In an effort to avoid everything incomprehensible to the mind at any cost, and by resorting to reductionist methods, man is now suffering the consequences: Homo sapiens has paradoxically produced Homo barbaricusa and has become a victim of the return to barbarism.
Technology, comfort, material prosperity, and all achievements in that regard cannot create a better world. We are far from triumphing over violence, selfishness, and greed, which these achievements abundantly feed. Perhaps we have lost sight of the goal, and that is the reason for our weaknesses on the moral and spiritual level. The overall understanding of the world is called into question, so other aspects of reality, especially those that elude reason, will have to be taken into account.
We have strayed because we tried to solely rely on reason. Man is simultaneously sapiens and demens, rational and intuitive, scientist and poet. He lives in constant oscillation between the conscious and the unconscious. Choosing only one side leads to behavior that deprives man of his humanity.
you and it approaches him to animal behavior, which results in violence, passion, blindness, barbarism. Humanity consists in the ability to manage this paradox, this dual nature. The spiritual dimension with its functions, reduced by contemporary society to a childish level and having no impact on individual and social behavior, finds its importance in myths which directly connect multiple dimensions of existence, as well as in rituals and symbols with their ambiguity. They are means that enable the management of these contradictions and their transcendence. Through the study of traditional civilizations and societies, anthropology has provided insight into the psychological workings that create myths, rituals, and symbols important for understanding our contemporary society.
We live in a unique time where individuals must find answers to feelings of uncertainty and anxiety that burden them. However, this scenario is not new. Since ancient times, from the moment he became self-aware, man has faced uncertainty and anxiety – the threat of his environment, but above all, the threat of death. He has devised various answers that are completely independent of changing circumstances.
“Homo religiosus” or the search for meaning
Mircea Eliade explained this mechanism as follows: all of man’s answers stem from religious feelings as the foundation of human order. At an anthropological level, this is defined by man’s ability to engage with other dimensions, a reality different from the sensory experience of everyday life. Eli This passage reminds us that human consciousness, unlike the consciousness of other species, possesses a unique quality – holiness.
“Holiness is an element of consciousness structure, not a historical moment.”^1 It allows the human being to attribute a completely different meaning to everyday, worldly facts. An ordinary thing thus becomes a carrier of meaning and gains much greater significance than its immediate properties and material value. By becoming a symbol and a carrier of meaning, it is able to create a connection between the visible and the invisible, the present and the absent. A tree or a plant is not holy because it is a tree or a plant; they become holy through their participation in transcendent reality; they become holy because they signify that transcendent reality.^2
Man cannot resist the urge to create order out of chaos as a source of coherence and meaning.
Similarly, the worldly dimension changes and takes on a unifying meaning. Holiness establishes a religious sense and allows, as Mircea Eliade said, “the reliving” of that transcendental reality.
“By embracing paradoxical phenomena, one transcends the limitations of the human condition. Man cannot live in chaos; he feels a constant need for an organized world, and the model of an organized world is the cosmos. Man cannot live without a vertical axis, which has a dual role: to open the way to the transcendent and simultaneously provide orientation. Once the connection with the transcendent is severed and the system of orientation is shattered, existence in the world is no longer possible.
Man cannot resist the tendency to create order from chaos as a source of coherence and meaning. Moreover, every time a human being settles in a place, they establish a microcosm that, according to anthropological research, conveys their vision of an invisible order that transcends material reality. Caves, houses, castles, and cities reflect the cosmological image of the people who created them. In order to establish order and coherence, a source of peace and harmony in a inhabited area, traditional man must separate that area through rituals of orientation.” In order to connect it with the cosmic order, or with the heavens, and thus cosmify it, he overcomes the threatening secular environment. The main streets of cities or entrances to houses represent the axes of the rising or setting sun or stars, which connect the earthly realm of humans with the heavenly realm of gods. The needs of human beings are not satisfied by armed force or the height of walls or the thickness of ramparts, but by a sense of connectedness with their surroundings, and not just with themselves, an opening towards the unknown world with which they enter into a relationship of exchange.
Human beings tirelessly conquer the world, organize it, transform the natural landscape into a cultural environment. The great event that introduces human order consists of transforming nature into something different from what it would create on its own. Likewise, man transcends nature while remaining connected to it. The cultural act par excellence is one that creates order out of chaos. Things need to be pulled out of disorder, where they are unintelligible and therefore inaccessible and useless, and push them into the background of existence where they can find their meaning.
The history of civilizations ultimately boils down to the history of human groups’ attempts to respond to uncertainty, danger, and threat. The mechanisms that determine these responses elevate Homo religiosus and have always remained the same, but the nature of these responses changes depending on periods, places, and people, and none of them is ever final.
Encouraged by the success of industrialization and mechanization, humans create a myth of linear and infinite development. The reign of quantity emerges, demanding that only what is quantitatively measurable be worthy of interest. Auguste Comte imagines his theory of the progress of humanity in three stages, from the least mature to the most advanced: theological, metaphysical, and positive. Intellectuals become new preachers of a secular religion.
From one eradication to another, we have progressively and ruthlessly removed the sacred to such an extent that the world has clearly become exclusively secular. However, the sacred It is expressed as an unavoidable function of the human consciousness through circumventing paths, taking on worldly forms, and re-emerging covertly in marketing advertisements, political speeches, cinema, etc. And, worst of all, it shows, as we have already emphasized, a dangerous and violent face, through collective unconsciousness, in the form of sects, fundamentalism, racism, etc.
Myth and religious anthropology
Religious anthropology explores the main laws to which the human being as a creator and user of symbols submits. Mircea Eliade states that the subject of its study is Homo religiosus. It attempts to uncover the immutability of human behavior towards religious phenomena. It investigates behavior, thought structure, logical symbolism, and the mental universe of Homo religiosus or the symbolist.
Religious anthropology should not be mistaken for ethnology, history, or sociology of religion. As its name suggests, religious anthropology is more interested in the individual than the people; more precisely, it is interested in The benefits of ethnology serve her only for a better understanding of the main characteristics of Homo religiosus through existing cultures. Ethnology primarily studies the religions of micro-societies and their customs, while the sociology of religion devotes itself to the study of major universal religions, transcending the frameworks of specific ethnic groups, such as Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, etc. Religious anthropology enables the discovery of keys that are applied to the religions of tribal societies and to universal religions.
The experience of myth and symbol leads man to himself, revealing his own existence and destiny.
Ernst Cassirer (1874 – 1945) initiated a synthesis that sparked an anthropological return to myth and the fundamental human phenomenon that constitutes it – symbol. Man is no longer only considered a physical or emotional being, but also a being capable of creating symbols and connections through his imagination, which establish relationships between the concrete and abstract, visible and invisible, Heaven and Earth…
This establishes a Exploring the myths and symbols in the center of anthropological interest will be strengthened by the works of C.G. Jung and the Eranos Circle, and will bring together esteemed anthropologists and historians of religion such as G. Tucci, H. Corbin, G. van der Leeuw, and M. Eliade. Today, G. Durand continues to engage with myths and symbols.
Considering the realms that Western philosophy has resisted, religious anthropology discovers that myth is the existential expression of human beings, to which symbolic thought allows a free flow through all levels of reality. It enables human beings to no longer live as a “separate part,” but as a living cosmos connected to all other living worlds that surround them. The experience of myth and symbols leads a person towards themselves, revealing their own existence and destiny.
1 Mircea Eliade, The Nostalgia of Origins, Gallimard
2 Fernand Schwarz, Tradition and the Paths of Knowledge, N.A.D.P.
3 The Birth of the World, Structures and Functions of the Cosmogonic Myth, Oriental Sources, Editions du Seuil
4 R. Bastide , Religious Anthropology, Universal Encyclopedia, vol. II.