The "eternal return" is an idea for interpreting religious behavior proposed by the historian Mircea Eliade; it is the belief that through ritual practices (sometimes implicitly, but often explicitly) one is able to merge with or return to the "mythical age"—the actual time of one's myths.Wendy Doniger, "Foreword to the 2004 Edition", Eliade, Shamanism, p. xiii It should be distinguished from the philosophical concept of eternal return.
Sacred and profane According to Eliade,
This concept had already been extensively formulated by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim in 1912. The scholar Jack Goody posits that it may not be universal..
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".Cosmos and History, p. 5. 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:
Where the Sacred intersects our world, it appears in the form of ideal models (e.g., the actions and commandments of gods or mythical heroes). All things become truly "real" by imitating these models. Eliade claims: "For archaic man, reality is a function of the imitation of a celestial archetype."Comos and History, p. 5 As evidence for this view, in The Myth of the Eternal Return, 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 sacred sky; for the physical Earth, there is a sacred Earth; actions are virtuous by conforming to a sacred pattern.The Myth of the Eternal Return, p. 6 These are some other examples Eliade gives: 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 [divinity of] 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".Myth and Reality, p. 6 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". Thus, the mythical age is sacred time, the only time that has value for traditional man.
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".Myth and Reality, p. 15 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".Myth and Reality, p. 34 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 Aboriginals 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".Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, p. 191 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".Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, p. 44 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.Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, p. 23 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. As an example of this phenomenon, Eliade cites church services, by which churchgoers "return" to the sacred time of Scripture: Just as a church constitutes a break in plane in the profane space of a modern city, [so] the service celebrated inside [the church] marks a break in profane temporal duration. It is no longer today's historical time that is present—the time that is experienced, for example, in the adjacent streets—but the time in which the historical existence of Jesus Christ occurred, the time sanctified by his preaching, by his passion, death, and resurrection.The Sacred and the Profane, p. 72
Cyclic time Eliade attributes the well-known "cyclic" view of time in ancient thought to the eternal return. In many religions, a ritual cycle correlates certain parts of the year with mythical events, making each year a repetition of the mythical age. For instance, Australian Aboriginal peoples 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.Myth and Reality, p. 43 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.Myth and Reality, p. 48
By periodically bringing man back to the mythical age, these liturgical cycles turn time itself into a circle. Those who perform an annual ritual return to the same point in time every 365 days: "With each periodical [ritual] festival, the participants find the same sacred time—the same that had been manifested in the festival of the previous year or in the festival of a century earlier."The Sacred and the Profane, p. 69
According to Eliade, some traditional societies express their cyclic experience of time by equating the world with the year: In a number of North American Indian languages the term world (= Cosmos) is also used in the sense of year. The Yokuts says "the world has passed," meaning "a year has gone by." For the Yuki, the year is expressed by the words for earth or world. ... The cosmos is conceived [of] as a living unity that is born, develops, and dies on the last day of the year, to be reborn on New Year's Day. ... At every New Year, time begins ab initio.The Sacred and the Profane, p. 73 The New Year ritual reenacts the mythical beginning of the cosmos. Therefore, by the logic of the eternal return, each New Year is the beginning of the cosmos. Thus, time flows in a closed circle, always returning to the sacred time celebrated during the New Year: the cosmos's entire duration is limited to one year, which repeats itself indefinitely.
These ritual cycles do more than give humans a sense of value. Because traditional man identifies reality with the Sacred, he believes that the world can endure only if it remains in sacred time. He periodically revives sacred time through myths and rituals in order to keep the universe in existence. In many cultures, this belief appears to be consciously held and clearly stated. From the perspective of these societies, 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.Myth and Reality, pp. 43–44
Human creativity To some, the theory of the eternal return may suggest a view of traditional societies as stagnant and unimaginative, afraid to try anything new. However, Eliade argues that the eternal return does not lead to "a total cultural immobility".Myth and Reality, p. 140 If it did, traditional societies would never have changed or evolved, and "ethnology knows of no single people that has not changed in the course of time". The mere fact that traditional societies have colonized new lands and invented new technologies proves that the eternal return hasn't suppressed their sense of initiative.Myth and Reality, p. 141