MYTH of the ETERNAL RETURN (FORWARD)

Eliade, M. (1974) The myth of the eternal return or, cosmos and history.  Princeton, NJ: Princeton Press

(ix) Foreword

Purpose: to examine the fundamental concepts of archaic societies-societies which, although they are conscious of a certain form of “history,” make every effort to disregard it...it is their revolt against concrete, historical time, their nostalgia for a periodical return to the mythical time of the beginning of things, to the “Great Time.” [See Golden Age}  The meaning and function of what we have called “archetypes and repetition” disclosed themselves to us only after we had perceived these societies’ will to refuse concrete time, their hostility toward every attempt to autonomous “history,” that is, at history not regulated by archetypes.  This dismissal, this opposition, is not merely the effect of the conservative tendencies of primitive societies, as this book proves.  In our opinion, it is justifiable to read in this depreciation of history (that is, of events without  transhistorical models), and in this rejection of profane, continuous time, a certain metaphysical “valorization” of human existence.   But this valorization is emphatically not that which certain post-Hegelian philosophical currently – notably Marxism, historicism, and existentialism—have sought to give to it since the discovery of “historical man,” of the man who is insofar as he makes himself, within history.

(x) The problem of history as history, however, will not be directly approached in this essay.  Our chief intent has been to set forth certain governing lines of force in the speculative filed of archaic societies.  It seemed to us that a simply presentation of this field would not be without interest, especially for the philosopher accustomed to finding his problems and the means of solving them in the texts of classic philosophy or in the situations of the spiritual history of the West.  With us, it is an old conviction that Western philosophy is dangerously close to “provincializing” itself (if the expression be permitted): first by jealously isolating itself in its own tradition and ignoring, for example, the problems and solutions of Oriental thought; second by its obstinate refusal to recognize any “situations” except those of the man of the historical civilizations, in defiance of the experience of “primitive” man, of man as a member of the traditional societies.  We hold that philosophical anthropology would have something to learn from the valorization that pre-Socratic man (in other words, traditional man) accorded to his situation in the universe.  Better yet: that the cardinal problems of metaphysics could be renewed through a knowledge of archaic ontology.  In several previous works, especially in our Patterns in Comparative Religion,  we attempted to present the principles of this archaic ontology, without claiming, of course, to have succeeded in giving a coherent, still less an exhaustive, exposition of it..

(xi) ...our concern has been to draw the attention of the philosopher, and of the cultivated man in general, to certain spiritual positions that, although they have been transcended  in various regions of the globe, are instructive for our knowledge of man and for man’s history itself.

Preface

(xiii)... The essential theme of my investigation bears on the image of himself formed by the man of the archaic societies and on the place that he assumes in the cosmos.  The chief difference between the man of the archaic and traditional societies and the man of the modern societies with their strong imprint of Judeo-Christianity lies in the fact that the former feels himself indissolubly connected with the Cosmos and the cosmic rhythms, whereas the latter insists that he is connected only with History.  

(xiv) Of course, for the man of the archaic societies, the Cosmos too has a “history,” if only because it is the creation of the gods and is held to have been organized by supernatural beings or mythical heroes.  But this “history” of the Cosmos and of human society is a “sacred history,” preserved and transmitted through myths.  More than that, it is a “history” that can be repeated indefinitely, in the sense that the myths serve as models for ceremonies that periodically reactualize the tremendous events that occurred at the beginning of time.  The myths preserve and transmit the paradigms, the exemplary models, for all the responsible activities in which men engage.  By virtue of these paradigmatic models revealed to men in mythical times, the Cosmos and society are periodically regenerated.  Later on in this book I discuss the effects that this faithful reproduction of paradigms and this ritual repetition of mythical evens will have on the religious ideology of the archaic peoples.  It is not difficult to understand why such an ideology makes it impossible that what we today call a “historical consciousness” should develop.

In the course of this book I have used the terms “exemplary models,” “paradigms,” and “archetypes” in order to emphasize a particular fact—namely, that for the man of the traditional and archaic societies, the models for his institutions and the norms for his various categories of behavior are believed to have been “revealed” at the beginning of time, that, consequently, they are regarded as having a superhuman and “transcendental” origin.  In using the term “archetype,” I neglected to specify that I was not referring to the archetypes described by Professor C.G. Jung.   This was a regrettable error.  For the use, in an entirely different meaning, a term that plays a role of primary importance in Jung’s psychology could lead to confusion.  I need scarcely say that, for Professor Jung, the archetypes are structures of the collective unconscious.  But in my book I nowhere touch upon the problems of depth psychology nor do I use the concept of the collective unconscious.  As I have said, I use the term “archetype,” just as Eugenio d’Ors does, as a synonym for “exemplary model” or “paradigm,” that is, in the last analysis, in the Augustinian sense.  But in our day the word has been rehabilitated by Professor Jung, who ahs given it a new meaning: and it is certainly desirable that the term “archetype” should no longer be used in its pre-Jungian sense unless the fact is distinctly stated.

(3)  The Problem

This book undertakes to study certain aspects of archaic ontology – more precisely, the conceptions of being and reality that can be read from the behavior of the man of the premodern societies.  The premodern or “traditional” societies include both the world usually known as “primitive” and the ancient cultures of Asia, Europe, and America.  Obviously, the metaphysical concepts of the archaic world were not always formulated in theoretical language; but the symbol, the myth, the rite, express, on different places and through the means proper to them, a complex system of coherent affirmations about the ultimate reality of things, a system that can be regarded as constituting a metaphysics.  It is, however, essential to understand the deep meaning of all these symbols, myths, and rites, in order to succeed in translating them into our habitual language.  If one goes to the trouble of penetrating the authentic meaning of an archaic myth or symbol, one cannot but observe that this meaning shows a recognition of a certain situation in the cosmos and that, consequently, it implies a metaphysical position.  It is useless to search archaic languages for the terms so laboriously created by the great philosophical traditions: there is every likelihood that such words as “being,” “nonbeing,” real,” “unreal,” “becoming,” “illusory,” are not to be found in the language of the Australians or of the ancient Mesopotamians. But if the word is lacking, the thing is present; only it is “said “—that is, revealed in a coherent fashion—through symbols and myths.

If we observe the general behavior of archaic man, we are struck by the following fact: neither the objects of the external world nor human acts, properly speaking, have any autonomous intrinsic value.  Objects or acts acquire a value, 

(4) and in so doing become real, because they participate, after one fashion or another, in a reality that transcends them.  Among countless stones, one stone becomes sacred—and hence instantly becomes saturated with being—because it constitutes a hierophany, or posses man, or again because it commemorates a mythical act, and so on.  The object appears as the receptacle of an exterior force that differentiates it from its milieu and gives it meaning and value.  This force may reside in the substance of the object or in its form; a rock reveals itself to be sacred because its very existence is a hierophany; incompressible, invulnerable, it is that which man is not.  It resists time; its reality is coupled with perenniality.  Take the commonest of stones; it will be raised to the rank of “precious, that is impregnated with a magical or religious power by virtue of its symbolic shape or its origin; thunderstone, held to have fallen from the sky; pearl, because it comes from the depths of the sea.  Other stones will be sacred because they are the dwelling place of the souls of ancestors, (India, Indonesia), or because they were once the scene of a theophany (as the bethel that served Jacob for a bed), or because a sacrifice or an oath has consecrated them.

(5) In the particulars of his conscious behavior, the “primitive,” the archaic man, acknowledges no act which has not been previously posited and lived by someone else, some other being who was not a man, What he does has been done before.  His life is the ceaseless repetition of gestures initiated by others.  The crude product of nature, the object fashioned by the industry of man, acquire their reality, their identity, only to the extent of their participation in a transcendent reality.  The gesture acquires meaning, reality, solely to the extent to which it repeats a primordial act.

We have first sought out examples likely to show, as clearly as possible, the mechanism of traditional thought;..It is essential to understand this mechanism thoroughly.  

world.”

3.  Finally, rituals and significant profane gestures which acquire the meaning attributed to them, 

1.  Facts which show us that, for archaic man, reality is a function of the imitation of a celestial archetype.

2.  Facts which show us how reality is conferred through participation in the “symbolism of the Center”: cities, temples, houses become real by the fact of being assimilated to the “center of the and materialize that meaning, only because they deliberately repeat such and such acts posited ab origine by gods, heroes and ancestors.

(6)  Celestial Archetypes of Territories, Temples, and Cities.

According to Mesopotamian beliefs, the Tigris has its model in the star anunit and the Wuphrates in the star of the Swallow  A Sumerian text tells of the “place of the creation of the gods,” where “the –divinity of] the flocks and grains” is to be found.  For the Ural-Altaic peoples the mountains, in the same way, have an ideal prototype in the sky.  In Egypt, places and nomes were indetified in terrestrial geogrpahy.  

In Iranian cosmology of the Zarvanitic tradition , “every terrestrial phenomenon, whether abstract or concrete, corresponds to a celestial, transcendent invisible term, to an “idea” in the Platonic sense.  Each thing, each notion presents itself under a double aspect: that of menok and that of getik.  There is a visible sky: hence there is also a menok sky which is invisible (Bundahisn, Ch. I).  Our earth corresponds to a celestial earth.  Each virtue practiced here below, in the getah has a celestial counterpart which represents true reality....the year, prayer...in short, whatever is manifested in the getah, is at the same time menok.  The creation is simply duplicated.  From the cosmogonic point of view the cosmic stage called menok precedes the stage getik.”  [Fn states:  H.S. Nyberg, “Questions de cosmogonie et de cosmologie mazdeennes, “ Journal Asiatique (Paris), CCXIX (July-Sept., 1931, pp. 35-36.  But, as Henry Corbin rightly remarks, “we must take care not to reduce the contrast they ‘the menok and the getik] express to a Platonic schema pure and simple.  We are not dealing precisely with an opposition between idea and matter, or between the universal and the perceptible.  Menok should, rather, be translated by a celestial, invisible, spiritual, but perfectly concrete state, Getik designates an earthly invisible, material state, but of a matter which is in itself wholly luminous, a matter immaterial in relation to the matter that we actually know.”  Corbin, “Cyclical Time in Mazdaism and Ismailism,” in Man and Time (New York and London, 1957), p. 118.

(7)  The temple in particular—pre-eminently the sacred place—had a celestial prototype.  On Mount Sinai, Jehovah shows Moses the “form” of the sanctuary that he is to build for him:  “According to all that I shew thee, after the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of all the instruments thereof, even so shall ye make it...And look that thou make them after their pattern, which was shewed thee in the mount”  (Exodus 25:9, 40).  And when  David gives his son Solomon the plan for the temple buildings, for the tabernacle, and for all their utensils, he assures him that “All this...the Lord made me understand in writing by his hand upon me, even all the works of his pattern” (I Chronicles 28:19).  Hence he had seen the celestial model [fn CF. the rabbinical traditions in Raphael Patai, Man and Temple (London, 1947), pp. 130 ff.

The earliest document referring to the archetype of a sanctuary is Gudea’s inscription concerning the temple he built at Lagash.  In a dream the king sees the goddess Nibada, who shows him a tablet on which the beneficent stars are named, and a god who reveals the plan of the temple to him.  Cities too have their divine prototypes.  All the Babylonian cities had their archetypes in the constellations:

(8)  Sippara in Cancer, Nineveh in Ursa Major, Assur in Arcturus, etc.  Sennacherib has Nineveh built according to the “form...delineated from distant ages by the writing of the heaven-of-stars.”  Not only does a model precede terrestrial architecture, but the model is also situated in an ideal (celestial) region of eternity.  This is what Solomon announces:  “Thou gavest command to build a sanctuary in the holy mountain, And an altar in the city of thy habitation, A copy of the holy tabernacle which thou preparedst aforehand from the beginning.”

(9)  We find the same theory in India:  all the Indian royal cities, even the modern ones, are built after the mythical model of the celestial city where, in the age of gold (in illo tempore), the Universal Sovereign dwelt. And like the latter, the king attempts to revive the age of gold, to make a perfect reign a present reality—an idea which we shall encounter again in the course of this study.  Thus for, example, the palace-fortress of Sigiriya in Ceylon, is built after the model of the celestial city Alakamanda and is “hard to ascent for human being” (Mahavastu, 29,2).  Plato’s ideal city likewise has a celestial archetype (Republic, 592b; cf. 5003).  The Platonic “forms” are not astral; yet their mythical region is situated on supraterrestrial planes (Phaedrus, 247, 250).

(10-11) re: colonialization is about uncolonized territory is pre-creation.  Rituals are done to bring territory into Creation.  [Very insightful].

(12)  The Symbolism of the Center

The architectonic symbolism of the Center may be formulated as follows:

1.  The Sacred Mountain where heaven and earth meet—is situated at the center of the world.

(According to Indian beliefs, Mount Meru rises at the center of the world, and above it shines the polestar.)

(14) 2.  Every temple or palace—and, by extension, every sacred city or royal residence—is a Sacred Mountain, thus becoming a center. (The names of the Babylonian temples and sacred towers themselves testify to their assimilation to the cosmic mountain...Babylon was a Bab-ilani, a gate of the gods,” for it was there that the gods descended to earth.)   

3.  Being an axis mundi, the sacred city or temple is regarded as the meeting point of heaven, earth, and hell (the underworld – no hell).  

FULL TEXT: (http://users.uoa.gr/~cdokou/MythLitMA/Eliade-EternalReturn.pdf)