Of Navels and Mountains. Inquiry into the History of an Idea.pdf

(1242 KB) Pobierz
FRANK
J .
KOROM
University
of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Of
Navels and Mountains:
A
Further
Inquiry into the History of an Idea*
Abstract
The notion of
axis mundi
as the "center of the universe" has been an important
component in the construction of universal theories concerning mythology. The
primary theoretician behind the propagation of the concept was Mircea Eliade,
who borrowed insights from the Pan-Babylonian school during the early part of
his career in Romania in order to provide concrete evidence for the existence of a
world axis. While the case can be made for the symbolism of the center in some
cultural and religious contexts, it is virtually impossible to generalize about the
idea. This paper provides more data to supplement
J.
Z.
Smith's earlier critiques
of Eliade's position.
Key
words:
axis mundi
-
Eliade
-
mythography
navel of the earth
-
world-mountain
-
Pan-Babylonianism
-
Asian Forlklore Studies,
Volume
51, 1992: 103-125
INTRODUCTION
N an essay published in 1967, Mircea Eliade tells a st0ry.l T h e
story is about an unusually famous camel that played a central role
in the late-nineteenth-century scholarly discourse concerning the
religions of the Near and Middle East. Based on the fourth-century
observations of Nilus, a Christian monk supposedly living in a monas-
tery on M t Sinai, Eliade begins with the recounting of a Bedouin com-
mensal camel sacrifice. T h e graphic description provided by Nilus of
the consumption of raw flesh, blood, bones, and entrails conjures up
short
literary images of "barbarians," such as the ones in Franz KAFKA'S
story "Ein altes Blatt" [An Old Pagel.2 Nilus's account contains all of the
motifs and formulaic elements necessary for
a
persuasive and rhetorical
personal-experience narrative, and Eliade's version of the account high-
lights those aspects of Nilus's vivid imagination that appeal to the
dramatic sense of the reader. But Eliade's story does not end here.
Nilus's camel received a quick stamp of approval from W. Robert-
son Smith two years after
J.
Wellhausen first brought the account to
light in his
Reste arabischen Heidentums
[The Residue of Arabian
Heathenism]. T h e supposed historicity of the camel sacrifice led
Robertson Smith and others to declare conclusively that Nilus's camel
was the oldest known Arabian animal sacrifice and must therefore be
the pivot of discussions on the origins of Semitic concepts of com-
munion. As Eliade relates,
". .
.
no one seemed to doubt the authen-
ticity of Nilus's testimony, even though a great number of scholars
rejected Robertson Smith's interpretation. Thus by the beginning of
this century Nilus's camel had become
.
.
.
exasperatingly omnipresent
in the writings of historians of religions, Old Testament scholars,
sociologists, and ethnologists
. . ."
(ELIADE
1967, 27). Indeed, the per-
petuation of "an anecdote
. . .
,
a detail related as an 'aside',"3 con-
tinued unabated even after K. Heussi refuted the validity of the account
and its associated theories in his definitive work
Das
Nilusproblem
[The
Nilus Problem], published in 1921. Eliade marvels at the power that
[I041
I
O F NAVELS AND MOUNTAINS
105
such academic anecdotes convey, and suggests that it is highly significant
that an empirically disproven hypothesis can persist beyond its func-
tional lifespan. Why is this so? T o attempt to answer this perplexing
question, we need to look at the context of Eliade's retelling.
Eliade's narrative is not the story of a monk and a camel. I t is
rather a common-sense parable interpreting a chapter in the history of
academic practice. Eliade delights in exposing the ultimate metho-
dological folly of what he terms "cultural fashions," but not at the
expense of casting aside their entire burden of meaning. He reflexively
equates cultural fashion with contemporary intellectual ideology, which
leads to salvation via theory:
". .
.
cultural fashion is immensely sig-
nificant, no matter what its objective value may be; the success of cer-
tain ideas or ideologies reveals to us the spiritual and existential situation
of all those for whom these ideas or ideologies constitute a kind of
soteriology" (ELIADE
1967, 25). Academic praxis, according to Eliade's
assumptions, is a spiritual method that enables the individual scholar to
delve as deeply into his own inner, subjective world as into the objec-
tive world of outer appearances.
Indeed, Eliade's own scholarly career was a comparative search for
meaning, a transformative quest leading to higher truths during which
he also became the bearer of a metaphorical Nilus's camel. Eliade be-
came ensnared in precisely the same net that he warns us about. I t is
ironic but true that he himself fell prey to a cultural fashion that emerged
roughly parallel to the scholarly story that he tells us about monks and
camels. T h e second story is the one that
I
wish to pursue in the re-
mainder of this essay.
One of the earliest preoccupations and central concerns in Eliade's
quasi-phenomenological approach to the symbolic study of the mythic
is the question of space. T h e theme of spatial orientation, along with
the related notions of time and history, dominated Eliade's thought to
such a degree that he cogently argued in defense of his position con-
cerning them throughout his academic career. Despite Eliade's prolific
writing and erudition as well as his bibliomaniacal approach to religious
phenomena, he has not gone unchallenged. Anglo-Saxon anthropolo-
gists such as E.
R.
Leach, who has discredited Eliade as being merely
a mystic in a number of vehement reviews, are at one end of the critical
spe~trum.~
They have focused their criticisms on Eliade's concept cf
universal symbolism, while a new school of what
I. P.
Culianu has
called "new-wave anthropologists" (CULIANU
1986, 52), complain that
Eliade has not paid adequate attention to extraordinary experiences such
~
as mysticism, shamanic trance, e t ~ .Whatever the case may be, Eliade
106
FRANK
J.
KOROM
has suffered a great deal of general criticism during his lengthy ~ a r e e r . ~
Yet aside from a few remarkably insightful essays by
J.
2.
Smith'7 no
scholar to date has taken Eliade to task on specific issues. In this essay,
I
wish to contribute to a line of argumentation that Smith recently
began by providing some of the hidden historical background to the
"navel debate."
I
shall explore some of the early sources that led to
Eliade's understanding of sacred space by focusing on his coinage of
the term axis mundi.
Eliade's thoughts on this matter are by no means new, for there are
traceable
My goal here is not only to identify and describe
Eliade's concept of axis mundi, but also to point out the major scholarly
figures and theories that influenced his own formulation.8 This task is
more difficult than it seems at first, because Eliade did not necessarily
mention particular works that served as exemplary models for him.
Such references are also not explicit in his published journals. The
search for sources of inspiration is further obfuscated when one at-
tempts to trace references in footnotes; Eliade often merely refers his
reader to one of his own prior publications. Even the most persistent
and sleuth-like researcher is frustrated when a seemingly endless quest
for sources leads only to fragmented citations. If one is willing, how-
ever, to struggle through the voluminous torrent of writings produced
by Eliade from 1935 onward until his death in 1986, one is rewarded
with some clues.
If
we look at the frequency with which select mono-
graphs and articles are cited by Eliade in his numerous discussions of
axis mundi, a clear canon of works belonging to an intellectual orienta-
tion that he found peculiarly enticing, emerges. I t is interesting to
note here that those sources that influenced Eliade's notion of axis
mundi in the formative period of his intellectual life remained his pri-
mary source material even after many of them were debunked by later
investigators. The details will be given in the latter portion of this
essay. First, a brief sketch of Eliade's overall theory of sacred space
will be useful.
ELIADE'S
CONCEPT
THE
"CENTER"
AS
AXIS
M U N D I ~
OF
Eliade believes that all myths and rites disclose a "boundary situation."
He defines a boundary situation as any event of encounter in which
"man discovers himself becoming conscious of his place in the universe"
(ELIADE
1961, 34). The mythic discovery of one's place in the universe
always leads to an awareness of difference, a Durkheimian distinction
between sacred and profane.lO According to Eliade, the sacred realm is
conceived of as a microcosm of the world characterized from within as
inhabited, organized, and orderly. The sacred world is closed off and
OF NAVELS AND MOUNTAINS
107
has limits. Beyond the sacred world there is an estranged realm that
is characterized as unknown, formless, dangerous, and chaotic (ELIADE
195913, 29-32; 1961, 38). The latter, the outside world, is the profane
sphere that engulfs the sacred home territory of any given culture.
Profane space is further characterized as homogeneous and neutral, a
fundamental Eliadean definition of chaos.11
Now Eliade further states that within each sacred space, within each
microcosm, there is a place that is more sacred than all others. It is a
"Center" that totally manifests the sacred in the form of elementary
hierophanies or as direct epiphanies (ELIADE
1958, 367-69; 1959b, 21;
1961, 39). He feels that such a central point, imbued with sacredness
and power, is absolutely necessary for human action to take place. Man
must therefore always ritually establish a "center" to live in. For
Eliade, the act of establishing and constructing a center is an act of
cosmogonic value; it is equivalent to the creation of the world (ELIADE
1958, 369-74; 1959b, 22). As such, each act of construction and con-
secration is
a
repetition of a cosmogonic act, a continuous creation of the
world from the inside (ELIADE
1959a, 17-20). Eliade says that to or-
ganize space is to repeat the paradigmatic work of the gods, because
they were the ones to perform the initial creative act
in illo tempore
(ELIADE
1959a, 32). Following W. Gaerte,l2 he assumes that the idea
of a "center" has existed since the dawn of man, and has remained a
universal ever since.13
The center can take
a
myriad of forms. In mythical geography,
the landscape itself can be conceived of as a sacred space. But sacred
space can also be materialized in cultic objects such as the
churinga
of
certain Australian aboriginal groups, or it can be manifested in "hiero-
cosmic" symbols such as "world trees" or "cosmic pillars." Finally,
sacred space can be interiorized within the human body, as in the case
of the meditations of an Indian
yogi.
In each example, regardless of its
form, sacred space puts one in direct contact with the sacred: "Whether
that space appears in the form of a sacred precinct, a ceremonial house,
a city, a world, we everywhere find the symbolism of the Center of the
World; and it is this symbolism which, in the majority of cases, explains
religious behavior in respect to the space in which one lives" (ELIADE
1959b, 37-38).
"Centers" are always powerful because they constitute a point of
intersection between the three regions: heaven, earth, hell. Here at the
center a breakthrough is possible and communication between these
three worlds is opened up. Usually, there is a vertical conduit of some
sort at the center of the sacred space that acts as the channel of com-
munication. According to Eliade, the conduit is an archetypal
axis

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika:

Zgłoś jeśli naruszono regulamin