Editing Mircea Eliade (section)

===="Modern gnosticism", Romanticism and Eliade's nostalgia====
In analyzing the similarities between the "mythologists" Eliade, [[Joseph Campbell]] and Carl Jung, Robert Ellwood concluded that the three modern mythologists, all of whom believed that myths reveal "timeless truth",<ref>Ellwood, p. 6</ref> fulfilled the role "[[Gnosticism|gnostics]]" had in [[Ancient history|antiquity]]. The diverse religious movements covered by the term "gnosticism" share the basic doctrines that the surrounding world is fundamentally evil or inhospitable, that we are trapped in the world through no fault of our own, and that we can be saved from the world only through secret knowledge (''[[gnosis]]'').<ref>Ellwood, p. 9</ref> Ellwood claimed that the three mythologists were "modern gnostics through and through",<ref>Ellwood, p. 15</ref> remarking,
<blockquote>Whether in [[Augustus|Augustan Rome]] or modern Europe, democracy all too easily gave way to [[totalitarianism]], technology was as readily used for battle as for comfort, and immense wealth lay alongside abysmal poverty. [...] Gnostics past and present sought answers not in the course of outward human events, but in knowledge of the world's beginning, of what lies above and beyond the world, and of the secret places of the human soul. To all this the mythologists spoke, and they acquired large and loyal followings.<ref>Ellwood, p. 2</ref></blockquote>

According to Ellwood, the mythologists believed in gnosticism's basic doctrines (even if in a secularized form). Ellwood also believes that [[Romanticism]], which stimulated the modern study of mythology,<ref name="Ellwood, p.19">Ellwood, p. 19</ref> strongly influenced the mythologists. Because Romantics stress that emotion and imagination have the same dignity as reason, Ellwood argues, they tend to think political truth "is known less by rational considerations than by its capacity to fire the passions" and, therefore, that political truth is "very apt to be found [...] in the distant past".<ref name="Ellwood, p.19"/>

As modern gnostics, Ellwood argues, the three mythologists felt alienated from the surrounding modern world. As scholars, they knew of primordial societies that had operated differently from modern ones. And as people influenced by Romanticism, they saw myths as a saving ''gnosis'' that offered "avenues of eternal return to simpler primordial ages when the values that rule the world were forged".<ref>Ellwood, p. 1</ref> In addition, Ellwood identifies Eliade's personal sense of nostalgia as a source for his interest in, or even his theories about, traditional societies.<ref>Ellwood, pp. 99, 117</ref> He cites Eliade himself claiming to desire an "eternal return" like that by which traditional man returns to the mythical paradise: "My essential preoccupation is precisely the means of escaping History, of saving myself through symbol, myth, rite, archetypes".<ref>Eliade, quoted by [[Virgil Ierunca]], ''The Literary Work of Mircea Eliade'', in Ellwood, p. 117</ref>

In Ellwood's view, Eliade's nostalgia was only enhanced by his exile from Romania: "In later years Eliade felt about his own Romanian past as did primal folk about mythic time. He was drawn back to it, yet he knew he could not live there, and that all was not well with it."<ref name="Ellwood, p.101">Ellwood, p. 101</ref> He suggests that this nostalgia, along with Eliade's sense that "exile is among the profoundest metaphors for all human life",<ref>Ellwood, p. 97</ref> influenced Eliade's theories. Ellwood sees evidence of this in Eliade's concept of the "Terror of history" from which modern man is no longer shielded.<ref>Ellwood, p. 102</ref> In this concept, Ellwood sees an "element of nostalgia" for earlier times "when the sacred was strong and the terror of history had barely raised its head".<ref>Ellwood, p. 103</ref>