Editing Mircea Eliade (section)

===The general nature of religion===
In his work on the history of religion, Eliade is most highly regarded for his writings on [[Alchemy]],<ref>{{Cite book|last=Calian|first=George Florin|title=Alkimia Operativa and Alkimia Speculativa. Some Modern Controversies on the Historiography of Alchemy|url=https://archive.org/stream/AlkimiaOperativaAndAlkimiaSpeculativa.SomeModernControversiesOnThe/FlorinGeorgeCalian-AlkimiaOperativaAndAlkimiaSpeculativa.SomeModernControversiesOnTheHistoriographyOfAlchemy#page/n0/mode/2up|publisher=Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU|location=Budapest|year=2010|page=169|quote=Eliade offers a theoretical background for understanding alchemy from the perspective of the history of religion. Alchemy is a spiritual technique and can be understood not as an important moment in the history of  science but rather as a kind of religious phenomenon with its own particular rules.}}</ref> [[Shamanism]], [[Yoga]] and what he called the [[Eternal return (Eliade)|eternal return]]—the implicit belief, supposedly present in religious thought in general, that [[Religious behaviour|religious behavior]] is not only an imitation of, but also a participation in, sacred events, and thus restores the mythical time of origins. 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]]).<ref name="pccheie"/> 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.

Eliade is known for his attempt to find broad, cross-cultural parallels and unities in religion, particularly in myths. [[Wendy Doniger]], Eliade's colleague from 1978 until his death, has observed that "Eliade argued boldly for universals where he might more safely have argued for widely prevalent patterns."<ref>Doniger's foreword to Eliade's ''Shamanism'' (Princeton University Press edition, 1972, p. xii)</ref> 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.<ref>Dumézil, "Introducere", in Eliade, ''Tratat de istorie a religiilor: Introducere'' ("Religious History Treatise" – ''Patterns in Comparative Religion''), [[Humanitas publishing house|Humanitas]], Bucharest, 1992</ref>

[[Robert S. Ellwood|Robert Ellwood]] describes Eliade's approach to religion as follows. Eliade approaches religion by imagining an ideally "religious" person, whom he calls ''homo religiosus'' in his writings. Eliade's theories basically describe how this ''homo religiosus'' would view the world.<ref name="Ellwood, p.99">Ellwood, p. 99</ref> This does not mean that all religious practitioners actually think and act like ''homo religiosus''. Instead, it means that religious behavior "says through its own language" that the world is as ''homo religiosus'' would see it, whether or not the real-life participants in religious behavior are aware of it.<ref name="Ellwood, p.104">Ellwood, p. 104</ref> However, Ellwood writes that Eliade "tends to slide over that last qualification", implying that traditional societies actually thought like ''homo religiosus''.<ref name="Ellwood, p.104"/>

====Sacred and profane====
[[File:Mosesshoesspeculum.jpeg|thumb|250px|[[Moses]] taking off his shoes in front of the [[burning bush]] (illustration from a 16th-century edition of the ''[[Speculum Humanae Salvationis]]'')]]
Eliade argues that "Yahweh is both kind and wrathful; the God of the Christian mystics and theologians is terrible and gentle at once."<ref name="Eliade Myths p.450">Eliade, ''Myths, Rites, Symbols'', p. 450</ref> He also thought that the Indian and Chinese mystic tried to attain "a state of perfect indifference and neutrality" that resulted in a coincidence of opposites in which "pleasure and pain, desire and repulsion, cold and heat [...] are expunged from his awareness."<ref name="Eliade Myths p.450"/>

Eliade's understanding of religion centers on his concept of [[hierophany]] (manifestation of the Sacred)—a concept that includes, but is not limited to, the older and more restrictive concept of [[theophany]] (manifestation of a god).<ref>Eliade, ''The Sacred and the Profane'', pp. 20–22; ''Shamanism'', p. xiii</ref> From the perspective of religious thought, Eliade argues, hierophanies 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."<ref name="Eliade, p.22">Eliade, ''The Sacred and the Profane'', p. 22</ref> 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 non-reality of the vast surrounding expanse."<ref name="Eliade, p.21">Eliade, ''The Sacred and the Profane'', p. 21</ref> As an example of "[[hierotopy|sacred space]]" demanding a certain response from man, Eliade gives the story of [[Moses]] halting before [[Yahweh]]'s manifestation as a [[burning bush]] (''[[Book of Exodus|Exodus]]'' 3:5) and taking off his shoes.<ref>Eliade, ''The Sacred and the Profane'', p. 20</ref>

====Origin myths and sacred time====
Eliade notes that, in traditional societies, myth represents the absolute truth about primordial time.<ref name="Eliade, p.23">Eliade, ''Myths, Dreams and Mysteries'', p. 23</ref> 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.''"<ref>Eliade, ''Myth and Reality'', p. 6</ref>

Many traditional societies believe that the power of a thing lies in its origin.<ref>Eliade, ''Myth and Reality'', p. 15</ref> If origin is equivalent to power, then "it is the first manifestation of a thing that is significant and valid"<ref>Eliade, ''Myth and Reality'', p. 34</ref> (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; therefore, the mythical age is sacred time,<ref name="Eliade, p.23"/> 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."<ref name="Eliade, p.44">Eliade, ''Myths, Dreams and Mysteries'', p. 44</ref> Eliade postulated this as the reason for the "[[nostalgia]] for origins" that appears in many religions, the desire to return to a primordial [[Paradise]].<ref name="Eliade, p.44"/>

====Eternal return and "Terror of history"====
{{Main|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. Because 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; by recounting or re-enacting mythical events, myths and rituals "re-actualize" those events.<ref>Eliade, ''The Sacred and the Profane'', pp. 68–69</ref> Eliade often uses the term "[[archetype]]s" to refer to the mythical models established by the Sacred, although Eliade's use of the term should be distinguished from the use of the term in [[Jungian psychology]].<ref>Leeming, "Archetypes"</ref>

Thus, argues Eliade, religious behavior does not only commemorate, but also participates in, sacred events:

<blockquote>In ''imitating'' the exemplary acts of a god or of a mythical hero, or simply by recounting their adventures, the man of an archaic society detaches himself from profane time and magically re-enters the Great Time, the sacred time.<ref name="Eliade, p.23"/></blockquote>

Eliade called this concept the "[[Eternal return (Eliade)|eternal return]]" (distinguished from the [[Eternal return|philosophical concept of "eternal return"]]). Wendy Doniger noted that Eliade's theory of the eternal return "has become a truism in the study of religions."<ref name="Doniger Forward p.xiii"/>

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 [[Mesopotamia]]ns, the [[Ancient Egypt|Egyptians]], and other [[Ancient Near East|Near Eastern]] peoples re-enacted their [[Cosmogony|cosmogonic]] myths. Therefore, by the logic of the eternal return, each New Year ceremony ''was'' the beginning of the world for these peoples. According to Eliade, these peoples felt a need to return to the Beginning at regular intervals, turning time into a circle.<ref>Eliade, ''Myth and Reality'', pp. 47–49</ref>

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.<ref>Eliade, ''The Myth of the Eternal Return'', Chapter 4; ''Myths, Dreams and Mysteries'', pp. 231–245</ref> Traditional societies escape this anxiety to an extent, as they refuse to completely acknowledge historical time. But the return to the sources involved an apocalyptic experience. [[Doina Ruști]], analyzing the story ''The Old Man and The Bureaucrats'' (''Pe strada Mântuleasa''), says  The memories<ref>{{Cite book|last=Doina|first=Ruști|title=Dicționar de simboluri din opera lui Mircea Eliade|publisher=Corint|year=1997|location=Bucuresti|pages=90|language=ro}}</ref> create the chaos, because "the myth makes irruption in a world in tormented birth, without memory, and transform all in a labyrinth".

====''Coincidentia oppositorum''====
Eliade claims that many myths, rituals, and mystical experiences involve a "coincidence of opposites", or ''[[coincidentia oppositorum]]''. In fact, he calls the ''<ref>coincidentia</ref> oppositorum'' "the mythical pattern."<ref>In ''Patterns in Comparative Religion'' (p. 419), Eliade gives a section about the ''coincidentia oppositorum'' the title "Coincidentia Oppositorum—THE MYTHICAL PATTERN". Beane and Doty chose to retain this title when excerpting this section in ''Myths, Rites, Symbols'' (p. 449).</ref> Many myths, Eliade notes, "present us with a twofold revelation":
<blockquote>they express on the one hand the diametrical opposition of two divine figures sprung from one and the same principle and destined, in many versions, to be reconciled at some ''illud tempus'' of eschatology, and on the other, the ''coincidentia oppositorum'' in the very nature of the divinity, which shows itself, by turns or even simultaneously, benevolent and terrible, creative and destructive, solar and serpentine, and so on (in other words, actual and potential).<ref>Eliade, ''Myths, Rites, Symbols'', p. 449</ref></blockquote>
The reconciling opposites „involves imitating gestures or situations from before the establishment of history, by recovering the initial state, by regenerating time and the world, but also by mystical initiation."<ref>Doina Ruști, Dictionary of symbols from Eliade's work, Corint, 1997</ref>
Eliade argues that "Yahweh is both kind and wrathful; the God of the Christian mystics and theologians is terrible and gentle at once."<ref name="Eliade Myths p.450"/> He also thought that the Indian and Chinese mystic tried to attain "a state of perfect indifference and neutrality" that resulted in a coincidence of opposites in which "pleasure and pain, desire and repulsion, cold and heat [...] are expunged from his awareness".<ref name="Eliade Myths p.450"/>

According to Eliade, the ''coincidentia oppositorum'''s appeal lies in "man's deep dissatisfaction with his actual situation, with what is called the human condition".<ref name="Eliade Myths p.439"/> In many mythologies, the end of the mythical age involves a "fall", a fundamental "[[Ontology|ontological]] change in the structure of the World".<ref name="Eliade Myths p.440">Eliade, ''Myths, Rites, Symbols'', p. 440</ref> Because the ''coincidentia oppositorum'' is a contradiction, it represents a denial of the world's current logical structure, a reversal of the "fall".

Also, traditional man's dissatisfaction with the post-mythical age expresses itself as a feeling of being "torn and separate".<ref name="Eliade Myths p.439">Eliade, ''Myths, Rites, Symbols'', p. 439</ref> In many mythologies, the lost mythical age was a Paradise, "a paradoxical state in which the contraries exist side by side without conflict, and the multiplications form aspects of a mysterious Unity".<ref name="Eliade Myths p.440"/> The ''coincidentia oppositorum'' expresses a wish to recover the lost unity of the mythical Paradise, for it presents a reconciliation of opposites and the unification of diversity:
<blockquote>On the level of pre-systematic thought, the mystery of totality embodies man's endeavor to reach a perspective in which the contraries are abolished, the Spirit of Evil reveals itself as a stimulant of Good, and Demons appear as the night aspect of the Gods.<ref name="Eliade Myths p.440"/></blockquote>