Mircea Eliade Pattern in Comparative Religions     PCR 38f II THE SKY AND SKY GODS [emphasis mine. GCS] 11. THE SACREDNESS OF THE SKY THE most popular prayer in the world is addressed to " Our Father who art in heaven ". It is possible that man's earliest prayers were addressed to the same heavenly father-it would explain the testimony of an African of the Ewe tribe : " There where the sky is, God is too ". The Vienna school of ethnology (particularly in the person of Fr. W. Schmidt, the author of the fullest monograph yet produced on the subject of the origins of the idea of divinity) even claims to have established the existence of a primitive monotheism, basing the proof chiefly on the belief in. sky gods among the most primitive human societies. For the moment we will leave on one side this problem of primeval monotheism. What is quite beyond doubt is that there is an almost universal belief in a celestial divine being, who created the universe and guarantees the fecundity of the earth (by pouring rain down upon it). These beings are endowed with infinite foreknowledge and wisdom; moral laws and often tribal ritual as well were established by them during a brief visit to the earth; they watch to see that their laws are obeyed, and lightning strikes all who infringe them. We shall look at a series of divine figures of the sky, but first it is necessary to grasp the religious significance of the sky as such. There is no need to look into the teachings of myth to-see that the sky itself directly reveals a transcendence, a power and a holiness. Merely contemplating the vault of heaven produces a religious experience in the primitive mind. This does not necessarily imply a " nature-worship " of the sky. To the primitive, nature is never purely " natural ". The phrase " contemplating the vault of heaven " really means something when it is applied to primitive man, receptive to the miracles of every day to an extent we find it hard to imagine. Such contemplation is the same as a revelation. The sky shows itself as it really is : infinite, transcendent. The vault of 39 heaven is, more than anything else, " something quite apart" from the tiny thing that is man and his span of life. The symbolism of its transcendence derives from the simple realization of its infinite height. " Most High " becomes quite naturally an attribute of the divinity. The regions above man's reach, the starry places, are invested with the divine majesty of the transcendent, of absolute reality, of everlastingness. Such places are the dwellings of the gods ; certain privileged people go there as a result of rites electing their ascension into heaven; there, according to some religions, go the souls of the dead. The " high " is something inaccessible to man as such; it belongs by right to superhuman powers and beings ; when a man ceremonially ascends the steps of a sanctuary, or the ritual ladder leading to the sky he ceases to be a man; the souls of the privileged dead leave their human state behind when they rise into heaven. All this derives from simply contemplating the sky ; but it would be a great mistake to see it as a logical, rational process. The transcendental quality of " height ", or the supra-terrestrial, the infinite, is revealed to man all at once, to his intellect as to his soul as a whole. The symbolism is an immediate notion of the whole consciousness, of the man, that is, who realizes himself as a man, who recognizes his place in the universe; these primeval realizations are bound up so organically with his life that the same symbolism determines both the activity of his subconscious and the noblest expressions of his spiritual life. It really is important, therefore, this realization that though the symbolism and religious values of the sky are not deduced logically from a calm and objective observation of the heavens, neither are they exclusively the product of mythical activity and non-rational religious experience. Let me repeat even before any religious values have been set upon the sky it reveals its transcendence. The sky " symbolizes " transcendence, power and changelessness simply by being there. It exists because it is high, infinite, immovable, powerful. That the mere fact of being high, of being high up, means being powerful (in the religious sense), and being as such filled with the sacred, is shown by the very etymology of some of the gods' names. - To the Iroquois, all that has orenda is called okia but the meaning of the word oki seems to be " what is 40 on high "; we even find a Supreme Being of the sky called Oke.1-The Sioux express magico-religious power by the word wakan, which is phonetically extremely close to wakan, wankan, which means, in the Dakota language, " on high, above "; the sun, the moon, lightning, the wind, possess wakan, and this force was personified though imperfectly in " Wakan ", which the missionaries translated as meaning " Lord ", but who was in fact a Supreme Being of the sky, manifesting himself above all in lightning.2 The supreme divinity of the Maoris is called Iho : iho means " raised up, on high ".g The Akposo negroes have a Supreme God Uwoluwu; the name means " what is on high, the upper regions ".4 And one could multiply these examples. 5 We shall see soon that " the most high ", " the shining ", " the sky ", are notions -which have existed more or less explicitly in the terms used by primitive civilizations to express the idea of Godhead. The transcendence of God is directly revealed in the inaccessibility, infinity, eternity and creative power (rain) of the sky. The whole nature of the sky is an inexhaustible hierophany [expression, revelation of the 'sacred' GCS]. Consequently, anything that happens among the stars or in the upper areas of the atmosphere - the rhythmic revolution of the stars, chasing clouds, storms, thunderbolts, meteors, rainbows - is a moment in that hierophany. When this hierophany became personified, when the divinities of the sky showed themselves, or took the place of the holiness of the sky as such, is difficult to say precisely. What is quite certain is that the sky divinities have always been supreme divinities ; that their hierophanies, dramatized in various ways by myth, have remained for that reason sky hierophanies ; and that what one may call the history of sky divinities is largely a history of notions of " force ", of " creation ", of " laws " and of " sovereignty ". We shall look briefly at several groups of sky divinities, which will help us to a better understanding both of the essence of these divinities and of the tenor of their " history ". 1 Pettazzoni, Did, Rome, 1922, vol. i, p. 310. All references to Pettazzoni's work are to vol. i; vol. ii has not yet appeared. Schmidt, Der Ursprung der Gottesidee, Munster, 1926, vol. ii, p. 399. 2 Pettazzoni, pp. 290 ff. ; Schmidt, vol. ii, pp. 402, 648-52. 3 Pettazzoni, p. 175. 4 Pettazzoni, p. 244. 5 Cf. Pettazzoni, p. 358, n. 2. 12. AUSTRALIAN SKY GODS Baiame, the supreme divinity among the tribes of South-East Australia (Kamilaroi, Wiradjuri, Euahlayi), dwells in the sky, beside a great stream of water (the Milky Way), and receives the souls of the innocent. He sits on a crystal throne ; the sun and moon are his " sons ", his messengers to the earth (more truly his eyes, as with the Fuegians' Halakwulup and among the Semang and the Samoyeds).1 Thunder is his voice; he causes the rain to fall, making the whole earth green and fertile; in this sense too he is creator. For Baiame is selfcreated and has created everything from nothing. Like the other sky gods, Baiame sees and hears everything.2 Other tribes on the East coast (Muring, etc.), believe in a similar divine being, Daramulum. This is an esoteric name (the name of Baiame is too) only made known to the initiate ; the women and children know him only as " father " (papang) and " lord " (biambam). In the same way, the clumsy clay images they have of the god are shown only during the initiation ceremonies ; they are afterwards destroyed and the pieces are carefully scattered. At one time Daramulum lived for a short time on earth, and inaugurated the rites of initiation ; he- was then raised once more into heaven whence his voice may be heard (in thunder) and whence he sends down the rain. The initiation consists, among other things, in a solemn demonstration of the " bull-roarer "; it is a piece of wood about six inches long and just under an inch and a half wide with a piece of string through a hole at one end ; when it is swung round it makes a noise like thunder or like a bull roaring. The identity of the bull-roarer and of Daramulum are known only to the initiate. The strange groanings they hear from the jungle at night fill the uninitiated with holy fear, for they take them to mean that the god is coming.3 1 Cf. Schmidt, vol. iii, p. 1087. 2 Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-East Australia, London, 1904, pp. 362 It, 466 ff. ; Pettazzoni, pp. 2 ff. ; Schmidt, vol. i, p. 416; vol. iii, pp. 846 ff. 3 Howitt, pp. 494 8., 528 ff.