Rupture of Plane
Breaking through planes Any rupture of plane ultimately prefigures the passage from one mode of being to another, in continuity with the archaic idea that a state cannot be changed without first being annihilated. Primordial images that are expressed by the ‘breaking through planes’ deal with the abolition of time or the order of time (Eliade, 1961, Images and Symbols. London: Harvill Press, p. 82). They are usually shown as a ‘dangerous passage’, or a ‘paradoxical transfer’ (Eiade, 1995, Rites and Symbols of Initiation, Woodstock: Spring Publications, p. 65), since that shift between dimensions (which come to mean transcendent states) is not accessible to the man of flesh and blood and, therefore, requires a change in the mode of being.
Ascension There are two different types of primordial images concerning ascension, one relating to bird-men and flight, the other to the experience of ascent and ‘magical flight’ (Eliade, 1977, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, London: Harvill Press p. 101). The ecstatic experience of ascension is the existential situation associated with the symbols and images relating to ‘magical flight’ (Eliade, 1977, p. 102) and integrates a universally diffused symbolism of ascension which expresses two purposes, transcendence and freedom, both the one and the other obtained by a rupture of the plane of experience, and expressive of an ontological mutation of the human being (Eliade, 1977, 108), primarily conveyed by the abolition of weight.
Flight As a primordial image, flight refers to the human aspiration to ‘breaking-out from a situation that has become “locked” or “petrified”, the rupture of plane that makes it possible to pass from one mode of being into another – in short, liberty ‘of movement’, freedom to change the situation, to abolish a conditioning system’ (Eliade, 1977, p. 110). The nostalgia for flight is inherent to this human aspiration for ‘freedom’, and many traditions tell that in the mythical age the power of flight extended to all man, all could reach heaven, whether flying on their own, or on the wings of a fabulous bird or on the clouds (Eliade, 1989, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, London: Arkana, p. 478), while, on a profane level, the power of flight expresses intelligence, understanding of secret things or metaphysical truths (Eliade, 1989, p. 479). The archaic and exemplary image of flight becomes charged with new meanings, discovered in the course of new awakenings of consciousness (Eliade, 1977, p. 106), showing that the roots of freedom are to be sought in the depths of the psyche.
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