"The Lengua Indians of the Gran Chaco love to hunt the ostrich,but when they have killed one of these birds and are bringing home the carcase to the village they take steps to outwit the resentful ghost of their victim. They think that when the first natural shock of death is passed, the ghost of the ostrich pulls himself together and makes after his body." (The Golden Bough, 610)

We've been assigned to do a blog about chapter 7 of Eliade, entitled "Mythologies of Memory and Forgetting." He concentrates primarily on Platonic and Gnostic mythological conceptions of memory; more specifically, the danger(no, sin)of forgetting, and the call to wakefullness, which is common to both, as well as Indian philosophy. Plato after all urged those within the cave to come out into the light, to "wake up". Anamenesis, or recollection of all that can be recollected, is vital if mortal beings are to (re)discover what it is that they once were; in another life(which if your Pythagoras or a shaman you can remember experiencing, apparently) or even another astral plain, if you're a Gnostic. Really for the latter living in the world is to be looked on a as bad thing generally, a Fall from a purer reality(caused by a jealous ignorant God). But we still retain a tiny spark of Divine Reality within us, which we can recapture when we do "remember" and awaken.
So, in a way, everything in the "Real World" and everything that has happened in the real world, recounted by History, is only operating on one particular level--divine recollection and myth operate on another all together. Or as Eliade puts it:

"The sufferings that constitute every human life vanish at the moment of waking. Waking, which is at the same time an anemnesis, finds expression in an indifference to History. Only the primordial myth is important. Only the events that occured in the past of fable arre worth knowing; for, by learning them, one becomes conscious of one's true nature--and awakens."(Eliade, 134)

Eliade also mentions something in passing that is vitally important, as many passing things are:" Indian literature uses images of binding, chaining and captivity interchangeably with those of forgetting, unknowing, and sleep to signify the human condition; contrariwise, images of being freed from bonds and the tearing of a veil(or the removal of a bandage from the eyes), of memory, remembering, being awakened, the waking state, express abollishing(or transcending) the human condition, freedom, deliverance(moksa, mukti, nirvana, etc)" (Eliade, 116)

The word Apocalypse literally means in Greek "removing the veil. So all of this stuff about the importance of remembering is apocalyptic, in its etiological sense. Let's ponder that for awhile.