This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Time gathers three positions on what is real about time itself and how history moves through it.
Presentism holds that only present things and events are real, since the past has slipped out of existence and the future has not yet come into it, a view close to ordinary intuition about dinosaurs no longer existing and next year's events not existing yet. Eternalism denies this, holding that all moments, past, present and future, are equally real, forming a single four dimensional block in which nothing is metaphysically privileged as the one true now, a picture the position draws from Einstein's special relativity, which shows simultaneity is relative to an observer's frame and makes a single, universally shared present hard to locate. Special relativity cuts the opposite way for each position, Eternalism's strongest support and Presentism's hardest technical challenge, since relativity denies any single shared present for presentism to single out as the real one.
Cyclical Time addresses a different question, not what is real about a given moment but how the whole of history moves, holding the cosmos runs through vast recurring cycles rather than a single line from a unique origin to a final end. Hindu cosmology gives the doctrine its most elaborated form in the four declining yugas, and Taoism holds a related conviction that reversal and return are the basic pattern of the Tao's own movement, while linear traditions such as Christianity and Islam reject the picture outright in favor of one creation moving toward one final judgment.