Search results

The foundational work on shamanism now available as a Princeton Classics paperbackShamanism is an essential work on the study of this mysterious and fascinating phenomenon. The founder of the modern study of the history of religion, Mircea Eliade surveys the tradition through two and a half millennia of human history, moving from the shamanic traditions of Siberia and Central Asia-where shamanism was first observed-to North and South America, Indonesia, Tibet, China, and beyond. In this authoritative survey, Eliade illuminates the magico-religious life of societies that give primacy of place to the figure of the shaman-at once magician and medicine man, healer and miracle-doer, priest, mystic, and poet. Synthesizing the approaches of psychology, sociology, and ethnology, Shamanism remains the reference book of choice for those interested in this practice

"Transnational Strategies in Mircea Eliade's Writings. In this article, we will consider the techniques through which an important hallmark of Romanian culture, Mircea Eliade, negotiated his transnational strategies, in a continual back-and-forth movement between his place of origin and a larger, cosmopolitan context. Paradoxically, as proven by Paul Cernat, it is not exoticism that will lead to his treatises on the history of religions, but on the contrary, the return to Sambo's room, as described in The Forbidden Forest novel. Moreover, the European modernist project, defended by Eliade, is in itself an antinomic project: exceptional avant-garde techniques succeed regressive strategies. The latter are based on the modern hermeneutics of meaning, developed by Eliade in his approach to the history of religions, which is an all-encompassing way of interpreting religious facts as hierophanies.

Keywords: terror of history, antimodernist strategies, hierophany, autochthonism, transnational techniques
"

Myths have intrigued scholars throughout history. 'Twentieth Century Mythologies' traces the study of myth over the last century, presenting the key theories of mythology and critiquing traditional definitions of myth. The volume presents the work of influential scholars in mythology: the noted Indo-Europeanist Georges Dumezil, the structuralist anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, and the historian of religions Mircea Eliade. 'Twentieth Century Mythologies' is an indispensable resource for scholars of religion and myth and for all those interested in the history of ideas

The four research interviews with Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) were taken by Mac Linscott Ricketts (1930–2022), who embarked on the project of writing a massive monograph on the Romanian period (1907–1945) of his former professor's life and work. For this purpose, he conducted research in Eliade's own archive in Chicago and travelled to Bucharest to consult the pre-World War II publications. Taken between 1981 and 1984, the interviews aim to clarify less known or contentious aspects of Eliade's biography and intellectual formation. A fifth interview, planned for 1986, was outrun by the sudden death of the great historian of religions. Ricketts replaced it with a short conversation with his wife, Chistinel. The manuscript of the interviews preserved in Ricketts's personal archive, now in the library of the New Europe College in Bucharest, was retrieved by Liviu Bordaș, who edited and enriched it with explanatory notes.