The crude product of nature, the object fashioned by the industry of man, acquire their reality, their identity, only to the extent of their particip… - Mircea Eliade

Odată, când eram mic, mă întorceam acasă într-un car cu fân. Asta se petrecea la via noastră de lângă Râmnicu-Sărat. Adormisem și m-am trezit deodată, singur în carul cu fân - și deasupra mea erau numai stele. Erau numai stele. Și parcă totul se oprise pe loc. Parcă timpul nu mai curgea. Nu erau decât stele.

And I realize how useless wails are and how gratuitous melancholy is.

In one way or another one "lives" the myth, in the sense that one is seized by the sacred, exalting power of the events recollected or re-enacted. "Living" a myth, then, implies a genuinely "religious" experience, since it differs from the ordinary experience of everyday life. The "religiousness" of this experience is due to the fact that one re-enacts fabulous, exalting, significant events, one again witnesses the creative deeds of the Supernaturals; one ceases to exist in the everyday world and enters a transfigured, auroral world impregnated with the Supernaturals' presence. What is involved is not a commemoration of mythical events but a reiteration of them. The protagonists of the myth are made present; one becomes their contemporary. This also implies that one is no longer living in chronological time, but in the primordial Time, the Time when the event first took place. This is why we can use the term the "strong time" of myth; it is the prodigious, "sacred" time when something new, strong, and significant was manifested. To re-experience that time, to re-enact it as often as possible, to witness again the spectacle of the divine works, to meet with the Supernaturals and relearn their creative lesson is the desire that runs like a pattern through all the ritual reiterations of myths. In short, myths reveal that the World, man, and life have a supernatural origin and history, and that this history is significant, precious, and exemplary.