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[Alexandr Korol]

The archaic model of time has a linear character. Gradually such a model is supplemented by another, grows into a cyclical model of time. This transformation is promoted by the ritual repetition of the events of mythical time, as well as by calendrical rites and the development of conceptions of dying and resurrecting gods and heroes, of the eternal renewal of nature, of useful grains and so forth. Primitive calendrical rites are known among the northern Australians, Papuans and others, but they receive full development in the agricultural civilizations of the Mediterranean, Mesoamerica and other regions.

In developed mythologies, in which the Universe is represented as an arena of unceasing struggle between cosmos and chaos, alongside the image of the primordial mythical time arises the eschatological image of the final time and the death of the world (Ragnarök, eschatology and others). After the death of the world in many mythologies there may follow its cyclical renewal. In a number of mythologies the world perishes irrevocably.

Space. Mythological space represents the space of social life, the part of the world in which a given society appears and functions, in some cases with its definite totem- ancestor, in the role of which there may act some object — an animal, a plant, or an inorganic thing. In this space one can pass from the past into the present and vice versa. The forces that gave birth to this society have not disappeared, they continue to exist. Man believes that he can pass from the space of the profane things surrounding him into the space of those totemic forces that in the past created man himself and society. In particular — from death to life, from life to death.”