Mesopotamian Religion

8. Excerpts

Mircea Eliade
1958 Patterns

Iman Nagy – March 2021

Mircea Eliade 1958 Patterns

Eliade 1958 Patterns
Patterns in Comparative Religion,
London: Sheed and Ward

[About this author, cf. also the section History of the Discipline]

ToC of Eliade 1958 Patterns

Table of Contents

APPROXIMATIONS: THE STRUCTURE AND MORPHOLOGY OF THE SACRED

THE SKY AND SKY GODS

THE SUN AND SUN-WORSHIP

THE MOON AND ITS MYSTIQUE

THE WATERS AND WATER SYMBOLISM

SACRED STONES: EPIPHANIES, SIGNS AND FORMS

THE EARTH, WOMAN AND FERTILITY

VEGETATION: RITES AND SYMBOLS OF RE-GENERATION

AGRICULTURE AND FERTILITY CULTS

SACRED PLACES: TEMPLE, PALACE, "CENTRE OF THE WORLD"

SACRED TIME AND THE MYTH OF ETERNAL RENEWAL

THE MORPHOLOGY AND FUNCTION OF MYTHS

THE STRUCTURE OF SYMBOLS

General topic(s)
of the book

     “This book deals with a twofold problem: first, what is religion and, secondly, how far can one talk of the history of religion? As I doubt the value of beginning with a definition of the religious phenomenon, I am simply going to examine various 'hierophanies' taking that term in its widest sense as anything which manifests the sacred. We shall, therefore, only be able to consider the problem of the history of religious forms after having examined a certain number of them.
     I have begun this study with an account of certain cosmic hierophanies, the sacred revealed at different cosmic levels – sky, waters, earth, stones. I have chosen these classes of hierophany not because I consider them the earliest (the historical problem does not yet arise), but because describing them explains on the one hand the dialectic of the sacred, and on the other what sort of forms the sacred will take.
     For instance, a study of the hierophanies of sky and water will provide us with data enabling us to understand both exactly what the manifestation of the sacred means at those particular cosmic levels, and how far those hierophanies constitute autonomous forms. I then go on to the biological hierophanies (the rhythm of the moon, the sun, vegetation and agriculture, sexuality, etc.), then local hierophanies (consecrated places, temples, etc.) and lastly myths and symbols.
     Each chapter will present one particular modality of the sacred, a series of relationships between man and the sacred, and, in these relationships, a series of 'historical moments'” (extracted from the Author’s foreword, pp. xi-xiv).

Extended summary of Eliade 1958 Patterns

Eliade offers the reader a thorough analysis of hierophany in the truest sense of the word – the manifestation of the sacred and its relative contexts. As opposed to focusing on the particularisms and their relationship to a structured whole within a religious tradition, he attempts to express the holistic aspects of human psychology that distinguishes the sacred from the mundane. Throughout the text, Eliade often provides a historical analysis which may have impacted the tradition in discussion, offering insight into linguistic and social relationships. His intention to reveal patterns is evidenced in the order of the table of contents, where he begins the first set of chapters discussing hierophanies related to elements occurring in nature. The second set reflects humanity’s relationship to these elements and their manifestations in religious symbolism. The last set of chapters focus on the philosophical repercussions of the manifestations of religion in the context of the spatio-temporal reality of existence, i.e. time, fate, the function of myths, etc. Eliade stresses that his analysis and revelation of patterns is not meant to imply a diachronic evolution through time from simple to complex. Rather, his aim is to reveal synchronic relationships between concepts and expressions of the sacred as they manifest in different times and locations throughout the world.

Excerpts from Eliade 1958 Patterns

NOTE: The notes in square brackets and in smaller font are by mDP.

Agriculture and intellectual advancement

Topic	Page	Excerpt
Agriculture and intellectual advancement	p. 361	We are used to thinking that the discovery of agriculture made a radical change in the course of human history by ensuring adequate nourishment and thus allowing a tremendous increase in the population. But the discovery of agriculture had decisive results for a quite different reason. It was neither the increase of the population nor the overabundance of food that determined the course of history, but rather it was the theory that man evolved with that discovery. What he himself saw in the grain, what he himself learnt from dealing with it, what he understood from seeing how the seed lost its identity in the earth, it was all this that made up his decisive lesson. Agriculture taught man the fundamental oneness of organic life; and from that revelation sprang the simpler analogies between woman and field, between the sexual act and sowing, as well as the most advanced intellectual syntheses: life as rhythmic, death as a return, and so on. These syntheses were essential to man's development, and were possible only after the discovery of agriculture.

Birth and creation

Topic	Page	Excerpt
Birth and creation	p. 412	Whether or not it includes a hierogamy, the creation myth, in addition to its important function as model and justification for all human activities, also constitutes the archetype of a whole complexus of myths and ritual systems. Every idea of renewal, of beginning again, of restoring what once was, at whatever level it appears, can be traced back to the notion of "birth" and that, in its turn, to the notion of “the creation of the cosmos”.

The centre of the world

Topic	Page	Excerpt
The centre of the world	p. 382	In short, all the symbolisms and equations we have looked at prove that, however different sacred space may be from profane, man cannot live except in this sort of sacred space. And when there is no hierophany to reveal it to him, he constructs it for himself according to the laws of cosmology and geomancy. Thus, although the “centre” is conceived as being “somewhere” where only the few who are initiated can hope to enter, yet every house is, nonetheless, thought of as being built at this same centre of the world. We may say that one group of traditions evinces man's desire to place himself at the “centre of the world” without any effort, while another stresses the difficulty, and therefore the merit, of attaining it.

Origin of children

Topic	Page	Excerpt
Origin of children	p. 243	What makes it quite certain that the hierophany of the earth was cosmic in form before being truly chthonian (which it became only with the appearance of agriculture), is the history of the beliefs as to the origin of children. Before the physiological causes of conception were known, men thought that maternity resulted from the direct insertion of the child into a woman's womb. We are in no way concerned here with the question of whether what entered the woman's womb was thought to be already a fetus – which up till then had lived its life in caves, crevices, wells, trees and such – or whether they thought it merely a seed, or even the “soul of an ancestor”, or what they thought it was. What we are concerned with is the idea that children were not conceived by their father, but at some more or less advanced stage of development, they were placed in their mother's womb as a result of a contact between her and some object or animal in the country round about.

From primitive divinities to agricultural divinities

Topic	Page	Excerpt
From primitive divinities to agricultural divinities	p. 261	Agricultural divinities took the place of the primitive divinities of the soil, but this substitution did not involve the abolition of all the primeval rites. Underlying the "form" of the agricultural Great Goddesses, we can still detect the presence of the "mistress of the place", the Earth-Mother. But the newer divinities are clearer in feature, more dynamic in their religious structure. Their history starts to involve emotion – they live the drama of birth, fertility and death. The turning of the Earth-Mother into the Great Goddess of agriculture is the turning of simple existence into living drama.

Plant symbolism and the drama of life

Topic	Page	Excerpt
Plant symbolism and the drama of life	p. 325	The forces of plant life are an epiphany of the life of the whole universe. Because man's lot is cast in with that nature and he thinks he can use that life for his own ends, he takes “signs” of vegetation and uses them (Maypoles, blossoming branches, the marriage of trees, and all the rest) or venerates them (“sacred trees” and so on). But there has never been any real vegetation cult, any religion solely built upon plants and trees. Even in the most “specialized” religions (the fertility cults, for instance), when plant life has been adored and used in the cult, other forces of nature have too. What are generally known as “vegetation cults” are really seasonal celebrations which cannot be accounted for merely in terms of a plant hierophany, but form part of far more complex dramas taking in the whole life of the universe.

The moon and “eternal returning”

Topic	Page	Excerpt
The moon and "eternal returning"	p. 184	It might be said that the moon shows man his true human condition; that in a sense man looks at himself, and finds himself anew in the life of the moon. That is why the symbolism and mythology of the moon have an element of pathos and at the same time of consolation, for the moon governs both death and fertility, both drama and initiation. Though the modality of the moon is supremely one of change, of rhythm, it is equally one of periodic returning; and this pattern of existence is disturbing and consoling at the same time for though the manifestations of life are so frail that they can suddenly disappear altogether, they are restored in the "eternal returning" regulated by the moon. Such is the law of the whole sublunary universe. But that law, which is at once harsh and merciful, can be abolished; and in some cases one may “transcend” this periodic becoming and achieve a mode of existence that is absolute.

Longing for Paradise

Topic	Page	Excerpt
Longing for Paradise	p. 434	Man, whatever else he may be free of, is forever the prisoner of his own archetypal intuitions, formed at the moment when he first perceived his position in the cosmos. The longing for Paradise can be traced even in the most banal actions of the modern man. Man's concept of the absolute can never be completely uprooted: it can only be debased. And primitive spirituality lives on in its own way not in action, not as a thing man can effectively accomplish, but as a nostalgia which creates things that become values in themselves: art, the sciences, social theory, and all the other things to which men will give the whole of themselves.

Nature is never purely “natural”

Topic	Page	Excerpt
Nature is never purely "natural"	p. 38	We shall look at a series of divine figures of the sky, but first it is necessary to grasp the religious significance of the sky as such. There is no need to look into the teachings of myth to see that the sky itself directly reveals a transcendence, a power and a holiness. Merely contemplating the vault of heaven produces a religious experience in the primitive mind. This does not necessarily imply a "nature-worship" of the sky. To the primitive, nature is never purely "natural". The phrase "contemplating the vault of heaven" really means something when it is applied to primitive man, receptive to the miracles of every day to an extent we find it hard to imagine. Such contemplation is the same as a revelation. The sky shows itself as it really is: infinite, transcendent. The vault of heaven is, more than anything else, "something quite apart" from the tiny thing that is man and his span of life. The symbolism of its transcendence derives from the simple realization of its infinite height. “Most High” becomes quite naturally an attribute of the divinity. The regions above man's reach, the starry places, are invested with the divine majesty of the transcendent, of absolute reality, of everlastingness. Such places are the dwellings of the gods; certain privileged people go there as a result of rites affecting their ascension into heaven; there, according to some religions, go to the souls of the dead. The “high” is something inaccessible to man as such; it belongs by right to superhuman powers and beings; when a man ceremonially ascends the steps of a sanctuary, or the ritual ladder leading to the sky he ceases to be a man; the souls of the privileged dead leave their human state behind when they rise into heaven.

The moon and pattern

Topic	Page	Excerpt
The moon and pattern	p. 156	The moon measures [on this topic cf. also Buccellati 2014 Profondo], but it also unifies. Its “forces” or rhythms are what one may call the “lowest common denominator” of an endless number of phenomena and symbols. The whole universe is seen as a pattern, subject to certain laws. The world is no longer an infinite space filled with the activity of a lot of disconnected autonomous creatures: within that space itself things can be seen to correspond and fit together. All this, of course, is not the result of a reasoned analysis of reality, but of an ever clearer intuition of it in its totality. Though there may be a series of ritual or mythical side-commentaries on the moon which are separate from the rest, with their own somewhat specialized function (as, for instance, certain mythical lunar beings with only one foot or one hand, by whose magic power one can cause rain to fall), there can be no symbol, ritual or myth of the moon that does not imply all the lunar values known at a given time. There can be no part without the whole.

Nostalgia for eternity

Topic	Page	Excerpt
Nostalgia for eternity	p. 408	The repetition of archetypes shows the paradoxical wish to achieve an ideal form (the archetype) in the very framework of human existence, to be in time without reaping its disadvantages, without the inability to “put back the clock”. Let me point out that this desire is no “spiritual” attitude, which depreciates life on earth and all that goes with it in favour of a “spirituality” of detachment from the world. On the contrary, what may be called the “nostalgia for eternity” proves that man longs for a concrete paradise, and believes that such a paradise can be won here, on earth, and now, in the present moment. In this sense, it would seem that the ancient myths and rites connected with sacred time and space may be traceable back to so many nostalgic memories of an “earthly paradise”, and some sort of “realizable” eternity to which man still thinks he may have access.

The pearl

Topic	Page	Excerpt
The pearl	p. 440	It is easy to see that what constitutes the manifold significance of the pearl is primarily the framework of symbolism surrounding it. Whether we interpret that symbolism so as to stress its sexual elements, or whether we choose to trace it back to a prehistoric ritual pattern, the one thing that remains certain, is its cosmological nature. In all primitive societies the emblems and functions of woman retain a cosmological value. We cannot say with any precision at what moment in prehistory the pearl acquired the different prerogatives I have listed. But we can be certain that it did not become a magic stone till the time when man became conscious of the cosmological pattern of Water, Moon, and Change, till he discovered the rhythms of nature governed by the moon. The “origins” of the symbolism of the pearl, then, were not empirical but theoretical. Only afterwards did that symbolism come to be interpreted and “lived” in varying ways, at last to degenerate into the superstition and economic-cum-aesthetic value that is all the pearl stands for to-day.

Plant symbolism

Topic	Page	Excerpt
Plant symbolism	p. 266	Before attempting to find out – if indeed it is possible to find out – in what millennium, in what civilization and by what means a given plant symbolism became widespread, before even distinguishing the various ritual frameworks embodying it, what matters to us at the moment is to find out the religious function of trees, of plants, and of vegetal symbols in religious life and the economy of the sacred, and then to see what that function reveals and what it means; to see, in fact, to what extent we are justified in seeking to find a coherent pattern beneath the apparent polymorphousness of tree symbolism. What we must find out is this: is there close connection among the significations – apparently so diverse that “vegetation” assumes, the meanings that give it its value in the various contexts in which it is found: cosmology, myth, theology, ritual, iconography, folklore? Obviously the coherence we are looking to find must be one which the very nature of the thing imposes on our mind; a coherence displaying itself – wholly or in part – from whatever level we look at it, whether it be that of popular rite (such as the May procession at the beginning of spring), or perhaps that of the ideogram of the “cosmic tree” in Mesopotamian art or in Vedic writings.

Primeval water

Topic	Page	Excerpt
Primeval water	p. 188	Principle of what is formless and potential, basis of every cosmic manifestation, container of all seeds, water symbolizes the primal substance from which all forms come and to which they will return either by their own regression or in a cataclysm. It existed at the beginning and returns at the end of every cosmic or historic cycle; it will always exist, though never alone, for water is always germinative, containing the potentiality of all forms in their unbroken unity. In cosmogony, in myth, ritual and iconography, water fills the same function in whatever type of cultural pattern we find it; it precedes all forms and upholds all creation.

Continuity from “primitives” to Christianity

Topic	Page	Excerpt
Continuity from "primitives" to Christianity	p. 463	Here, at the conclusion of this, I should like simply to declare that almost all the religious attitudes man has, he has had from the most primitive times. From one point of view there has been no break in continuity from the “primitives” to Christianity. The dialectic of the hierophany remains one, whether in an Australian churinga or in the Incarnation of the Logos. In both cases we are faced with a manifestation, vastly different obviously, of the sacred in a fragment of the universe; in both is implicit the problem of the “personality” or “impersonality” of the epiphany.

Definition of “religion”

Topic	Page	Excerpt
Definition of "religion"	p. 1	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 the secular life. But as soon as you start to fix limits to the notion of the sacred you come upon difficulties both theoretical and practical. For, before you attempt any definition of the phenomenon of religion, you must know where to look for the evidence, and, first and foremost, for those expressions of religion that can be seen in the "pure state" – that is, those which are “simple" and as close as possible to their origins.

Modalities of the Sacred

Topic	Page	Excerpt
Modalities of the Sacred	pp. 6-8	How far – considering the diversity and tenuousness of our evidence – are we right to speak of different "modalities of the sacred"? That those modalities exist is proved by the fact that a given hierophany may be lived and interpreted quite differently by the religious elite and by the rest of the community... Which is the true meaning of Durga and Siva – what is deciphered by the initiates, or what is taken up by the mass of the faithful? In this book I am trying to show that both are equally valuable; that the meaning given by the masses stands for as authentic a modality of the sacred manifest in Durga or Siva as the interpretation of the initiates. And I can show that the two hierophanies fit together – that the modalities of the sacred which they reveal are in no sense contradictory, but are complementary, are parts of a whole. That is my warrant for giving equal weight to what records an experience of the masses, and what reflects only the experience of an elite. Both categories are necessary to enable us not only to trace the history of a hierophany, but, even more important, to establish the modalities of the sacred which that hierophany manifests.

Sacred places

Topic	Page	Excerpt
Sacred places	p. 368	A sacred place is what it is because of the permanent nature of the hierophany that first consecrated it. That is why one Bolivian tribe, when they feel the need to renew their energy and vitality, go back to the place supposed to have been the cradle of their ancestors. The hierophany therefore does not merely sanctify a given segment of undifferentiated profane space; it goes so far as to ensure that sacredness will continue there. There, in that place, the hierophany repeats itself. In this way the place becomes an inexhaustible source of power and sacredness and enables man, simply by entering it, to have a share in the power, to hold communion with the sacredness. This elementary notion of the place's becoming, by means of a hierophany, a permanent “centre” of the sacred, governs and explains a whole collection of systems often complex and detailed. But however diverse and variously elaborated these sacred spaces may be, they all present one trait in common: there is always a clearly marked space which makes it possible (though under very varied forms) to communicate with the sacred.

Sacred time

Topic	Page	Excerpt
Sacred time	pp. 388-389	In what is sacred time distinguishable from the “profane” duration that comes before and after it? The phrase "hierophanic time", we see at once, covers a collection of widely varying things. It may mean the time during which a ritual takes place and therefore a sacred time, a time essentially different from the profane succession which preceded it. It might also mean mythical time, reattained by means of a ritual, or by the mere repetition of some action with a mythical archetype. And, finally, it might also indicate the rhythms of the cosmos (like the hierophanies of the moon) in that those rhythms are seen as revelations, that is, manifestations of a sacred power behind the cosmos. Thus, an instant or a fragment of time might at any moment become hierophanic: it need only witness the occurrence of a kratophany, hierophany or theophany to become transfigured, consecrated, remembered because repeated, and therefore repeatable forever. All time of whatever kind “opens” on to sacred time – in other words, is capable of revealing what we may for convenience call the absolute, the supernatural, the superhuman, the super-historic [on thic topic, cf. also Bucellati 2014 Time.]

Secularization of hierophany

Topic	Page	Excerpt
Secularization of hierophany	p. 151	These last honours paid to the sun in the twilight of antiquity are not entirely devoid of significance; they are like palimpsests in which traces of the old writing can still be seen under the new – they still reveal traces of the true, primitive hierophanies: the dependence of the sun on God which recalls the very early myth of the solarized demiurge, its connections with fecundity and plant life and so on. But generally speaking, we find there only the palest shadow of what the sun hierophanies once meant, and constant rationalization makes it paler still. The philosophers, last among the “elect”, thus at last completed the secularization of what was one of the mightiest of all the cosmic hierophanies.

Sky and water symbolism

Topic	Page	Excerpt
Sky and water symbolism	p. 208	In Chinese mythology, which is that of a people living away from the sea, the dragon, emblem of water, has always got more definite sky powers than he has elsewhere. The fertility of water becomes centred in the clouds, in the world above. But the pattern fecundity-water-kingship (or holiness) is more closely adhered to in the South-East Asian mythologies in which the ocean is seen as the foundation of all reality and the giver of all powers. J. Przyluski has analyzed a great many Australasian and Indonesian legends and folk tales which all present one special feature: the hero owes his extraordinary status (of “king” or “saint”) to the fact that he was born of a water animal.

Verticality

Topic	Page	Excerpt
Verticality	p. 99	We have looked at a series of sky divinities, or divinities closely connected with the hierophany of the sky. In every case we have observed the same phenomenon of the withdrawal of the sky gods in face of more dynamic, concrete and familiar theophanies. However, it would be quite wrong to limit the hierophanies of the sky to divine or semi-divine figures issuing from them. The sacred nature of the sky appears in innumerable rites and myths which are not, in appearance at least, directly connected with any sky god. The sacred as manifested by the sky lives on in men's religious experience, after the actual sky god has faded into the background, in the symbolism of “height”, “ascension”, “centre”, and so on. Then, too, we often find in such symbolism that while a fertilizing divinity has been substituted for the sky divinity, the celestial nature of the symbolism remains.

Bearing witness to “something else”

Topic	Page	Excerpt
Bearing witness to "something else"	pp. 233-234	The omphalos, in every tradition, is a stone consecrated by a superhuman presence, or by symbolism of some kind. Like bethels and masseba, or prehistoric megaliths, the omphalos bears witness to something, and it is from that witness that it gets its value, or its position in the cult. Whether they protect the dead (like, for instance, neolithic megaliths), or become the temporary dwellings of the souls of the dead (as among many “primitives”), or witness a covenant made between man and God, or man and man (as among the Semites), or owe their sacred character to their shape or their heavenly origin (as with meteorites etc.) – whether, in fact, they represent theophanies, or points where the different zones of the universe touch, or images of the “centre” stones always draw their religious significance from the presence of God transfiguring them, from extra-human powers (the souls of the dead) embodied in them or from the symbolism (erotic, cosmological, religious, or political) which gives them their setting.