Certain legends evoke that light from the dawn of mankind, better than other ones. Certain illustrators, very talented ones, knew how to harness and transcribe these beautiful lights.

Krita Yuga

The shivaite tradition of the Four Yuga/Ages, describes the mankind with successive cycles, also called maha-yugas. Each cycle is 60,000 years long,According to Alain Daniélou. See below and is composed of four successive yugas/ages: krita yuga, treta yuga, dwapara yuga, and finally, our present age, kali yuga. The four yugas remind of the four agesTo see The End of Ages, click on + below of antique Greece, and they sometimes have the same names (golden, silver, bronze and iron) that we also find in antique Persia, what may suggest the same origin.

Even their order evokes a decline, confirmed by their length, each age being half the length of the previous one. Thus, Golden Age is 32,000 years long, then Silver Age is 16,000 years long, then Bronze Age 8,000 years long, and finally Iron Age is only 4,000 years long. They are shorter and shorter, because they are harder and harder to bear. Anyway, the real length of a cycleAlso called maha-yuga varies a lot depending on authors: some hindu sages spoke about hundreds thousands years, and even millions of years, for one cycle.

60,000 Years Cycles

The present estimation, 60,000 years for a whole cyle, was proposed by the french indianist Alain Danielou who found these numbers in the old shivaite tradition. But he insisted on the fact that those figures, like any, only gave an indicative value. Like every antique civilization, the vedic tradition mentioned very huge and unbelievable lengths of time. They point to the extreme ancientness of our species, to the fabulous length of its history. But datations evolve faster than theories...

Born in 1907 in Neully-sur-Seine, near Paris, Alain Danielou, an indianist and musicologist researcher, travelled across India studying sanskrit and hindi languages, as well as hindu philosophy and theology. He translated the writings of a famous Sannyasi,Renouncing man in Hinduist tradition Swami Kârpatrî, who initiated him to the rites of shivaite hindouism. He died in Italy in 1994. He left several important essaysFor french readers only: 'La fantaisie des dieux et l'aventure humaine', 'Origines et pouvoirs de la musique', and 'Shivaïsme et tradition primordiale'. where he shows the inner vision of shivaism, probably the more ancient religion of the world.

What did life look like during golden age? We can imagine it watching the last so called primitive peoples still living in australian and african deserts, in 'primary' forests in Amazonia, Indonesia or New Guinea. These golden age's inheritants respect Mother Earth. They don't leave indelible marks. They don't build enormous walls. Did people live like that in Eden? Some anthropologists thought so, but this is doubtful. What if men from Krita Yuga were very different from our savages?

The Golden Weapons

To say the truth, the further we go back in time, the higher is the development rate showed by archeological discoveries. But no one seems to notice that. And all of the anthropologists still believe in the myth of progress. Thus, in the Mahabharata book, which took place during Silver Age, Arjuna met a god from Golden Age, Shiva, who gave him 'pasupata', a weapon of mass destruction whose effects are similar to those of a nuke bomb.See Shiva's nuke bomb Did you say Golden Age?

To the ancient Greeks, the Golden Age came after the creation of man, while Cronos, god of time, was reigning over heaven and earth: it was a time of innocence, justice, affluence and happiness. Earth knew an eternal spring, fields were producing without cultivations, men lived almost for ever and died with no pain, falling asleep for ever. In his book Theogony, Hesiode described this lost eden, with the sincere accent of undoubtful nostalgia.

To Jung, Golden Age is an archetype, and shows the universal dreamy nature of man. Maybe Jung concluded too hastily on that point: according to the mostpart of mythologies, golden age is a reality.

On all fields, the reign of Cronos,See The Reign of Cronos first age of humankind, was a time of affluence and virtue: "In the absence of any upholder of the law, spontaneously, without any law, good faith and honesty were current.(...) The Earth itself, free from every constraint, suffering no damage from agriculture, gift all its fruits with pleasure." (source)Hesiode, Theogony Yet, Cronos was a bloodthirsty monster, who devoured his own children!  If he were such a bloody tyrant, why do we feel those sweet scents of harmony, sweetness of living in a really peaceful place ?

This is the main paradox of Eden. Such a nice place for Gods, such a bad place for men.

One day, Cronos was thrown in the tartarian darknesses, and ZeusSee Le règne de Zeus became the God of Gods, the new ruler of this world. The Silver AgeClick on > came, and the decline began.