COSMOS an D HISTORY

COSMOS an d HISTORY The Myth of the Eternal Return MIRCEA ELIADE TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY WILLARD R, TRASK HAEPER TORCHROOKS Harper & Brothers * Publishers * New York COSMOS AND HISTORY Copyright 1964 by Bollingen Foundation Inc. Copyright 1959 by Harper & Brothers Printed in the United States of America Att rights in this book are reserved. No part of the book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written per- mission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in, critical articles and reviews. For information address Harper & Brothers 49 East BSrd Street, New York 16, N. Y. This translation of Le Mythe de Veternel retour: archetypes et repetition (Paris, Librairie Gallimard, 1949) was originally published in 1954 by Pantheon Books under the title The Myth of the Eternal Return and is reprinted by arrangement with the Bollingen Foundation. Library of Congress catalog card number: 59-6648 TO Tantzi AND Bratus Coste in Memory of our Evenings at the Chalet Chaimite PREFACE TO THE TORCHBOOK EDITION I AM delighted that this little book is to be republished in the Harper Torchbook series, especially because it has given me the opportunity to restore the original title. The manuscript that I began in May, 1945, was headed Cosmos and History. It was only later that I changed its title to Archetypes and Repetition. But finally, at the suggestion of the French publisher, I made Archetypes and Repetition the subtitle, and the book was published in 1949 as The Myth of the Eternal Return (Le Mythe de reternel retour). This has sometimes given rise to misunderstandings. For one thing, the archaic ideology of ritual repetition, which was the central subject of my study, does not always imply the "myth of the eternal " return. And then too, such a title could lead the reader to suppose that the book was principally concerned with the celebrated Greek myth or with its modern reinterpre- tation by Nietzsche, which is by no means the case. 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 Judaeo-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. Of course, for the man of the archaic societies, the Cosmos Vll PREFACE TO THE TORCHBOOK EDITION too has a "history," if only because it is the creation of the gods and is held to have been organized by super- " " natural 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" than can be repeated indefinitely, in the sense that the myths serve as models for cere- monies 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 events 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 con- sciousness" should develop. In the course of the 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 "transcen- dental" origin. In using the term "archetype," I neglected to specify that I was not referring to the archetypes described by Professor C. GL Jung. This was a regrettable error. For to 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 viii PREFACE TO THE TOBCHBOOK EDITION 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 has 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. An author is seldom satisfied with his work ten years after finishing it. There is no doubt that, if I were writing this little book now, it would be very different. Yet such as it is, with all its faults of commission and omission, I still consider it the of books and most significant my ; when I am asked in what order they should be read, I always recommend beginning with Cosmos and History. To some of the problems treated in it I have returned in my later publications, especially in Images et symboles (Paris, 1952) and Mythes, reves et mysteres (Paris, 1957). A new presentation of archaic mythology periodically reactualized as "sacred history" is outlined in my recent book on initiations, Birth and Rebirth (Harper, 1958). MIBOEA. ELIADE Department of History of Religions Federated Theological Faculty University of Chicago November, 1958 IX FOREWORD HAD WE not feared to appear overambitious, we should have given this book a subtitle: Introduction to a Philosophy of History. For such, after all, is the purport of the present essay; but with the distinction that, instead of proceeding to a speculative analysis of the historical phenomenon, it examines the fundamental concepts of archaic societies societies which, although they are conscious of a certain form of "history," make every effort to disregard it. In studying these traditional societies, one characteristic has especially struck us: it is their revolt for a against concrete, historical time, their nostalgia periodical return to the mythical time of the beginning of things, to the "Great Time." The meaning and function of what we have called "archetypes and repetition" disclosed themselves to us con- only after we had perceived these societies' will to refuse crete time, their hostility toward every attempt at autonomous This "history," that is, at history not regulated by archetypes. con- dismissal, this opposition, are not merely the effect of the servative tendencies of primitive societies, as this book proves. of In our opinion, it is justifiable to read in this depreciation transhistorical and history (that is, of events without models), a certain meta- in this rejection of profane, continuous time, existence. But this valoriza- physical "valorization" of human tion is emphatically not that which certain post-Hegelian and ex- philosophical currents notably Marxism, historicism, of istentialism have sought to give to it since the discovery "historical man," of the man who is insofar as he makes himself, within history. xi FOREWORD The problem of history as history, however, will not be chief intent has been to directly approached in this essay. Our set forth certain governing lines of force in the speculative field of archaic societies. It seemed to us that a simple presentation of this field would not be without interest, especially for the his and the means philosopher accustomed to finding problems or in the of solving them in the texts of classic philosophy 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 and by jealously isolating itself in its own tradition 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 anthro- pology 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 Traite d'histoire des religions, we attempted to present the of principles of this archaic ontology, without claiming, course, to have succeeded in giving a coherent, still less an exhaustive, exposition of it. This study, likewise, does not attempt to be exhaustive. Addressing ourselves both to the philosopher and to the eth- nologist or orientalist, but above all to the cultivated man, to the nonspecialist, we have often compressed into brief state- ments what, if duly investigated and differentiated, would de- mand a substantial book. Any thoroughgoing discussion would have entailed a marshaling of sources and a technical language that would have discouraged many readers. But instead of furnishing specialists with a series of marginal comments upon xii FOREWORD their particular problems, our concern has been to draw the attention of the philosopher, and of the cultivated man in gen- eral, 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.

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