The Mystery of Being in Heaven in Georgian Mythopoetic (“I Was in Heaven ...”)

Abstract

The worldview of all the most ancient peoples of the world, including the Georgians, is animistic, which is primarily based on beliefs and ideas about the cult of celestial bodies. Accordingly, for our ancestors, heaven – the universal image of the boundlessness of the human worldview – has been a symbol of eternal aspiration and an object of cognition since time immemorial. Human striving toward the heavens gave rise to the constant dialogue between the celestial and the earthly, immense reverence for the supreme luminaries, and the desire to comprehend their substance; this eternal aspiration of humankind is well expressed in the archaic Georgian mythopoetic example “I Was in Heaven ...”