The sacralizing project extends beyond the Divine Being and the sacraments of Christian faith to “objects and phases of life of special reverence arising from religions in general.” For Emile Durkheim, this project revolved around the construction of a “totem system,” a “symbolically coherent, deeply primitive, powerfully religious enterprise organized around a violent identity-crystallizing mechanism.” The totem itself is both the emblem of the state’s agreement to be a state, and the foundation of the national security identity. In Durkheim’s words: “It is at once the symbol of the God and of the society.”

Exactly what it is depends on the history of the nation-state in question. Popular understandings of beliefs, flags, events, places and personages naturally are at the fore. In each case, they may  be approached, but never fully comprehended. They are, ultimately, “unknowable, untouchable, and unviewable.” Under certain conditions, they effect consubstantiation whereby the totem’s power is transferred to other persons and things—so that they, too, enjoy its holy status. Marvin and Ingle remind us: “It is not like religion; it is religion.”