The Eternal Return

By Tai Carmen

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.  Ecclesiastes 1:9

I dwell in sacred time, which flows in a circle. Not historical time, which runs in a line. T. A. Barron, The Lost Years of Merlin

The idea of the eternal return is not limited to Biblical platitude. The concept can also be found in ancient Egyptian, Mayan and Aztec beliefs, in East Indian and ancient Greek philosophy, as well as the 19th century thought experiment of Friedrich Nietzsche.

The concept of the eternal return posits that the universe has been recurring, and will continue to recur, in a self-similar form, an infinite number of times across infinite time and/or infinite space.

The image of the Ouroboros, the snake devouring its own tail, symbolizes the eternal recurrence, or “the end is the beginning.” It has been seen in various expressions through out ancient Egypt, Japan, India, and Greece — in European woodcuts and Aztec art.

Stephen Hawking affirms the possibility of the  “arrow of time”,  a concept that the universe proceeds up to a certain point, after which it undergoes a time reversal.

Respected religious scholar, Mircea Eliade, expands on the concept in his book, Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return, first by splitting man’s experience into two categories: the sacred and the profane, or everyday.

In his studies of tribal belief systems around the world, Mircea concludes that traditional or “archaic” man associates “the sacred” with some original mythology of creation. He sites the Aborigines concept of “dreamtime” as one example. In the Aborigine legend of “the time before time” creators, who exist in a world outside of time, created the world within time, and then become rocks, trees, stars, etc. in the world. In this way, Mircea observes, the profane only gains meaning through the sacred.

Nietzsche uses the idea of the eternal return as a thought experiment to explore his concept of Amor fati, or “love of fate.” Imagining such an existence horrifying, he rallies with the cry of embracing what is:

“I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful.”