Autor: Flanagan, Josef

Buch: Quest for Self-Knowledge

Titel: Quest for Self-Knowledge

Stichwort: Mythos, Eliade, Symbol, Wasser, Sünde, Eliade

Kurzinhalt: Arachaische Stufe: 2 Weisen der Existenz; transkulturelle Ethik im Mythos und in der Moderne; Definition der archaischen Religion

Textausschnitt: () The central issue for Eliade is that, for archaic and primitive people, there are two modes of existing: the profane and the sacred. What myths and rituals mean for these people is a passage or transformation from a lower way of being to a new higher mode of being, from the natural to supernatural mode, from the secular to sacred.
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These rites have a super-human origin, and by performing them, the novice initiates a super-human, divine action. It is important to note this, for it shows once again that the religious man wants to be other than he finds himself on the natural level ..
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Primitive man undertakes to attain a religious ideal of humanity, and his effort already contains the germs of all the ethics later elaborated in evolved societies.
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Archaic religion can be defined as a set of mythic rituals that specify various personal and social passages which are ontological transformations in that they involve a conversion from one mode of being to a higher way of existing.