Tim Jensen - recenzie The International Eliade (JAAR 2009)pdf

Liberty is an excellent introduction to this study. It should be read by everyserious student of the history of religious liberty and church–state relations.

doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfp002 Mark David HallAdvance Access publication February 10, 2009 George Fox University

Mircea Eliade: A Critical Reader (Critical Categories in the Study ofReligion). Edited by Bryan S. Rennie. Equinox, 2006. 448 pages. $32.95.The International Eliade (Issues in the Study of Religion). Edited byBryan S. Rennie. State University of New York Press, 2007. 256 pages.$70.00.

In his “General Introduction,” editor Bryan S. Rennie stakes out his aim: tohave Mircea Eliade, A Critical Reader serve not to “answer the questions raisedfor the academic study of religion by the work of Eliade,” but to “serve as auseful introduction for scholars at whatever stage of their studies who wish toconsider these questions” (2). Rennie stresses that since the selection of textshas to serve for “a variety of readers, hence the inclusion of both introductorytexts… and more esoteric works from Eliade’s early years” (4). He also arguesfor the very idea of having such a reader on Eliade, saying that too often scho-lars are forced to reading but one of two of Eliade’s most general works, andmaybe one book on Eliade, thus missing important texts in “difficult-to-find”journals. Furthermore, “the inexperienced scholar remains unaware of the sig-nificance of, say the Preface to Shamanism” (2).

What, then, has Rennie chosen to serve up for such readers? In Part I,“Introduction,” Rennie himself gives a brief, yet balanced and informative,introduction to “The Life and Work of Mircea Eliade,” and then lets Eliadehimself introduce his work by way of his own introduction to The Sacred andProfane.

“Part II: Eliade’s Understanding of Religion” has five sections and six sub-sections. The first section, “Early Understanding,” consists of but one piece (anexample, I guess, of the abovementioned “more esoteric works”) by Eliade,namely the 1937 “Folklore as an Instrument of Knowledge,” translated now forthe first time by Mac Linscott Ricketts. Eliade here asks, “In what way and towhat extent can ethnographic and folkloric documents serve as instruments forgaining knowledge?” (26) and then tries, with reference to Frazer’s “contagiousmagic,” to “parapsychological” phenomena (cryptesthesia pragmatic andpsychometria), and to various miracles (levitation, incombustibility of thehuman body), to establish what he terms the “reality of these exceptional hap-penings,” concluding, inter alia, that “in certain circumstances the humanbody can escape the laws of gravity and the conditions of organic life” (35). AsRennie remarks, this article certainly points to what he calls Eliade’s “methodo-logical openness,” taking, as expressed by Eliade himself, “all religioustraditions seriously as authentic expressions of lived existential situations” (25).

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But, it points to more than that, and it can for example be read also in thecontext of discussions about the degree to which Eliade and his work is influ-enced by the “traditionalists,” esoterics, or occultists (cf. the articles mentionedbelow in The International Eliade).

The next section on “The Elements of Eliade’s Understanding” has severalsubsections. In first one, on “The Sacred,” Eliade is represented by excerptsfrom Patterns in Comparative Religion, 1959 (1949), and from “The Sacred inthe Secular World” (published in 1973 but based on a paper given in 1968).Following Eliade come texts by William Paden on Eliade and ÉmileDurkheim’s notion of the “sacred,” and by Rennie, on “The Ontology of theSacred,” discussions on the kind of status Eliade actually afforded to “thesacred.” Rennie’s article is, like some of his other contributions to this volume,taken from his important 1996 Reconstructing Eliade: Making Sense of Religion.

“Hierophany,” another key critical term in Eliade, is represented only bythe article by Eliade and Lawrence Sullivan in the first edition of theMacMillan Encyclopedia of Religion (1987).

As for the next notion and subsection “The Dialectics of the Sacred andthe Profane,” Douglas Allen’s interpretation of Eliade’s hermeneutics andphenomenology (from Structure and Creativity in Religion: Hermeneutics inMircea Eliade’s Phenemenology and New Directions, 1978) is the one chosento, more explicitly, elucidate this.

The subsection “Homo Religiosus” opens with a straightforward, informa-tive, and highly useful overview by Gregory Alles (also from the MacMillanEncyclopedia of Religion) of the expression “Homo Religiosus,” in Eliade andin other relevant writers. Following this “outsider” overview, Rennie serves upa text by Eliade, characteristic not just in regard to the themes but also to itsstyle. A good example of why Eliade has fascinated and charmed quite a fewreaders, outside as well as within the academia. First published in 1985,“Homo Faber and Homo Religiosus,” also reminds the reader of the earlyEliade in the abovementioned article from 1937. An excerpt from the work ofJohn A. Saliba (“Homo Religiosus in the works of Mircea Eliade,” 1976) endsthis subsection.

Moving on to “Symbols,” the first excerpt (“What the Symbols ‘Reveal’”) isfrom the well-known 1965 chapter in The Two and the One called“Observations on Religious Symbolism,” a reworking of the 1959 article“Methodological Remarks on the Study of Religious Symbolism.” The second,“Notes on the Symbolism of the Arrow” (from 1968) is probably less well-known and interesting to read for its discussion on new discoveries and tech-nologies opening up for new symbolic representations and religious ideas.Robert D. Baird’s critical assessment (1970) of “Normative Elements inEliade’s Phenomenological Understanding of Symbolism,” with Baird claiming(and he is not the only one) that “the phenomenological understanding of reli-gion, as exhibited in the work of Eliade, will appear useful to all those whoshare his ontological stance” follows (157).

The theme of “Coincidentia Oppositorum” is dealt with via excerpts fromPatterns and The Quest (1969), and an analysis (1992) by John Valk.

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“Myths,” also a fairly central (to say the least) subject and critical categoryin most of Eliade’s work, is dealt with first by an excerpt from a review articleby Eliade on Martin P. Nilsson and M. Gabriel Germain (and Pettazoni) inDiogenes 1955—a refreshing choice, showing fragments of Eliade’s metho-dology as he relates to other scholars’ work. Then follows, from Myth andReality (1963), Eliade’s ideas about “Survivals and Camouflages of Myths,” and,from Myths, Dreams and Mysteries (1960), “The Myths of the Modern World.”

“Illud Tempus,” another key Eliadean notion, is illustrated by an excerptfrom The Sacred and the Profane, and by Rennie’s “Illud Tempus - Time byAny Other Name,” discussing Eliade’s views and evaluations of so-calledarchaic vs. modern conceptions of time and history.

“Part III: Eliade’s Methodology” first has a section called “Eliade,” becausewe here find some of Eliade’s own more explicit remarks on what he thinkscharacterizes the “exemplary” scholar/historian of religion: the generalist capa-bility to skillfully use, integrate, synthesize, and interpret results and data pro-duced by specialist historians cum philologists, ethnographers, sociologists, orpsychologists of religion. Having, on a global scale, collected and compared,related and distinguished, and made up an inventory of all the variants so thatdifferences in meaning stand out in full relief, the final task is to deal with(what Eliade considers) timeless constants of religious experience, to decipherthe transhistorical content a religious datum reveals through history, forexample, what a motive like “ascent to heaven” reveals about the “boundary-line situations of mankind,” or, as Eliade calls it elsewhere, the “la grande situ-ation humaine.” To exemplify this stance, Rennie provides another excerptfrom the article on symbolism (cf. above) in The Two and the One, an excerptfrom the review article mentioned above (on R. Pettazoni as the exemplary his-torian of religion), and finally Eliade’s foreword to Shamanism (1964).

The next subsection is scholarly “Critiques of Eliade.” First excerpts fromAllen’s Structure and Creativity in Religion: Hermeneutics in Mircea Eliade’sPhenemenology and New Directions (1978), with Allen trying to give a “sys-tematic treatment of… Eliade’s phenomenological approach,” inter alia stres-sing Eliade’s claims and efforts to decipher the above mentioned postulatedtranshistorical and specifically religious meaning of the various religiousphenomena by way of integration in “coherent systems of symbolic associ-ations.” Allen’s rather positive evaluation of Eliade’s methodology and historyof religions, stands in sharp contrast to the next article, namely EdmundLeach’s absolutely negative verdict in his (in)famous review (1966) of The Twoand The One (and more of Eliade’s work)—a review with the telling title:“Sermons from a Man on a Ladder.” In the following article, RichardGombrich (one of the specialists the generalist must rely on, also according toEliade) discusses several problems (or failings) in Eliade’s Yoga: Immortalityand Freedom (English trans. 1958; French editions in 1936 and 1954), thusquestioning the validity of several of Eliade’s conclusions in this seminal work,and therefore also, by implication, other key notions indebted to Eliade’sinterpretations of the Indian material. After Gombrich comes an article (from

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1989) by R. J. Zwi Werblowsky who, in spite of his profound friendship withEliade, critically questions Eliade’s ideas about history, cyclical renewal,“archaic” mentality—at the same time as he insists on the value of Eliade’stotal oeuvre and “the wealth of perspectives which it opens” (301). In “MirceaEliade: Some Theoretical Problems” (1973), Ivan Strenski, one of the earliestcritics of Eliade, advices outsiders to the scientific study of religions not to relytoo heavily on Eliade when philosophizing about religion, arguing that“Eliade’s general methodological views on the study of religion and mythleaves much to be desired, vitiated as they are by loose thinking and an anti-scientific approach” (304).

“Part IV: Problems and Themes in Eliade’s Thought,” has Eliade tell abouthis ideas about history and historicism (in an excerpt from Cosmos andHistory: The Myth of the Eternal Return (1954)), and (in an excerpt from anarticle in Criterion 6/1 1967) the tension between search for (what Eliade calls)“structures” or “structural meaning” vis á vis “historical events.” In “HowHistorical is the History of Religions,” Robert Segal, modelling his argumentswith reference to Quentin Skinner and referring not least to Patterns, arguesthat the meaning (or “significance”) of religion, as interpreted and explainedby Eliade, goes beyond and against the believers own viewpoint(s): to Eliade,the significance of religion is “independent of any believers” (335). The sectioncloses Guilford Dudley III’s article “Mircea Eliade as the Anti-Historian ofReligions” (1976), in which Dudley, inter alia, argues that Eliadeologists needto concede that Eliade’s method is “not simply deficient as a historical studybut is radically anti-historical,” and that his “program is to uncover the struc-tures of the transconsciousness” (341). Their, as well as Eliade’s, efforts to haveit both ways should be forsaken. Eliade, Dudley concludes, can sail if surren-dering the “pretence that phenomenological description and the raw data ofhistory are compatible” (351).

The next section has the same title as the title of the text chosen, namelyRennie’s “Mircea Eliade and Postmodernism,” an adaption of an article from2000 in which Rennie argues (largely within the framework of a polemicsagainst Carl Olson’s rejections of Rennie’s earlier views) that parts of Eliade’sthinking can be seen as a precursor to postmodernism.

The next theme is “Eliade’s Literature.” In a previously unpublished paper,“On Reading Eliade’s Stories as Myths for Moderns” (presented 1982),Ricketts—not unlike Eliade himself—thinks of Eliade’s “scholarly and literaryactivities [as] of one piece”: both can be seen as aimed at helping modern manto gain access or escape to “other worlds,” and Eliade himself most likely usedhis nonacademic writing and imagination to get into the “other world” tobalance his day-time academic studies of the religious worlds. In “TheDisguises of Miracle: Notes on Mircea Eliade’s fiction,” Matei Calinescu brieflydiscusses Eliade the writer vis á vis Eliade the scholar before giving an overviewof themes, trends, and developments in Eliade’s fiction.

The next subsection is called (slightly misleading, I think) “Eliade’s Religion.”Ansgar Paus (“The Secret Nostalgia of Mircea Eliade for Paradise: Observations



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on the Method of the ‘History of Religions’,” 1989), and Alexander F. C.Webster (“Orthodox Mystical Tradition and the Comparative Study ofReligion: An Experimental Synthesis,” 1986) both try to connect key aspects ofEliade’s methodology and thinking with his knowledge of OrthodoxChristianity. Paus discusses the influence of “aggregates of thought of thereligious or mystical experience of Orthodox Byzantine Christinity in relationto the icons” (396), claims that Eliade practices an “‘Iconosophy’ of thereligions” (399), and ends up calling Eliade a “secularized mystic of ByzantineChristinity” (401). Webster is more focused on the influence of the theology ofthe Orthodox liturgy and liturgical “mysticism and Eliade’s depiction of the‘archaic’ religious person” (407).

The final section is on “Eliade’s Politics.” Rennie devotes a large part(8–11) of his introductory chapter to the discussions about Eliade’s involve-ment in politics in Romania, including his possible anti-Semitism, but here hegives the word solely to Eliade himself by way of two 1937 articles “BlindPilots” and “Meditation on the Burning of Cathedrals.” The first is a furiousattack on Romanian leadership for having lost and betrayed what Eliade thinksought be the principal instinct of the political elite, namely what (in thisEnglish translation, cf. note 1, p. 418, of the Romanian “instinctul statal”) hecalls “nationalistic instinct” (413), an instinct, if alive and not dead, wouldhave motivated the leaders to keep out (or down) Jews and other non-Romanian ethnic groups. The second comes close to a defence of the HitlerianFascist dictatorship as Eliade insists that contrary to the Bolschevik Revolutionin Russia, where hundreds of churches were burnt and thousands of priestskilled, an outspoken anti-Semite like Hitler did not burn down the synagoguein Charlottenburg. So, Fascism may be bad but not as bad as Communism.

A bibliography (listing first Eliade’s nonfiction books, second his nonfic-tion articles, third his autobiographical work, fourth his fiction, and fifthbooks and articles [cited] on Eliade) and an index of names close the volume.

When Rennie in his “General Introduction” says that such a selection oftexts by and on Eliade cannot satisfy every reader nor be totally comprehensive(2), he is not just safeguarding himself. He is also perfectly right. The same istrue for his acknowledgment that some important, yet readily available, textson important themes have been left out, and that some important themescould have deserved more attention. This, however, also means that thisreviewer, neither a total newcomer to Eliade and discussions on Eliade, nor anup-to-date Eliadeologist, has his desiderata, though acknowledging that it isRennie who is the expert if any.

First: in regard to Eliade’s (im- or explicit) methodology, more articles onEliade’s phenomenology and hermeneutics vis á vis other kinds would behelpful, not least to the reader who is not a philosopher or well versed in therelevant terminology. Let me give an example related to the use by Eliade andothers of the (technical) term “intentionality”: in a fairly important text on“The Sacred and the Structure of Human Consciousness,” Eliade speaks aboutthe “religious intentionality of the vegetation” as an intention that is there and

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“is grasped by the human spirit, but not invented or created by the humanmind because the intention is in the agricultural process” (“The Sacred in theSecular World,” 58–67). And, he goes on, “The meaning, then, is given in theintentionality of the structure. The structure of the agricultural is called a ferti-lity religion” (59). What does Eliade really mean? I do not know. In a 1984review of Eliade’s work, I suggested to compare what Eliade here says withGoethe’s “Urpflantze,” adding a remark about Eliade being somewhat too phi-losophical from time to time. At least too philosopical for me. I do not think Iam the only scholar of religion who has problems understanding what Eliademight mean with “intentionality,” in this example and elsewhere, and I do notthink I am the only scholar of religion who is not well versed in philosophy,hermeneutics, and philosophical phenomenology. Consequently, I think thisCritical Reader on Eliade ought have had one or two articles (Allen’s is notsufficient) discussing whether, how, to what a degree, and in what ways (ifany) Eliade’s notions about this (including “intentionality”) can actually besaid to be “philosophical.” If Rennie did not judge any existing text goodenough for this purpose, he might have commissioned one or at least guidedthe interested (or bewildered) reader in the direction of clarification by way ofa commentary or a reference. To judge from what Rennie himself has written,including his recent “Mircea Eliade and the Perception of the Sacred in theProfane: Intention, Reduction, and Cognitive Theory” (Temenos, vol. 43, no. 1,2007, 73–98), he could have written at least one of the relevant articles himself.

Second: In regard to the evaluation and understanding of Eliade’s workand in continuation of allusions in several of the texts, some of Eliade’s pro-grammatic articles, not least “A New Humanism” and “Crisis and Renewal”ought to have been included. To help newcomers understand the total designand purpose, scholarly as well as soteriological, of Eliade’s work and key con-cepts like, e.g., “creative hermeneutics,” articles (or excerpts from them) likethese would have been helpful.

Third: In continuation of this, I think the volume also ought have hadsomething about Eliade’s History of Religious Ideas. An article discussing thispart of his total oeuvre, relating and comparing it to the first (or maybe even“preparatory”) part, namely Eliade’s morphological, phenomenological, orstructural work (primarily Patterns).

Mentioning this and Patterns leads me to say that I miss some biblio-graphical details, for instance the not unimportant information (cf. Eliade inFragments d’un journal II, 1978, 271–72) that Traité d’historie des religionsoriginally was titled “Prolégomenes á l’histoire des religions: morphologie etstructures du sacré,” and I find it problematic that several of Eliade’s workspublished first in French are not listed in the bibliography. Rennie has chosento concentrate on “English-language publications available to the researchscholar,” but as the example of Traité illustrates, then exactly such biblio-graphical details can prove important in stimulating further interest andresearch, for instance, in the relations between the synchronic and diachronicparts of Eliade’s total work.



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Regarding the editorial work done by Rennie, I want to add but one moreremark, concerning his short introductions to each article: I find these necess-ary as well as useful, but I am not sure whether I find it neither useful norright when Rennie, from time to time, uses these introductions to inform thereader about his own evaluation, agreement, or disagreement with the writer inquestion. On the one hand, I recognize that Rennie is a (maybe the) leadingEliadeologist and deeply engaged in the debates, and that no up-to-date com-prehensive picture of positions on Eliade can be without Rennie. On the otherhand, I am not sure that this is the way to include Rennie. Sometimes, it looksmore like interfering than elucidating, and occasionally it may make it hardfor the reader to just forget about Rennie and his opinion when reading thetext in question. Likewise, I find it problematic when Rennie, as it so happensp. 402, note 5, corrects an author by way of adding a commentary to his notes.

Rennie’s “Eliade Reader” is published in the series Critical Categories inthe Study of Religion. This series (according to the statement in the colophon)aims to “present the pivotal articles that best represent the most importanttrends in how scholars have gone about the task of describing, interpreting,and explaining the position of religion in human life.” The work of Eliade cer-tainly abounds with highly influential as well as controversial “critical cat-egories.” Consequently, the series editor, Russell T. McCutcheon who, in hiscontribution to Rennie’s 2001 Eliade anthology (Changing Religious Worlds:The Meaning and End of Mircea Eliade), urged that Eliade be left behind, inmy opinion made an obvious choice when he, after all, solicited this “EliadeReader.” Asking today’s leading specialist on Eliade and Eliadeology—Rennie—to edit it was an equally obvious choice, and the volume at hand no doubtlives up to the aims of the series. Hopefully, however, some readers will usethe “Eliade Reader” as but a stepping stone to the reading of several works ofEliade as well as of his critics in extenso. The risk that they do not is a risk per-taining not only to this Eliade Reader, but to the very idea of such readers ingeneral.

Contrary to the “Eliade Reader,” The International Eliade holds noexcerpts or articles by Eliade himself. Though the title, as well as Rennie’s“Introduction,” allude to the international career and impact of Eliade, includ-ing translations of his works into many European and Asian languages, TheInternational Eliade here primarily denotes nonanglophone scholarship onEliade. An AAR session (1996) on “The Reception of Mircea Eliade in theUnited States” as well as the anthology based on that session, the aforemen-tioned Changing Religious Worlds: The Meaning and End of Mircea Eliade,made Rennie realize the need to give (an English) voice to the nonanglophonescholarship, in order for it to be (more of) a part of the Eliadeology of theanglophone West. Accordingly, Rennie arranged two symposia on Eliade at theXVIIIth Quinquennal World Congress of the IAHR, The InternationalAssociation for the History of Religions, in Durban 2000. The 2007International Eliade is the (late) offspring of some of the papers read there,with a few extra contributions added.

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Following “Acknowledgments” and an “Introduction” (including a synop-sis of its contents) comes chapter I “The Sacralization of Time.” Michel Meslinopens with “The Sacralization of Time in the Thought of Mircea Eliade.”Central to his brief but precise critique is the doubt as to whether “sacredtime” and contact between religious people (real historical instances of HomoReligiosus, so to speak) and what they hold as divine powers can be understoodsolely or primarily in terms of the outstanding festivals of (the postulated)return to/celebration of the primordial sacred time beyond the “la durée.”What, Meslin asks about religion, Homo Religious, religious life, and religiousreinterpretation and innovation in the “meantime,” in the “duration of exist-ence,” in “quotidian time” (17)? And, even if adopting the Eliadean view, then“continuous re-presentation of the origin can only be actualized through a tra-dition that transmits myths, symbols, and rites, and… every tradition is alwaysinterpretation” (18).

After this straightforward critique from a scholar of religion, follows amuch more philosophical piece, “Cosmological Bridges: Suspicion andRecollection in the Realities of Myth” (23–33) by Pablo Wright and CésarCeriani Cernadas. The article seeks to read Eliade in the light of Paul Ricoeur’s“analysis of the hermeneutical field” (23) “delimiting two fundamental per-spectives in the interpretation of symbols: recollection and suspicion” (24), aswell as to look at Eliade in his role as “a thinker of European modernity, a roleshared by Ricoeur” (23). The authors, if I understand them right, furthermorewant to use Eliade to enrich what they refer to as “Western ontological andepistemological assumptions” (32) and to identify “those universal existentialtraits whose power of poesis may turn the brightest and darkest sides of huma-ness dramatically real” (33).

Chapter II, “The Interpretation of History,” much to the relief of thisreviewer, opens with the less speculative, down to earth, balanced, and illustra-tive “Mircea Eliade and the Myth of Adonis” by Ulrich Berner. Berner,warning against debates about Eliade being reduced to controversies “betweenreligious and nonreligious scholars of religion” (37), applies Eliade’s notion (ortheory) of homo religiosus to a specific historical situation and text, namelyLucian’s De Dea Syria. He effectively demonstrates why a reading of the text,not just of one but more passages, reveals more than one type of religiosityand most likely three different attitudes to the rites and myth of Adonis(41–42). Religion, has, as Berner furthermore remarks, also a “terrestial” side,and it is the task of the scholar to analyze that too.

Brigitte Quellet in “In Search of a Methodology: Eliade’s HermeneuticalApproach in the Study of Ancient Egyptian Texts” expresses her understandingof critics and specialists who are suspicious to interpretations by scholars whodo not have the historical–philological expertise (47–69). Yet, she finds Eliade’shermeneutics and analytical categories (e.g., “hierophany,” “the irreduciblesacred,” “illud tempus”) applicaple to Egyptian sources, and that the “charac-teristics of Egyptian thought comfortably agree with those of Eliadeanthought” (61). To demonstrate this and “to serve the role of a brief



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homologization” these categories are “transposed with those that fashioned thereligious though of ancient Egyptian civilization” (52). Unfortunately, Quelletfrom time to time, uses insider (or esoteric) jargon that this reviewer justcannot make sense of. She writes, to give but two examples: “An in-depthinvestigation of Eliadean hermeneutics enables an evaluation of the interme-diation of religious structures in literary structures of discourse in relation towhat is known of factual history” (63). I find it hard to understand whatQuellet actually means by an “intermediation of religious structures in relationto factual history,” and also how such a result can possibly follow from aninvestigation of Eliade’s (or anybody’s) hermeneutics. When Eliade’s so-calledtotal hermeneutics, furthermore, is said to tend to “close the gap between thetext, the hermeneut, and the Egyptian spirit with its concern for the essentialinteractions between its being, writing, and living context” (63), then it seemsto be too good to be true, or to put it differently: it becomes much too spiritualfor my taste. Actually, I think Quellet has been charmed by Eliade’s “creativehermeneutics” and style of writing and let herself be carried far beyond the“terrestial” trivialities also of Egyptian religion. Her way of winding up thearticle, besides, is truly Eliadean: “Isn’t history an enigma, eternally misremem-bered, and isn’t the human being a hermeneut who, from conception has been,is, and will remain in search of meaning?” (65).

Soteriological aspirations can be found also in the next article, “TheSignificance of Mircea Eliade for the study of the New Testament,” by JosephMuthuraj. Muthuraj, an Indian himself, declares himself on the look out for aless occidental New Testament studies approach, and praises Eliade who “drankfrom the wells of Indian religious heritage” (73), Eliade’s (nonorientalist)“encounter with Indian spirituality” (90), Eliade’s mediation “between Westernand Eastern schools of thought” (92), and “Eliade, the champion of new human-ity and a prophet to the West” (93). Muthuraj thinks or hopes that Eliade’s “deepinterest in myths and symbols, and in archaic and Indian (Oriental) religions willhave paramount significance, first of all for opening up the religious dimensionsof NT Christianity” (95). In Eliade, he concludes, “an Indian Christian finds aguru who opens the eyes to the wealth of Indian traditions” (95).

Thus, Muthuraj leads the reader directly to the next chapter III, “TheInterpretation of India and Eliade’s ‘Traditionalism’,” which begins with LiviuBordas’s informative discussion of “The Secret of Dr. Eliade.” Bordas dealswith Eliade’s relations to the traditionalism (or: perrenialism, esotericism,occultism) of, for example, Guénon, Evola, Aurobindo, and Coomeraswami,but his focus is on Eliade’s efforts to transform the happenings during hissojourn to India into initiatory experiences, to make a secret and a myth outof his Indian adventures—paving the way for Eliade, the great scholar with aspecial gift for understanding man’s spiritual quest.

In “Mircea Eliade and ‘Traditional Thought’,” Natale Spineto goes intomore detail with the possible influences and importance of traditional thoughtfor Eliade’s work, vision, and key concepts. Looking at biographical facts aswell as texts, and in continuous dialogue with earlier research on the subject,

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Spineto concludes that the “reading of traditionalists was crucial in the evo-lution of the categories on which Eliade based his idea of the history of reli-gions” (145). “However,” he adds, “the traditionalist notions were reinterpretedand integrated into a different conceptual framework” (145).

Chapter IV, “History and Historicism” has but one contribution: “Eliade,‘History,’ and ‘Historicism’,” in which Philip Vanhaelemeersch elucidatesEliade’s notion(s) of “history” (as well as his “alleged antihistoricism”), by wayof discussing what kind of “historicism” Eliade criticizes and rejects, and—notleast—by way of describing one kind of historicism, the Italian storicismo, andthe criticism raised against Eliade by some of its proponents, primarilyBenedetto Croce.

Chapter V has the title “The History of Religions,” and ( for reasons notexplicated) the editor has placed one, and only one, article here, namely“Gender Perspectives in Eliade’s History of Religions,” by Katrine Ore. Orefirst looks at Jane Ellen Harrison, her feminism, and the gender perspectives ofher work, and she considers that “the feminism Eliade expresses is an inversionof [this] first wave feminism” (170) and that Eliade in his work identifies “themale norm with the human norm in his concept homo religiosus” (175).Eliade “adopted some feminist issues and themes… but he used them to thinkabout maleness” (177).

Chapter VI, “The Dialectic of the Sacred and Creative Hermeneutics” alsoholds but one contribution, namely “Mircea Eliade’s Dialectic of Sacred andProfane and Creative Hermeneutics,” by Chung Chin-Hong. Although Chungadmits that Eliade’s phenomenology and arguments, seen from the point ofview of philosophical phenomenology, “show traces of unclear logic and vagueconcepts” (201), then he also thinks that Eliade “distinguishes himself as anindependent and original phenomenologist” (204). Eliade’s “creative herme-neutics” constitutes, Chung claims, sort of a “surplus of phenomenology”(205), and he thinks that it is also “the founding and ultimate objective of allthe traditional concerns of religious studies” (205).

Once again, this reviewer admit having problems understanding everythingin this philosophical paper on Eliade’s phenomenological hermeneutics. Onceagain with the many instances of “intentionality,” but also with specific sen-tences such as: “Eliade expresses the consciousness of the intentional mode ofthe hierophany as a symbolic system” (194). I have no clue as to what this maymean—not to say what it may possibly refer to beyond the phenomenologicaljargon and discourse. As for its reference to Eliade, my guess is that moreexamples from Eliade’s actual interpretations of hierophanies might have beenuseful to a less philosophically trained reader.

In Chapter VII, “Mysticism and the Orthodox Tradition,” Wilhelm Dancăhas written a piece on the Romanian roots and genesis of “mysticism” inEliade, with special attention to the philosophy (of religion) and ideas of NaeIonescu. This is in many ways an informative article, nicely adding to the twodealing with Eliade and traditionalism. When, at the end of the day, theauthor-priest concludes that the “stress laid [by Eliade] on the anthropological



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dimension of mystical experience caused [him] to overlook certain termino-logical ambiguities: he sometimes mixes up mysticism with religion, magicwith alchemy and religion, and the sacred with the divine,” then the text is,however, informative and revealing in quite another way (222–23).

Chapter VIII, “Eliade’s Fiction,” first has “Camouflage and Epiphany: TheDiscovery of the Sacred in Mircea Eliade and Oe Kenzaburo,” by OkuyamaMichiaki. Having briefly mentioned passages in Eliade, on the sacred being“revealed as well as disguised in the profane,” on the possible historical devel-opment in the West towards a “complete camouflage of the ‘sacred,’ more pre-cisely, its identification with the ‘profane’” (230), and on “the dialectic of thecamouflaging of the sacred in the profane” (234), the author turns to the lit-erary work of Japanese Nobel Prize winner, Ōe Kenzaburo. Ōe has read Eliadeand also applied a notion of “epiphany” in his literature that may be comparedto Eliade’s aforementioned notions of “hierophany.” The author thinks thatsuch a comparison helps solve the challenges that follow from Eliade’s notionthat the sacred is not only manifested but also disguised “for everyone elseoutside that particular religious community,” or as the author says, for “thosewho cannot recognize the manifestations of the sacred” (235).

The volume is closed by a play by Eliade, “Men and Stones,” translated byRicketts. The play displays, inter alia, the motif of the “quest,” and may be seen asa dealing with questions pertaining to making sense of past and foreign cultures.

A bibliography lists works cited: works of Eliade in English first, then hisworks in other languages, and then other works cited. A list of contributors,and an index of names closes the volume.

The volume is organized in accordance with the various themes of thearticles, yet, as the editor himself admits, many of the chapters touch on morethan a single theme, and the volume no doubt reveals its character of being acollection of edited papers by a mixed company of writers. However, as can beseen from the remarks to some of the contributions as well as from the reviewof the “Eliade Reader,” this reviewer is in agreement with Rennie that thisvolume too indicates that there is more to learn about Eliade. And, maybe moreimportantly, there is still more to learn about the study of religion, and mostlikely also about religion, by way of studying Eliade—and by way of studyingthose who study Eliade. Eliade is still useful. The International Eliade shows this.It also shows that Eliade, now as before, can be used for and serve many pur-poses, some less “purely” academic than others. In this way too, studying Eliadeand certain kinds of Eliadeologists around the world, anglophone or not, issometimes equal to studying the religion(s) and religious practices and aspira-tions of some scholars. Or, to change the perspective and wording slightly, TheInternational Eliade also attests to the not infrequent im- and explicit mixture ofacademic and extra-academic aspirations, as well as to the academic cum reli-gious practices and aspirations of many a(n Eliade) scholar.

doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfp003 Tim JensenAdvance Access publication February 18, 2009 University of Southern Denmark

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