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

by Mircea Eliade

Awkward. Why is there some limit in how much “oriental” religion can be adapted to the “Aryan” mind. Is the valorous soul of the Aryan immune to the cowardly and effeminate religions of the East? I feel like this is another instance of Eliade slipping towards fascism.

Interesting that Daedalus’ legend goes back to the Bronze Age, or at least, some aspect of it.

Meaning that the stories are tethered to Cretan locales, and therefor presumably Cretan in origin. Also, or maybe alternatively, that Crete was seen as inherently sacred.

I thought the cave was on Crete. I looked back and Eliade said nothing of the sort. I guess we are talking about a Mycenaean sight which I had assumed to be Minoan.

So by Minoan, we mean originating in the religious traditions of Minoan Crete, not necessarily that the site was within the physical boundaries of the Minoan civilization. Skopje is all the way up in Macedonia.

The pillars remained, as well as the sacred trees and the goddesses themselves. What was lost were the initiatory rituals dedicated to those goddesses, and linking death and journey into the afterlife with initiation into the religious tradition. I fear that Eliade is going to claim that some aspect of the “Aryan mind” rejected this part of the religion. It is interesting to wonder, however, what happened to these traditions. Unlike Eliade, we know that the Bronze Age collapse apparently did not involve a massive resettlement of Greece by outsiders. This begs the question of why and how this apparently central aspect of Minoan & Mycenaean religious belief was jettisoned during the Ancient Dark Ages and the Archaic Era of Greece. It was apparently something of an aberration because similar cults will be revived in the classical era. So, what gives?

Unless you stop and realize that the Mycenaeans also spoke and Indo-European language. It’s also worth noting that the transition in the upper Peloponnesus from Mycenaean (which I this was Cypro-Aeolus, or something like that) to Doric as the dominant dialect of Greek was not accompanied by a widespread invasion or migration. This means that the Grerks who rejected “Mediterranean” religious ideas were the sons and grandsons of Mycenaean practitioners.

Meaning no part of the link has dissolved? That’s a pretty odd usage.

Why is Eliade referring to some as Indo-European and others as Aryan? Is he buying the old Volkisch canard of a world-wide Aryan migration?

Does Eliade think that Aryan is a candidate for the name of the proto-Indoeuropean language.

I think Hurrian was also an Indo-European language.

Some local Anatolian goddesses were analogized to Ishtar, and represented using her ideograms. Some Anatolian locals simply worshipped Ishtar using the Assyrian name, and presumably also the Assyrian iconography and rituals, or at least some of that iconography and some of those rituals.

The idea of an Aryan Conquest spreading Indo-European languages away from their place of origin in the Iranian Plateau has been fairly thoroughly discredited since Eliade’s day (really, even during his career it was pretty much a dying ember of an older world view). However, I don’t know that an ethnic conquest is needed to explain the king’s role in the ritual as a personification of authority, even including military authority.

Because the king need not represent ethnic conquerors to make an effective and plausible symbol of authority.

Not unlike a medieval saint or Pope.

I presume that the Hittites understood bees’ roles in the cycle of plant growth. That role makes this legend strangely apt.

His is almost worst. His disappearance seems to overthrow the whole reasoned order of the universe. Not only do plants not grow, but animals stop caring for their young and people are struck by a form of existential dread.

Kind of like asking the gods “why would you create us just to watch us die?”

This seemed rather Typhon like until a mortal got involved. Now it’s getting rather original. I guess it would have been original anyway by virtue of being so old, but still. It took a rather unexpected twist.

Well, that’s not really clear and enthusiastic consent, now is it?

...

A god couldn’t just tie a knot in a rope?

Hmm

If we’re referring here to Hermes, he may have been born to a mortal, but he is pretty clearly a god.

Meaning what? Are myths somehow grander than other stories passed down by word of mouth?

Marduk and Tiamat were fighting over whether the nature of creation would be defined by order or chaos. Teshub and Illuyak (like Typhon and Zeus) were fighting over which would be allowed to rule the world. In many ways this makes the Babylonian gods appear more powerful than their Hittite and Greek successors. The Babylonian ones fight over forming the very nature of creation. The Hittite gods fight over control of a world created outside of their authority, and a world that contains them and their power, great though it may be.

Not entirely unlike the cycle of Uranus, Cronus & Zeus, though we have an older god thrown in preceding Uranus.

Now we’re getting something rather different than the Greek story.

Presumably ever dreaming Cthulhu and Neolarthotep.

I had not realized that El, in Phoenician mythology, is one of the generations of gods who has been replaced. That seems odd given that the name means “god” in the generic.

So this myth predates the Hebrew religious concept of El as the supreme god.

Much of Canaan (including the portions that would later be known as Phoenicia) was subject to Hittite suzerainty.

The universe is formed by the conflict contained in the Enuma Elish. It is conquered, or fought over, in the Hurrian cosmogony.

Our condition now is the result of this past conflict.

I know Akkadian is also a Semitic language, as is Amorite, and Assyrian. I don’t know why Palestine is designated the first “Semite” civilization.

Ruined?

It will not, but that’s more of an argument between historians than among students (or professors) of comparative religion.

Until the students of comparative history begin to base their suppositions on inaccurate versions of history.

I presume we’re talking about the birth of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religious tradition.

Slightly outside of Bronze Age Canaan.

Do we know religious practices to change much across Canaan? Or, are we talking about similar religion systems, but with a different chief deity connected to each city sitting at the head of the pantheon?

So in these texts, unlike later Phoenician ones, El and not Baal sits at the head of the divine pantheon.

Does Baal appear in this Canaanite religion? If so, in what capacity? All that we have thus found could still be considered consistent with the former glory of an El who has since been supplanted by his son.

Like Baal has supplanted him?

Seems pretty aggressive.

Must we? Just because myth refers to him as the former king of the gods does not mean that there was an actual time when people considered him the king of the gods.

There are a lot of mythical cycles that reference an earlier period when some other god is was king, I don’t think there is any evidence of any of those other gods actually being worshipped as though they were the kings. They may well have been born into the past tense.

A creator god which has since retired from active participation in the world.

In the very earliest known concept of the divine order, El was already the former ruler,

I am guessing that this is the inspiration for Livecraft’s god of the same name.