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

by Mircea Eliade

Hence the cosmos has a double nature; it consists of an ambivalent, if not frankly demonic, matter and a divine form, for it is the work of Marduk. The celestial vault is formed from one half of Tiamat’s body, but the stars and constellations become “dwellings” or images of the gods. The earth itself comprises the other half of Tiamat and her various organs, but it is sanctified by the cities and temples. In the last analysis, the world proves to be the result of a mingling of chaotic and demonic primordiality on the one hand with divine creativity, presence, and wisdom on the other.

We may presume that, before its folklorization, the myth presented the reign of the Dragon as a “chaotic” period, endangering the very sources of life (the Dragon symbolizes not only “virtuality” (potentiality) and darkness, but also drought, the suspension of norms, and death).

In his analysis of the two aspects of divine sovereignty among the Indians and the Romans, Dumézil has aptly emphasized the differences. In Vedic India as in Rome, the same Indo-European structure is recognizable, but the two “ideological fields” are not homogeneous. “The Romans think historically, whereas the Indians think in fable. The Romans think nationally, and the Indians cosmically.” Over against the empirical, relativistic, political, juridical thought of the Romans stands the philosophical, absolute, dogmatic, moral, and mystical thought of the Indians.

Finally, the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa (13. 4. 3. 9) declares that “the knowledge of the Serpents (sarpa-vidyā) is the Veda.”30 In other words, the divine doctrine is paradoxically identified with a “knowledge” that, at least in the beginning, had a “demonic” character.

Originally, Hera was the goddess of Argos; it is from there that her cult spread through the whole of Greece. Wilamowitz explains her name as the femine form of hērōs and as having the meaning despoina, “Our Lady.”

engendered Hephaestus all by herself (ibid.

This is the typical image of the union between a fecundating storm god and Mother Earth.

The state of maga is obtained primarily by the haoma sacrifice, the sacrifice of the “drink of immortality,” which the priest imbibes during the ceremony.22 Now haoma is rich in xvarenah, the sacred fluid, at once igneous, luminous, vivifying, and spermatic. Ahura Mazdā is preeminently the possessor of xvarenah, but this divine “flame” also springs from the forehead of Mithra (Yašt 10. 127) and, like a solar light, emanates from the heads of sovereigns.23 However, every human being possesses his xvarenah, and on the day of transfiguration, i.e., of the final Renovation, “the great light seeming to come from the body will burn continually on this earth.”

the Iranian king was responsible for the preservation and regeneration of the world, in other words, that on the plane proper to him he fought against the forces of evil and death and contributed to the triumph of life, fecundity, and Good.

Whole sectors of the natural world—the “high places,” stones, springs, trees, certain crops, certain flowers—will be denounced as unclean because they were polluted by the cult of the Canaanite divinities of fertility.38 The preeminently clean and holy region is the desert alone, for it is there that Israel remained faithful to its God. The sacred dimension of vegetation and, in general, of the exuberant epiphanies of nature will be rediscovered only late, in medieval Judaism.

Desacralization of nature, devalorization of cult activity, in short, the violent and total rejection of cosmic religiosity, and, above all, the decisive importance attributed to spiritual regeneration of the individual by a definitive return to Yahweh were the response of the prophets to the historical crises that threatened the very existence of the two Jewish kingdoms.

Indeed, cosmic religion encouraged the illusion that life does not cease to go on and hence that the nation and the state can survive, despite the gravity of historical crises.