity to represent both these meanings as they are contained within other objects. This capacity of transcendent symbolism holds true for all objects which share a meaning in common with The Berlin Wall: whether this meaning is latent or imminent. The act of sacrifice breaches the possible space between the imminent and the latent, between that which is profane and that which is sacred. Through sacrifice The Berlin Wall was inverted as a political symbol. Yet for it to move through the stages of profane and sacred, it must always have held within itself symbolic truths from both profane and sacred realms. All objects capable of becoming sacred hold within themselves a latent meaning from across the grand divide. Sacrifice is the unveiling of that which is latent.