Editor,
It was a bustling afternoon in late September when I entered my professor’s room. We exchanged thoughts on Arunachal’s mythological traditions, a domain in which she possesses profound expertise and discerning acumen. She began to narrate an anecdote in which she came across an article presenting an account of a distinctive indigenous belief, wherein souls, after their demise from the mortal realm, trace their steps back to the place and history where their ancestors originated from. This origin is often imagined as mountains or valleys past the deep waters from where our ancestors are believed to have descended onto the plains. This idea stands quite contrary to the familiar notion of heaven and hell where souls, after death, either ascend to the former or are condemned to the latter based upon their deeds during their mortal span on earth.
The fascinating account stirred a moment of deep reflection in me. Death, in this case, was seen not as an end or a linear/one-way progression toward an endpoint or final judgment, as prevalent in the mainstream belief, but as a cyclical return portraying existence as a continuum linking past, present and future. Endings mark a return to the beginnings, and the living remain connected to the departed through a reversal of cosmological evolution. The philosophical metaphor of womb-tomb dichotomy beautifully mirrors this unique vision wherein the same womb or earthly origin from which life is thrust outward is essentially the very tomb where life must ultimately return after death. This duality, intriguingly, also echoes a similar theme in astrology, understood here not as a mere superstitious mystical belief but as an archetypal framework. The 4th/10th axis in astrological symbolism reflects a similar interplay between the inward pull of roots, home and ancestry represented by the 4th house and the outward call of destiny, public life, judgment and transcendence symbolized by the 10th house, thus manifesting the same pattern of the cyclical exchange between origin and culmination, birth and return, memory and judgment.
Together, these symbolic stories reveal a recurring and shared human intuition: that the nature of life is cyclical, death is a return and true meaning lies not only in judgment and transcendence but also in the journey back to the source. The soul retraces the footsteps of the ancestors, returning to the cosmic womb to the mind of the source itself. In today’s world where progress, deadlines and ends reign supreme, these stories present a different perspective. They call us to see life not as a mere straight race toward an endpoint, but as a perennial dance between past and future, tradition and innovation, history and possibility; a cosmos that is both familiar and ever-changing.
Yompu Karlo
Department of Political Science, Rajiv Gandhi University