Analyzing and confronting different 20th century theories proposed to explain the manifestation of the sacred (Ricoeur, Otto, Heidegger, Gumbrecht, Godelier, Freud, Zizek, Caillois), the author points out an opposition of two approches: the acknowledgement of pure phenomenality and irrationality of the numinosum (which is suppposed to be only descriptable), and the attempts to rationalize it by reducing to combinative semantic processes. The attitude of contemporary sciences towards the manifested sacred hesitates between a synthetical contemplation and an analytical deconstruction.