[6]Where the Sacred intersects our world, it appears in the form of ideal models (e.g., the actions and commandments of gods or mythical heroes).
A Sumerian text tells of the "place of the creation of the gods," where "the [divinity of] the flocks and grains" is to be found.
Just before the dawn of the first day, the Bagadjimbiri brothers emerged from the Earth in the form of dingos, and then turned into human giants whose heads touched the sky.
A great many myths describe the manner in which the brothers Bagadjimbiri founded all the customs of the Karadjeri, and even their behavior.
According to Eliade's hypothesis, "primitive man was interested only in the beginnings ... to him it mattered little what had happened to himself, or to others like him, in more or less distant times".
Traditional man's myth- and ritual-filled life constantly unites him with sacred time, giving his existence value.
[15]Eliade attributes the well-known "cyclic" view of time in ancient thought to the eternal return.
For instance, Australian Aboriginal peoples annually reenact the events of the "Dreamtime": The animals and plants created in illo tempore by the Supernatural Beings are ritually re-created.
[16]Every New Year, the people of Mesopotamia reenacted the Enuma Elish, a creation myth, in which the god Marduk slays Tiamat, the primordial monster, and creates the world from her body.
[17] By periodically bringing man back to the mythical age, these liturgical cycles turn time itself into a circle.
The idea that the Cosmos is threatened with ruin if not annually re-created provides the inspiration for the chief festival of the California Karok, Hupa, and Yurok tribes.
[20] To some, the theory of the eternal return may suggest a view of traditional societies as stagnant and unimaginative, afraid to try anything new.
[21] The mere fact that traditional societies have colonized new lands and invented new technologies proves that the eternal return hasn't suppressed their sense of initiative.
Traditional man desires to escape the linear march of events, empty of any inherent value or sacrality.
In Chapter 4 of The Myth of the Eternal Return (entitled "The Terror of History") and in the appendix to Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, Eliade suggests that the abandonment of mythical thought and the full acceptance of linear, historical time, with its "terror", is one of the reasons for modern man's anxieties.
Traditional societies escape this anxiety to an extent, as they refuse to completely acknowledge historical time.
Eliade describes the difference between ancient and modern man's reactions to history, as well as modern man's impotence before the terror of history, as follows: In our day, when historical pressure no longer allows any escape, how can man tolerate the catastrophes and horrors of history—from collective deportations and massacres to atomic bombings—if beyond them he can glimpse no sign, no transhistorical meaning; if they are only the blind play of economic, social, or political forces, or, even worse, only the result of the 'liberties' that a minority takes and exercises directly on the stage of universal history?We know how, in the past, humanity has been able to endure the sufferings we have enumerated: they were regarded as a punishment inflicted by God, the syndrome of the decline of the "age," and so on.
And it was possible to accept them precisely because they had a metahistorical meaning ... Every war rehearsed the struggle between good and evil, every fresh social injustice was identified with the sufferings of the Saviour (or, for example, in the pre-Christian world, with the passion of a divine messenger or vegetation god), each new massacre repeated the glorious end of the martyrs.
... By virtue of this view, tens of millions of men were able, for century after century, to endure great historical pressures without despairing, without committing suicide or falling into that spiritual aridity that always brings with it a relativistic or nihilistic view of history[23]In general, according to Eliade, traditional man sees the eternal return as something positive, even necessary.
When it is no longer a vehicle for reintegrating a primordial situation ... that is, when it is desacralized, cyclic time becomes terrifying; it is seen as a circle forever turning on itself, repeating itself to infinity.
Nor is time cyclical but sacred, as for the ancient Mesopotamians, whose ritual calendar periodically returned the world to the mythical age.
Although immensely influential in religious studies, the ideas behind Eliade's hypothesis of the eternal return are less well accepted in anthropology and sociology.
In short, Kirk sees Eliade's theory of eternal return as a universalization of the Australian Dreamtime concept.
The eternal return is nostalgic: by retelling and reenacting mythical events, Australian Aborigines aim to evoke and relive the Dreamtime.
However, Kirk believes that Native American myths "are not evocative or nostalgic in tone, but tend to be detailed and severely practical".
"[31] Jean Cocteau's screenplay for L'Éternel retour portrays the timeless nature of the myth of Tristan and Isolde.
In Milan Kundera's book, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the author fixates around the theme of eternal return.