#mercea eliade

[darkmuseum]

The sum total of vital energy that is left available by the interruption of an existence still far from reaching it natural end is 'creative', in the sense that it is capable of animating any object made by man.

Mercea Eliade, Zalmoxis: The Vanishing God (quoted in Daniel A. Schulke’s Veneficium).

[mmmspace]

The numinous presents itself as something “wholly other”, something basically totally different. It is like nothing human or cosmic; confronted with it, man sense his profound nothingness, feels that he is only a creature, or, in the words in which Abraham addressed the Lord, is “but dust and ashes” (Genesis, 18, 27).

[doctorsax]

In certain highly evolved societies, the intellectual élites progressively detach themselves from the patterns of traditional religion. The periodical resanctification of cosmic time then proves useless and without meaning. [...] But repetition emptied of its religious content necessarily leads to a pessimistic vision of existence. 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.

Mercea Eliade