ABSTRACT
Finally there is the mythology of the celestial archetypes of territories and temples, of which their worldly counterparts are copies. . . . This is why, when possession is taken of a territory – that is, when its exploitation begins – rites are performed that symbolically repeat the act of Creation: the uncultivated zone is first “cosmicized,” then inhabited. Thus, “Settlement in a new, unknown, uncultivated country is equivalent to an act of Creation.”
