Early History of Greater Mexico Book

To Transcend Profane Time


It is always a joy to read a great man's greatest book- and the author himself considered this to be the most significant of all his works. He would expand the central concepts elsewhere, but it is here that they first seem to burst forth. The way he rattles out references and examples with only a line or footnote you get the feeling that he can't be bothered with detailed analysis because he is too caught up with the central ideas and is being swept along with them. It is an infectious enthusiasm.

The central idea here is that for traditional man (man before our brief and temporary modern epoch) no act or object was real if it did not repeat or imitate an archetype. All meaning, all reality, flowed down from above. The goal was to achieve connection through the divine center with the archetype and therefore become one with the god or hero, indeed to abolish profane time itself and be transported into the mythical moment when the original model took place. This wasn't superstitious imitation; it was becoming one with true reality.

Nothing in a traditional society had any reality if it had no connection to the Divine- from buildings, cities, clothing, utensils- or your own life. The goal of life was to find the center of your being in the manner of the great heroes. Through arduous seeking and wandering through the profane and illusory earthly existence one would finally find the center and breakthrough into a life that was real, enduring, and effective.

The ultimate expression of this mode of life and behavior in the West was Platonic philosophy.

In reading this book I could not but wonder if this principle is not at the deepest core of every human being, and the reason why everything "modern" inevitably seems to be so cheap, meaningless, and illusory. Of course I am no academic specialist but rather "the cultivated man" that the author refers to in his foreward...

If I may add one more brief observation, it seems to me that an understanding of the principles of this book are key to an understanding of what 2012 really means. One of the greatest of the cosmic cycles is coming to a close. Mundane time will give way to sacred time. The actual instant of creation comes again- chaos gives way to cosmos. Regeneration is achieved by abolishing past time and reactualizing the cosmogony.