Magazine of culture, traditional studies, history of religions, anthropology of the sacred, folklore, esotericism, fantastic literature
(image: Gilbert Bayes, ananke, sculpture)
Extract from the essay by Giorgio de Santillana «History to rewrite", Written in 1968 and published the following year by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, later (1985) translated and published in Italy by Adelphi in the collection of writings entitled"Ancient fate and modern fate».
Preface and notes by Marco Maculotti. Our italics.
In the first chapter of his study Myths, dreams and mysteries (published in 1957), the Romanian historian of religions Mircea Eliade deals with the question of the survival of the Myth, more or less "disguised", in the modern world. The question from which his analysis starts is the following: "What have myths become in modern societies?" Or rather: what occupied the essential place that myth had in traditional societies?». With these premises, Eliade therefore investigates the function of mythical thought in the twentieth century, analyzing in the first place the different types of eschatology underlying the political myths of our time: the "communist myth" and the "national socialist" one.
This article is based on the summary of William Sullivan's book "The Mystery of the Incas" edited by Piervittorio Formichetti and expanded by Marco Maculotti.
The ancient Andean peoples called huaca (o waka) "the presence of the sacred and the magical-telluric in each of its multiple forms or manifestations (stones, mountains, rivers, stars, celestial and terrestrial phenomena, crossroads, funeral cults, etc.)"That they encountered everywhere in a sacred world / mental space [González, The pre-Columbian symbols, p. 75]. In other words, they revered the innumerable states of a Universal Being manifesting through the environment as a hierophany. The Italian anthropologist Mario Polia writes [The blood of the condor, p. 86], reporting an indigenous tradition of the Samanga valley: "Le huacas, be they rocks, stones or mountains, they are hungry and if men do not nourish them, they devour their soul, their "shadow", sucking life from their bodies. If they are satisfied, however, they protect the fields, ward off evils and call the rains».
