A History of Religious Ideas, Volume 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries

by Mircea Eliade

It is possible to find in this episode an opposition between cultivators and herders and, implicitly, an apologia for the latter. Yet, if the name Abel means “shepherd,” Cain means “smith.” Their conflict reflects the ambivalent position of the smith in certain societies of pastoralists, where he is either scorned or respected but is always feared.10 As we saw (§ 15), the smith is regarded as the “master of fire” and possesses redoubtable magical powers. In any case, the tradition preserved in the biblical narrative reflects the idealization of the “simple and pure” existence of the nomadic herders and the resistance against the sedentary life of agriculturalists and dwellers in towns. Cain became “builder of a town” (4:17), and one of his descendants is Tubal-cain, “the ancestor of all metalworkers in bronze or iron” (4:22). So the first murder is performed by him who in some sort incarnates the symbol of technology and urban civilization. Implicitly, all techniques are suspected of magic.

Abraham felt that he was bound to his God by “faith.” He did not “understand” the meaning of the act that God had demanded of him, whereas those who offered their firstborn to a divinity were perfectly well aware of the meaning and the magico-religious power of the ritual. On the other hand, Abraham never doubted the sanctity, perfection, and omnipotence of his God. Consequently, if the prescribed act had every appearance of being an infanticide, it was because of the powerlessness of human understanding. God alone knew the meaning and the value of a gesture that, for all others, was indistinguishable from a crime.

Here we are confronted by a special case of the dialectic of the sacred: not only is the “profane” transmuted into the “sacred,” at the same time retaining its original structure (a sacred stone does not cease to be a stone), but its “sacralization” is not even comprehensible by the mind: infanticide is not transformed into a ritual intended to produce a particular effect (as was the case with those who sacrificed their firstborn). Abraham did not perform a ritual (since he pursued no objective and did not understand the meaning of his act); on the other hand, his “faith” assured him that he was not committing a crime. One would say that Abraham did not doubt the “sacrality” of his gesture, but it was “irrecognizable” and hence unknowable.

Meditation on this impossibility of recognizing the sacred (since the sacred is completely identified with the profane) will have marked consequences. As we shall see, Abrahamic faith will enable the Jewish people, after the destruction of the Temple and the disappearance of the state, to bear all the ordeals of their tragic history. And it is equally by meditating on the example of Abraham that, even at such a late date as the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, certain Christian thinkers have grasped the paradoxical and, in the last analysis, “irrecognizable” nature of their faith. Kierkegaard renounced his fiancée in the hope that, in some way impossible to imagine, she would be restored t...

The beginnings of the religion of Israel are related in Genesis, chapters 46–50, in Exodus, and in the Book of Numbers. Their content is a series of events, most of which were directly caused by God. We list the most important: the settling of Jacob and his sons in Egypt; the persecution launched some centuries later by a pharaoh who ordered the extermination of the firstborn of the Israelites; the vicissitudes of Moses (miraculously saved from the massacre and brought up at the pharaoh’s court) after killing an Egyptian soldier who was beating a Hebrew, especially his flight into the desert of Midian, the appearance of the “burning bush” (his first encounter with Yahweh), the mission laid upon him by God, to bring his people out of Egypt, and the revelation of the divine name; the ten plagues sent by God to force the pharaoh to consent; the departure of the Israelites and their crossing the Sea of Reeds, whose waters overwhelmed the Egyptian chariots and soldiers that were pursuing them; the theophany on Mount Sinai and Yahweh’s covenant with his people, followed by instructions concerning the content of the revelation and the cult; finally, the forty years of journeying in the desert, the death of Moses, and the conquest of Canaan under the leadership of Joshua.

While he is keeping sheep for his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, Moses crosses the desert and comes to the “mountain of God,” Horeb. There he sees a “flame of fire coming from the middle of a bush” and hears himself called by name. A few moments later the voice of God comes to him, saying, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6). Nevertheless, Moses senses that he is in the presence of an unknown aspect of the divinity, or even of a new god. He accepts the order to go to the children of Israel and say to them, “The God of your fathers has sent me to you”; but, if they ask what God’s name is, “what am I to tell them?” (3:13). “And God said to Moses, I Am Who I am (eyeh ašer ehyeh).” And he teaches him to address the children of Israel in these terms: “I Am has sent me to you” (3:14).

The irruption of the Indo-Europeans into history is marked by terrible destruction. Between 2300 and 1900 B.C. in Greece and Asia Minor many cities are sacked and burned; for example, Troy (about 2300 B.C.), Beycesultan, Tarsus, and some three hundred cities and villages in Anatolia. The documents mention ethnic groups named Hittites, Luwians, and Mitanni. But Āryan-speaking elements are also attested in other bodies of invaders.

The dispersal of the Indo-European peoples had begun some centuries earlier, and it continued for two millennia. By about 1200 B.C. the Āryans had made their way into the Indo-Gangetic plain, the Iranians were firmly established in Persia, and Greece and the islands were Indo-Europeanized.

For more than a century, scholars have made every effort to identify the original homeland of the Indo-Europeans, to decipher their protohistory, and to clarify the phases of their migrations. Their land of origin has been sought in northern and central Europe, in the Russian steppes, in central Asia, in Anatolia, etc. It is generally agreed today to localize the home of the Indo-Europeans in the regions north of the Black Sea, between the Carpathians and the Caucasus.1 Between the fifth and third millennia these regions saw the development of the so-called Tumuli (kurgan) Culture. About 4000–3500 B.C. it expanded westward, as far as Tisza.

During the following millennium the representatives of the Kurgan Culture made their way into central Europe, the Balkan Peninsula, Transcaucasia, Anatolia, and northern Iran (ca. 3500–3000 B.C.); in the third millennium they reached northern Europe, the Aegean zone (Greece and the coasts of Anatolia), and the eastern Mediterranean. According to Marija Gimbutas, the peoples who developed and disseminated the Kurgan Culture can only have been the Proto-Indo-Europeans and, in the last phases of their dispersal, the Indo-Europeans.

In their common period the Indo-Iranian tribes called themselves by a significant name, “noble (man)” (airya in Avestan, ārya in Sanskrit). The Āryans had begun their advance into northwestern India at the beginning of the second millennium; four or five centuries later they occupied the region of the “Seven Rivers,” sapta sindhavah,13 that is, the basin of the Upper Indus, the Punjab.

The cult role of the domestic fire was already important in the Indo-European period. It certainly goes back to a prehistoric custom, which is also amply documented in a number of primitive societies. In the Veda, the god Agni supremely represents the sacrality of fire, but he does not submit to be limited by these cosmic and ritual hierophanies. He is the son of Dyaus (RV 1. 26. 10), just as his Iranian homologue, Atar, is the son of Ahura Mazdā (Yasna 2. 12; etc.). He “is born” in the sky, from which he descends in the form of lightning, but he is also in water, in wood, in plants. He is further identified with the sun.

The reason for this regressus ad uterum is continually recalled: “Man is in truth not born. It is through the sacrifice that he comes to birth” (Mait.-Saṃ. 3. 6. 7).8

In the most famous hymn of the Rig Veda (10. 129) the cosmogony is presented as a metaphysics. The poet asks himself how Being could have come out of non-Being, since, in the beginning, neither “non-Being existed, nor Being” (strophe 1. 1). “In that time there existed neither death nor nondeath” (that is, neither men nor gods). There was only the undifferentiated principle called “One” (neuter). “The One breathed from its own impulse, without there being any breath.” Aside from that, “nothing else existed” (str. 2). “In the beginning, darkness was hidden by darkness,” but heat (generated by asceticism, tapas) gave birth to the “One,” “potential” (ābhū)—i.e., “embryo”—“covered with emptiness” (we may understand: surrounded by the primitive waters). From this germ (“potential”) develops Desire (kāma), and it is this same Desire that “was the first seed (retas) of Consciousness (manas),” an astonishing assertion, which anticipates one of the chief theses of Indian philosophical thought.

But already in the Vedas brahman was thought to be, and was expressly called, the imperishable, the immutable, the foundation, the principle of all existence. It is significant that in several hymns of the Atharva Veda (e.g., 10. 7. 8) brahman is identified with the skambha (literally, “stay, support, pillar”); in other words, brahman sustains the world, for it is at once cosmic axis and ontological foundation. “In the skambha is all that is possessed by the spirit (atmanvat), all that breathes” (Atharva Veda 7. 8. 2). “He who knows the brahman in man knows the supreme being (parameṣthin, the Lord), and he who knows the supreme being knows the skambha” (ibid. 10. 8. 43). We perceive the effort to isolate the ultimate reality: brahman is recognized as the “pillar of the universe,” the support, the base; and the term pratiṣṭhā, which expresses all these notions, is already frequently used in the Vedic texts. The Brahman is identified with brahman because he knows the structure and origin of the universe, because he knows the Word that expresses all that; for Vāc, the Logos, can transform any person into a Brahman (already Rig Veda 10.

The term saṃsāra appears only in the Upanishads. As for the doctrine, its “origin” is not known.

The first Being is, obviously, unthinkable, limitless, eternal; it is at once the One and the All, “creator” and “lord” of the world. Some even identified it with the universe; others sought it in the “person” (puruṣa) present in the sun, the moon, the word, etc., still others in the “limitless” that sustains the world, life, and consciousness. Among the names of the first Being, the one that took precedence from the beginning was Brahman.

In a famous passage of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad (3. 14. 2–4), Brahman is described as being “the whole world” and yet spiritual in nature; “life is his body, his form is light, his soul is space,” and he encloses in himself all acts, desires, odors, tastes, etc. But he is at the same time “my ātman in the heart, smaller than a grain of barley, than a mustard seed,” and yet “greater than the earth, greater than the atmosphere, greater than these worlds.”

“Containing all acts, all desires …, containing this whole world …, this is my ātman in t...

Men must never forget that their existential status was precarious and ephemeral.

Wisdom begins with consciousness of the finiteness and precariousness of every human life.

So the thing to do is to take advantage of everything that can be offered by the present: youth, health, physical pleasures, or occasions for displaying the virtues. This is Homer’s lesson: to live wholly, but nobly, in the present. Certainly, this “ideal” born of despair will undergo changes: we shall examine the most important of them further on (see vol. 2). But consciousness of the predestined limits and the fragility of existence was never obliterated.

The heroes are characterized by a specific form of creativity, comparable to that of the civilizing heroes of the archaic societies. Just like the Australian mythical ancestors, they alter the landscape, are believed to be autochthons (i.e., the first inhabitants of certain regions) and the ancestors of races, peoples, or families (the Argives descend from Argos, the Arcadians from Arcas, etc.). They invent—that is, “found,” “reveal”—many human institutions: the laws of the city and the rules of urban life, monogamy, metallurgy, song, writing, tactics, etc., and are the first to practice certain crafts. They are preeminently founders of cities, and the historical personages who found colonies become heroes after death.41 In addition, the heroes establish athletic games, and one of the characteristic forms of their cult is the athletic contest. According to one tradition, the four great Panhellenic games were consecrated to the heroes before they belonged to Zeus. (The agonistic cult at Olympia, for example, was celebrated in honor of Pelops.)

Zarathustra and the Iranian Religion

100. The enigmas The study of Iranian religion is full of surprises, even of disappointments. We approach the subject with the most lively interest, for we have learned beforehand of the Iranian contribution to the religious formation of the West. If the conception of linear time, replacing the notion of cyclical time, was already familiar to the Hebrews, a number of other religious ideas were discovered, revalorized, or systematized in Iran.

To mention only the most important: the articulation of several dualistic systems (cosmological, ethical, religious dualisms); the myth of the savior; the elaboration of an optimistic eschatology, proclaiming the final triumph of Good and universal salvation; the doctrine of the resurrection of bodies; very probably, certain Gnostic myths; finally, the mythology of the Magus, reelaborated during the Renaissance, both by the Italian Neo-Platonists and by Paracelsus or John Dee.

However, as soon as the nonspecialist reader approaches the sources, he is disappointed and thwarted. Three-fourths of the old Avesta is lost. Among the texts that have been preserved, only the gāthās, presumably composed by...

But an understanding of these enigmatic poems has not yet been attained with certainty. The rest of the present Avesta, and especially the Pahlavi books redacted between the fourth and ninth centuries, are characterized by their dryness, their disheartening monotony, and their platitude. Readers of the Vedas ...

Yet the ideas that can occasionally be deciphered in the gāthās, or that are found, elaborated and systematized, in the later scriptures, are absorbing. But they are buried in a hodgepodge of ritual texts and commentaries. Except for the gāthās—the reading of which, despite their obscurities, is always rewarding—one is seldom seized by the power of the ...

As for the personal contribution of Zarathustra to the invention or revalorization of these religious conceptions, the opinions of Iranianists differ and tend to be mutually exclusive. Essentially, it is a matter of two historiographic points of view. According to the one, Zarathustra is a historical personage, a reformer of the traditional ethnic religion, that is, the religion that was shared by the Indo-Iranians in the second millennium B.C. According to the other, the religion of Zarathustra represents only one aspect of the Iranian religion, i.e., Mazdaism, whose center is the worship of Ahura Mazdā,...

As we shall see in a moment, the problem of the historicity of Zarathustra ought not to constitute a difficulty. It was normal for the historical personage Zarathustra to be transformed into a paradigmatic model for the believers who made up the “Mazdean religion.” After a few generations the collective memory can no longer preserve the authentic biography of an eminent personage; he ends by becoming an archetype, that is, he ex...

It is proper to use these few biographical details for a preliminary sketch of Zarathustra’s life and religious activity. We will later give the corrections and supplements that seem to be required by the results of recent research. It has been proposed that Zarathustra’s activity should be placed between 1000 and 600 B.C. If the Mazdean tradition, which speaks of “258 years before Alexander,” is accepted, Zarathustra’s life can be placed between 628 and 551 B.C.1 The earlier dates have been proposed in view of the archaic character of the language of the gāthās, especially of its analogies with the Vedas. Linguistic analysis allows the conclusion that the prophet lived in the eastern part of Iran, probably in Chorasmia or Bactria.2

According to tradition, he was a zaotar (Yašt 33. 16), that is, a sacrificing priest and chanter (cf. Sanskrit hotṛ), and his gāthās take their place in an old Indo-European tradition of sacred poetry. He belonged to the clan named Spitāma (“of the brilliant attack”), breeders of horses; his father’s name was Pouruśaspa (“of the spotted horse”). Zarathustra was married, and the names of his two children are known, the younger being his daughter Pouručistā (Yasna 53. 3). He was poor. When, in a famous gāthā, he begs for the help and protection of Ahura Mazdā, he exclaims: “I know, O Wise One, why I am powerless: it is for my few flocks and because I have few men” (Yasna 46. 2).

The community to which he addressed his message was made up of sedentary herders with chiefs, called kavi, and priests called karapan, “murmurer,” and usig, “sacrificer.” It is these priests, guardians of the traditional Āryan religion, whom Z...

The reaction soon made itself felt, and the prophet had to flee. “To what land shall I flee?” he exclaims. “Where flee, where go? I am separated from my tribe and my family; neither the village nor the wicked chiefs of the land are favorable to me” (Yasna 46. 1). He took refuge with Vishtaspa, chief of the Fryāna tribe, whom he succeeded in converting, and who became his friend and protector (46. 14; 15. 16). Yet the resistance did not weaken, and in the gāthās Zarathustra publicly denounces some of his personal enemies: Bandva, who “is always the chief obstacle” (49. 1–2), and “the little prince Vaēpya,” who “at the Brid...

It is possible to decipher in the gāthās a few indications of Zarathustra’s missionary activity. The prophet is surrounded by a group of friends and disciples, variously called the “poor” (drigu), the “friends” (frya), the “knowing” (vīdva), the “confederates” (urvatha).3 He urges his companions to “take arms to drive away” the enemies, the “wicked one” (Yasna 31. 18)...

has been possible to show the equivalence of these Iranian secret societies with the groups of young Indian warriors, the Maruts, whose leader, Indra, is called adhrigu, that is “not-dhrigu” (“he who is not poor”).4 Zarathustra violently attacks those who sacrifice bovines (32. 12, 14; 44. 20; 48. ...

the urgency and existential tension with which Zarathustra questions his Lord: he asks him to teach him the secrets of the cosmogony, to reveal his future to him, but also the fate of certain persecutors and of all the wicked. Each strophe of the celebrated Yasna 44 is introduced by the same formula: “This is what I ask you, Lord—answer me well!” Zarathustra wants to know “who assigned their road to the sun and the stars” (3), “who fixed the earth below, and the sky of clouds, so that it does not fall” (4); and his questions concerning the Creation follow one another in an ever faster rhythm. But he wants to know, too, how his soul, “arrived at the Good, will be ravished?” (8), and “how shall we get rid of evil” (13), “how shall I deliver evil into the hands of justice?” (14). He demands that “visible marks” shall be given him (16) and, above all, that he shall be united with Ahura Mazdā and that his “word shall be efficacious” (17). But he adds: “Shall I obtain in payment, through Justice (Arta), ten mares, with a stallion, and a camel that have been promised me, O Wise One?”

The punishment of the wicked, the rewarding of the virtuous, obsess Zarathustra. In another hymn he asks, “What penalty is provided for him who procures empire (khshathra, ‘power, potency’) for the wicked evildoer?” (Yasna 31. 15). Elsewhere he exclaims: “When shall I learn if you have power, O Wise One (Mazdā) with Justice (Arta), over each of those who threaten me with destruction?” (48. 9). He is impatient at seeing the members of the men’s societies continuing to sacrifice bovines and consume haoma with impunity: “When wilt thou strike this filthy liquid?” (48. 10). He hopes that he can renew “this life” (30. 9) and asks Ahura Mazdā if the just will conquer the wicked now (48. 2; see further on). Sometimes we feel that he is hesitant, troubled, humble, wanting to know the Lord’s will more concretely: “What dost thou command? What wouldst thou have as praise, as worship?” (34. 12).

To return to Zarathustra’s original message, a question at once arises: is it to be sought only in the gāthās, or is it permissible to use the later Avestan scriptures? There is no way to prove that the gāthās have brought us Zarathustra’s whole doctrine. In addition, a number of later texts, even quite late ones, refer directly, though developing them, to concepts expressed in the gāthās. And it is well known that the elaboration of a religious idea first documented in late texts does not necessarily imply that the concept is a new one.

Zarathustra receives the revelation of the new religion directly from Ahura Mazdā. By accepting it, he imitates the primordial act of the Lord—the choice of Good (see Yasna 32. 2), and he asks nothing else of his disciples. The essence of the Zoroastrian reform consists in an imitatio dei. Man is called to follow the example of Ahura Mazdā, but he is free in his choice. He does not feel that he is the slave or the servant of God (as the worshipers of Varuṇa, Yahweh, Allah admit themselves to be).

In the gāthās Ahura Mazdā holds the first place. He is good and holy (spenta). He created the world by thought (Yasna 31. 7. 11), which is equivalent to a creatio ex nihilo. Zarathustra declares that he “recognized” Ahura Mazdā “by thought,” “as the first and the last” (31. 8), that is, as the beginning and the end. The Lord is accompanied by an escort of divine beings (the Amesha Spentas): Asha (Justice), Vohu Manah (Good Thought), Ārmaiti (Devotion), Xshathra (Kingdom, Power), Haurvatāt and Ameretāt (Integrity [health] and Immortality).13 Zarathustra invokes and praises these Entities together with Ahura Mazdā, as in this gāthā: “Wise Lord most powerful, Devotion, Justice making the living prosper, Good Thought, Kingdom, hear me: Have pity on me when retribution comes to each” (33. 11; see also the following strophes).

Ahura Mazdā is the father of several Entities (Asha, Vohu Manah, Ārmaiti) and of one of the twin Spirits, Spenta Mainyu (the Beneficent Spirit). But this implies that he also engendered the other twin, Angra Mainyu (the Destroying Spirit). In the beginning, it is stated in a famous gāthā (Yasna 30), these two spirits chose, one of them good and life, the other evil and death. Spenta Mainyu declares, at the “beginning of existence,” to the Destroying Spirit: “Neither our thoughts nor our doctrines, nor our mental powers; neither our choices, nor our words, nor our acts; neither our cons...

Zarathustra’s theology is not dualistic in the strict sense of the term, since Ahura Mazdā is not confronted by an anti-god; in the beginning, the opposition breaks out between the two Spirits. On the other hand, the unity between Ahura Mazdā and the Holy Spirit is several times implied (see Yasna 43. 3, etc.). In short, Good and Evil, the holy one and the destroying demon, proceed from Ahura Mazdā; but since Angra Mainyu freely chose his mode of being and his maleficent vocation, the Wise Lord cannot be considered responsible for the appearance of Evil. On the other hand, Ahura Mazdā, in his omniscience, knew from the beginning what choice the Destroying Spirit would make and neverthele...

However, recent research has shown that the haoma ritual, together with the cult of Mithra, was not entirely condemned by Mazdaism, not even in the gāthās.14 In addition, animal sacrifices were practiced without interruption, at least for the benefit of laymen.15 It seems, therefore, that Zarathustra primarily opposed the excesses of the orgiastic rites, which involved countless blood sacrifices and the immoderate absorption of haoma. As for the epithet “herdsman” applied to Zarathustra, it does not refer, as has been maintained, to the duty of every Mazdean to protect and take good care of cattle. The metaphorical expressions “shepherds” and “flocks,” documented throughout the ancient Near East and in ancient India, refer to chieftains and their subjects. The “cattle” of which Zarathustra is the “herdsman” means those men who practice the Good Religion.16

These corrections and revisions make possible a better understanding of the contribution made by Mazdaism to the religious history of Iran. Indeed, it is known that, despite his “reform,” Zarathustra accepted many traditional religious beliefs and ideas, at the same time giving them new values. Thus, he takes up again the Indo-Iranian tradition of the journey of the dead but stresses the importance of the judgment: each will be judged by the choice that he has made on earth. The just will be admitted into paradise, into the “House of Song”; as for the sinners, they will remain “forever the guests of the House of Evil” (Yasna 46. 11). The road to the beyond passes over the Činvat Bridge, and it is there that the sorting of the just from the wicked takes place. Zarathustra himself announces the fateful crossing, when he will lead those who have worshiped Ahura Mazdā: “With them all I shall cross the Bridge of the Sorter!” (46. 10).

The Prophet does not doubt that the daēvas will be annihilated and that the just will triumph over the wicked. But when will it take place, this victory of Good that will radically renew the world? He implores Ahura Mazdā: “Teach me that which thou knowest, Lord: Even before the coming of the punishments that thou hast conceived, O Wise One, will the just conquer the wicked? For it is in that, as we know, that the reform of existence consists” (Yasna 48. 2). It is the transfiguration of existence that Zarathustra awaits: “Give me this sign: the total transformation of this existence. So that, worshiping you and praising you, I attain to the greatest joy” (34. 6). “Make known the pattern that will cure existence!” he cries (44. 16). He insists: “What retribution thou dost destine for the two sides, O Wise One, by thy bright fire and by molten metal, give a sign of it to souls, to bring harm to the wicked, advantage to the just” (51. 9).

It is probable that Zarathustra had hoped for the imminent “transfiguration” (frašō-kereti) of the world. “May we be those who will renew this existence!” he exclaims (Yasna 30. 9).17 Several times he calls himself saošyant, the “savior” (48. 8; 46. 3; 53. 2; etc.),

The eschatological ordeal by fire and molten metal that he announces (see also 30. 7; 32. 7) had as its objective both the punishment of the w...

As has happened more than once in history, the expectation of judgment and renewal of the world is progressively projected into an eschatological future that can be variously calculated. But it is important to emphasize the new interpretation given by Zarathustra to the idea of renewal. As we have seen (§ 21) and shall see again (§ 106), various mythico-ritual scenarios for the renovation of the world were known in the Near East, both by the Indo-Iranians and by other peoples. The ritual, which reiterated the cosmogony, was celebrated on the occasion of the New Year. But Zarathustra impugns this archaic scenario, whose purpose was the annual regeneration of the world, and announces a radical and definitive “transfiguration,” effected once and for all. Furthermore, the renovation will no longer be ...