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This paper, amply illustrated with ancient, fascinating and beautiful maps, seeks to understand and explain attempts between early Christian times and 1949 to locate a myth—that of Paradise. Plaut uses the word ‘Paradise’ (which, he tells us, is derived from an old Persian word meaning enclosure or park) to cover both the literal and the symbolic. He points out that it is only over the last three centuries that the ‘fact’ of a terrestrial paradise has fallen into disrepute. Nevertheless, the question in his title is insistent because of a psychological fusion in the mind between the celestial and the terrestrial. The map-maker finds himself at a parting of the ways—the path prescribed in the Bible is at the same time forbidden because it will lead the traveller into temptation. Sifting the early evidence, Plaut notes a progression in map-makers from the visionary through the missionary to the scientific, each advance being followed by some degree of retreat. After strenuous efforts to locate Paradise, the map-makers, torn between faith and doubt, sentenced it to a period of vagrancy, before letting it settle for a while in the role of decorative detail on world maps. More recently, Paradise seems to have been on the move again, and occasionally fought over by fanatics.
But it is to the meaning of the search that Plaut addresses himself. The aim of the search is to relate to a myth, which, as well as offering an explanation for a phenomenon, will also attribute meaning to life and, like any symbol, will act as a bridge between two worlds.
Although rather obscure on first reading, this is a paper which becomes more meaningful as the quests of the analytical psychologist and the cartographer converge in one's mind.