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The "eternal return" is, according to the theories of the religious historian Mircea Eliade, a belief, expressed (sometimes implicitly, but often explicitly) in religious behavior, in the ability to return to the mythical age, to become contemporary with the events described in one's myths.〔Wendy Doniger, "Foreword to the 2004 Edition", Eliade, ''Shamanism'', p.xiii〕 It should be distinguished from the philosophical concept of ''eternal return''. ==Sacred and profane== According to Eliade, This concept had already been extensively formulated by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim in 1912,〔Durkheim, ''The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life'', (1912, English translation by Joseph Swain: 1915) The Free Press, 1965. ISBN 0-02-908010-X, new translation by Karen E. Fields 1995, ISBN 0-02-907937-3 (p. 47)〕 Scholars such as Jack Goody gave evidence that it may not be universal.〔.〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Sacred and Profane – Durkheim's Critics )〕 This sharp distinction between the sacred and the profane is Eliade’s trademark theory. According to Eliade, traditional man distinguishes two levels of existence: (1) the Sacred, and (2) the profane world. (Here "the Sacred" can be God, gods, mythical ancestors, or any other beings who established the world's structure.) To traditional man, things "acquire their reality, their identity, only to the extent of their participation in a transcendent reality".〔''Cosmos and History'', p. 5.〕 Something in our world is only "real" to the extent that it conforms to the Sacred or the patterns established by the Sacred. Hence, there is profane space, and there is sacred space. Sacred space is space where the Sacred manifests itself; unlike profane space, sacred space has a sense of direction: 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). All things become truly "real" by imitating these models. Eliade claims: "For archaic man, reality is a function of the imitation of a celestial archetype."〔''Comos and History'', pg. 5〕 As evidence for this view, in ''The Myth of the Eternal Return'', he cites a belief of the Iranian Zurvanites. The Zurvanites believed that each thing on Earth corresponds to a sacred, celestial counterpart: for the physical sky, there is a sacred sky; for the physical Earth, there is a sacred Earth; actions are virtuous by conforming to a sacred pattern.〔''The Myth of the Eternal Return'', pg.6〕 These are some other examples Eliade gives: "According to Mesopotamian beliefs, the Tigris has its model in the star Anunit and the Euphrates in the star of the Swallow. A Sumerian text tells of the 'place of the creation of the gods,' where 'the (of ) the flocks and grains' is to be found. For the Ural–Altaic peoples the mountains, in the same way, have an ideal archetype in the sky. In Egypt, places and nomes were named after the celestial 'fields': first the celestial fields were known, then they were identified in terrestrial geography."〔''The Myth of the Eternal Return'', pg. 6〕 Further, there is profane time, and there is sacred time. According to Eliade, myths describe a time that is fundamentally different from historical time (what modern man would consider "normal" time). "In short," says Eliade, "myths describe … breakthroughs of the sacred (or the ‘supernatural’) into the World".〔''Myth and Reality'', pg. 6〕 The mythical age is the time when the Sacred entered our world, giving it form and meaning: "The manifestation of the sacred ontologically founds the world".〔 Thus, the mythical age is sacred time, the only time that has value for traditional man. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Eternal return (Eliade)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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