Editing Mircea Eliade (section)

====''Coincidentia oppositorum''====
Eliade claims that many myths, rituals, and mystical experiences involve a "coincidence of opposites", or ''[[coincidentia oppositorum]]''. In fact, he calls the ''<ref>coincidentia</ref> oppositorum'' "the mythical pattern."<ref>In ''Patterns in Comparative Religion'' (p. 419), Eliade gives a section about the ''coincidentia oppositorum'' the title "Coincidentia Oppositorum—THE MYTHICAL PATTERN". Beane and Doty chose to retain this title when excerpting this section in ''Myths, Rites, Symbols'' (p. 449).</ref> Many myths, Eliade notes, "present us with a twofold revelation":
<blockquote>they express on the one hand the diametrical opposition of two divine figures sprung from one and the same principle and destined, in many versions, to be reconciled at some ''illud tempus'' of eschatology, and on the other, the ''coincidentia oppositorum'' in the very nature of the divinity, which shows itself, by turns or even simultaneously, benevolent and terrible, creative and destructive, solar and serpentine, and so on (in other words, actual and potential).<ref>Eliade, ''Myths, Rites, Symbols'', p. 449</ref></blockquote>
The reconciling opposites „involves imitating gestures or situations from before the establishment of history, by recovering the initial state, by regenerating time and the world, but also by mystical initiation."<ref>Doina Ruști, Dictionary of symbols from Eliade's work, Corint, 1997</ref>
Eliade argues that "Yahweh is both kind and wrathful; the God of the Christian mystics and theologians is terrible and gentle at once."<ref name="Eliade Myths p.450"/> He also thought that the Indian and Chinese mystic tried to attain "a state of perfect indifference and neutrality" that resulted in a coincidence of opposites in which "pleasure and pain, desire and repulsion, cold and heat [...] are expunged from his awareness".<ref name="Eliade Myths p.450"/>

According to Eliade, the ''coincidentia oppositorum'''s appeal lies in "man's deep dissatisfaction with his actual situation, with what is called the human condition".<ref name="Eliade Myths p.439"/> In many mythologies, the end of the mythical age involves a "fall", a fundamental "[[Ontology|ontological]] change in the structure of the World".<ref name="Eliade Myths p.440">Eliade, ''Myths, Rites, Symbols'', p. 440</ref> Because the ''coincidentia oppositorum'' is a contradiction, it represents a denial of the world's current logical structure, a reversal of the "fall".

Also, traditional man's dissatisfaction with the post-mythical age expresses itself as a feeling of being "torn and separate".<ref name="Eliade Myths p.439">Eliade, ''Myths, Rites, Symbols'', p. 439</ref> In many mythologies, the lost mythical age was a Paradise, "a paradoxical state in which the contraries exist side by side without conflict, and the multiplications form aspects of a mysterious Unity".<ref name="Eliade Myths p.440"/> The ''coincidentia oppositorum'' expresses a wish to recover the lost unity of the mythical Paradise, for it presents a reconciliation of opposites and the unification of diversity:
<blockquote>On the level of pre-systematic thought, the mystery of totality embodies man's endeavor to reach a perspective in which the contraries are abolished, the Spirit of Evil reveals itself as a stimulant of Good, and Demons appear as the night aspect of the Gods.<ref name="Eliade Myths p.440"/></blockquote>