Open AccessBiographical Metamorphoses in the History of Religion - Moshe Idel and Three Aspects of Mircea Eliade
Author(s) -
Eduard Iricinschi
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
entangled religions
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.101
H-Index - 1
ISSN - 2363-6696
DOI - 10.46586/er.v2.2015.a-n
Subject(s) - kabbalah , magic (telescope) , mythology , philosophy , theosophy , androgyny , judaism , religious studies , literature , interpretation (philosophy) , mysticism , psychoanalysis , theology , art , masculinity , psychology , medicine , physics , alternative medicine , pathology , quantum mechanics , linguistics
This paper includes an extended review of Moshe Idel’s Mircea Eliade: From Magic to Myth (New York: Peter Lang, 2014) through a triple analysis of Eliade’s early literary, epistolary, and academic texts. The paper examines Idel’s analysis of some important themes in Eliade’s research, such as his shift from understanding religion as magic to its interpretation as myth; the conception of the camouflage of sacred; the notions of androgyny and restoration; and also young Eliade’s theories of death.The paper also discusses Idel’s evaluation of Eliade’s programatic misunderstanding of Judaism and Kabbalah, and also of Eliade’s moral and professional abdication regarding the political and religious aspect of the Iron Guard, a Romanian nationalist extremist and anti-Semitic group he was affiliated with in 1930s.