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The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History (Bollingen)

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Somewhere on the cover, or in the preface, or even in the introductions to other of his many profound works in the field of comparative religious studies, one will find Eliade's famous counsel: "I consider it the most significant of my books; and when asked in what order they should be read, I always recommend beginning with The Myth of the Eternal Return." One of the enduring monuments of twentieth century academic writing, The Myth of the Eternal Return expounds Eliade's seminal ruminations on the advent of the nuclear, or post-modern era - the naissance of our capacity for apocalyptic self-annihilation - an attempt to demonstrate in analyzable terms the relation between the foundations of the contemporary psyche to the seemingly adventitious madness which actively anticipates (and even militates in favor of) an end-time, an Armageddon, a Judgment Day, if you will. Eliade thus asks the arch-question: "What can protect us from the terror of history?"

The discussion is framed within a comparison between what Eliade deems as the distinctive difference between the ancient and modern, the archaic (or primitive) and contemporary world-view. The modern envisions reality as a series of events which fulminate in a linear, progressive history - a history which had a beginning and will have an end. The ancient experiences reality as an endless, cyclic repetition of primordial acts. "... the life of archaic man (a life reduced to the repetition of archetypal acts, that is, to categories and not to events, to the unceasing rehearsal of the same primordial myths) although it takes place in time, does not bear the burden of time, does not record time's irreversibility; in other words, completely ignores what is especially characteristic and decisive in a consciousness of time. Like the mystic, like the religious man in general, the primitive lives in a continual present. (And it is in this sense that the religious man may be said to be a `primitive'; he repeats the gestures of another and, through this repetition, lives always in an atemporal present.)"

Eliade points to the centrality of the lunar cycle in the mythological fabric woven from this perspective, which, to a degree, envelops our own world-view, however linear and eschatologically determinate. "The phases of the moon - appearance, increase, wane, disappearance, followed by reappearance after three nights of darkness - have played an immense part in the elaboration of cyclical concepts. We find analogous concepts especially in the archaic apocalypses and anthropogonies; deluge or flood puts an end to an exhausted and sinful humanity, and a new regenerated humanity is born, usually from a mythical `ancestor' who escaped the catastrophe, or from a lunar animal." Regeneration of humanity is thus always implied in its destruction. In the natural imaging, like the seasons, we assure ourselves, fall and dissolution are ever succeeded by renewal. "... just as the disappearance of the moon is never final, since it is necessarily followed by a new moon, the disappearance of man is not final either; in particular, even the disappearance of an entire humanity ... is never total ..." As the modern (historical) cultures translate this concept, "this optimism can be reduced to a consciousness of the normality of the cyclical catastrophe, to the certainty that it has a meaning and, above all, that it is never final... In the `lunar perspective', the death of the individual and the periodic death of humanity are necessary, even as the three days of darkness preceding the `rebirth' of the moon are necessary. The death of the individual and the death of humanity are alike necessary for their regeneration ... what predominates in all these cosmico-mythological lunar conceptions is the cyclical occurrence of what has been before, in a word, eternal return."

Due to the fact that the modern, predominantly Western model, of consciousness, primarily informed by Hebraic/Christian-Greek (teleological) influences, perceives time as a matrix for linear progress toward eschatological fulfillment, an end (and Eliade does not hesitate to analyze with his usual acumen - and here one must highlight the amazing passage where he claims that the concept of `ekpyrosis', the destruction of the world by fire, originates in early Iranian mythology - how Islam developed within this eschatological framework), we are forced to confront what he terms "the terror of history", the assertion (often stated by zealots of various stripes as fact) that human history, itself, must end. Recognition of this shift in human consciousness, from the archaic celebration of the repetition of nativity to the modern obsession with the limitation of mortality yields enormous explanatory power. In the face of the nuclear option, we must seriously consider how far such concepts as "resurrection", "rebirth" have tangible reality, not merely a traditionally assigned or contemplatively evoked meaning, but value as real states of affairs.

"Since the `invention' of faith, in the Judeo-Christian sense of the word (= for God all is possible), the man who has left the horizon of archetypes and repetition can no longer defend himself against that terror except through the idea of God . . . Any other situation of modern man leads, in the end, to despair. It is a despair provoked not by his own human existentiality, but by his presence in a historical universe in which almost the whole of mankind lives prey to a continual terror (even if not always conscious of it) . . .

In this respect, Christianity incontestably proves to be the religion of `fallen man': and to the extent to which modern man is irremediably identified with history and progress, and to which history and progress are a fall, both implying the final abandonment of the paradise of archetypes and repetition." These are the words with which the book concludes. If all that we are is the product of all that has been thought, they deserve the closest sort of reading by every thinking being. For the final abandonment, in the fine sense and print, means no less than the final abandonment of planet earth and the evolutionary project of humanity in full.

I am a newcomer to the scholarship of Eliade, being referred to him, through lecture, only recently by the late Terence McKenna (who explicitly mentions the universally respected academic cornerstone "Shamanism") and Stephan Hoeller. In my initial interest for finding his works I was concerned with where to enter the massive corpus, having already a keen insight into the subjects of cultural and religious psychology (that is to say, their history). By reading a fair amount of reviews on the highly rated tomes, I came across one that mentions Eliade himself recommending this particular offering as a starting place to his brand of information; this a result of Eliade being asked--as he often was, apparently--basically, `Where would one begin with you?' Having that come straight from the source, it was simply a matter of placing my order (along with "Shamanism"), and embarking upon my studies in his stream of thought.

I could regale the reader with a long and involved report, but would rather say something more to the point: I cannot praise this book too much. It comes highly recommended to anyone interested in the main differences, psychologically speaking, between our distant "ahistorical" ancestors' (from across the globe) and our own "historicistic" modes of religious worship, social activity, and spiritual reconciliation to "time". Eliade touches upon the non-Jungian archetypes that comprise the tribal structure, and how actual events became interpreted mythologically (thus meaning nothing in themselves); how archaic man was clearly freer than we, his time-bound successors--freer to approach the deity, to appease the deity, to co-create with the deity, et cetera. He concludes with how and why such a disposition, such a world is no longer available to us, being culturally resigned to the temporal realms (via clocks, and other mundane, "profane" scheduling systems). Do not be fooled by the short length--these are considerably deep waters, if one is not well-versed in the material. Eliade is damn thorough, making an astounding number of references to groups and cultures, authors and works, that might not be at the forefront of your brain or tip of your tongue (his acumen is found to be quite impressive). Aside from reasonably sober expositions, Eliade lends himself to an immensely enjoyable and accessible reading--even inspiring in certain spots. Here is the perfect balance of scholarship and entertainment; for some this will reveal itself to be another piece of "the big puzzle", for others it will be a catalyst to starting that puzzle. Read it for fun, homework, inner-work, re-read it for clarification--whatever--the value is immeasurable.

It is always a joy to read a great man's greatest book- and the author himself considered this to be the most significant of all his works. He would expand the central concepts elsewhere, but it is here that they first seem to burst forth. The way he rattles out references and examples with only a line or footnote you get the feeling that he can't be bothered with detailed analysis because he is too caught up with the central ideas and is being swept along with them. It is an infectious enthusiasm.

The central idea here is that for traditional man (man before our brief and temporary modern epoch) no act or object was real if it did not repeat or imitate an archetype. All meaning, all reality, flowed down from above. The goal was to achieve connection through the divine center with the archetype and therefore become one with the god or hero, indeed to abolish profane time itself and be transported into the mythical moment when the original model took place. This wasn't superstitious imitation; it was becoming one with true reality.

Nothing in a traditional society had any reality if it had no connection to the Divine- from buildings, cities, clothing, utensils- or your own life. The goal of life was to find the center of your being in the manner of the great heroes. Through arduous seeking and wandering through the profane and illusory earthly existence one would finally find the center and breakthrough into a life that was real, enduring, and effective.

The ultimate expression of this mode of life and behavior in the West was Platonic philosophy.

In reading this book I could not but wonder if this principle is not at the deepest core of every human being, and the reason why everything "modern" inevitably seems to be so cheap, meaningless, and illusory. Of course I am no academic specialist but rather "the cultivated man" that the author refers to in his foreward...

If I may add one more brief observation, it seems to me that an understanding of the principles of this book are key to an understanding of what 2012 really means. One of the greatest of the cosmic cycles is coming to a close. Mundane time will give way to sacred time. The actual instant of creation comes again- chaos gives way to cosmos. Regeneration is achieved by abolishing past time and reactualizing the cosmogony.

The provocative and persuasive book is a very interesting analysis of religous patterns aimed at insight into basic features of human psychology. Eliade presents humans as confronting the "terror of history," the basic facts of the irreversibility of events, the inevitable transience of human existence, and though the doesn't say so explicitly, the unavoidable fact of mortality. Eliade analyzes two ways which humans deal with this existential problem. One is the basic pattern of archaic religious thought in which there is an inevitable cycling of the cosmos with recurrent declines and regenerations of the world. The "real" world is not the quotidian reality of daily existence but a virtually platonic mythical world of the gods and heroes whose acts established the world. Through ritual and the identification of daily acts with myth, men participate in the mythic, "real" cosmos by recreating the actions of the founding heroes and gods. Against this background, Eliade suggests that the great monotheistic, salvationist religions introduce a new way of dealing with the terror by introducing a linear concept of sacred history that eliminates the cyclical nature of time, introduces God as the creator of contingent events, but makes existence bearable by guaranteeing the evenuation of a new creation and salvation of believers. At the same time, these salvationist religions include an individual relation with God, which in some ways recreates the whole of history, allowing present day believers to participate in the whole sequence. Eliade shrewdly extends this analysis to the great secular salvationist movement of the 20th century, Marxism.
Written well and based on examination of a great deal of scholarship, this is a persuasive analysis. An important criticism of Eliade is that he presents as universal what may be only common. In addition, these different modes of thought are not necessarily exclusive.

In this work, Eliade looks at patterns in comparative religion regarding cosmology, eschatology, and how archaic man saw time, history, and mythology.

While Eliade was clearly influenced to a small degree by Jung's work on archetypes, he has redefined the term and taken it to a new level. Jung regards archetypes as "primordial images," or at least primordial categories of images (a concept which owes as much to Kant as Plato), while Eliade sees them as exemplary patterns which archaic peoples immitate in their own actions.

Eliade examines these exemplary facets, and builds a picture not only of how archaic peoples viewed both the cosmos and history, but also how our ideas of modern history have developed against the traditional and cyclic ideas of time. This work is thus important for anyone trying to understand older, traditional cultures.

There are a few places where the translation could be improved ("Sanguinary civil wars?" Why does that give me an image of calm, smiling people hacking eachother to death?)

Overall, highly recommended.

A prolix review for such a poignantly brief work would be pointless. We know of authors who have composed a seminal work which is disordered, short, magmatic, extremely questionable, but genial and pregnant: Nietzsche on Greek tragedy, for instance. This is a similar case, and Eliade's most important intuitions are presented in this readable treatise: the distinction between linear and circular time, and therefore the hierophany, the manifestation of the sacred, as elimination of the profane and ontological communion with the true archetype, which existed, out of time, before time, ab illo tempore, in the world of myth, and therefore truly existed--and can exist again, can give true being to the profane by filling it of sacred. No better explanation/interpretation of premodern religious sentiments.

So far, this is a very good book that has a unique vision of religion. While most religion texts focus on either A) Christianity, B) Eastern Philosophy, or C) Atheist Polemics, this is an excellent study on the actual anthropological and existential functioning of religion as an entity. Along with Ludwig Feuerbach and Daniel Dennett, this stands as a very good, detached, objective study of religion as far as not being a polemic or an apology. I would definitely recommend this to anyone interested in general religious studies, especially if you are an Atheist and still have an interest in non-Dawkins literature on religion.

"Myth of the Eternal Return" is typically considered a vital text to anyone interested in sociological,anthropological and psychological approaches to religion.

Eliade is deeply original in his analysis, and I found he transformed my understanding of religious expression and ritual.

I disagree entirely with the hints that other reviewers have made here that Eliade was some kind of white supremacist -- Eliade was indeed, a fascist in his youth, with sympathies for Codrineau's Iron Guard -- but, there is not a trace of elitism or fascism in his work, latent or otherwise, and he writes with balance and the distanced, detached objectivity of a dedicated scholar. There is no proof at all that Eliade continued being a fascist after his youthful stage.

It is true that Eliade was friends with Julius Evola,who was certainly an elitist,and arguably a fascist -- but what does that prove ? Friendship with Evola makes Eliade a fascist ? Sorry, but that is absurd : indeed, Evola was also close friends with Triztan Tzara, a Jewish avant garde nihilist, Hugo Ball, a German avant gardist mystic anarchist and anti fascist, and Hulsuenbeck, a nihilist who despised fascists. So you see , being close to Evola does not make Eliade a fascist.

Why would a racial elitist fascist, if that is where you presume Eliade's "sympathies lie", then go on to devote his entire life to understanding the mysticism and ritual of non white peoples, from looking closely at the 'cosmos' of Arab Jews to the holistic one ness of Korean Shaman to the insights of Sri Lankan Buddhists and on to the visions of Manicheans and Sufis ?

Eliade was a man of great insight -- not a slow witted brown shirted jackbooted stiff armed deluded supremacist.

I sometimes have to tell stories to my students to make then understand where we live in this world, and this has been a great resource. I really think more people should read Eliade for an understanding of what makes us human. If you are working with tribal college, tribal people, or even just some of those lost types, this can help ground all faiths and beliefs. Eliade was the premiere religious historian of his age, and is well respected. this is now part of my permanent collection of books on this topic.