`titrebBeyond the Girard’s mirage : some issues in theory of religion`/titreb This article first recalls Camille Tarot’s thesis according to which a theory of religion must articulate both notions of the sacred and the structuralist symbolique, as expressed in his book Le Symbolique et le sacré (2008), probably one of the most important of recent works in the socio-anthropology of religion. However, Tarot’s perspective turns out to be colored by René Girard’s theses to such an extent that the richest of his former propositions, conceived in a more « durkheimo-maussian » lineage, are simply abandoned, while the articulation between the symbolique and the sacred become entirely absorbed in the latter, defined in terms of violence. Secondly, a critical examination of the Girardian system is in order to highlight certain important elements on the subject of which Tarot remains silent, as well as to discuss some of this system’s inherent impasses such as its reification of arbitrariness. Thirdly, this « Girardian conversion », which marks a major redirection in Tarot’s work starting 2003, finds an explanation. Close attention paid to Tarot’s rupture with his former Maussian filiation points towards important epistemological issues in anthropology in the form of a recent debate held in La Revue du MAUSS semestrielle on the nature of the prototypical symbol : gift or sacrifice ? Finally, the fourth part of this article returns to the idea according to which a theory of religion must articulate symbolique and sacred and from which Tarot’s opus gradually moved away under the influence of Girard. Examining the evolution of the notion of sacred in Marcel Mauss’ works and its posterity through the radically opposite interpretations of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Georges Bataille, this article shows how two heterogeneous analytical levels, topic and energetic, make up a fundamental epistemological divide which has structured religion theories for over a century.