The core of the eonic effect is the phenomenon of the Axial Age. It can stand by itself as a direct challenge to our ordinary ideas of historical dynamics. It is useful to do this until its puzzle generates the realization of the greater pattern of which it is a subset. Unfortunately the idea has become subject to a series of misinterpretations based on the mysterious way it seems to generate two or more world religions in its wake. This has led to a new myth of some sort of ‘spiritual age’ of revelation, which is entirely misleading given the greater complexity of the true pattern. Science, and secularism, not just religion, are aspects of this pattern. The idea of the Axial Age was codified by the philosopher Karl Jaspers in his The Origin and Goal of History. We have Jaspers’ observation:

The most extraordinary events are concentrated in this period. Confucius and Lao-tse were living in China, all the schools of Chinese philosophy came into being, including those of Mo-ti, Chuang-tse, Lieh-tsu and a host of others; India produced the Upanishads and Buddha and, like China, ran the whole gamut of philosophical possibilities down to skepticism, to materialism , sophism and nihilism; in Iran Zarathustra  taught a challenging view of the world as a struggle between good and evil; in Palestine the prophets made their appearance, from Elijah, by way of Isaiah and Jeremiah to Deutero-Isaiah; Greece witnessed the appearance of Homer, of the Philosophers—Parmenides, Heraclitus and Plato—of the tragedians, Thucydides and Archimedes. Everything implied by these names developed during these few centuries almost simultaneously in China, India, and the West, without any one of these regions knowing of the others.From Karl Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), Part I, Ch. 1.

This statement says nothing about the birth of Greek science, or the birth of democracy in the Greek Axial period. We are confronted with an elusive synchrony, but must be wary of trying to reduce such diversity to a common denominator. Some idea of ‘dialectic’ might be better. We should note immediately that Zarathustra is probably well before the Axial period. Is this a problem or contradiction? Not in the slightest. Creative individuals can appear at any time. The Axial interval merely shows a mysterious clustering of such individuals as a function of some overall dynamic in world history. We have prepared the way with our ideas of ‘eonic emergents’ and ‘relative transforms’. To a high degree the Axial interval simply remorphs what it finds in its direct path. Monotheism was born, primordially, before the Axial period, but shows a crystallization in the Judaic stream during the Axial interval. The same is true of Indic Buddhism, which is a repackaging of primordial yogic lore stretching backwards into the Neolithic or before. This factor falsifies the idea of an ‘age of revelation’. Something else is at work.

Archaic Greece: the clue We can become distracted by an emphasis on a series of creative individuals and sages. But these are merely shining lights in a far broader phenomenon at the level of whole cultures. The Axial phenomenon is the result of the actions of individuals, but these individuals generate a coherent outcome that surpasses their isolated contributions. This point, and the Axial phenomenon generally, can be seen at its clearest by studying the period of the Greek Archaic flowing into its Classical flowering: the period from the Greek Dark Ages to its period, from ca. –900 to –600, followed by two centuries of stunningly multifaceted innovation across an entire spectrum of culture. Because they are innocent of metaphysical historicism histories of the Greek Axial give unwitting testimony to the extraordinary character of this period. Armed with the periodization pattern of the Greek instance we can rapidly uncover the similar and isomorphic ‘core Axial’ significance of the other cultures in the spectrum: Israelite, Indic, Chinese, Roman. The Greek Axial shows how the phenomenon undergoes rapid fall-off after around –400, the onset of the Age of Alexander and the subsequent periods of empire being clear cases of decline from the peak period.

The Axial Age is defined by Jaspers as occurring in the interval from about –800 to –200, but we see already a reason to slightly modify this interval. The Axial phenomenon is evanescent and begins to wane rapidly by –400. However, the basic point is clear. By –200 the ‘Axial’ period would seem to be well over, and the core period of intensity would seem to center around –600. This is the period of Solon in Greece, and the Exile in the case of the clearly correlated history of Israel recorded in the Old Testament. Solon seems to precede the great spectacle of Greek democracy and Athenian culture, but the transformations that make this possible are already complete in the Greek Archaic period, whose seminal foundations have created a new framework of advance. As we zoom in and study this data in detail, we will attempt to distinguish the generative period, from -900 at the outside, to -600, roughly, followed by a 'realization period', from about -600 onward. By -400 there is a sudden fall off, and the process is on the wane. But this division into transitions is not dogmatic and the five centuries from –900 to –400 enclose in each case the parallel developments of the Axial period from Greece to China. And a mysterious process it is. We see the generalized resemblance of all the exemplars, but each is also unique.

For the Axial Age period, we have at least five seminal areas suddenly showing characteristic 'pivotal' intervals in concert:

Archaic to Classical Greece The period from the Greek Dark Age to Alexander contains the great clue to world history. The period of Archaic Greece overflowing into the Classical period lays the foundation for a whole new order of civilization, and produces the beginnings of philosophy, science, and democracy.  

Histories of Israel The phenomenon of ‘Israel’ is in the Old Testament is a considerable enigma but its significance falls into place once we see that it simply reflects its place in the Axial phenomenon. This involves the period from about -900 to the Exile, and does not include the (mostly mythical) accounts of Abraham to Moses. No historical myth, theory of evolution, or universal history has ever produced a coherent account of this history. But the eonic effect will clarify its status at once, and in a very simple and elegant way, if we see that the key issue is the core period of the Prophets around which additional history is adjoined as epic prelude.  

China: The period of Confucius One of the strangest cases of the eonic effect is the sudden transformation in medias res of the Axial period in China. This comes right on schedule in the midst of an otherwise continuous history! The rise to organized states in Chinese civilization begins very early, and yet we see the synchronous effect right in the correct time frame, as an overlay on the prior development. China and Europe are both at the fringes of the ‘eonic sequence’, at this point (we notice nothing in Europe).  The Chinese case is inexplicable in isolation. This shows that the Axial/eonic effect occurs on schedule independently of the local dynamics of civilization.

India: Upanishads to Buddhism The case of India resembles that of our ‘Israel’ in producing a world religion from the temporal sequence, as if sifting from a tradition that is already clearly formulated (relative transform) and existing prior to the transition. We see that some dynamic is operating independently of the politics of cultures and empires in the reactions of religion to state integration. With the forest philosophers who renounce history, India creates a protected zone, a parallel world in the Axial spectrum.  

Early Rome We should include the case of Rome either by itself or as a cousin of the Greek case. Note that when we speak of the Greek period we are referring to a network of city-states stretching all the way to southern Italy. The appearance of Republican Rome in the wake of the Axial Age is prime data for the eonic effect. Note that the Roman Empire is a much later phenomenon, and in fact dramatizes its own deviation and decline from the sturdy Republican beginnings appearing in the Axial interval.

New World?? Seldom considered is the possibility that the New World civilizations might show Axial influence, given the clear global character of eonic action in the Axial (and other) intervals. A close look shows, remarkably, the Mayan generation period in sync with the overall pattern. That is, the Mayan, as a relative transform, and thus not the earlier Olmec (analogous to the contrast of Mycenaean and Axial Greece). We should refrain from jumping to conclusions here since the isolation of the New World cultures creates hard-to-interpret evidence.

A great many attempts to understand the Axial period founder in a confusion over the appearance of two (at least) world religions in this period. 

An Axial Age Myth The question of the Axial Age has spawned a new historical myth of a semi-secular idea of a spiritual age producing the world's great religions. The fact that Buddhism (and Jainism) are ‘atheistic’ while the Israelite Axial interval spawns a theistic religion makes any simple interpretation highly problematic. The case of Greece is then downplayed because it doesn’t fit the religious pattern (it actually shows a last great flowering of polytheism along with the seminal emergence of a critique of such). The pattern is far more complex than an association, god or no-god.  If there were ever an age of ‘revelation’ it has to be the Greek case, whose multidimensionality is spectacular. Note the extraordinary synchrony of the core Old Testament period of the Prophets, and Archaic Greece. Then note how the Indic zone recycles itself in Buddhism, stripped of all local associations with ‘Hinduism’ (a highly vexed term. Our historical dynamic thus transcends the content enclosed in the remarkable 'Axial interval'. Note that the Israelites said as much, and then fell into the crystallization of their historical realization short of the implied universalism of thought generated by the sense of ‘Big History’ in action. This religious interpretation, then, of the Axial Age fails on several grounds, among them, for example, the fact that Zarathustra may well have lived before the Axial interval (and Lao Tse is sometimes placed quite late). Monotheism was not invented in the Axial Age. What we see instead is a kind of elaboration, or repackaging of outstanding or priorly existing cultural materials. Once again we see this ‘relative transform’ effect.

The period does indeed, however, produce two major world religions in its wake, theist and atheist. Something much deeper than monotheism is quite obviously at work. The yogas of India are known to have existed almost primordially. But the advent of Buddhism packaged these traditions for universal diffusion. The key to the Axial Indian phenomenon lies in the earlier period of the Upanishads, synchronous with Archaic Greece, and Prophetic Israel.  

We notice the Axial pattern in terms of creative individuals. These philosophers and sages are the tip of the iceberg, and behind them we see whole cultural regions, out of the blue, proceed rapidly to a new stage of culture. Note however that it is essential to induce change through individuals seeding cultures with new ideas. This does not explain the overall coordination over time of complex emergent events, i.e. the birth of democracy. Actually changing the mechanics of culture in those periods is less easy, and may prove abortive. The clearest and best documented case is that of Archaic/Classical Greece. Roughly we have the following remarkable surge: 

Early tribal history of the Greeks
-1200-900 Mycenaean period, Greek Dark Ages
-900-600   Dark Ages/Archaic period
-600-400   The great take-off period, the Greek 'Miracle'
-400 onward: We enter the Hellenistic, it's over 

Compare this now to Israel:
Early Canaanite history
-1200-900 ? The onset of the 'Israel/Judah' kingdoms
-900-600   The history of 'Israel/Judah', emergence of Prophets
-600-400   The Exile period
-400 onward: A new religion has come into existence 

Note the isomorphic character of these two histories. This is the embedded 'transition' pattern. Later we will see this in terms of what we call the ‘stream and sequence’ aspects of the eonic process/pattern. In the middle of continuous stream of culture a sudden relative speed up occurs. We must realize the high level at which this dynamic is operating,. And remarkably in both cases a great literature comes into existence, the Greek and Old Testament epics. Note that 'Israel/Judah' disappears near the Exile, depriving us of a flowering or realization period, but enforcing a mysterious extra-state character to what will be a 'cultural complex' that travels transculturally. Note that our system treats states and religions equally in its dynamics, and it is the case that the core Axial period for 'Israel/Judah' is about a state, and not about a 'world religion'. Judaism as we know it comes much later, as do Christianity and Islam. 

The five centuries from -900 to -400 enclose the principal effect. This periodization in turn shows us what's going on in the case of Israel. The case of Archaic Greece is especially telling because we aren't distracted by religious questions. Its clarity is enhanced by the fact that its earlier Mycenaean phase collapses and Greece goes into what is called its Dark Age. Later we will create the idea of a 'stream and sequence' effect. The stream of Greek cultures shows many civilizations, but that part that we call the 'Axial interval' stands out. Why? Because, as we shall see it intersects with a greater sequence. In the same way the Old Testament is confusing, because it includes, just as does the Iliad, the prior tales and chronicles of a Canaanite people, the stream history, but the crucial era is the Axial interval and this occurs in exact concert with that of Archaic Greece. It is clear that the Israelites were aware of something strange happening in their history: they noticed their 'Axial' transformation. 

The sudden reawakening of Greek history in the Archaic period after the collapse of the Mycenaean is the classic clue. Thus its sudden resurgence, as if on cue and in parallel with the other regions of the Eurasian continent, is the more remarkable. We are stunned, by zooming out to see the whole pattern, to see that the Greek Archaic is exploding on schedule in a larger system, not solely as the result of antecedent influences. Against the backdrop of world history as a whole this brief period from around -900 to -400 induces an immensity of innovative advances, with an intensity that has never been matched to this day, although the rise of the modern is a fair competitor. Note that we cannot ascribe simple causal/local influences as the cause of this phenomenon, since we are observing a part of a total Eurasian phenomenon. Each of five regions, Rome, Greece, Israel/Judah, India, and China, has an analogous interval in this fashion (the Roman being a bit late), although the Chinese and Indian are less well-known. The case of (early) Rome is really an aspect or variant of the Greek case, and can be considered, at this level of generality, in the same category. We can see that Rome arrives a bit later, for the obvious reason that it waits on diffusion from the Greek system. 

We have the clue to the Old Testament: it contains a core account of precisely this interval, with a great deal of other material tacked on as lead up history. The Axial interval is more about the emergence of the Bible than of Israelite history. Much of the content of the Bible distracts us from the crucial Axial interval. The tales of Abraham, Moses, the Exodus, are clearly the mythical lore of a Canaanite people who, especially during the Axial interval, accumulate a literature that, at the end of this interval, becomes what we know of as the Bible. Note the resemblance of this to the way the Greek Iliad and Odyssey come into existence. Achilles and Odysseus are not Axial figures, but the crystallization of the Greek epics is! The Homeric period in the eighth century is followed by an immense flowering of literature, which becomes incandescent in the period of Greek Tragedy. The latter lasts barely a century, and is gone. Stand back from this analogous biblical phenomenon, which casts its spell to this day. Is it not a very odd and historically embedded text? We see that its correlation with the Axial interval reveals at once its real significance. Our approach almost does better justice to this history. It makes almost no sense stripped of its religious mythology until we see its Axial context.  

Note the way the historical facticity behind the Biblical myths changes its character after around -900 in the wake of the David/Solomon era/myths and we have the histories of Israel/Judah or general Canaan up to the Exile. As foundational religious history, this is quite peculiar stuff, but in light of the Axial context it becomes precious historical lore indeed, the first documentation in writing of the genesis of a religious formation, a world historical moment. Note how various traditions of prophets suddenly without warning turn into the remarkable string of the classic Prophetic cluster in concert with the Greek timing. The sameness in difference from the Greek example is beguiling. We note how just around the Exile the Biblical corpus comes into something resembling its final form, and that from -400 onward the phenomenon is essentially finished, as the record is codified. The seeds of a 'world religion' or the materials for several have appeared and crystallized. Remarkably, as it happens, 'Israel/Judah' suddenly disappears at the period of the Exile, and we don't see the analogous sudden flowering that we find in Greece after -600. It makes no difference, however, to the overall effect. There is an irony to this circumstance, it almost feeds the phenomenon itself by separating a literature from a region! 

Let us not forget that our discussions of religion in the abstract can forget the obvious: the Bible records the actual history of a Canaanite kingdom during the Axial interval. Once that interval closes, the record stops. From that point onward, a tradition is born and its adherents are looking backward. The material, here as in the other cases, flows outward into its environment to have what effects it will have. For the peoples of that era, the Biblical corpus was a tremendous new cultural asset, an almanac of Civilization. It spread through the regions of the Roman Empire and beyond because it was of great help in the assimilation of tribal peoples to the shock of expanding civilization. We constantly think of religion in terms of metaphysical abstractions, but that misses the historical point that, sourcing in the Axial interval, a cultural instrument appears that assists the process of tribal integration into the world system. For its time the Bible was 'state of the art'. 

We can be certain that the Biblical history is only one aspect of what must have been a far more complex 'Axial interval' in the regions of the Middle East as a whole. As our strange phenomenon shows it is trying to balance itself, as it were, across Eurasia. In the context of monotheism, the phenomenon of Zoroastrianism, and much else, should join our account. It is not clear just when Zarathustra lived, but it is highly significant that just at the Exile there is a blending of the Biblical and Zoroastrian literatures. Be wary of thinking that this period invents monotheism. That probably already existed, and is in fact a primordial belief fairly well known to the Paleolithic in the Great Spirit cultures, for example.  What we are seeing here is the effect of the Axial interval on what is, as primordial monotheism, already probably in existence, mixed no doubt in a melee of polytheistic beliefs. That effect is to spawn a world religion. But the Axial Age as such has nothing to do with religion, and in fact the term requires adjustment to historical realities: we see that religion in one sense, and speaking in broad strokes, is simply the ad hoc output of the Axial interval. It is important to see that the actual world religions we now speak of are constructs outside of the Axial Age, created by men recalling unsuccessfully the histories of that period.

In general the whole case of the Axial interval in the Middle East must be larger than what we see now. But the case of Israel/Judah is put in writing, and somehow carries the day because, and this is the whole point, it produces a literature and cultural record that outlasts everything else from this time and zone. And we have stumbled on something else of significance. As we move to complete our pattern, we will see that Sumer and Egypt comprise an earlier version of this kind of phenomenon, millennia before. But these centers of earlier advance are silent in the Axial Age. Why is that? 

The clue here is to see that Greece, and 'Israel/Judah' are essentially frontier areas, for their time, and that the drama of the great Empires, such as the Assyrian, which are the legacy in decline of these earlier periods, is being bypassed by clusters of innovation on their fringes. These empires are dinosaurs of an earlier age period. Note how the Greeks barely survived these attempts by Empire to destroy their world, that the 'Israel/Judah' is a dramatic account of the history of surviving or not surviving these destructive empires. The Axial Age here is a record of innovation outsmarting the momentum of the legacy of a previous cycle of civilizations. This frontier effect will help resolve one of the puzzles of the isolation of the rise of the modern on the fringes of the European system. Thus if you factor out the Sumerian core area, and the Egyptian zone, and consider the Occidental zone of the Eastern Mediterranean and South Asia, you suddenly realize there are very few innovation zones available. One is precisely the Canaanite region, another the Greek, conveniently buffered by Aegean. The Indian, Chinese, and Roman cases automatically fulfill this requirement also. 

We have the essential framework for what is happening in the Roman, Indian, and Chinese cases. In many ways the Roman phenomenon is part of the Greek, which spawned an immense network of city-states and republican experiments, from the Black Sea to southern Italy, some of them producing democracy, the classic Athenian. Thus Rome springs into existence in the wake of this network and is essentially a variant of it. We must keep in mind the obvious fact that all these cultural zones are extremely different in character and that we can't be talking about the autonomous mechanics of these cultures or civilizations. The Axial phenomenon simply happens independently of the prior histories and cultural mechanics of each region. In the Greek case we do see, however, the expenditure of Axial impetus on innovative cultural forms, among them Greek democracy. Note that this appears suddenly in the wake of Solon, -600, and that it doesn't last very long. Later we will realize even these particulars down to the decades of a half-century interval are not accident.  

Thus, in China, for example, we have a considerable outstanding history proceeding from the Shang period and before. Unlike the case of Greece there is no convenient cutoff just before the Axial period. There is no need for one, and we see the way innovation challenges the momentum of the prior past in any case. Thus Kwang-Chih Kwang, in The Archaeology of Ancient China notes the turning point in the Chou era (eighth century), and observes, “A new era in the history of North China began in the Eastern Chou. In political history, ancient China consisted of the Shang and Chou dynasties, but in cultural history, the subdivision may be placed at the Middle of the Chou dynasty, dividing the Shang-Chou periods into two stages.”  

The case of India is one of the most extraordinary but its documentation is less reliable than that of the other examples. As Prem Nath Bazaz notes in The Role of the Bhagavad Gita in Indian History:

The seventh and sixth centuries B.C. witnessed in India, as in Greece, an intellectual ferment. Dissatisfaction with the Vedic natural religion gave rise to speculations about the origin of the universe and things contained in it…There arose early in the sixth century B.C. an order of paribrajakas (literally ‘wanderers’) who were intellectuals devoted to search after truth…The movement of paribrajakas spread far and wide in Northern India; they were accepted as harbingers of a new age…    

It is curious hybrid, on the surface, of the Chinese and Greek cases, but at a deeper level resonating with the exemplar of 'Israel/Judah' in so far as it produces another source of world religion, several in fact. We don't have the detailed chronology of the other cases, but what we do have fits the Axial pattern perfectly. Thus the period of the Upanishads corresponds to the Greek Archaic, or the Judaic Prophetic period, while the emergence of Buddhism and/or Jainism occurs after -600. Just as the Bible crystallizes after the seminal creative era in the period of the Prophets in the eighth century, so the religion of Buddhism, in synchronous parallel with the Judaic stream, emerges as the first stage of a world religion in the centuries after -600. Please note that here, as in the other cases, if we zoom in for a close look, most of what is energized in the Axial interval already existed in some form. We have records of yogis doing yoga going back much earlier. But none of this preempts the distinct way the Axial interval garlands such local materials and packages them as a world religion. The Indian case resemble the Chinese and Greek cases in the way it reveals the spectrum between the philosopher and the sage. That should remind us to be wary of absolute distinctions of 'religion' and 'philosophy', or 'sacred' and 'secular'. Please note that most of what makes up the elements of modern secular culture originates in this period also, and in parallel with the emergence of two world religions. We are confronted with something that is almost unbelievable, but that with careful chronology stands out as impossible to explain away. But the data of the Axial Age presents us with a puzzle, one that only makes sense if we see it in terms of a larger pattern. To get from the Axial Age to the larger pattern, we ask if there are any other periods like this in world history? The answer is suddenly obvious. We have three periods of rapid advance, 'axial ages' with 'medieval' or 'sluggish middle periods'. As we go along we might consider the problem with thinking in terms of an Axial 'age'. What is an age? What we are really seeing is the way in which the 'onset of an age or era' is precipitated by a period of transition. Our Axial Age is really a transition between age periods, so to speak.  

The Rise of The Modern The formulation of Karl Jaspers remains ambiguous on the question of the rise of the modern. In fact, the rise of the modern period, once we clearly separate the interval of transition from what follows, shows an unmistakable macrohistorical connection to the earlier Axial period. It is in a real sense the ‘next Axial Age’. The double birth of democracy in successive transitions is one clue. We should begin, therefore, to drop the term ‘Axial’ and replace it with something more general (although its usage remains useful.  The period from 1500 to 1800 is the key to understanding this question. We must adopt a comprehensive description of this ‘early modern’ period, from the Reformation and Scientific Revolution to the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution, since we are completely dependent on the philosophies generated in this period for the very task demanded. One of the problems created by some interpreters lies in the way that the Axial Age is taken as the source of the great religions, to the neglect of the full phenomenon. But the Axial Age is a comprehensive spectrum including most especially the Greek transition with its different character, almost foreshadowing the rise of the modern. These issues create a conflict over the meaning of the term ‘secularism’ in the attempts, mostly unsuccessful to define this in terms of the contrast of science and religion. But we will need a more general set of terms to mediate this conflict which nonetheless does characterize the modern period.

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