Mircea Eliade: Metaphysics of the Moon

"It was lunar symbolism that enabled man to relate and connect such heterogeneous things as: birth, becoming, death, and resurrection; the waters, plants, woman, fecundity, and immortality; the cosmic darkness, prenatal existence, and life after death, followed by a rebirth of lunar type ('light coming out of darkness'); weaving, the symbol of the 'thread of life,' fate, temporality, and death; and yet others. In general most of the ideas of cycle, dualism, polarity, opposition, conflict, but also of reconciliation of contraries, of coincidentia oppositiorum, were either discovered or clarified by virtue of lunar symbolism. 

 We may even speak of a metaphysics of the moon, in the sense of a consistent system of 'truths' relating to the mode of being peculiar to living creatures, to everything in the cosmos that shares in life, that is, in becoming, growth and waning, death and resurrection. For we must not forget that what the moon reveals to religious man is not only that death is indissolubly linked with life but also, and above all, that death is not final, that it is always followed by a new birth."



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Marina Abramović - Walk Through Walls (excerpt)

Image
Once I was a postwoman. Not for very long, though. None of us had wanted to go back to Belgrade when the festival was over, but in order to stay in Edinburgh, we had to find work. So I got a job as a mail lady. I was excited about my new job, but after a few exhausting days of walking around the city, often lost and not speaking the language very well, I decided to only deliver the envelopes with nice handwritten addresses and throw out everything else—especially the bills. My supervisor asked me to return my uniform. That was that for postal work. Then Demarco asked me if I knew anything about interior design. “Of course,” I said. Of course I knew nothing. He took me to an architectural firm and introduced me to one of the principals. “We are designing a dining room for a luxury cruise ship,” the guy said. “Can you give us your input?” I reported for work the next morning. The first thing I did was to take a pile of white paper and draw a closely spaced grid on each sheet. I...
Keep reading

Ariana Huffington - Maria Callas (part I)

Image
(1923-1941) Maria's fighting instinct beginning to assert itself, but it was still her mother who was the force driving her on. Evangelia’s head may have been in the clouds about her daughter’s prospects, and her heart nowhere in evidence, but her feet were solidly on the ground. The conclusion she reached in the last days of 1936 was that, if Maria was to have the teachers and training she would need for the career Evangelia dreamed of, they would have to return to Greece. There, with her family’s musical connections and without her husband’s constant objections, she could dedicate herself even more thoroughly to the polishing of the treasure she was convinced she held in her hands. However logical the arguments in favor of leaving for Greece, the arguments against the move were equally compelling. In the end it was not logic, but instinct that resolved Evangelia’s dilemma. She had a dream in which her father—the figure who from her childhood had been most irrevocably associat...
Read more

Sreten Petrović: Mit, religija i umetnost

Image
Kada je Ernst Bloh sa najdubljim filozofskim uverenjem rekao da „nema umetnosti bez mitološkog tla, i nikada je neće biti bez nekog verovanja”, dodavši da je mit trajni izvor i iskon umetnosti? [1], on je time potcrtao privrženost Šelingovoj metafizici i romantičkoj ideji njegove Filozofije umetnosti i Filozofije mitologije, da je mit osnov i inspiracija umetnosti.  Prva polovina XIX veka u znaku je obnovljenog interesa za mitologiju i umetnost, što je posledica novih duhovnih okolnosti, u kojima se uz uspon i obogotvoravanje nauke a sa njom i nove vere u istorijski napredak koji se oslanja na tehniku, shvatilo da se nikakav pomak u budućnosti ne može učiniti na štetu tradicije i vrednosti duha koje su položene u prošlim vekovima. Zahvaljujući romantičkom poletu, shvaćena je na pravi način ideja o neophodnosti očuvanja ravnoteže između sadašnjosti i prošlosti, na kojoj je kao na epohalnom projektu, samo koju deceniju ranije, istrajavao Ž. Ž. Ruso, ustajući protiv optimistički...
Read more