Mircea Eliade, “Paradise and Utopia:

Mythical Geography and Eschatology”

Eschatology is a part of theology, philosophy, and futurology concerned with what are believed
to be the final events in history, or the ultimate destiny of humanity, commonly referred to as the
end of the world or the World to Come. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as "concerned
with ‘the four last things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell’". (Source of definition Wikipedia).

At one point in the text, a subchapter is names “The quest for Earthly Paradise” (page 90). Here
the author is referring to the Garden of Eden. And with different occasions he tells us that the
immigrants went to New England hoping for “Heaven on Earth”. Europe was for them at that
time some sort of hell, so they wanted a land where they can start fresh, a new Garden of Eden,
so they can prove they are worthy of all they have been offered up to that moment.

“The colonization of the two Americas began under an eschatological sign:

people believed that the time had come to renew the Christian world, and
the true renewal was the return to the Earthly Paradise or, at the very least,
the beginning again of sacred history, the reiteration of the prodigious
events spoken of in the Bible.” (page 91)

Mircea Eliade presents later on some interpretations of the New World and how they were born.
He gathers in one place some famous declarations about New England from important
personalities like John Smith (Heaven on earth), Edward Johnson (Massachusetts was the place
where the Lord would create a new Heaven and Earth) , Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards
(Paradise on Earth), John Winthrop and many more. They rediscover this new Garden of Eden in
different parts of America, in different states sometimes.

The author also presents the fact that Europe was an old continent, a continent that suffered, that
was corrupted, that decayed over the years and a continent that lost the path to God, the path to
Paradise, and also as a continent on the path to self destruction. “Catholic Europe was presented
as a fallen world, a Hell, in contrast with the Paradise of the New World”(page 95).

So some pilgrims, not being able to stand this, take matter into their own hands and go to search
for this new Paradise. Even if some of them believe that this is something like the beginning of
the end, they are still proud to be the ones that were able to discover it. Because people thought
that this new land was a sign that the apocalypse was on its way. America appeared having this
background of a messianic and apocalyptic atmosphere, of fear and of hope for a new start.
We can clearly see from Mircea Eliade’s point of view that religion was a very important factor
in America’s colonization. And we are presented with this theory in the chapter called “The
Return to Primitive Christianity”. The struggle between Protestantism and Catholicism turned
into a conflict between Good and Evil in the end. The colonist were hoping to be like “reborn”,
and later on we see Cotton Mather’s opinion, because he was expecting America “to return to
the early days of Christianity.”(page96)

And for the puritans, the best and most important Christian virtue was
simplicity. For them intelligent people were dangerous, because they were
“more ready to work for Satan”.

This return to the past was not as simple as they had hoped. It was hard to
escape that past [ “Shall we never, never get rid of this Past? It lies upon the
present like a giant’s dead body” page 100 ], and to accept the fact that
smart people are not necessarily dangerous, and that their main goal is not
to destroy this new found Paradise, but to help its being prosperous. They
were under the impression that “the American Paradise has been infested
with demonic forces coming from urban Europe”.

In his 1959, The Sacred and Profane, Mircea Eliade decried the secularization
of the modern mind:

“It is only in the modern societies of the West that nonreligious man has developed
fully. Modern nonreligious man assumes a new existential situation; he regards
himself solely as the subject and agent of history, and he refuses all appeal to
transcendence. In other words, he accepts no model for humanity outside the
human condition as it can be seen in the various historical situations. Man makes
himself, and he only makes himself completely in proportion as he desacralizes
himself and the world. The sacred is the prime obstacle to his freedom. He will
become himself only when he is totally demysticized. He will not be truly free until
he has killed the last god.”

He is telling us that the human is surpassing his own condition just because he is
able to think – an attribute that is so important for our existence. The fact that we
think situates us higher than other forms of life. This is the secret of life, because
through thinking you can map your own road in life. We are the only life form able
to think and able to change our destiny, able to change the world, the others just
exist and are happy in this state of being. This is an evolution engine for us,
because trough philosophy and psychology we evolve, and isn’t this the meaning of
life? To evolve and to change? Isn’t this what the first pilgrims wanted? They
needed to escape from the Hell in Europe, so they could be able to grow and evolve
in a different manner.

Eliade also underlines the fact that the people who traveled to the New World, saw themselves as
people who can change the world, people that will be able to build the “city upon a hill” to be a
beacon for everybody else. They saw America as El Dorado, as Arcadia and they considered
themselves as chosen by Providence to do this task that “would serve as an example of the true
Reformation for all Europe.” (Page 92). And the first pioneers “saw a sign of divine Providence
in the fact that America had been hidden to the Europeans until the time of Reformation”(page
93). They thought they hold the key to salvation. “New England, New York, New Haven – all
these names express the hope that in these lands and these new cities life will know new
dimensions”(page 98). And this land became the perfect place for the puritans to start fresh, for
the immigrants to have a better life and better conditions, and to have the possibility to
rediscover the original “nature”.

Not only Christianity, but also the Indian tribes would look at the New World as a Salvation: in
order to reach the Paradise for "an eternal felicity"[102], in Latin America the Guarani Indians
would practice different rituals that could induce them a state of ecstasy, for establishing a
connection with the divinity. They believed that the divinity would reveal them the chosen land
through the ritual of dance or through the dreams of the shamans.

It is the obsession of Paradise that made them fearful of "not understanding the divine messages
in time and consequently facing the risk of perishing in the imminent cosmic catastrophe".[104]