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The "Eternal return" is, according to the theories of religious historian Mircea Eliade, a belief, expressed (sometimes implicitly but often explicitly) in religious behavior, in the ability to return to the mythical age, to become contemporary with the events described in one's myths. It should be distinguished from the philosophical concept of eternal return, which holds that, statistically speaking, all arrangements of matter in the universe must necessarily recur if given an infinite amount of time.

Sacred and profane

According to Eliade,

"all the definitions given up till now of the religious phenomenon have one thing in common: each has its own way of showing that the sacred and the religious life are the opposite of the profane and secular life."

This sharp distinction between the Sacred and the profane is Eliade’s trademark theory. According to Eliade, traditional man distinguishes two levels of existence: (1) the Sacred, and (2) the profane world. (Here "the Sacred" can be God, gods, mythical ancestors, or any other beings who established the world's structure.) To traditional man, things "acquire their reality, their identity, only to the extent of their participation in a transcendent reality". Something in our world is only "real" to the extent that it conforms to the Sacred or the patterns established by the Sacred.

Hence, there is profane space, and there is sacred space. Sacred space is space where the Sacred manifests itself; unlike profane space, sacred space has a sense of direction:

"In the homogeneous and infinite expanse, in which no point of reference is possible and hence no orientation is established, the hierophany reveals an absolute fixed point, a center."

Where the Sacred intersects our world, it appears in the form of ideal models. All things become "real" by imitating these models. Eliade claims: "For archaic man, reality is a function of the imitation of a celestial archetype." He cites a belief of the Iranian Zurvanites. The Zurvanites believed that each thing on Earth corresponds to a sacred, celestial counterpart: for the physical sky, there is a metaphysical sky; for the physical Earth, there is a metaphysical Earth; actions are virtuous by conforming to a metaphysical pattern. Besides the Zurvanites, Eliade gives two additional examples:

"According to Mesopotamian beliefs, the Tigris has its model in the star Anunit and the Euphrates in the star of the Swallow. A Sumerian text tells of the 'place of the creation of the gods,' where 'the the flocks and grains' is to be found. For the Ural-Altaic peoples the mountains, in the same way, have an ideal archetype in the sky. In Egypt, places and nomes were named after the celestial 'fields': first the celestial fields were known, then they were identified in terrestrial geography."

Further, there is profane time, and there is sacred time. According to Eliade, myths describe a time that is fundamentally different from historical time (what modern man would consider "normal" time). "In short," says Eliade, "myths describe … breakthroughs of the sacred (or the ‘supernatural’) into the World". The mythical age is the time when the Sacred entered our world, giving it form and meaning: "The manifestation of the sacred ontologically founds the world".

Origin as power

According to Eliade, in the archaic worldview, the power of a thing resides in its origin, so that "knowing the origin of an object, an animal, a plant, and so on is equivalent to acquiring a magical power over them". The way a thing was created establishes that thing's nature, the pattern to which it should conform. By gaining control over the origin of a thing, one also gains control over the thing itself.

Eliade concluded that, if origin and power are to be the same, "it is the first manifestation of a thing that is significant and valid". The Sacred first manifested itself in the events of the mythical age; hence, traditional man sees the mythical age as the foundation of value.

Sacred time

Eliade's theory implies that as the power of a thing lies in its origin, the entire world's power lies in the cosmogony. If the Sacred established all valid patterns in the beginning, during the time recorded in myth, then the mythical age is sacred time — the only time that contains any value. Man's life only has value to the extent that it conforms to the patterns of the mythical age.

The religion of the Australian Aborigines is supposed to contain many examples of the veneration paid to the mythical age. Just before the dawn of the first day, the Bagadjimbiri brothers emerged from the Earth in the form of dingos, and then turned into human giants whose heads touched the sky. Before the Bagadjimbiri came, nothing had existed. But when the sun rose, and the brothers began naming things, the "plants and animals began really to exist". The brothers met a group of people and organized them into a civilized society. The people of this tribe — the Karadjeri of Australia — still imitate the two brothers in many ways:

"One of the Bagadjimbiri stopped to urinate That is the reason why the Australian Karadjeri stop and take up a special position in order to urinate. The brothers stopped and ate a certain grain raw; but they immediately burst into laughter, because they knew that one ought not eat it so and since then men imitate them whenever they have this grain cooked. The Bagadjimbiri threw a primal (a kind of large baton) at an animal and killed it—and this is how men have done it ever since. A great many myths describe the manner in which the brothers Bagadjimbiri founded all the customs of the Karadjeri, and even their behavior."

The mythical age was the time when the Sacred appeared and established reality. For traditional man, Eliade argues, (1) only the first appearance of something has value; (2) only the Sacred has value; and, therefore, (3) only the first appearance of the Sacred has value. Because the Sacred first appeared in the mythical age, only the mythical age has value. According to Eliade’s hypothesis, "primitive man was interested only in the beginnings … to him it mattered little what had happened to himself, or to others like him, in more or less distant times". Hence, traditional societies express a "nostalgia for the origins", a yearning to return to the mythical age. To traditional man, life only has value in sacred time.

Myths, rituals, and their purpose

Eliade also explained how traditional man could find value for his own life (in a vision of where all events occurring after the mythical age cannot have value or reality); he indicated that, if the Sacred's essence lies only in its first appearance, then any later appearance must actually be the first appearance. Thus, an imitation of a mythical event is actually the mythical event itself, happening again — myths and rituals carry one back to the mythical age:

"In imitating the exemplary acts of a god or of a mythic hero, or simply by recounting their adventures, the man of an archaic society detaches himself from profane time and magically re-enters the Great Time, the sacred time."

Myth and ritual are vehicles of "eternal return" to the mythical age. Traditional man's myth- and ritual-filled life constantly unites him with sacred time, giving his existence value. In many religions, a ritual cycle correlates certain parts of the year with mythical events, making the year an endless repetition of the mythical age. For instance, Australian Aborigines annually reenact the events of the "Dreamtime":

"The animals and plants created in illo tempore by the Supernatural Beings are ritually re-created. In Kimberley the rock paintings, which are believed to have been painted by the Ancestors, are repainted in order to reactivate their creative force, as it was first manifested in the mythical times, at the beginning of the World."

Every New Year, the people of Mesopotamia reenacted the Enuma Elish, a creation myth, in which the god Marduk slays Tiamat, the primordial monster, and creates the world from her body. They correlated the birth of the year with the mythical birth of the world.

These ritual cycles do more than give humans a sense of value: because traditional man identifies reality with the Sacred, and only sacred time is real to him, he believes that the world can only endure if it remains in sacred time and if he returns to the myth itself. He retells myths and reenacts the mythical age in order to keep the universe in existence. In many cultures, this belief appears to be consciously held and clearly stated. Eliade notes that the world

"must be periodically renewed or it may perish. The idea that the Cosmos is threatened with ruin if not annually re-created provides the inspiration for the chief festival of the California Karok, Hupa, and Yurok tribes. In the respective languages the ceremony is called 'repair' or 'fixing' of the world, and, in English, 'New Year'. Its purpose is to re-establish or strengthen the Earth for the following year or two years."

"Terror of history"

According to Eliade, this yearning to remain in the mythical age causes a "terror of history". Traditional man desires to escape the linear march of events, empty of any inherent value or sacrality. In an appendix to Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, Eliade suggests that the abandonment of mythical thought and the full acceptance of linear, historical time, with its "terror", is one of the reasons for modern man's anxieties. Traditional societies escape this anxiety to an extent, as they refuse to completely acknowledge historical time.

Terror of the eternal return

In general, according to Eliade, traditional man sees the eternal return as something positive, even necessary. However, in some religions, such as Buddhism and certain forms of Hinduism, the traditional cyclic view of time becomes a source of terror:

"In certain highly evolved societies, the intellectual élites progressively detach themselves from the patterns of traditional religion. The periodical resanctification of cosmic time then proves useless and without meaning. But repetition emptied of its religious content necessarily leads to a pessimistic vision of existence. When it is no longer a vehicle for reintegrating a primordial situation that is, when it is desacralized, cyclic time becomes terrifying; it is seen as a circle forever turning on itself, repeating itself to infinity."

When the world becomes desacralized, the traditional cyclic view of time is too firmly entrenched to simply vanish. It survives, but in a profane form (such as the myth of reincarnation). Time is no longer static, as for the Karadjeri, for whom almost every action imitates a mythical model, keeping the world constantly in the mythical age. Nor is time cyclical but sacred, as for the ancient Mesopotamians, whose ritual calendar periodically returned the world to the mythical age. Rather, for some Dharmic religions, "time was homologized to the cosmic illusion (māyā)".

For most of traditional humanity, linear history is profane, and sacredness lies in cyclic time. But, in Buddhism, Jainism, and some forms of Hinduism, even cyclic time has become profane. The Sacred cannot be found at the beginning of history; it exists outside all history. Thus, human fulfilment does not lie in returning to a certain time (the mythical age), but in escaping from time altogether, in "a transcendence of the cosmos." In these religions, the "eternal return" is less like the eternal return in most traditional societies (for whom time has an objective beginning, to which one should return) and more like the philosophical concept of eternal return — an endless cosmic cycle, with no beginning and, thus, no inherently sacred time.

References in popular culture

In T. A. Barron's The Lost Years of Merlin (the "Sacred Time" chapter), Merlin's mother says that "stories" — specifically, myths — are "real enough to help live. And work. And find the meaning hidden in every dream, every leaf, every drop of dew." She indicates that "they dwell in sacred time, which flows in a circle. Not historical time, which runs in a line."

Notes

1. Patterns in Comparative Religion, pg. 1
2. Comos and History, pg. 5
3. The Sacred and the Profane, pg. 21
4. Comos and History, pg. 5
5. Cosmos and History, pg.6
6. Cosmos and History, pg. 6
7. Myth and Reality, pg. 6
8. The Sacred and the Profane, pg. 21
9. Myth and Reality, pg. 15
10. Myth and Reality, pg. 34
11. Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, pg. 191
12. Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, pg. 191
13. Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, pg. 44
14. Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, pg. 44
15. Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, pg. 23
16. Myth and Reality, pg. 43
17. Myth and Reality, pg. 48
18. Myth and Reality, pp. 43-44
19. The Sacred and the Profane, pg. 107
20. The Sacred and the Profane, pg. 109
21. The Sacred and the Profane, pg. 109
22. Barron, pg. 36
23. Barron, pg. 36

References

• Barron, T. A., The Lost Years of Merlin. New York: Ace Books, 1999
• Eliade, Mircea:
  • Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1959
  • Myth and Reality. Trans. Willard R. Trask. New York: Harper & Row, 1963
  • Myths, Dreams and Mysteries. Trans. Philip Mairet. New York: Harper & Row, 1967
  • Patterns in Comparative Religion, New York: Sheed & Ward, 1958
  • The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. Trans. Willard R. Trask. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961

• Mythemes
• Philosophy of religion