Abolishing Time And The Cosmic Dance

To summarize, we might say that the archaic world knows nothing of “profane” activities: every act which has a definite meaning: hunting, fishing, agriculture; games, conflict, sexuality—in some way participates in the sacred. As we shall see more clearly later, the only profane activities are those which have no mythical meaning, that is, which lack exemplary models. Thus, we may say that every responsible activity in pursuit of a definite end is, for the archaic world, a ritual. But since the majority of these activities have undergone a long process of desacralization and have, in modern societies, become profane, we have thought it proper to group them separately. 

Take dance, for example. All dances were originally sacred; in other words, they had an extrahuman model. The model may in some cases have been a totemic or emblematic animal, whose motions were reproduced to conjure up its concrete presence through magic, to increase it numbers, to obtain incorporation into the animal on the part of man. In other cases, the model may have been revealed by a divinity (for example the pyrrhic, the martial dance created by Athena) or by a hero (cf. Theseus’ dance in the Labyrinth). The dance may be executed to acquire food, honor the dead, or to assure good order in the cosmos. It may take place upon an occasion of initiations, of magico-religious ceremonies, of marriages, and so on. But all these details need not be discussed here. What is of interest to us is its presumed extrahuman origin (for every dance was created in illo tempore, in the mythical period, by an ancestor, a totemic animal, a god, or a hero). Choreographic rhythms have their model outside the profane life of man; whether they reproduce the movements of the totemic or emblematic animal, or the motions of the stars; whether they themselves constitute rituals (labyrinthine steps, leaps, gestures performed with ceremonial instruments)—a dance always imitates an archetypal gesture or commemorates a mythical moment. In a word, it is repetition, and consequently a reactualization, of illud tempus, “those days.”

Each of the examples cited in the present chapter reveals the same “primitive” ontological conception: an object or act becomes real only insofar as it imitates or repeats an archetype. Thus, reality is acquired solely through repetition or participation; everything which lacks an exemplary model is “meaningless,” i.e., it lacks reality. Men would thus have a tendency to become archetypal and paradigmatic. This tendency may well appear paradoxical, in the sense that the man of traditional culture see himself as real only to the extent that he ceases to be himself (to a modern observer) and is satisfied with imitating and repeating gestures of another. In other words, he sees himself as real, i.e., as “truly himself,” only, and precisely, insofar as he ceases to be so. Hence it could be said that this “primitive” ontology has a Platonic structure; and in that case Plato could be regarded as the outstanding philosopher of “primitive mentality,” that is, as the thinker who succeeded in giving philosophic currency and validity to the modes of life and behavior of archaic humanity. Obviously, this in no way lessens the originality of his philosophic genius; for his great title to our admiration remains his effort to justify this vision of archaic humanity theoretically, through the dialectic means which the spiritualty of his age made available to him. 

But our interest here is not in this aspect of Platonic philosophy; it is in archaic ontology. Recognizing the Platonic structure of that ontology would not take us very far. No less important is the second conclusion to be drawn from analyzing the facts cited in the foregoing pages—that is, the abolition of time through the imitation of archetypes and the repetition of paradigmatic gestures. A sacrifice, for example, not only exactly reproduces the initial sacrifice revealed by a god ab origine, at the beginning of time, it also takes place at that same primordial mythical moment; in other words, every sacrifice repeats the initial sacrifice and coincides with it. All sacrifices are performed at the same mythical instant of the beginning; through the paradox of rite, profane time and duration are suspended. And the same holds true for all repetitions; i.e., all imitations of archetypes; through such imitation, man is projected into the mythical epoch in which the archetypes were first revealed. Thus we perceive a second aspect of primitive ontology: insofar as an act (or an object) acquires a certain reality through the repetition of certain paradigmatic gestures, and acquires it through that alone, there is an implicit abolition of profane time, or duration, of “history”; and he who reproduces the exemplary gesture thus finds himself transported into the mythical epoch in which its revelation took place. 

-excerpted from “Myth of the Eternal Return or, Cosmos and History” (1954) by Mircea Eliade