Mircea Eliade
Eliade’s Background

Eliade was born in Bucharest, Romania (1907)
 In 1925, enrolled at the University of Bucharest
where he studied philosophy
 In 1928 he sailed for Calcutta to study Sanskrit
and philosophy under Surendranath Dasgupta
(1885-1952)
 He returned to Bucharest in 1932 and
successfully submitted his analysis of Yoga as
his doctoral thesis
Eliade’s Background

In 1945 he moved to Paris where his
acquaintance with George Dumézil, an
important scholar of comparative mythology,
secured a part-time post for him at the École des
Hautes Études at the Sorbonne teaching
comparative religion.
 In 1958 he was invited to assume the chair of
the History of Religions department in Chicago.
There he stayed until his death in 1986
Thoughts

In Cosmos and History: The Myth of the
Eternal Return (1954), Eliade
distinguishes between


Religious humanity, who perceives time as
heterogeneous [sacred and profane]
Non-religious humanity, who perceives time
as homogenous [all the same time]
Religious Humanity
 Profane
time experienced as linear
 Sacred time experienced as cyclical and
re-actualizable
 By means of myths and rituals which give
access to this sacred time, religious
humanity protects itself against the “terror
of history”, that human existence is a
pointless exercise ending in oblivion.
Religious Humanity
 In
other words, Sacred time always
involves a return to a paradigmatic mythic
time in the past, the time of the creation,
the Exodus, the Last Supper, etc
 Yet Eliade contended that non-religious
humanity in any pure sense is a very rare
phenomenon.
 Sacred time usually concealed in the
world, hidden in myth and ritual
Religious Humanity
 In
the Sacred and Profane (1957), Eliade
examines the Archaic Man, the tribal
human who dwells continually in the two
planes (the sacred and profane)
 Archaic Man believed in the supernatural
realm
 This belief reflected through its actions in
society
What is the Sacred?





A Transcendental deity? (Hegal)
A “wholly other”? (Rudolf Otto)
A social construction (Durkheim)?
Eliade himself repeatedly identifies the sacred
as the real, yet he states clearly that "the sacred
is a structure of human consciousness"
This would argue more for the third
interpretation: a social construction of both the
sacred and of reality
What is the Sacred?
 Yet
he also defined the sacred as the
source of significance, meaning, power
and being, manifesting in three distinct
forms:



Hierophanies (physical representation of the
holy)
Cratophanies (physical representation of
power)
Ontophanies (physical representation of
Being)
What is the Sacred?
 This





idea sounds more like Rudolf Otto
The Idea of the Holy (1916)
The subject experiences the mysterious,
awesome and beautiful
Mysterium tremendum (a mystery that both
frightens and fascinates
Leaves the individual feeling insignificant
This feeling the basis of all religions
What is the Sacred?
 Eliade
claimed that one of the most
important senses of a hierophany, an
appearance of the holy, was as an
ontophany, an appearance of Being.
 The location of the hierophany becomes
the axis mundi.
 Villagers then builds toward the axis
mundi, giving order and form to the village
Sacred Space

"Religious man sought to live as near as
possible to the Center of the World." (p. 43)
 "To settle in a territory, to build a dwelling,
demands a vital decision for both the whole
community and the individual. For what is
involved is undertaking the creation of the world
that one has chosen to inhabit. Hence it is
necessary to imitate the work of the gods, the
cosmogony.“ (p. 51)
Imago Mundi
 "The
habitation always undergoes a
process of sanctification, because it
constitutes an imago mundi [microcosm
of the world] and the world is a divine
creation.” (p. 52)
 In this way the original appearance of the
holy [hierophany] yields a order of social
existence [ontophany]
Dwelling with the Holy
 Why
do human cultures engage in this
behavior?
 Eliade thought because Archaic Humanity
wanted to dwell within the holy—to
become the holy itself.
 Yet this behavior only made the separation
between the holy and humans more
profound.
Sacred and Profane
 Eliade
assumed that Archaic Humanity
wished to return to the beginning of time
and space “to live in the world as it came
for the Creator’s hands, fresh, pure, and
strong.” (Sacred and Profane, p. 91)
 Key purpose of ritual: to reenact the return
to the primordial—when all was sacred.
 Mythic return rejected with the emergence
of Judaism and Christianity, claims Eliade.
What is the Sacred?
 So
maybe the sacred is more than mere
social construction?
 Eliade never clarifies this conflict
 Instead, suggests that some persons will
encounter the sacred dimension of a
phenomenon while others will not based
on preparation for apprehension (trained
to see an object as sacred)
From the Sacred to Religion
 So,
if one must be trained to apprehend
the sacred, this must be the role of
religion.
 Religion is the apprehension of relative
worth conferred through non-historical
realities (including all abstract and
imaginary entities)
 Religion is the cause of human behaviors,
not the effect.
From the Sacred to Religion





But religion must be revealed and confirmed
through historical phenomena
This dual nature of religion, thought Eliade, was
a universal dimension of humankind.
Myth becomes a paradigmatic model for all
human activities.
From myth, Humans symbolically transform the
world into a cosmos.
Humans desire to live in the sacred to transcend
subjective experience
The Study of Religion
 Eliade
believed that while religions were
historically bound phenomenon (like Zeus
to Ancient Greece), all religions operate on
general forms or archetypes (such as sky
god)
 Scholars can learn a great deal by looking
for the archetypes or forms and how they
change from one culture to the next.
What of Symbols?
 Patterns
of Comparative Religion (1949)
 Almost anything can become a symbol
when infused with the supernatural
 “Dialectic of the sacred”
 Symbols appeal to religious imagination,
not reason
 Hence an object can sacred and profane
simultaneously.
Convergence Theory and Symbols

Different gods originated as symbolizations of
different aspects of nature.
 This resulted in the formation of departmental
gods




sky gods
storm gods
moon gods.
These gods subsequently acquired
characteristics from other spheres of nature
symbolism, so that all sorts of blends between
the various aspects of nature were formed.
Convergence Theory and Symbols
 As
tribal communities become agrarian,
sky gods (distant, aloof, removed,
mysterious) transformed into storm gods
(entities responsible for rain, clouds,
thunder, fertility, sexuality)
 Sky gods also could transform to son
gods, whose actions reflected the cyclic
dynamics of life and death
Convergence Theory and Symbols
 Water
becomes the archetypical
movement from chaos to order, from
pollution to purity, from barrenness to
renewal
 Stone serves as the archetypical
expression of the non-changing,
impermeable nature of the sacred
Symbolic Thinking
 Symbolic
thinking must display two
dimensions or features:


Structural: how a symbol organizes elements
of reality into a system
Valuation: how symbols are grant worth within
reality [not all symbols are equal]
Structural Dimension of Symbols
 No
symbol exists in isolation
 Symbol connect with other images to
fashion and extend the idea of the sacred



Sun god yields symbol of solar disk
Symbol carved on walls, worn around neck,
paraded on a certain day
In this manner, the sacred is extended from its
initial appearance.
Valuation Dimension of Symbols

Eliade does believe some symbol systems
(images, myths, structures) superior to others
 Bigger is better: the more complex the symbol
system the more universal it must be.
 For instance, Christian mythology incorporates
numerous symbol systems: cosmic tree, son
god, water, wine, stone, etc.
 The tendency of myth is to move toward
complexity through associations with other
symbol systems. These acquisitions occur in a
universalizing manner.
The Future of Religion

Archaic Religion possessed the desire of mythic
return [going back to the beginning of creation]
 Judaism and Christianity move archaic religion
from a de-evolutionary to an evolutionary view of
history. Sacred now in history, not nature.
 This idea of history yields Modern Historicism philosophy replacing religion.
 In other words, the sacred does not exist in
either nature nor history. The sacred does not
exist [remember Marx?]
The Future of Religion
 But
can such non-religious philosophies
ultimately be satisfying, asked Eliade.
 Athletics, television, movies, plays, games
all reflect the concept of the Mythic Return.
It never left after all!
 Modern Historicism replaced with a return
to Archaic Religion.