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

by Mircea Eliade

The democratization of the afterlife? The idea that a life spent doing the gods’ will results in some form of eternal reward? I could use some specificity.

So the synthesis is analogizing a parallel between the myth of Osiris’ murder, the course of the sun through the sky, and a human life. All three track a course from birth, through apex, into death, and from there rebirth into an afterlife. I don’t know if this necessarily serves as the “invention” of an afterlife, or one of a number of instances of people interring one. I do, however, see Eliade’s point as the analogous relationship between the different elements that are combined in Middle Kingdom religion.

Sum total

Does Eliade see this as the birth of the idea that will reverberate through Judaism, Christianity and, I presume, Islam?

Or possibly “affluent hunter-gatherers.”

Presumably not the extension of a single megalithic complex, but of the idea of a type of megalithic complex built first in Spain, and then in surrounding regions and presumably mirroring a shared religious belief system, if not s broader set of shared cultural practices.

Do we know that they represented a family as opposed to the members of a geographically defined community, or the members of a specific class or profession?

Rocks represent a force that will, if nothing else, endure the passage of time.

Who is this “we?”

If we accepted the stone our “life” would not really have involved any living. Maybe we did not fail the test, but passed it instead.

Literally, when they died we starved.

It is rather permanent

The ancestors are eternal and unchanging, and therefor eligible to be analogized to stone.

As opposed to all protecting ancestors. Can they be both?

They did not commune with their ancestors, they sought the ancestors’ assistance from afar.

Specific decedents, or simply “the ancestors,” as more of a conceptual construct?

Why not? Not saying it should be, but what is the basis for proclaiming it should not?

I mean, not very animated. I wouldn’t wait for it to do something interesting,

Probably, why?

That’s a fairly specific deduction to draw from the complex’s proximity to graves.

That’s an interesting analogy.

I found no definition, but I am going out on a limb and guessing it means sacred island. The use of Italian (I think) would imply that this is a common phrase in Italian (or in some language) and that a Sacred Island is totally a thing in Italy (or somewhere).

Is that the only interpretation of using darkened subterranean spaces as temples? Could it also be a representation of the underworld?

So maybe the religion spread in the opposite direction, from the Pyrenees to the Mediterranean?

True, knowing that these western structures are older does not help determine what they represented.

Given that Eliade previously pointed out how often ancient religions, just like their modern counterparts, were reinterpreted and altered over time, it seems odd that he would look to 19th century megalithic cultures and their religious practices as a means to interpret religious structures built some 6,000 years earlier. I think this may betray the unconscious assumption that “primitive” people have been frozen in time. Eliade seems willing to overcome this bias when comparing ancient civilizations to one another, but he carries it with him in reference to modern people whose culture differs from European Christianity.

Is there any reason, other than that they are both made of stone, to connect the heads on Easter Island to the cromlech at Stone Henge?

It’s one form of life after death.

He puts quotes around primitive, presumably to signal his disagreement with the term. However, presuming that their practices reflect those of distant and deceased ancestors more or less implies that they are somehow preserved in an earlier simple state, especially when we’re using their practices to understand our own ancestors, not even the ancestors of the people we study. It is as though he argues that their inherent “old ness” makes them a living relic of anything “old.” Eliade rejects calling these people primitive, but whole-heartedly treats them as though they are.

The ancestors are somehow combined, conceptually if not ritually, into the stone. They persist as long as the stone does.

What does it mean for products to be unimaginative?

Which has begun to seem increasingly likely in cities further west in Anatolia.

Those in the East being centered on a sacred enclosure representing the center of the world, rather than a portal to the underworld.

Don’t they all?

Are we really still using Aryan for Indo-European speaking migrants?

Do we know of a pre-Indoeuropean culture? I guess, given how late Indo-European languages arrived, and how Long humans have inherited the region the existence of a pre-Indo-European speaking culture must be assumed.

How do we know they came from Southeast instead of Northwest or due South?

They had not been then, but they are now, though I am not certain whether anybody has as of yet translated the Minoan language.

I guess technically there are three littorals on Asia Minor. The Greeks primarily settled the western littoral.

Local or indigenous

Not implausible, but certainly a rather massive leap of faith.

Are any of the other inferential leaps Eliade makes less so? Is he drawing from, but not citing, a body of knowledge that a layman (e.g. me) would not know?

Making the myth of Theseus the garbled memory of an initiation ritual? Or was myth the sacral act that was as being replayed when the ritual was performed?

What kind of hieros gamos is characteristic of a rural religion? Are the god and goddess who have sec cousins?

I wonder how far back bullfighting goes in Spain. Was this a phenomenon that crossed the Mediterranean? It seems kind of romantic, but probably not. There are a fair few places between Spain and Greece where bullfighting is not in any way part of the cultural heritage.

Or the ordeal re-enacts the story. Or maybe the ordeal re-enacts a different version of the story which had been more reimagined than strictly translated into Greek. All seem plausible, I have no idea what makes one more likely than the others.

Each is two things? Isn’t there an Old Spice commercial mocking that simple a form of analogy?

That’s one I am not familiar with.

It displays his trip to the afterlife, presumably by boat. Who needs a ferryman when you have your own boat?

It’s probably a little fanciful to believe that Minoan religious ceremonies, carried on in secret, provide the mystery cults of the Hellenistic era. That is getting pretty close to the nonsense beliefs that the Templars were the secret founders of the Masonic movement, or that both were preserving the secret religion of the Gnostics, or the Ancient Egyptians, or some other such Dan Brown nonsense.