Jacob’s ladder leads from earth to heaven: but the angels in his vision ascended and descended. It was a two-way traffic that he saw. The patriarch’s vision and its sequel were crucial for the destiny of the Jews. But they are, too, a primary statement of what the sacred means. The episode provides a cardinal text for the rites of consecration in the Roman liturgy, for Jacob, when he awoke from sleep, poured oil on the stone on which his head had rested and called the place Bethel, the house of God. A vow is made, and the symbol of it is the anointed stone, ‘set up for a title’ in the place where God has been.

The sacred, in this primeval sense, always speaks of God to man. Something has been set aside and offered to God: something sealed and ratified, usually by rites of consecration. It declares now a reality other than its own, for the thing—metal, stuff or stone—has been taken out of the context of profane use to point to a mystery itself inaccessible to man.

St Thomas, in his long and perceptive discussion of the ceremonial precepts of the Old Law, points out that ‘the divine worship regards two things: namely, God who is worshipped; and men, who worship him. Accordingly God, who is worshipped, is confined to no bodily place; wherefore there was no need, on his part, for a tabernacle or temple to be set up.