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"Eliade" redirects here. For the 19th century Wallachian writer, see Ion Heliade Rădulescu.

Mircea Eliade

Born:	March 13, 1907 Bucharest
Died:	April 22, 1986 Chicago
Occupation:	historian, philosopher, short story writer, journalist, essayist, novelist
Nationality:	Romanian
Writing period:	1921–1986
Genres:	fantasy, autobiography, travel literature
Subjects:	history of religion, philosophy of religion, cultural history, political history
Literary movement:	Modernism Criterion Trăirism
Debut works:	Cum am găsit piatra filosofală (short story) Novel of the Nearsighted Adolescent (novel) The Comparative History of Yoga Techniques (essay)
Influences:	Surendranath Dasgupta, Julius Evola, René Guénon, Nae Ionescu, Carl Jung, Rudolf Otto, Giovanni Papini, Gerardus van der Leeuw, Joachim Wach
Influenced:	Ioan Petru Culianu, Wendy Doniger

Mircea Eliade (March 13 [O.S. February 28] 1907 – April 22, 1986) was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. He was a leading interpreter of religious experience, who established paradigms in religious studies that persist to this day. As a tool for interpreting religion, his theory that hierophanies form the basis of religion, splitting the human experience of reality into sacred and profane space and time, has proved a far more widely applicable than the older term theophany, which denotes the manifestation of a god.^[1] His most enduring and influential contribution to religious studies was possibly his theory of Eternal Return, which holds that myths and rituals do not simply record or imitate hierophanies, but, at least to the minds of the religious, actually participate in them. In academia, the Eternal Return has become one of the most widely accepted ways of understanding the purpose of myth and ritual.^[2] His literary works belong to the fantasy and autobiographical genre; the best known are the autobiographical novels Maitreyi (La Nuit Bengali or Bengal Nights), the novella Domnişoara Christina (Miss Christina), and the short stories Secretul doctorului Honigberger (The Secret of Dr. Honigberger) and La Ţigănci (With the Gypsy Girls).

Early in his life, Eliade was a noted journalist and essayist, a disciple of Romanian far right philosopher and journalist Nae Ionescu, and member of the literary society Criterion. He also served as cultural attaché to the United Kingdom and Portugal. Several times during the late 1930s, Eliade publicly expressed his support for the Iron Guard, a fascist and antisemitic political organization; since the 1970s, his position at the time was the frequent topic of criticism.

Remarkable for his vast erudition, Eliade had fluent command of five languages (Romanian, French, German, Italian, and English) and less command of three others (Hebrew, Persian, and Sanskrit). He was elected postmortem member of the Romanian Academy.

Born in Bucharest, Eliade attended the Spiru Haret National College in the same class as Arşavir Acterian, Haig Acterian, and Petre Viforeanu (and several years the senior of Nicolae Steinhardt, who was to satirize his novels under the pen name Antisthius, and who became a close friend of Eliade's);^[3] while in high school, he wrote his debut work, the autobiographical Novel of the Nearsighted Adolescent (influenced by the literature of Giovanni Papini, particularly his Un uomo finito). It was completed in 1925 (his first work to be published, however, was Cum am găsit piatra filosofală, "How I Found the Philosophers' Stone", printed in 1921, when he was aged 14).

He became interested in natural sciences at an early age, and taught himself French and English, the latter so he could read James Frazer's Golden Bough in the original.^[4] He graduated from the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Philosophy and Letters in 1928, earning his diploma with a study on Italian Philosophy from Marsilio Ficino to Giordano Bruno, and subsequently traveled to Italy, where he met Papini and collaborated with the scholar Giuseppe Tucci. It was during his student years that Eliade would meet Nae Ionescu and become one of his disciples and friends.

His scholarly works began after a long period of study in India at the University of Calcutta. Finding that the Maharaja of Kassimbazar sponsored European scholars to study in India, Eliade applied and was granted an allowance for four years. In 1928 he sailed for Calcutta to study Sanskrit and philosophy under Surendranath Dasgupta, a Bengali Cambridge alumnus and professor at the University of Calcutta, the author of a five volume History of Indian Philosophy. While living with Dasgupta, Eliade fell in love with his daughter, Maitreyi Devi, later writing a barely-disguised autobiographical novel Maitreyi (also known as La Nuit Bengali or Bengal Nights), in which he claimed that he carried on a physical relationship with her.^[5] When she became aware of this account, she contested it in her own novel Na Hanyate, written in Bengali (the title in English is It Does Not Die).^[6]

At the time, he became interested in the actions of Mahatma Gandhi, whom he met personally,^[7] and the Satyagraha as a phenomenon; later, Eliade adapted Gandhist ideas in his discourse on spirituality and Romania.^[8]

As one of the figures in the Criterion literary society (1933-1934), his initial encounter with the traditional far right was polemical: the group's conferences were stormed by members of A. C. Cuza's National-Christian Defense League, who objected to what they viewed as pacifism and addressed anti-Semitic insults to several speakers, including Mihail Sebastian;^[9] in 1933, he was among the signers of a manifesto opposing Nazi Germany's state-enforced racism.^[10] Eliade's views at the time focused on innovation — in the summer of 1933, he replied to an anti-modernist critique written by George Călinescu:

"All I wish for is a deep change, a complete transformation. But, for God's sake, in any direction other than spirituality".^[11]

In 1936, Eliade was the focus of a press campaign in the far right press, being targeted for having authored "pornography" in his Domnişoara Christina and Isabel şi apele diavolului (similar accusations were aimed at other cultural figures, including Tudor Arghezi and Geo Bogza).^[12]

However, while a professor at the University of Bucharest (1933-1939), Eliade became active in nationalist politics. He and friends Emil Cioran and Constantin Noica were by then under the influence of Trăirism, a school of thought that was formed around the ideals expressed by Romanian philosopher Nae Ionescu. A form of existentialism, Trăirism was also the synthesis of traditional and newer right-wing beliefs.^[13]

Eliade's articles before and after his adherence to the principles of the Iron Guard (or, as it was usually known at the time, the Legionary Movement), beginning with his famous Itinerar spiritual ("Spiritual itinerary", serialized in Cuvântul in 1927) center on several political ideals advocated by the far right. They displayed his rejection of liberalism and the modernizing goals of the 1848 Wallachian revolution (perceived as "an abstract apology of Mankind"^[14] and "ape-like imitation of [Western] Europe"),^[15] as well as for democracy itself (accusing it of "managing to crush all attempts at national renaissance",^[16] and later praising Benito Mussolini's Fascist Italy on the grounds that, according to Eliade, "[in Italy,] he who thinks for himself is promoted to the highest office in the shortest of times").^[17] He approved of an ethnic nationalist state centered on the Romanian Orthodox Church (in 1927, despite his still-vivid interest in Theosophy, he recommended young intellectuals "the return to the Church"),^[18] which he opposed to, among others, the secular nationalism of Constantin Rădulescu-Motru;^[19] referring to this particular ideal as "Romanianism", Eliade was, in 1934, still viewing it as "neither fascism, nor chauvinism".^[20] A major dissatifaction with the state focused on the unemployment of intellectuals, whose careers in state-financed institutions had been rendered uncertain by the Great Depression.^[21]

By 1937, he gave his intellectual support to the Iron Guard, in which he saw "a Christian revolution aimed at creating a new Romania",^[22] and a group able "to reconcile Romania with God".^[23] His articles of the time, published in Iron Guard papers such as Sfarmă Piatră and Buna Vestire, contain ample praises of the movement's leaders (Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Ion Moţa, Vasile Marin, and Gheorghe Cantacuzino-Grănicerul).^[24] He eventually enrolled in the Totul pentru Ţară ("Everything for the Fatherland" Party), the political expression of the Iron Guard, and contributed to its 1937 electoral campaign in Prahova County — as indicated by his inclusion on a list of party members with county-level responsibilities (published in Buna Vestire).^[25]

The stance taken by Eliade resulted in his arrest on July 14, 1938 after a crackdown on the Iron Guard authorized by King Carol II. At the time of his arrest, he had just interrupted a column on Provincia şi legionarismul ("The Province and the Iron Guard's ideology") in Vremea, having been singled out by Prime Minister Armand Călinescu as an author of Iron Guard propaganda.^[26]

Eliade was kept for three weeks in a cell at the Siguranţa Statului Headquarters, in an attempt to have him sign a "declaration of dissociation" with the Iron Guard, but he refused to do so.^[27] In the first week of August he was transferred to a makeshift camp at Miercurea-Ciuc. When Eliade began coughing blood in October 1938, he was taken to a clinic in Moroeni.^[28] Eliade was simply released on November 12 and, with the help of Alexandru Rosetti, became the cultural attaché to the United Kingdom, a posting cut short when Romanian-British foreign relations were broken.^[29]

After leaving London he retained the same position in Portugal, where he was kept on as diplomat by the National Legionary State (the Iron Guard government) and, ultimately, by Ion Antonescu's regime. In 1942, Eliade authored a volume in praise of the Estado Novo, established in Portugal by António de Oliveira Salazar, alleging that "The Salazarian state, a Christian and totalitarian one, is first and foremost based on love".^[30] On July 7 of the same year, he was received by Salazar himself, who asked assigned Eliade the task of warning Antonescu to withdraw the Romanian Army from the Eastern Front ("[In his place], I would not be grinding it in Russia").^[31] Eliade also claimed that such contacts with the leader of a neutral country had made him the target for Gestapo surveillance, but that he had managed to communicate Salazar's advice to Mihai Antonescu, Romania's Foreign Minister.^[32]

At signs that the Romanian communist regime was about to take hold, Eliade opted not to return to the country. He lived in France, where, recommended by Georges Dumézil, he taught at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris; it was estimated that, at the time, it was not uncommon for him to work 15 hours a day.^[33]

In 1957, he moved to the United States. He was invited by Joachim Wach to give a series of lectures at Wach's home institution, the University of Chicago, and settled in Chicago. The two scholars are generally admitted to be the founders of the "Chicago school" that basically defined the study of religions for the second half of the 20th century.^[34] Upon Wach's untimely death before the lectures were delivered, Eliade was appointed as his replacement, becoming the Sewell Avery Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions. He also worked as editor-in-chief of Macmillan Publishers' Encyclopedia of Religion, collaborated with Carl Jung and the Eranos circle, and wrote for the Antaios magazine (edited by Ernst Jünger).^[35]

Initially attacked with virulence by the Romanian Communist Party press, chiefly by România Liberă (which described him as "the Iron Guard's ideologue, enemy of the working class, apologist of Salzar's dictatorship"),^[36] he was slowly rehabilitated beginning in the early 1960s (under the rule of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej).^[37] In the 1970s, Eliade was approached by the Nicolae Ceauşescu regime in several ways, in order to have him return. The move was prompted by the officially-sanctioned nationalism and Romania's claim to independence from the Eastern Bloc, as both phenomena came to see Eliade's prestige as an asset. An unprecedented event occurred with the interview that was granted by Mircea Eliade to poet Adrian Păunescu, during the latter's 1970 visit to Chicago; Eliade complimented both Păunescu's activism and his support for official tenets, expressing a belief that

"the youth of Eastern Europe is clearly superior to that of Western Europe. [...] I am convinced that, within ten years, the young revolutionary generation shan't be behaving as does today the noisy minority of Western contesters. [...] Eastern youth have seen the abolition of traditional institutions, have accepted it [...] and are not yet content with the structures enforced, but rather seek to improve them".^[38]

Păunescu's visit to Chicago was followed by those of the nationalist official poet Eugen Barbu and by Eliade's friend Constantin Noica.^[39] At the time, Eliade contemplated returning to Romania, but was eventually persuaded by fellow Romanian intellectuals in exile (including Radio Free Europe's Virgil Ierunca and Monica Lovinescu) to reject Communist proposals.^[40]

In 1990, after the Romanian Revolution, Eliade was elected post-mortem to the Romanian Academy. A Romanian Television 1 poll nominated him as the 7th Greatest Romanian in history; his case was argued by the writer Dragoş Bucurenci (see 100 greatest Romanians).

In his work on the history of religion, Eliade is most highly regarded for his writings on Shamanism, Yoga and what he called the eternal return—the implicit belief, supposedly present in religious thought in general, that religious behavior is not only an imitation of, but also a participation in, sacred events.

Eliade's thinking was in part influenced by Rudolf Otto, Gerardus van der Leeuw, Nae Ionescu and the writings of the Traditionalist School (René Guénon and Julius Evola).^[41] For instance, Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane partially builds on Otto's The Idea of the Holy to show how religion emerges from the experience of the sacred, and myths of time and nature.

He has had a decisive influence on many scholars, for instance Ioan Petru Culianu. In Romania, Eliade's legacy in the field of the history of religions is mirrored by the journal Archaeus (founded 1997). An endowed chair in the History of Religions at the University of Chicago Divinity School was named after Eliade in recognition of his wide contribution to the research on this subject. The current (and first incumbent) holder of this chair is Wendy Doniger, Eliade's colleague from 1978 until his death.

Eliade is noted for his attempt to find broad, cross-cultural parallels and unities in religion, particularly in myths. Wendy Doniger notes that "Eliade argued boldly for universals where he might more safely have argued for widely prevalent patterns".^[42] His Treatise on the History of Religions was praised by French philologist Georges Dumézil for its coherence and ability to synthesize diverse and distinct mythologies.^[43]

Eliade argues that religious thought in general rests on a sharp distinction between the Sacred and the profane;^[44] whether it takes the form of God, gods, or mythical Ancestors, the Sacred contains all "reality", or value, and other things acquire "reality" only to the extent that they participate in the Sacred.^[45]

From the perspective of religious thought, Eliade argues, hierophanies (the manifestations of the Sacred) give structure and orientation to the world, establishing a sacred order. The "profane" space of nonreligious experience can only be divided up geometrically: it has no "qualitative differentiation and, hence, no orientation [is] given by virtue of its inherent structure".^[46] Thus, profane space gives man no pattern for his behavior. In contrast to profane space, the site of a hierophany has a sacred structure to which religious man conforms himself. A hierophany amounts to a "revelation of an absolute reality, opposed to the nonreality of the vast surrounding expanse".^[47] As an example of "sacred space" demanding a certain response from man, Eliade gives the story of Moses halting before Yahweh's manifestation in Exodus 3:5 and taking off his shoes.^[48]

Eliade notes that, in traditional societies, myth represents the absolute truth about primordial time.^[49] According to the myths, this was the time when the Sacred first appeared, establishing the world's structure — myths claim to describe the primordial events that made society and the natural world be that which they are. Eliade argues that all myths are, in that sense, origin myths: "myth, then, is always an account of a 'creation'".^[50]

Many traditional societies believe that the power of a thing lies in its origin.^[51] If origin is equivalent to power, then "it is the first manifestation of a thing that is significant and valid"^[52] (a thing's reality and value therefore lies only in its first appearance).

According to Eliade's theory, only the Sacred has value, only a thing's first appearance has value and, therefore, only the Sacred's first appearance has value. Myth describes the Sacred's first appearance, and the mythical age is sacred time,^[53] the only time of value: "primitive man was interested only in the beginnings [...] to him it mattered little what had happened to himself, or to others like him, in more or less distant times".^[54] Eliade postulated this as the reason for the "nostalgia for origins" that appears in many religions, the desire to return to a primordial Paradise.^[55]

Main article: Eternal return (Eliade)

Eliade argues that traditional man attributes no value to the linear march of historical events: only the events of the mythical age have value. To give his own life value, traditional man performs myths and rituals. Since the Sacred's essence lies only in the mythical age, only in the Sacred's first appearance, any later appearance is actually the first appearance: myths and rituals do not simply recount or reenact mythical events; they "reactualize" them.^[56] Religious behavior is not only an imitation of, but also a participation in, sacred events.

Eliade called this concept the "eternal return" (distinguished from the philosophical concept of "eternal return"), and Wendy Doniger noted that it "has become a truism in the study of religions".^[57]

Eliade attributes the well-known "cyclic" vision of time in ancient thought to belief in the eternal return. For instance, the New Year ceremonies among the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians, and other Near Eastern peoples reenacted their cosmogonic myths. According to Eliade, these peoples felt a need to periodically return to the Beginning, abolishing linear history and turning time into a circle.^[58]

Eliade argues that yearning to remain in the mythical age causes a "terror of history": traditional man desires to escape the linear succession of events (which, Eliade indicated, he viewed as empty of any inherent value or sacrality). Eliade suggests that the abandonment of mythical thought and the full acceptance of linear, historical time, with its "terror", is one of the reasons for modern man's anxieties.^[59] Traditional societies escape this anxiety to an extent, as they refuse to completely acknowledge historical time.

Eliade acknowledges that not all religious behavior has all the attributes described in his theory of sacred time and the eternal return. Specifically, the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions embrace linear, historical, time as sacred or capable of sanctification, while certain Dharmic religions reject the notion of sacred time altogether, seeking escape from the cycles of time.

Because they contain rituals, Judaism and Christianity necessarily — Eliade argues — retain a sense of cyclic time:

"by the very fact that it is a religion, Christianity had to keep at least one mythical aspect — liturgical Time, that is, the periodic rediscovery of the illud tempus of the beginnings [and] an imitation of the Christ as exemplary pattern".^[60]

However, Judaism and Christianity do not see time as a circle endlessly turning on itself; nor do they see such a cycle as desirable, as a way to participate in the Sacred; rather, these religions embrace the concept of linear history progressing toward the Messianic Age or the Last Judgment, thus initiating the idea of "progress" (humans are to work for a Paradise in the future).^[61] On the other hand, Judaeo-Christian eschatology can be understood as cyclical in that salvation at the "end of time" is a return to God: "The final catastrophe will put an end to history, hence will restore man to eternity and beatitude".^[62]

The Dharmic religions of the East generally retain a cyclic view of time — for instance, the Hindu doctrine of kalpas. In general, according to Eliade, most religions that accept the cyclic view of time also embrace it: they see it as a way to return to the sacred time. However, in Buddhism, Jainism, and some forms of Hinduism, the Sacred lies outside the flux of the material world (called maya, or "illusion"), and it can only be reached by escaping from the cycles of time.^[63]

Since the Sacred lies outside cyclic time, which conditions humans, then these can only reach the Sacred by escaping the human condition. According to Eliade, Yoga techniques aim at escaping the limitations of the body, allowing the soul (atman) to rise above maya and reach the Sacred (nirvana, moksha). Imagery of "freedom", and of death to one's old body and rebirth with a new body, occur frequently in Yogic texts, representing escape from the bondage of the temporal human condition.^[64] Eliade discusses these themes in detail in Yoga: Immortality and Freedom.

Main article: Axis mundi

A recurrent theme in Eliade's myth analysis is the axis mundi, the Center of the World. According to Eliade, the Cosmic Center is a necessary corollary to the division of reality into the Sacred and the profane. The Sacred contains all value and structure, and the world only becomes structured through the sacred events recorded in myth; this structuring of the world may be visualized as a "solidification" of previously chaotic elements, spreading outward from a central point:

"In the homogeneous and infinite expanse, in which no point of reference is possible and hence no orientation is established, the hierophany reveals an absolute fixed point, a center."^[65]

Sacred existence should thus have purpose and direction, both of which cannot exist in the "homogeneity and relativity of profane space"; thus, the creation of a fixed point, or center, allows the Sacred to found the world.^[66]

A manifestation of the Sacred in profane space is, by definition, an example of something breaking through from one plane of existence to another. Therefore, the initial hierophany that establishes the Center must be a point at which there is contact between different planes — this, Eliade argues, explains the frequent mythical imagery of a Cosmic Tree or Pillar joining Heaven, Earth, and the underworld.^[67]

Eliade noted that, when traditional societies found a new territory, they often perform consecrating rituals that reenact the hierophany that established the Center and founded the world.^[68] In addition, the designs of traditional buildings, especially temples, usually imitate the mythical image of the axis mundi joining the different cosmic levels. For instance, the Babylonian ziggurats were built to resemble cosmic mountains passing through the heavenly spheres, and the rock of the Temple in Jerusalem was supposed to reach deep into the tehom, or primordial waters.^[69]

According to the logic of the eternal return, the site of each such symbolic Center will actually be the Center of the World; according to Eliade's interpretation, religious man apparently feels the need to live at the mythical Center as much as possible, given that the Center is the point of communication with the Sacred.^[70]

Many pre-agricultural societies hold a vague belief in a supreme sky-god. Like Wilhelm Schmidt's "historico-cultural school" of religious studies, Eliade cites this sky-god as evidence of an earlier "primordial monotheism" (Urmonotheismus).^[71] This hypothesis is directly opposed to certain schools of thought that see religion evolving linearly from polytheism to monotheism.

However, unlike Schmidt, Eliade cautiously avoids assuming that this primordial monotheism was the very beginning of religion. "At most," he writes, "this schema renders an account of human [religious] evolution since the paleolithic era".^[72] Eliade also points out that his hypothetical Urmonotheismus probably differed in many ways from the conceptions of God in many modern monotheistic faiths &madsh; for instance, the primordial High God could manifest himself as an animal without losing his status as a celestial Supreme Being.^[73]

Main article: Deus otiosus

Eliade speculates that the discovery of agriculture brought a host of fertility gods and goddesses into the forefront, causing the celestial Supreme Being to fade away and eventually vanish from many ancient religions.^[74] Even in the primitive hunter-gatherer societies in which Eliade identifies traces of the Urmonotheismus, the High God is a vague, distant figure, dwelling high above the world. Often he has no cult and only receives prayer as a last resort, when prayers to all other gods have failed.^[75] Eliade calls the distant High God a deus otiosus ("idle god").^[76]

In belief systems that involve a deus otiosus, the distant High God is believed to have been closer to humans during the mythical age. After finishing his works of creation, the High God "forsook the earth and withdrew into the highest heaven".^[77] This is an example of the Sacred's distance from "profane" life, life lived after the mythical age: by escaping from the profane condition through religious behavior, figures such as the shaman return to the conditions of the mythical age, which include nearness to the High God ("by his flight or ascension, the shaman [...] meets the God of Heaven face to face and speaks directly to him, as man sometimes did in illo tempore").^[78] The shamanistic behaviors surrounding the High God are a particularly clear example of the eternal return.

Eliade's scholarly work includes a well-known study of shamanism, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. His Myths, Dreams and Mysteries also addresses shamanism in some detail.

In Shamanism, Eliade argues for a restrictive use of the word shaman: it should not apply to just any magician or medicine man, as that would make the term redundant; at the same time, he argues against restricting the term to the magicians of Siberia and Central Asia (from whose title, the Turkic šamán, the term itself was coined).^[79] Eliade defines a shaman as follows:

"he is believed to cure, like all doctors, and to perform miracles of the fakir type, like all magicians [...] But beyond this, he is a psychopomp, and he may also be a priest, mystic, and poet".^[80]

If we define shamanism this way, Eliade claims, we find that the term covers a collection of phenomena that share a common and unique "structure" and "history".^[81] (When thus defined, shamanism tends to occur in its purest forms in hunting and pastoral societies like those of Siberia and Central Asia, which revere a celestial High God "on the way to becoming a deus otiosus".^[82] Eliade takes the shamanism of those regions as his most representative example.)

Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy is mainly a survey of shamanistic practices in different areas. Throughout the work, Eliade's places emphases on the shaman's attribute of regaining man's condition before the "Fall" out of sacred time.^[83] This concern — which, by itself, is the concern of almost all religious behavior, according to Eliade — manifests itself in specific ways in shamanism.

According to Eliade, one of the most common shamanistic themes is the shaman's supposed death and resurrection. This occurs in particular during his initiation.^[84] Often, the procedure is supposed to be performed by spirits who dismember the shaman and strip the flesh from his bones, then put him back together and revive him. In more than one way, this death and resurrection represents the shaman's elevation above human nature.

First, the shaman dies so that he can rise above human nature on a quite literal level. After he has been dismembered by the initiatory spirits, they often replace his old organs with new, magical ones (the shaman dies to his profane self so that he can rise again as a new, sanctified, being).^[85] Second, by being reduced to his bones, the shaman dies on a more symbolic level: in many hunting and herding societies, the bone represents the source of life, so reduction to a skeleton "is equivalent to re-entering the womb of this primordial life, that is, to a complete renewal, a mystical rebirth".^[86] Eliade considers this return to the source of life essentially equivalent to the eternal return.^[87]

Third, the shamanistic phenomenon of repeated death and resurrection also represents a transfiguration in other ways. The shaman dies not once but many times: having died during initiation and risen again with new powers, the shaman can send his spirit out of his body on errands; thus, his whole career consists of repeated deaths and resurrections. The shaman's new ability to die and return to life shows that he is no longer bound by the laws of profane time, particularly the law of death: "the ability to 'die' and come to life again [...] denotes that [the shaman] has surpassed the human condition".^[88]

Having risen above the human condition, the shaman is not bound by the flow of history. Therefore, he enjoys the conditions of the mythical age. In many myths, humans and animals can communicate; shamans often claim to be able to speak with animals — according to Eliade, this symbolizes a return to "the illud tempus described to us by the paradisiac myths".^[89]

The shaman can descend to the underworld or ascend to heaven, often by climbing the World Tree, the cosmic pillar, the sacred ladder, or some other form of the axis mundi.^[90] Often, the shaman will ascend to heaven to speak with the High God. Because the gods (particularly the High God, according to Eliade's deus otiosus concept) were closer to humans during the mythical age, the shaman's easy communication with the High God represents an abolition of history and a return to the mythical age.^[91]

Because of his ability to communicate with the gods and descend to the land of the dead, the shaman frequently functions as a psychopomp and a medicine man.^[92]

Eliade cites a wide variety of myths and rituals to support his theories. However, many scholars think he lacks sufficient evidence to put forth his ideas as universal, or even general, principles of religious thought. According to one scholar, "Eliade may have been the most popular and influential contemporary historian of religion", but "many, if not most, specialists in anthropology, sociology, and even history of religions have either ignored or quickly dismissed" Eliade's works.^[93] The classicist G. S. Kirk takes issue with Eliade's insistence that the Australian Aborigines and ancient Mesopotamians had concepts of "being", "non-being", "real", and "becoming", although they lacked words for them; Kirk also believes that Eliade overextends the ideas behind the eternal return: for example, Eliade claims that the modern myth of the "noble savage" results from the religious tendency to idealize the primordial, mythical age.^[94] According to Kirk, "such extravagances, together with a marked repetitiousness, have made Eliade unpopular with many anthropologists and sociologists".^[95] Even Wendy Doniger, Eliade's successor at the University of Chicago, claims (in an introduction to Eliade's own Shamanism) that the eternal return does not apply to all myths and rituals, although it may apply to many of them.^[96]

Several researchers have criticized Eliade's work as having no empirical support. Thus, he is said to have "failed to provide an adequate methodology for the history of religions and to establish this discipline as an empirical science",^[97] though the same critics admit that "the history of religions should not aim at being an empirical science anyway".^[98] Specifically, his claim that the sacred is a structure of human consciousness is distrusted as not being empirically provable: "no one has yet turned up the basic category sacred".^[99] Also, there has been mention of his tendency to ignore the social aspects of religion.^[100]

In contrast, Professor Kees W. Bolle of the University of California, Los Angeles argues that "Professor Eliade's approach, in all his works, is empirical"^[101]: Bolle sets Eliade apart for what he sees as Eliade's particularly close "attention to the various particular motifs" of different myths.^[102]

Notably, Eliade was also preoccupied with the cult of Zalmoxis and its supposed monotheism.^[103] His conclusions regarding Dacian history (arguing that Romanization was superficial inside Roman Dacia) have been celebrated by contemporary partisans of Protochronist nationalism.^[104]

The 6th European Association for the Study of Religion and International Association for the History of Religions Special Conference on Religious History of Europe and Asia took place from September 20 to September 23, 2006 in Bucharest. An important section of the Congress was dedicated to the memory of Mircea Eliade, whose legacy in the field of history of religions was carefully scrutinized by acclaimed scholars, some of whom were his direct students at the University of Chicago.^[105]

To evaluate the legacy of Eliade and Joachim Wach within the discipline of the history of religions, the University of Chicago chose 2006 (the intermediate year between the 50th anniversary of Wach's death and the 100th anniversary of Eliade's birth), to hold a two-day conference in order to reflect upon their academic contributions and their political lives in their social and historical contexts, as well as the relationship between their works and their lives.^[34]

The early years in Eliade's public career show him to have been highly tolerant of the Jews in general, and of the Jewish minority in Romania in particular. His early condemnation of Nazi anti-Semitic policies was accompanied by his caution and moderation in regard to Nae Ionescu's various anti-Jewish attacks.^[106]

Mihail Sebastian claimed in his Journal that Eliade's actions during the 1930s show him to be an anti-Semite. According to Sebastian, who was Jewish, Eliade had been friendly to him until the start of his political commitments, after which he severed all ties.^[107] Before their friendship came apart, however, Sebastian claimed that he took notes on their conversations (which he later published) during which Eliade was supposed to have expressed anti-Semitic views. According to Sebastian, Eliade said in 1939:

"The Poles' resistance in Warsaw is a Jewish resistance. Only yids are capable of the blackmail of putting women and children in the front line, to take advantage of the Germans' sense of scruple. The Germans have no interest in the destruction of Romania. Only a pro-German government can save us.... What is happening on the frontier with Bukovina is a scandal, because new waves of Jews are flooding into the country. Rather than a Romania again invaded by kikes, it would be better to have a German protectorate."^[108]

Later, Eliade expressed his regret at not having had the chance to redeem his friendship with Sebastian, before the latter was killed in a car accident.^[109]

Beyond his involvement with a movement known for its anti-Semitism, Eliade did not usually comment on Jewish issues. However, a text he contributed to Vremea in 1936 showed that he supported at least some Iron Guard accusations against the Jewish community:

"Ever since the war [that is, World War I], Jews have invaded villages in Maramureş and Bukovina, and have become an absolute majority in every town in Bessarabia.^[110] [...] It would be absurd to expect Jews to resign themselves in order to become a minority with certain rights and very many duties — after they have tasted the honey of power and conquered as many command positions as they have. Jews are currently fighting with all forces to maintain their positions, expecting a future offensive — and, as far as I am concerned, I understand their fight and admire their vitality, tenacity, genius."^[111]

One year later, a text, accompanied by his picture, was featured as answer to an inquiry by the Iron Guard's Buna Vestire about the reasons he had for supporting the movement. A short section of it summarizes an anti-Jewish attitude:

"Can the Romanian nation end its life in the saddest state of decay ever to be known in history, undermined by misery and syphilis, invaded by Jews and torn apart by foreigners, demoralized, betrayed, sold off for some hundreds of millions of lei?"^[112]

According to the literary critic Z. Ornea, in the 1980s Eliade denied authorship of the text. He explained the use of his signature, his picture, and the picture's caption, as having been applied by the magazine's editor, Mihail Polihroniade, to a piece the latter had written after having failed to obtain Eliade's contribution; he also claimed that, given his respect for Polihroniade, he had not wished to publicize this matter previously.^[113]

A fellow diplomat present in London during Eliade's stay in the city later stated that the latter had identified himself as "a guiding light of [the Iron Guard] movement" and victim of Carol II's repression.^[114] The depolitisation of Eliade after the start of his diplomatic career was also mistrusted by his former close friend Eugène Ionesco, who indicated that, upon the close of World War II, Eliade's personal beliefs as expressed to his friends amounted to "all is over now that «Communism has won»" (this forms part of Ionesco's harsh and succinct review of the careers of Legionary-inspired intellectuals, many of them his friends and former friends, in a letter he sent to Tudor Vianu).^[115] In August 1954, when Horia Sima, who led the Iron Guard during its exile, was rejected by a faction inside the movement, his name was included on a list of persons who supported the latter (although this may have happened without Eliade's consent).^[116] During the final years of Eliade's life, his disciple Ioan Petru Culianu exposed and publicly criticized his 1930s pro-Iron Guard activities; relations between the two soured as a result.^[117]

Further criticism of his political involvement with anti-Semitism and fascism came from Adriana Berger, Leon Volovici, Daniel Dubuisson, Florin Ţurcanu and others, who have attempted to trace Eliade's anti-Semitism throughout his work and through his associations with contemporary anti-Semites, such as the Italian Fascist occultist Julius Evola. Volovici, for example, is critical of Eliade not only because of his support for the Iron Guard, but also for spreading anti-Semitism and anti-Masonry in 1930s Romania.^[118]

Other scholars, like Bryan S. Rennie, have claimed that there is, to date, no evidence of Eliade's membership, active services rendered, or of any real involvement with any fascist or totalitarian movements or membership organizations, nor that there is any evidence of his continued support for nationalist ideals after their inherently violent nature was revealed. They further assert that there is no imprint of overt political beliefs in Eliade's scholarship, and also claim that Eliade's critics are following political agendas.^[119]

Eliade's own version of events, presenting his involvement in far right politics as marginal, was judged to contain several inaccuracies and unverifiable claims.^[120] On another occasion, he is known to have denied ever having contributed to Buna Vestire.^[121]

Eliade has never been a protagonist in a cinema production. Following is a list of films based on, or referring to, his works.

• Mircea Eliade et la redécouverte du Sacré (1987), part of the television series Architecture et Géographie sacrée, by Paul Barbă Neagră
• The Bengali Night (1988), by Nicolas Klotz (based upon the French translation of his novel, Maitreyi).
• Domnişoara Christina (1996), by Viorel Sergovici
• Eu Adam (1996), by Dan Piţa
• Youth Without Youth (2007), by Francis Ford Coppola

In the 1988 film The Bengali Night, the European man based on Eliade is played by British actor Hugh Grant; Supriya Pathak is Gayatri, a character based on Maitreyi Devi (who had refused to be mentioned by name).^[122] The film, considered "pornographic" by Hindu activists, was only shown once in India.^[123]

In 2000, Saul Bellow published his controversial Ravelstein novel. Having for its setting the University of Chicago, it had among its characters Radu Grielescu, who was indicated by several critics as Eliade. The latter's portrayal is polemical: Grielescu, who is identified as a disciple of Nae Ionescu,^[124] took part in the Bucharest Pogrom, and is in Chicago as a refugee scholar, searching for the friendship of a Jewish colleague as a means to rehabilitate himself.^[125] In 2005, the Romanian literary critic and translator Antoaneta Ralian, who was an acquaintance of Bellow's, argued that much of the negative portrayal was owed to a personal choice Bellow made (after having divorced from Alexandra Bagdasar, his Romanian wife and Eliade disciple).^[126] She also mentioned that, during a 1979 interview, Bellow had expressed admiration for Eliade.^[127]

• Allen, Douglas. 2002. Myth and Religion in Mircea Eliade. London: Routledge.
• Carrasco, David and Law, Jane Marie (eds.). 1985. Waiting for the Dawn. Boulder: Westview Press.
• Culianu, Ioan Petru. 1978. Mircea Eliade. Assisi: Citadela Editrice
• Dadosky, John D. 2004. The Structure of Religious Knowing: Encountering the Sacred in Eliade and Lonergan. Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Dudley, Guilford. 1977. Religion on Trial: Mircea Eliade & His Critics. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
• Ellwood, Robert S. 1999. The Politics of Myth: A Study of C. G. Jung, Mircea Eliade and Joseph Campbell. Albany: State University of New York Press.
• McCutcheon, Russell T. 1997. Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Olson, Carl. 1992. The Theology and Philosophy of Eliade: A Search for the Centre. New York: St Martins Press.
• Pals, Daniel L. 1996. Seven Theories of Religion. USA: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-508725-9
• Posada, Mihai. 2006. Opera publicistică a lui Mircea Eliade. Bucharest: Editura Criterion. ISBN 978-973-8982-14-7
• Rennie, Bryan S. 1996. Reconstructing Eliade: Making Sense of Religion. Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Rennie, Bryan S. (ed.). 2001. Changing Religious Worlds: The Meaning and End of Mircea Eliade. Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Simion, Eugen. 2001. Mircea Eliade: A Spirit of Amplitude. Boulder: East European Monographs.
• Strenski, Ivan. 1987. Four Theories of Myth in Twentieth-Century History: Cassirer, Eliade, Levi Strauss and Malinowski. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.
• Tolcea, Marcel. 2002. Eliade, ezotericul. Timişoara: Editura Mirton.
• Ţurcanu, Florin. 2003. Mircea Eliade. Le prisonnier de l'histoire. Paris: Editions La Découverte.
• Wasserstrom, Steven M. 1999. Religion after Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

• Bibliography of Mircea Eliade
• History of religions

• Mircea Eliade:
  • Myth and Reality. Trans. Willard R. Trask. New York: Harper & Row, 1963
  • Myths, Dreams and Mysteries. Trans. Philip Mairet. New York: Harper & Row, 1967
  • Myths, Rites, Symbols. vol. 2. Ed. Wendell C. Beane and William G. Doty. New York: Harper Colophon 1976
  • Patterns in Comparative Religion. New York: Sheed & Ward, 1958
  • Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstacy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004
  • The Myth of the Eternal Return, or Cosmos and History. Trans. Willard R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954
  • The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. Trans. Willard R. Trask. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961
• Douglas Allen. "Eliade and History". Journal of Religion. 52:2 (1988): pp. 545-565.
• Gregory D. Alles, "Review of Changing Religious Worlds: The Meaning and End of Mircea Eliade by Brian Rennie", in Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 71, p.466-469
• Sorin Antohi, "Exploring the Legacy of Ioan Petru Culianu", in the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen Post, Spring 2001
• Ted Anton, "The Killing Of Professor Culianu", in Lingua Franca, Volume 2, No. 6 - September/October 1992
• Lucian Boia, Istorie şi mit în conştiinţa românească, Humanitas, Bucharest (tr. History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness, Central European University Press, 2001)
• Kees W. Bolle. The Freedom of Man in Myth. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1968.
• Paul Cernat, "Îmblânzitorul României Socialiste. De la Bîrca la Chicago şi înapoi" ("The Tamer of Socialist Romania. From Bîrca to Chicago and Back"), in Paul Cernat, Ion Manolescu, Angelo Mitchievici, Ioan Stanomir, Explorări în comunismul românesc ("Forays into Romanian Communism"), Polirom, Iaşi, 2004, p.346-348
• (Romanian) Paul Cernat, "Eliade în cheie ezoterică" ("Eliade in Esoterical Key"), review of Marcel Tolcea, Eliade, ezotericul ("Eliade, the Esoteric"), in Observator Cultural
• Victor Frunză, Istoria stalinismului în România ("The History of Stalinism in Romania"), Humanitas, Bucharest, 1990
• Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism, Routledge UK, London, 1993
• (Romanian) Mircea Handoca, Convorbiri cu şi despre Mircea Eliade ("Conversations with and about Mircea Eliade") on Autori ("Published Authors") page of the Humanitas publishing house
• Douglas R. Holmes, Integral Europe: fast-capitalism, multiculturalism, neofascism, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2000
• (Romanian) Mircea Iorgulescu, "Portretul artistului ca delincvent politic" ("The Portrait of the Artist as a Political Offender"), Part I, in 22
• Ginu Kamani, "A Terrible Hurt: The Untold Story behind the Publishing of Maitreyi Devi", at the University of Chicago Press website
• G. S. Kirk, Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1974
• Z. Ornea, Anii treizeci. Extrema dreaptă românească ("The 1930s: The Romanian Far Right"), Editura Fundaţiei Culturale Române, Bucharest, 1995
• (Romanian) Antoaneta Ralian, interviewed by BBC Romania on the occasion of Saul Bellow's death
• Bryan S. Rennie, Reconstructing Eliade: Making Sense of Religion, State University of New York, Albany, New York, 1996, ISBN 0-7914-2763-3
• (Spanish) Albert Ribas, Mircea Eliade, historiador de las religiones ("Mircea Eliade, Historian of Religions")
• Mac Linscott Ricketts, "Review of Religion on Trial: Mircea Eliade and His Critics by Guilford Dudley III", in Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Sep. 1978), p.400-402
• Kelley L. Ross, Mircea Eliade, on Friesian.com
• Mihail Sebastian, Journal, 1935-1944: The Fascist Years, Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 2000, ISBN: 1-56663-326-5
• (Romanian) Ovidiu Şimonca, "Mircea Eliade şi 'căderea în lume'" ("Mircea Eliade and 'the Descent into the World'"), review of Florin Ţurcanu, Mircea Eliade. Le prisonnier de l'histoire ("Mircea Elaide. The Prisoner of History"), in Observator Cultural
• Leon Volovici, Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism: The Case of Romanian Intellectuals in the 1930s, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1991

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