M Y T H AND R E L I G I O N

IN MiRCEA ELIADE
 Theorists of Myth
Robert A. Segal, Series Editor

Jung and the Jungians on Myth

An Introduction
by Steven F. Walker

Rene Girard and Myth

An Introduction
by Richard J. Golsan

Political Myth
A Theoretical Introduction
by Christopher G. Flood

The Poetics of Myth

by Eleazar M. Meletinsky
translated by Guy Lanoue and Alexandre Dadetsky

Northrop Frye on Myth

An Introduction
By Ford Russell

Cassirer and Langer on Myth

An Introduction
by William Schultz

The Myth and Ritual School:

J. G. Frazier and the Cambridge Ritualists
by Robert Ackerman
M Y T H AND RELIGION
IN M i R C E A ELIADE

DOUGLAS ALLEN

ROUTLEDGE
N E W Y O R K AND L O N D O N
Published in 2002 by
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Contents

Series Editor's Foreword ix

Preface xi
1 Eliade's Antireductionism 3
The Need for a New Procedure 4
The Irreducibility of the Sacred 8
Romanian Roots 9
Antireductionist Claims 12
No Purely Religious Phenomena 18
2 Reductionistic Critics and Eliade 27
All Approaches Are Reductionist 27
Nonreductionism Begs the Question 33
Technical Analysis of Reductionism and Eliade's Theory 43
Reduction as Simplifying the Complexity 45
Theory and Religious Phenomena or Data 46
Scientific Reductionism and Eliade's Different
Interests 53
3 The Dialectic of the Sacred 65
The Sacred and Transcendence 66
The Dialectic of the Sacred 74
The Sacred-Profane Dichotomy and Hierophanic
Object 74
The Paradoxical Relationship 78
The Dialectical Movement 80
Crisis, Evaluation, and Choice 83
vi Contents

Concealment and Camouflage 87

Religion as an "Opening" 92
4 Nature, Cosmos, and Religious Bias 101
Nature and Cosmos 101
Particular Religious Bias? 106
Archaic Religion and India 107
Cosmic Christianity 112
EUade' s Personal Faith and His Scholarship 118
5 Symbolic Language and Structure 129
Symbolism: The Language of Myth and Religion 130
Symbolism and Structuralism 139
6 Characteristics and Functions of Symbolism 149
Characteristics and Functions of Symbolism 149
The "Logic of Symbols" 151
The Multi valence 153
The Function of Unification 155
The Expression of Paradoxical and Contradictory
Aspects of Reality 157
The "Existential Value" 159
Archetypes 162
Symbolism of the "Center" 168
7 The Structure of Myth 179
The Definition of Myth 182
The Sacred and the Symbolic 185
The General Structure and Function of Myth 188
The Cosmogonic Myth 194
Myths of Origins 200
Eschatological Myths 203
Mythic Renewal 205
8 Eliade's Antihistorical Attitudes 211
Eliade's Personal Attitudes Toward Time and History 212
Personal Autobiographical Reflections 215
Personal Scholarly Interpretations 218
Other Scholars: Eliade Is Antihistorical 225
Contents vii

9 The Primacy of Nonhistorical Structures 235

Antihistorical Atemporal Essence of Myth and Religion 236
Nonhistorical Structures 242
Structures and Meanings Versus Conditionings and
Explanations 248
Normative Antihistorical Judgments 254
The Interaction of the Historical and Nonhistorical 256
10 Camouflage of Sacred in Modern Profane 267
Camouflage of Sacred in Modern Profane 272
The Modern Unconscious 278
Modern Western Provincialism 283
11 Cultural and Spiritual Renewal 291
The Renewal of Modem Human Beings 291
Creative Hermeneutics 292
Rediscovering Symbolic and Mythic Structures 295
Encounter, Confrontation, and Dialogue 301
The Political and the Spiritual 308
The Renewal of Philosophy 314
Bibliography 333
Index 353
Series Editor's Foreword

Theories of myth are always theories of something larger such as

literature, society, and the mind. To theorize about myth is to apply to
the case of myth this larger theory. Theories of myth hail from an array
of disciplines throughout the humanities and the social sciences. Of the
theories that come from the field of religious studies, by far the most
influential has been that of Mircea Eliade. Indeed, his is the only
contemporary theory from religious studies that has had much influence
outside of religious studies.
Douglas Allen is widely admired as the foremost authority on
Eliade generally, and in his present book he brings to bear his mastery
of Eliade's corpus and of the considerable scholarship on Eliade.
Allen's position is atypical and almost unique among writers on Eliade:
he is neither a devotee nor an antagonist but instead an expositor. He
seeks neither to endorse nor to condemn Eliade's theory but, more
fundamentally, to reconstruct it. He strives to work out the fundamental
tenets that underlie Eliade's theory of myth, and by no coincidence
those tenets also underlie Eliade's theory of religion. Allen is hardly
unique in linking Eliade's theory of myth to Eliade's theory of religion,
but he is unique in the rigor with which he unravels the philosophical
roots of that theory of myth. Allen rallies to the defense of Eliade not
when Eliade's philosophy is challenged but when Eliade's theory is
dismissed as less than a well-conceived philosophy, when it is
dismissed as the mere expression of Eliade's personal religiosity. Again
and again, Allen spurns not those who disagree with Eliade but those
who disagree without recognizing what Eliade is "getting at," to use
X Series Editor's Foreword

one of Allen's pet phrases. Allen himself by no means concurs in all of

his subject's views.
Allen's previous books on Eliade present some of the same basic
points of Eliade's philosophy as his present book, but only in Myth and
Religion in Mircea Eliade does he hone in on the subject of myth. As
much as Allen connects Eliade's theory of myth to Eliade's larger
theory of religion, he also identifies the distinctively mythic element in
religion for Eliade. As Allen says continually, all myth for Eliade is
religious, but not all religion is mythic.
Allen shows that for Eliade myth is an indispensable element in
achieving the kind of life that all humans crave. Eliade is therefore
especially zealous to detect the scent of myth even among those who
profess to be indifferent, if not hostile, to it. The presence of myth
everywhere is taken as confirmation of its indispensability. While not
all theorists of myth consider it a pre-modem, outdated phenomenon,
Eliade is one of the most zealous to deem it a panhuman one. Among
major theorists, only Joseph Campbell and perhaps C. G. Jung are as
committed to the eternality of myth as he. At the same time the tie for
Eliade between myth and religion remains: in claiming that even
scrupulously rational, scientific modems still cling to myths, Eliade is
claiming that those same moderns also still cling to religion—a link
rejected by both Campbell and Jung. Ever sensitive to the nuances of
Eliade's views, Allen maintains that Eliade is not thereby effacing the
difference between "primitives" and modems, as he is often charged
with doing. But once again, Allen's concem is less to defend Eliade's
position than to present it accurately. On this point, as on so many other
points, Allen's book provides an unsurpassed overview of Eliade as
theorist of at once myth and much else.

Robert A. Segal
Preface

Mircea Eliade, who was bom in Bucharest in 1906 and died in

Chicago in 1986, was often described by scholars and in the popular
press as the world's most influential historian of religion and the
world's foremost interpreter of symbol and myth. For example, an
article in Time magazine identified Eliade as "probably the world's
foremost living interpreter of spiritual myths and symbolism," and
an article in People Weekly claimed that "Eliade is the world's fore-
most living historian of religions and myths."^ Not unusual was the
claim by former Eliade student and leading historian of religions
Lawrence Sullivan that "Eliade has been the single most important
individual in introducing the world to what religion means."^ An
incredibly prolific writer, Eliade had what he described as a "dual
vocation" as a scholar of religion and as a writer of literary works.^
Romanian was his literary language. His major scholarly works—
from Traite d'histoire des religions (English translation: Patterns of
Comparative Religion) and Le mythe de I'etemel retour (The Myth of
the Eternal Return) in 1949 through the third volume of Histoire des
croyances et des idees religeuses (A History of Religious Ideas) in
1983—were written in French. He served as editor-in-chief of the
sixteen-volume The Encyclopedia of Religion, published in 1987.
As influential as Eliade was as a scholar of myth and religion, he
has remained extremely controversial. Indeed, many scholars, espe-
cially those in the social sciences, have completely ignored or vigor-
ously attacked Eliade's scholarship on myth and religion as method-
ologically uncritical, subjective, and unscientific. Critics charge that
Eliade is guilty of uncritical universal generalizations; reads all
xii Preface

sorts of "profound" mythic and religious meaning into his data; ignores
rigorous scholarly procedures of verification; and interjects all sorts of
unjustified, personal, metaphysical, and ontological assumptions and
judgments into his scholarship.
Both Eliade's style and the contents of his scholarly studies add to
the controversial nature of his scholarship. He never seems as bothered
as critics think any serious scholar should be by his eclectic approach,
by contradictions and inconsistencies in his writings, or by his mixing
of particular scholarly studies with sweeping controversial personal
assertions and highly normative judgments. Unlike the self-imposed
limited approaches of specialists studying myth and religion, he views
his subject matter as the entire spiritual history of humankind. He often
does many different things simultaneously, resists simple classification
of his scholarship, and describes himself as "an author without a
model."^
Adding to the controversial nature of his scholarship on myth and
religion is the fact that Eliade, while not hesitating to criticize the
approaches of other scholars, never seems to feel the need to defend his
work against the attacks of critics. In the Foreword to my Structure and
Creativity in Religion, Eliade wrote the following: "For myself, I plan
someday to dedicate an entire work to discussing the objections put
forth by some of my critics, those who are responsible and acting in all
good faith (for the others do not deserve the bother of a reply.)"^ But
during the last year of his life, after noting that "methodological"
criticisms brought against his conception of the history of religions had
increased, Eliade wrote the following: "The fault is, in part, mine; I've
never replied to such criticisms, although I ought to have done so. I told
myself that someday, 'when I'm free from works in progress,' I'll write
a short theoretical monograph and explain the 'confusions and errors'
for which I am reproached. I'm afraid I'll never have time to write it."^
My original intention was to deal with some of this confusion and
controversy about Eliade's scholarship by writing the first book
focusing entirely on Eliade's theory of myth. I was motivated to
undertake this project by at least three major considerations. First, it is
remarkable that no one has written a book on Eliade's approach to
myth, especially since there has been such an upsurge in general inter-
Preface xiii

est in myth and Eliade has often been regarded as the world's leading
interpreter of myth.
Second, in terms of my own discipline of philosophy, it is equally
remarkable that few philosophers have written books on myth since
Ernst Cassirer's works published from 1925 through 1946. Anthologies
on myth include writings by scholars in anthropology, sociology,
literature, history, religious studies, and other disciplines but almost
never include anything by a philosopher. Undeniably, traditional
philosophy tended to classify and dismiss myth as prephilosophical and
unphilosophical, but much of recent philosophy—as seen in the
influential works of Richard Rorty and many scholars identified with
postmodernism—has attempted to undermine traditional approaches to
truth, objectivity, and rationality. Distinctions between philosophy and
literature, for example, have become blurred, and there has been great
interest in narrative discourse. And yet none of the most influential
recent works on myth have been written by philosophers.
Third, one might assume incorrectly from my past scholarship on
Eliade that I must have already focused on his theory of myth.
However, because of the need to set some limits, I intentionally ignored
or deemphasized my consideration of Eliade's theory of myth. In
several writings, I explicitly noted this glaring omission. Therefore, the
present work is an attempt to fill that obvious gap and provide a more
comprehensive analysis and evaluation of Eliade's scholarship.^
It soon became clear that I could not restrict my focus to "myth,"
and this book was gradually expanded to include "myth and religion."
Since for Eliade all myth is religious myth and myth has a religious
structure and fulfills a religious function, it is impossible to
comprehend his theory of myth without understanding his complex
theory of religion. Therefore, I have included two chapters on the
sacred, the dialectic of the sacred and the profane, cosmic religion, and
other aspects of Eliade's general theory of religion.
In addition, it became clear that I had to expand the book's focus to
emphasize Eliade's theory of symbolism. Since for Eliade myths are
symbolic narratives and mythic language is necessarily symbolic, it is
impossible to comprehend Eliade's theory of myth without understand-
ing his theory of symbolism. One cannot identify and interpret the
meaning of mythic structures without grasping Eliade's underlying
xiv Preface

hermeneutical framework consisting of interconnecting symbolic

structures.
Finally, it became clear I had to expand my focus to include detailed
analysis of Eliade's antireductionist approach. Central to Eliade's
theory of myth are general assumptions and judgments about the
irreducibility of the sacred, as well as specific claims about the
irreducibility of the mythic. To comprehend Eliade's theory of myth, it
therefore became necessary to consider the heated debates over
reductionism, in terms of both Eliade's antireductionist claims and the
attacks by reductionistic critics.
In my previous studies of Eliade—especially in Structure and
Creativity in Religion and Mircea Eliade et le phenomene religieux—
perhaps my major original contribution has been to submit that there is
an impressive, underlying, implicit system at the foundation of Eliade's
history and phenomenology of religion. Eliade is not simply a brilliant,
unsystematic, intuitive genius, as extolled by some supporters, or a
methodologically uncritical, unsystematic, hopelessly unscientific
charlatan, as attacked by some critics. I formulated Eliade's
foundational system primarily in terms of two key interacting concepts:
the dialectic of the sacred and the profane, the universal structure in
terms of which Eliade distinguishes religious phenomena, and religious
symbolism, the coherent structural systems of religious symbols in
terms of which Eliade interprets the meaning of religious phenomena. I
maintain that it is the essential universal systems of symbolic
structures, when integrated with the essential universal structure of the
dialectic of the sacred, that primarily constitute Eliade's hermeneutical
framework and serve as the foundation for his phenomenological
approach.
Several other scholars have emphasized this key of an underlying
system as essential to Eliade's approach.* Most significant, in this
regard, is Bryan Rennie's recent book. Reconstructing Eliade. Rennie
correctly maintains that most scholars have not recognized that there is
a complex, coherent, implicit theoretical system at the foundation of
Eliade's approach to religion. Eliade tends to resist clear definition, and
he never attempts an overall systematization of his thought. But Rennie
is correct in contending that "Eliade's thought is systematic, its internal
elements referring to, supported by, and reciprocally supporting its
Preface xv

other elements." Without attempting to reconstruct Eliade's implicit

system, often functioning on the level of the prereflective, one cannot
comprehend his approach to myth and religion.'
My emphasis on the specific systematic nature of Eliade's theory of
myth and religion not only differs from most interpreters of Eliade's
writings but also may produce some confusion on the part of many
readers of this book. Following variations of the procedures outlined by
Rene Descartes in his Discourse on Method, most scholars see the
necessity of starting with simple component elements, as seen in
providing clear definitions of basic terms, and then developing one's
thesis (argument, analysis, presentation) through some structure of
rational linear progression. When social scientists and other readers
look for clear definitions and linear progressive development in
Eliade's writings, they are usually frustrated.
For Eliade, ambiguities, enigmas, and contradictions are not
necessarily problems to be removed through rational systematic
analysis. Just the opposite: Eliade often embraces and sustains ambigui-
ties, enigmas, and contradictions as essential to mythic and spiritual
life. Many of Eliade's key terms are highly idiosyncratic and by their
very nature resist clear definition and analysis. The sacred simultane-
ously reveals and conceals itself. Eliade often attacks other scholars
who insist on clear definitions and linear development as employing
rationalistic, scientific, positivistic, historicistic, naturalistic, or other
reductionistic approaches that destroy the specific intentionality and
nature of the mythic and religious world.
Eliade's systematic approach, as reflected in some of my mode of
presentation, tends to be holistic, organic, and dialectical. The whole is
more than the sum of its parts. No element can be understood in
isolation but only in terms of its dynamic, mutually interacting relations
with other key elements. New structures and meanings emerge through
dynamic relations that cannot be found in any separate component part.
The image of weaving, while limited, gets better at Eliade's approach
than some analytic model of clear, linear progression. Therefore, even
if it initially causes some confusion, I have resisted superimposing
some non-Eliadean clear definition and analysis on key terms and
positions. As new interrelated terms and analyses are introduced in
xvi Preface

subsequent chapters, earlier concepts and positions will gain greater

clarity and depth of understanding.
The eleven chapters on myth and religion in Eliade's thought have
been organized in terms of six general topics: principle of antireduc-
tionism; theory of religion; theory of symbolism; nature of myth; myth,
religion, and history (or time and history); and myth, religion, and the
contemporary world. The first two chapters focus on the key
methodological issue of reductionism. Chapter 1 presents Eliade's
antireductionist approach to myth and religion. Chapter 2 formulates a
variety of reductionistic attacks on Eliade's scholarship as well as some
suggestions as to why Eliade and his critics are often speaking at cross-
purposes. The next two chapters focus on Eliade's general theory of
religion. Chapter 3 presents Eliade's foundational concept of the sacred
and his formulation of the dialectic of the sacred as the essential
universal structure of sacralization. Chapter 4 develops this analysis of
Eliade's approach to religion by presenting his emphasis on nature,
cosmos, and cosmic religion and by considering whether his theory of
religion reflects an archaic, Indian, or some other religious bias.
Chapters 5 and 6 focus on Eliade's general theory of symbolism: first
presenting his view of symbolism as the language of myth and religion
and as disclosing the centrality of symbolic structures and then formu-
lating the essential characteristics and functions of symbolism and
clarifying the confusing concept of "archetypes."
Although the first six chapters are all essential to comprehending
Eliade's theory of myth, it is only with chapter 7 that I formulate
EUade's analyses of the specific nature, structure, and function of myth,
along with his claims about the primacy of the cosmogonic myth and
myths of origins. The following two chapters consider Eliade's
controversial interpretations of history (and time) in his theory of myth
and religion. Chapter 8 examines Eliade's antihistorical attitudes, both
in terms of his personal autobiographical reflections and his personal
scholarly interpretations, as well as claims by other scholars that his
scholarship tends to be antihistorical. Chapter 9 then examines in detail
Eliade's scholarly interpretations of time and history. Eliade is seen to
focus on the primacy of nonhistorical structures and the antihistorical
atemporal essence of myth and religion, and he makes strong anti-
Preface xvii

historical judgments. But he also emphasizes the complex dialectical

interaction between the historical and the nonhistorical.
Finally, we consider the relation of Eliade's theory of myth and
religion to his analysis of the major existential crises and issues
confronting modem human beings and the contemporary world. In our
previous chapters, Eliade has usually directed his attention to
phenomena that he considers traditionally and explicitly mythic and
religious. He now reflects on phenomena of the modem world in which
the mythic and religious is often explicitly rejected. Chapter 10 focuses
on Eliade's frequent claim that the sacred rather than being completely
absent is frequently camouflaged, and hence unrecognizable, in the
modem profane. By failing to recognize the concealed sacred, Eliade
charges that modem human beings suffer from a self-defeating and
dangerous Westem provincialism. Chapter 11 presents Eliade's more
positive proposals for overcoming modem anxiety, meaninglessness,
and provincialism through a radical cultural and spiritual renewal. Such
renewal can be achieved through a creative hermeneutics involving the
rediscovering of our own symbolic and mythic structures and the
authentic encounter with the mythic and reUgious world of "the other."
My approach to Eliade's works on myth and religion tends to be
both sympathetic and at the same time critical. In evaluating my past
writings, some of Eliade's strongest critics have labeled me an Eliade
supporter, while strong Eliade supporters have sometimes classiiied me
as a critic, even if more sympathetic than most other critics. As can be
seen throughout this book, I am impressed by Eliade's great contribu-
tions toward understanding much of traditional myth and religion, as
well as toward uncovering mythic and religious structures still shaping
much of contemporary secular life. At the same time, I recognize that
Eliade's method and interpretations of myth and religion must often be
amended, reformulated, and supplemented if we are to deal with the
many relevant criticisms of his scholarship.
In formulating several of the chapters in this book, I have utilized
material from some of my previous publications. Especially in my
presentation of Eliade dialectic of the sacred and his theory of
symbolism, I have included, usually in revised and expanded form,
material from my Structure and Creativity in Religion and Mircea
Eliade et le phenomene religieux. In formulating Eliade's approach to
xviii Preface

history, I have utilized material that appeared in my "Eliade and

History."'" In summarizing the views of several of Eliade's strongest
supporters and in presenting some of the recent controversy over the
political and the spiritual in Eliade's personal life and writings, I
have used material from my "Recent Defenders of Eliade.""
I would especially like to thank Robert Segal, the editor of
Routledge's series on "Theorists of Myth," for his invaluable sug-
gestions and support. Over the years, I have benefited greatly from
the responses of Professor Segal and other scholars to my works and
from their very different interpretations and evaluations of Eliade's
history of religions. I am also appreciative of the patience and sup-
port shown to me by Phyllis Korper of Taylor & Francis Publishing.
Chuck Bartelt of Taylor & Francis was of great assistance in working
with me to overcome problems involved in preparing my first cam-
era-ready book. I also appreciate the support of those at the Institute
for Ecumenical and Cultural Research in CoUegeville, Minnesota,
where I began writing this book, and of the Office of Vice Provost at
the University of Maine, which provided financial assistance for
costs involved in the preparation of this book. Finally, as with my
previous books I deeply appreciate the support, care, humor, invalu-
able feedback, and love of Ilze Petersons, who has had to live with
the creative stress and abnormalities involved in scholarly projects.

NOTES
1. See "Scientist of Symbols," Time 87 (11 February 1966): 68; and
Giovanna Breu, "Teacher: Shamans? Hippies? They're All Creative to the
World's Leading Historian of Religions," People Weekly 9 (27 March 1978):
49.
2. Lawrence Sullivan is quoted by Delia O'Hara in the introduction to her
interview with Mircea Eliade. See "Mircea Eliade" (interview of Eliade by Delia
O'Hara), Chicago 35, no. 6 (1986): 147. In her introduction, O'Hara also iden-
tifies Eliade as "the world's foremost historian of religions."
3. For works by and about Eliade through 1978, see Douglas Allen and
Dennis Doeing, Mircea Eliade: An Annotated Bibliography (New York:
Garland, 1980).
4. See Mircea Eliade, Journal IV, 1979-1985, trans. Mac Linscott Ricketts
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 41.
Preface xix

5. Mircea Eliade, "Foreword" to my Structure and Creativity in Religion:

Hermeneutics in Mircea Eliade's Phenomenology and New Directions (The
Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1978), p. vii.
6. Journal IV, 1979-1985, p. 143.
7. While providing a more comprehensive analysis by examining Eliade's
theory of myth, I necessarily exclude from this book many important topics
central to my previous writings on Eliade. For example, in Structure and
Creativity in Religion, Mircea Eliade et le phenomene religieux (Paris: Payot,
1982), and other works, I attempt to provide detailed analysis of Eliade's
phenomenological method: his hermeneutical framework and procedures for
interpreting meaning, his specific sense of phenomenological induction, his
attempts at overcoming traditional descriptive versus normative dichotomies,
and the distinguishing of different levels of meaning in his phenomenological
approach. In this book, I occasionally add a note referring to such analysis in
earlier works, but I do not address these central concerns.
8. For example, loan Couliano entitles his introduction to Mircea Eliade
and loan P. Couliano, The Eliade Guide to World Religions (San Francisco:
HarperCollins Publishers, 1991) "Religion as a System" and attributes to Eliade
the view that "religion is an autonomous system" (p. 1).
9. See Bryan S. Rennie, Reconstructing Eliade: Making Sense of Religion
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), pp. 1-6. I did not read
Rennie's important book until after I had completed all eleven chapters. I have
added relevant analysis from Rennie to different sections of my book, but a
number of his significant claims—such as his contention that Eliade has a
significant idiosyncratic sense of "history"—would have received greater
consideration if Rennie's book had been published earlier.
10. Douglas Allen, "Eliade and History," Journal of Religion 68 (1988):
545-65.
11. Douglas Allen, "Recent Defenders of Eliade: A Critical Evaluation,"
«e%oM 24 (1994): 333-51.
M Y T H AND R E L I G I O N
IN M i R C E A E L I A D E
CHAPTER 1

Eliade's Antireductionism

One cannot read Mircea Eliade's writings on myth, in particular, and

religion, in general, without soon encountering his concern, often
bordering on an obsession, with the evils of modem forms of "reduc-
tionism." It is such reductionism, as evidenced in modem scholarly
approaches and in much of contemporary life, that prevents us from
appreciating, or even recognizing, the nature, function, significance,
and meaning of myth and religion. Eliade sees much of his task, as
defined by the proper and urgently needed "creative hermeneutics"
of the history of religions, as reclaiming the mythic and renewing
modem scholarship and contemporary life by an "antireductionist"
orientation toward the "irreducibility of the sacred," including the
irreducibly sacred world of myth.
Already introduced is Eliade's frequent use of the term "antire-
ductionism." Defenders of the methodological assumption of the
irreducibility of the religious, as well as critics such as Robert Segal,
often use the term "nonreductionism" and present the basic distinc-
tion as reductionism versus nonreductionism. As used within the his-
tory of religions and religious studies, "nonreductionism" refers to
approaches that analyze religious data only in religious terms;
"reductionism" refers to the analysis of religious data in secular
terms. Eliade, in this regard, claims to adopt a nonreductionist
method and interpretation of religious myth.
The stronger, more assertive sense of "antireductionism" gets bet-
ter at Eliade's position: his vigorous critique and condemnation of
dominant, inadequate, and oppressive reductionist accounts; his claim
not only for a more adequate interpretation of the irreducibly mythic
4 Myth and Religion in Mircea Eliade

but also for the irreplaceable significance of his threatened,

autonomous discipline of history of religions; and even his vision of
the mythic spiritual renewal of modem, desacralized, impoverished,
reductionist, Western culture.
With regard to Eliade's general approach to reductionism and myth,
w^e may distinguish two related claims: the irreducibility of the reli-
gious, or of the "sacred," and the irreducibility of the mythic. First, for
Eliade myth is religious myth; therefore, the most common way to
violate the irreducibly mythic dimension of the data is to reduce its
irreducibly religious structure and function to some nonreligious plane
of reference and explanation. This focus on the irreducibility of the
religious will be the main concern of chapters 1 and 2. Chapter 3 will
examine Eliade's claims about the universal structure of the dialectic
of the sacred that defines the irreducibly religious nature of his myth-
ic data.' Second, there are claims about the irreducibility of the myth-
ic that go beyond claims about its irreducibly religious nature. All
mythic data are religious, but not all religious data are mythic. In chap-
ter 7 it will be seen that there are unique, irreducibly mythic structures,
functions, and modes of being in the world that distinguish myth not
only from nonreligious but also from other religious phenomena.
Eliade's frequent concern with "reductionism" raises many com-
plex issues. Reductionism has been and continues to be a central
methodological and theoretical focus in many scholarly disciplines.
It will be important to situate Eliade's antireductionist analysis with-
in some of these larger theoretical debates on reductionism. First, we
shall uncover some of the motives and concerns that contributed to
Eliade's primary focus on the evils of reductionism and his insistence
on an irreducibly religious approach to myth. Emphasized in chapter
1 will be Eliade's formulation of the irreducibility of the sacred.
Chapter 2 will then consider some of the criticisms of Eliade's antire-
ductionism that have arisen within the field of history of religions, or
Religionswissenschaft, and social scientific approaches to religion.

THE NEED FOR A NEW PROCEDURE

In his so-called antireductionist approach to myth and other religious
phenomena, Mircea Eliade has been criticized and praised as a
"romantic" scholar who privileges the mythic world of the "primitive"
Eliade's Antireductionism 5
and the "archaic."^ As we shall see, he is very critical of major char-
acteristics of the Western Enlightenment that have defined much of
"modernity." Therefore, it is not surprising that scholars such as Ivan
Strenski should characterize Eliade's approach to myth as extolling an
irrationalist traditionalism and a "Volkish," neo-romantic primitivism,
one largely devoid of any modem, rigorous, scholarly methodology.^
Nevertheless, Eliade, while appreciating and even defending
much of the traditional mythic world view, intends his antireduc-
tionist approach to myth to be more advanced than that of earlier
scholarly interpretations with which his is often compared. He
claims to be avoiding methodological pitfalls of past theories and to
be offering new, more adequate interpretations of the meaning of
myth, as well as a creative future-oriented response for dealing with
personal and even global crises confronting humanity. In his
approach to myth, Eliade recognizes profound differences in the
modem hermeneutical situation from that of earher interpreters. In
studying myth as part of the scholarly discipline of
Religionswissenschaft, he distinguishes what he is doing from the
earlier, highly subjective and normative theories of Tylor, Frazer, and
other scholars, as well as from the normative approaches defining
such disciplines as theology and the philosophy of religion.'*
As a scholarly historian of religions, Eliade repeatedly claims to
use an "empirical" approach to myth and other rehgious phenomena.
The "historian of religions uses an empirical method of approach. He
is concerned with religio-historical facts which he seeks to under-
stand and to make intelligible to others."^ The modem scholar begins
by collecting mythic and other religious documents, empirical facts
that need to be interpreted.^ She or he studies myths as factual,
empirical phenomena. In siding with R. J. Zwi Werblowsky and oth-
ers signing the so-called Marburg platform at the Tenth Intemational
Congress for the History of Religions in 1960, Eliade agreed that
"the common ground on which students of religion qua students of
religion meet is the realization that the awareness of the numinous or
the experience of transcendence (where these happen to exist in reli-
gion) are—whatever else they may be—undoubtedly empirical facts
of human experience and history, to be studied like all human facts,
by the appropriate methods. Thus also the value systems of the vari-
6 Myth and Religion in Mircea Eliade
ous religions, forming an essential part of the factual, empirical phe-
nomenon, are legitimate objects of our studies."'
A profound difference in the modem hermeneutical situation is
seen in the attempt by most contemporary scholars to differentiate
their approaches from earlier interpretations that ignored the irre-
ducibly historical nature of the mythic data. "Almost without notic-
ing it, the historian of religions found himself in a cultural milieu
quite different from that of Max Miiller and Tylor, or even that of
Frazer and Marrett [sic]. It was a new environment nourished by
Nietzsche and Marx, Dilthey, Croce, and Ortega; an environment in
which the fashionable cliche was not Nature but History."^ Modem
scholars realize that in studying myth they work exclusively with
historical documents. As EUade affirms in many places, his point of
departure is historical data that express mythic and other reUgious
experiences of humankind. Through his phenomenological
approach, he attempts to decipher the empirical, historical, mythic
data; to describe the phenomena that constitute the mythic world of
homo religiosus; and to interpret their religious meaning.
Although Eliade upholds the empirical and historical nature of his
approach to myth and occasionally goes out of his way to distinguish
what he is doing from the theological, metaphysical, subjective, non-
empirical, nonhistorical, and "unscientific" nature of earlier
approaches, many critics claim that his own approach is nonempiri-
cal and nonhistorical, even antihistorical.' Indeed, some critics com-
pare his approach with that of various uncritical, nineteenth-century
generalists whom he claims to reject. They claim that "Eliade, hke
Frazer, lumps religious beliefs and practices together in a compara-
tive way which ignores the differences and the cultural and historical
situations" and that "every methodological error of which Sir James
Frazer and his contemporaries have ever been accused is here exhib-
ited in its purest form."'"
Eliade not only wants to distinguish his approach to myth not only
from that of earlier nonempirical and nonhistorical theorists but also
from that of twentieth-century, "scientific" empiricists, historicists,
and other specialists. He keeps insisting that we need a new theoret-
ical approach, a new hermeneutics more adequate to interpret the
meaning of myth and other religious phenomena:
Eliade 's Antireductionism 7

The correct analyses of myths and of mythical thought, of symbols

and primordial images, especially the religious creations that emerge
from Oriental and "primitive" cultures, are, in my opinion, the only
way to open the Western mind and to introduce a new, planetary
humanism. These spiritual documents—myths, symbols, divine
figures, contemplative techniques, and so on—had previously been
studied, if at all, with the detachment and indifference with which
nineteenth-century naturalists studied insects. But it has now begun to
be realized that these documents express existential situations, and
that consequently they form part of the history of the human spirit.
Thus, the proper procedure for grasping their meaning is not the
naturalist's "objectivity," but the intelligent sympathy of the
hermeneut. It was the procedure itself that had to be changed. For
even the strangest or the most aberrant form of behavior must be
regarded as a human phenomenon; it cannot be interpreted as a
zoological phenomenon or an instance of teratology. This conviction
guided my research on the meaning and function of myths, the
structure of religious symbols, and in general, of the dialectics of the
sacred and the profane."

This important formulation is typical of claims found throughout

Eliade's writings. Usually when he makes these points about the need
for a new hermeneutical procedure, qualitatively different from earlier
approaches insisting on scholarly "detachment" and "nonhuman"
models of "objectivity," he presents them as part of a critique of
"reductionism" and as promoting "the irreducibility of the sacred."
In an essay on how to understand polarities, oppositions, and
antagonisms in archaic and traditional societies, Eliade tells us that we
need a hermeneutical effort, not another secular demystification: "Our
documents—be they myths or theologies, systems of space divisions or
rituals enacted by two antagonistic groups, divine dualities or religious
dualism, etc.—constitute, each according to its specific mode of being,
so many creations of the human mind." "We do not have the right to
reduce them to something other than what they are, namely spiritual
creations. Consequently, it is their meaning and significance that must
be grasped."^^ In short, Eliade frequently attacks earlier and many
8 Myth and Religion in Mircea Eliade

contemporary interpreters as reductionists, who ignore the irre-

ducibly sacred dimension of their mythic data.
In this introductory section, it has simply been asserted that Mircea
Eliade claims to be using an empirical approach to myth, to recognize
the historical nature of the mythic data, and to collect mythic religious
documents expressing phenomena that need to be described and inter-
preted. But how does he know which documents to collect, which
phenomena to describe and interpret? To answer these and similar
questions, we need to introduce several methodological principles in
terms of which Eliade can distinguish religious phenomena. The most
important principles allowing Eliade to distinguish religious phenom-
ena are the irreducibility of the religious and the dialectic of the
sacred and the profane. This chapter considers his criticism of reduc-
tionistic approaches to myth and other religious phenomena and his
methodological alternative in terms of the irreducibility of the sacred.
Chapter 3 will focus on a formulation of Eliade's universal structural
criteria for distinguishing rehgious from nonreligious phenomena.

THE IRREDUCIBILITY OF THE SACRED

This presentation of Eliade's position has referred to his critique of
"reductionism" and his insistence on "the irreducibility of the sacred."
Such language reflects Eliade's own formulations. At times, other
expressions such as Eliade's "methodological assumption of the irre-
ducibility of the sacred" and his "so-called antireductionist principle"
will be used, since my position is that all approaches, including
Eliade's, are in certain broad respects necessarily reductionistic.'^ But
not all reductionistic approaches are necessary or justifiable on schol-
arly grounds. The key question is whether Eliade's kind of reduction-
ism, as reflected in the assumption of the irreducibility of the religious
and the irreducibility of the mythic, is justified in providing a more
adequate interpretation of the function, structure, meaning, and sig-
nificance of myth than alternative reductionistic approaches.
In what is his best-known antireductionist formulation, cited by
both defenders and critics of his position, Mircea Eliade claims that "a
religious phenomenon will only be recognized as such if it is grasped
at its own level, that is to say, if it is studied as something religious.
To try to grasp the essence of such a [religious] phenomenon by
Eliade 's Antireductionism 9
means of physiology, psychology, sociology, economics, linguistics,
art or any other study is false; it misses the one unique and irreducible
element in it—the element of the sacred."^'* Here we have the twenti-
eth-century antireductionist claim made not only by Eliade but also by
Rudolf Otto, Gerardus van der Leeuw, Joachim Wach, and many oth-
ers: investigators of mythic and other religious phenomena must
respect the irreducibly religious nature of religious phenomena.'^

Romanian Roots
Mac Linscott Ricketts, focusing on the Romanian roots of
Eliade's life and thought, has contended that by age twenty Eliade
had formulated the main lines of his scholarly method and that most
of his fundamental methodological principles had been worked out
in his "Spiritual Itinerary" series and other youthful Romanian writ-
ings before he left for India.'* Ricketts believes that the most basic
of these youthful principles that continued to guide Eliade's thinking
throughout his life was the principle of separate "planes of reahty":
the antireductionist principle that religion be approached as an
autonomous, irreducible reality. This principle was taught by Nae
lonescu, the person who had the greatest influence on Eliade's per-
sonal philosophy and who is mentioned more than any other person
in Eliade's Autobiography}^
lonescu assumed the existence of three irreducible planes of real-
ity, each requiring its own, unique method of cognition. "There exist
in the order of cognition a scientific plane, a philosophical plane, and
a religious plane of reality: each independent, with methods of its
own, mutually irreducible." For each of these "planes of existence"
or "realms" ("orders," "worlds"), "we must have special means of
investigation." "The greatest 'sin' for lonescu was to confuse the
planes: to try to approach one level of reality with methods appro-
priate to another."'*
Starting with articles in lonescu's newspaper Cuvantul in 1926
and 1927, Eliade wrote often of this principle of separate "planes of
reahty" and of the need to approach the religious plane as an
autonomous world or reality, known by its own method, and not
reduced or "explained" by the criteria of other planes with their dis-
tinct instruments of cognition:
10 Myth and Religion in Mircea Eliade

The practical effect of accepting this principle was to remove religion

from criticisms arising from other "planes"—above all, from posi-
tivistic science. It led Eliade also to reject what he called
"Gourmontine method," the fallacy of judging a complex cultural phe-
nomenon (such as religion) by its "origins" (such as fear of the dead).
Here, then, is the philosophical basis of his Ufe long insistence that
religion be studied as such, and not "demystified" by being "reduced"
to something else. Furthermore, this principle permitted him to look
behind the religious phenomenon to the essence of the reaUty as it
exists on its own plane, apart from its expression in "history," and to
make comparisons of phenomena drawn from many times and places
on the basis of their common essence."

In some of his early, often highly personal, Romanian newspaper

and other articles, Eliade gives this so-called antireductionist princi-
ple a formulation that is at the heart of many contemporary scholarly
debates. In studying religious or other phenomena on their own
"plane," must the scholar "believe" in the reality of that plane? And if
so, what does it mean to be such a believer? Some phenomenologists
and other scholars of myth will grant that the interpreter must believe
in the mythic phenomena in the sense of taking them seriously,
acknowledging that for mythic people the myths are real, and trying,
at least as part of one's scholarship, to empathize with and describe
just what myths and their reality claims mean for mythic people.
Eliade accepts such a scholarly position. In his later scholarly
works, his usual position is that the scholar's role is to approach
mythic or other religious phenomena on their own plane, to interpret
what is real for homo religiosus, and not to impose the scholar's own
views of what is real or unreal. The scholar, for example, must
assume that the sacred is irreducible and ultimately real for mythic
persons, and this must guide interpretations of the meaning and sig-
nificance of mythic phenomena regardless of what the individual
scholar may personally disbelieve about the sacred reality.
Otherwise, the secular scholar will reduce myth to some nonreli-
gious, nonmythic meaning and significance and will fail to grasp the
irreducibly religious, mythic essence.
However, in some youthful Romanian writings on the "confusion of
planes," in some later, often personal, antireductionist reflections on the
Eliade 's Antireductionism 11

history of religions and the modern world, and interspersed throughout

his scholarly writings, Eliade presents stronger claims about the scholar
as believer. Not only must mythic and other religious phenomena be
understood in irreducibly religious terms of believers, but only scholars
who are themselves believers are capable of providing adequate
interpretations of such phenomena. Citing such passages, many critics
and some supporters have maintained that Eliade-the-scholar has
ulterior motives, a hidden agenda, a highly personal normative position
on myth and religion that shapes not only his autobiographical and
literary writings but also his scholarly works.
In some early Romanian writings, Eliade maintains that for
someone to understand and evaluate mythic or other religious
phenomena on their own plane, the person must have personal
experiential knowledge of the mythic and the religious. Eliade agrees
with Rudolf Otto's controversial, often attacked claim early in The Idea
of the Holy that if the reader has not already had a numinous
experience, then she or he will be incapable of grasping Otto's
description of the religious essence and is "requested to read no
farther."^*^ Eliade tells us that to judge religious or metaphysical
phenomena, "one must believe in the existence of the religious and
metaphysical planes." Just as "laymen" are unqualified to judge
literature and art on moral grounds, since this involves a "confusion of
planes," nonbelievers are laypersons unqualified to say anything about
mythic and other religious beliefs: "You cannot judge a spiritual reality
without knowing it, and you do not know it without contemplating it on
its own plane of existence." Only by "loving supra-sensible realities
(i.e., believing in their existence and autonomy) can you judge and
accept or reject a metaphysics, a dogma, or a mystical experience."^'
One can understand how such formulations, including similar
personal interjections in later scholarly works, have led many critics to
charge that Mircea Eliade is not only interpreting and describing the
believer's mythic view but in fact endorsing it; that he is maintaining
that scholars themselves must be believers in the religious origin,
function, meaning, truth, and reality of myth and the sacred.^^
12 Myth and Religion in Micea Eliade
Antireductionist Claims
The methodological assumption of the irreducibility of the sacred
can be seen as arising from Eliade's frequent criticisms of past reduc-
tionist positions. According to Eliade, earlier scholars, utilizing cer-
tain assumed norms (rationalist, positivist, etc.), usually forced their
data into unilinear, evolutionary schemes. He grants that twentieth-
century anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and historians
opened up new dimensions of the sacred, but he criticizes them for
reducing the meaning of the religious to its anthropological, socio-
logical, psychological, or historical analysis.
The upshot of Eliade's criticism may be expressed by the follow-
ing antireductionist claim: the scholar must attempt to grasp religious
phenomena "on their own plane of reference," as something reli-
gious. To reduce an interpretation of myths to some nonreligious
plane of reference (sociological, psychological, economic, etc.) is to
neglect their full intentionality and to fail to grasp their unique and
irreducible "element": the sacred.
Although historians and phenomenologists of religion, in oppos-
ing psychological, sociological, and other reductionisms, often main-
tain that myths reveal "an irreducible reality, the experience of the
sacred," they "do not agree among themselves even apropos of the
nature of this experience." "For some of them, the 'sacred' as such is
a historical phenomenon, i.e., it is the result of specific human expe-
riences in specific historical situations. Others, on the contrary, leave
open the question of 'origins'; for them the experience of the sacred
is irreducible, in the sense that, through such an experience, man
becomes aware of his specific mode of being in the world and con-
sequently assumes responsibilities which cannot be explained in
psychological or socio-economic terms."^^
Eliade uses his antireductionist claim—that religious phenomena
must be grasped as irreducibly religious, that one must make "an
effort to understand them on their own plane of reference"^—to
define the autonomous nature of his discipline. In contrast to most
anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and other past investi-
gators, historians of religions attempt to define their own unique per-
spective qua historians of religions. If there are certain irreducible
modes by which mythic and other religious experiences and their
Eliade 's Antireductionism 13
expressions are given, then our "method of understanding must be
commensurate with the givenness of the mode."^
Such formulations do not exhaust all of the aspects of Eliade's
analysis of the irreducibility of the sacred. As was seen in the above
passage from Patterns (p. xiii) and in numerous other writings,
Eliade primarily attacks reductionist accounts for being "false." On
phenomenological grounds, he claims that reductionist explanations
fail to grasp the unique, irreducibly religious structure and meaning
expressed through the mythic data. Sometimes his attacks on such
misconceived and inappropriate approaches, with their misplaced
and false explanations, will be seen to go beyond phenomenological
grounds and involve personal, ontological, normative concerns.
In the above quotation from No Souvenirs (p. xii), as in many of
his other writings, Eliade also criticizes reductionist approaches for
not doing justice to the "human" dimension of religious mythic phe-
nomena, for reducing "living" data to impersonal "dead" data, and
for providing us with inappropriate models of "objectivity." An inter-
preter must do justice to, not explain away, the essential personal
dimension of mythic data with a central focus on intentionality,
human agency, and a specific human mode of existence and specific
human constitution of a sacred, meaningful, mythic world.
Eliade's works contain many criticisms of reductionistic inter-
pretations and explanations that do not do justice to the "complexi-
ty," "totahty," "ambiguity," and "unrecognizability" of the sacred,
but instead reduce the mythic to some partial, oversimplified, one-
sided, or otherwise incomplete perspective. For example, Eliade
will be seen to maintain that myths and other expressions of the
sacred are symbolic in nature. He criticizes Freud and some other
reductionists for focusing on only one, limited valorization of a
complex, multivalent, inexhaustible religious symbolism and then
claiming that their very narrow interpretation or explanation is suf-
ficient. Many of his antireductionist formulations will be seen as
arising from his criticisms of approaches that do not do justice to
the complexity and ambiguity, paradoxical and contradictory
aspects, and camouflage and concealment of the mythic sacred and
to the multivalence and other functions and structures of religious
symbolism, the language of myth.
14 Myth and Religion in Mircea Eliade

Eliade repeatedly expresses his antireductionist claim in terms of

the following principle: "the scale creates the phenomenon." He quotes
the following ironical query of Henri Poincare: "Would a naturalist
who had never studied the elephant except through the microscope
consider that he had an adequate knowledge of the creature?" Eliade
continues: "The microscope reveals the structure and mechanism of
cells, which structure and mechanism are exactly the same in all multi-
cellular organisms. The elephant is certainly a multicellular organism,
but is that all that it is? On the microscopic scale, we might hesitate to
answer. On the scale of human vision, which at least has the advantage
of presenting the elephant as a zoological phenomenon, there can be no
doubt about the reply."^^
The methodological assumption of the irreducibility of the sacred
can be seen as arising from Eliade's view of the role of the historian of
religions. His justification for such an assumption seems to be that the
task of the phenomenologist, at least in the beginning, is to follow and
attempt to understand an experience as it is for the person who has had
that experience. What his mythic data reveal is that certain people have
had experiences which they have considered religious. Thus the
phenomenologist must first of all respect the original intentionality
expressed by the mythic data; he or she must attempt to understand
such myths as something religious. One's approach must be
commensurate with the nature of the subject matter. Homo religiosus
experiences the sacred as something sui generis. If Eliade is to
participate in and sympathetically understand the mythic phenomena of
others, his scale must be commensurate with the scale of the mythic
other. Consequently, he insists on an irreducibly religious scale of
understanding in order to have the most adequate knowledge possible
of mythic and other irreducibly reUgious phenomena.
To gain some sense of the extreme significance of this hermeneu-
tical principle for Eliade, we shall provide four of his illustrations: the
lofty status of Australian medicine men; the strange shamanic imitation
of animal sounds; expressions of "madness" by religious specialists;
and the extraordinary value that human beings place on gold.
How are we to understand the enormous prestige and the various
functions and duties of the Australian medicine man? Eliade's data,
such as the mythic models and initiation rituals for becoming a
Eliade's Antireductionism 15
medicine man, reveal that the Australians have placed these experi-
ences within a religious context. Eliade, using a "religious scale,"
attempts to understand these phenomena "on their own plane of ref-
erence." He finds that "only the medicine man succeeds in surpass-
ing his human condition, and consequently he is able to behave like
the spiritual beings, or, in other words, to partake of the modality of
a spiritual being." It is because of his "transmutation," his "singular
existential condition," that the medicine man can cure the sick, be a
rainmaker, and defend his tribe against magical aggression. In short,
his "social prestige, his cultural role, and his political supremacy
derive ultimately from his magico-religious 'power.'"^^
How are we to understand the shaman's strange imitation of animal
cries? Many have interpreted this phenomenon as manifesting a patho-
logical "possession," clear evidence of the shaman's mental aberration.
However, suppose we suspend our normative judgments and first
attempt to understand the religious meaning which such shamanic
experience has had for the religious other. Understood in terms of such
a religious scale, EHadefindsthat the shaman's friendship with animals
and knowledge of their language reveal a mythic "paradisal syndrome."
As part of one of his favorite religious scenarios, Eliade interprets com-
munication and friendship with animals as a means of partially recov-
ering the paradisal situation of primordial human beings. This blessed-
ness and spontaneity existed in illo tempore, before the "fall," and is
inaccessible to our ordinary nonsacred state. From this religious per-
spective, Eliade begins to understand that the "strange behavior" is
"actually part of a coherent ideology, possessing great nobility." In
terms of this ideology, this "yearning for Paradise," Eliade is able to
interpret the meaning of particular variations of the shaman's central
ecstatic experience and other related phenomena of shamanism.^^
A third illustration, again involving Eliade's use of a religious scale
to interpret phenomena that may otherwise be dismissed as simply
expressing apsychopathological condition, is seen in many contexts of
the "madness" of the religious specialist: "Certain prophets were even
accused of 'madness' (like Hosea: 'the prophet is made, this inspired
fellow is raving' [Hos. 9:7]), but we cannot speak of a true psy-
chopathological disease. Rather there are emotional shocks, brought
on by the terrifying presence of God and the gravity of the mission the
16 Myth and Religion in Mircea Eliade

prophet has just assumed. The phenomenon is well known from the
'initiatory maladies' of shamans to the 'madnesses' of the great mystics
of all religions." "What distinguishes Dionysus and his cult [from other
cases of mania brought on by the Greek gods] is not these psychopathic
crises but the fact that they were valorized as religious experience,
whether as a punishment or as a favor from the god."^'
One might grant the usefulness, if not the necessity, of assuming the
irreducibility of the sacred when attempting to interpret the meaning of
the myths of Australian medicine men, initiations of Siberian shamans,
Dionysiac orgiastic ecstasies, or the "ravings" of Biblical prophets. But
some of Eliade's most interesting interpretations involve the utilization
of a religious scale to interpret phenomena usually considered non-
religious.^°
For example, Eliade uses a religious scale in his inquiry as to why
human beings, from prehistory to the present, have been so obsessed
with the desperate search for gold and have placed such an
extraordinary value on this particular metal. At least in one respect
Eliade would agree with the analysis in the first volume of Capital in
which Karl Marx shows that gold (or any other fetishized commodity),
when "demystified," has no inherent exchange value; its value—what it
is worth quantitatively—expresses a dynamic social relation. Of course,
Eliade does not agree that this value relation is primarily determined by
the amount of socially necessary labor time embodied in the production
of the commodity gold and by other economic factors. Rather he
submits that this value relation is primarily a mythic, sacred relation
constituted by homo religiosus.
When interpreting the extraordinary value placed on gold, Eliade
notes that there are impressive mythologies of homofaber concerned
with the first decisive conquests of the natural world: "But gold does
not belong to the mythology of homofaber. Gold is a creation of homo
religiosus: this metal was valorized for exclusively symbolic and
religious reasons. Gold was the first metal utilized by man, although it
could be employed neither as tool nor as weapon. In the history of
technological innovations—that is to say, the passage from stone
technology to bronze industry, then to iron and finally to steel—gold
played no role whatsoever. Furthermore, its exploitation is the most
difficult of any metal."''
Eliade 's Antireductionism 17

Using a religious scale of interpretation, Eliade submits that the

mythology of homo religiosus that allows us to comprehend the
exaltation of gold involves the belief that all ores "grow" in the belly of
the earth; that given sufficient time there is a natural transmutation of
metals into gold, since gold or perfection is the final goal of Nature.
"The primordial symbolic value of this metal could not be abolished, in
spite of the progressive desacralization of Nature and of human exist-
ence." This primordial symbolic value involves the idea that "gold is
immortality." Therefore, alchemists, using the Elixir or the Philoso-
pher's Stone to complete the work of Nature, not only "heal" base
metals by accelerating their "maturation," transmuting them finally into
gold. The "alchemists went even further: their elixir was reputed to heal
and to rejuvenate men as well, indefinitely prolonging their lives and
making them into immortal beings."^^
Only brief mention will be made of Eliade's few, explicit references
to "the transconscious" as a unique, irreducible state of religious
consciousness, since this positing of a "higher" religious consciousness
is sometimes presented by Eliade as part of his general, antireductionist
orientation.-^^ It is not entirely clear what Eliade intends by "trans-
consciousness." Most of his references focus on essential symbols and
images. Several passages mention C. G. Jung's insights, although
Eliade also indicates that by "transconscious" he intends something
more than the psychological. Ricketts analyzes the concept of the trans-
conscious as Eliade's attempt to render more adequately Otto's a priori
category of the Holy. Ricketts claims that "Eliade wishes to designate a
mental structure or capacity set apart from all others, one which comes
into play only in religious experience."^'*
For Eliade, the transconscious—whether analyzed as some essential,
religious, mental state, capacity, faculty, category, or structure—has a
universal, transcultural, nonhistorical status. In some passages, Eliade
seems to employ the concept of the transconscious as a necessary
criterion for all religious experience: for distinguishing mythic and
other religious phenomena from nonrehgious phenomena. In this sense,
the intentionality of the sacred and the unique universal structure of the
dialectic of the sacred require a "higher," or at least unique, irreducibly
religious structure of consciousness. In other passages, Eliade seems to
maintain that the transconscious "zone" or state of consciousness
18 Myth and Religion in Mircea Eliade

functions only in Yoga, shamanism, mysticism, and other examples

of the "highest," "most elevated" mythical and other religious states
of spiritual realization. As I have tried to show elsewhere, much of
this Eliadean positing of a unique, irreducibly religious transcon-
scious as a way of establishing the irreducibly religious nature of
mythic and other religious phenomena rests upon assumed ontologi-
cal moves and normative judgments that go far beyond a descriptive
history and phenomenology of religion.^^

No Purely Religious Phenomena

Eliade's hermeneutic principle of the irreducibility of the sacred may
be seen as consistent with twentieth-century scholarly approaches
that reacted against what was perceived as the threat of scientific and
other forms of reductionism. Such approaches often attempted to
carve out and insulate their own unique subject matter, requiring their
own, specialized interpretations and explanations. Eliade certainly
fears that reductionist approaches will not only explain inadequately
but also explain away the irreducibly religious subject matter. But
unlike some other scholars within religious studies who also attempt
to interpret religious phenomena religiously, Eliade is not interested
in a narrow, highly specialized, religiously insulated, scholarly
method and discipline.^^ This can be seen in his frequent assertions
that there are no "purely" religious phenomena and in his emphasis
on integration and synthesis as part of his antireductionism.
The methodological principle of the irreducibility of the sacred
does not mean that the scholar can focus on purely religious phenom-
ena: "Obviously there are no purely religious phenomena; no phe-
nomenon can be solely and exclusively religious. Because religion is
human it must for that very reason be something social, something
linguistic, something economic—^you cannot think of man apart from
language and society. But it would be hopeless to try and explain reli-
gion in terms of any one of those basic functions which are really no
more than another way of saying what man is. It would be as futile as
thinking you could explain Madame Bovary by a list of social, eco-
nomic and political facts; however true, they do not affect it as a work
of literature." Eliade goes on to assert that he does "not mean to deny
the usefulness of approaching the religious phenomenon from various
Eliade 's Antireductionism 19

different angles," although some of his formulations certainly minimize

or deny such usefulness.-''^ Typically, Eliade then concludes that the
religious phenomenon "must be looked at first of all in itself, in that
which belongs to it alone and can be explained in no other terms."-^*
Sometimes such general formulations, conceding that there are no
purely religious phenomena and then arguing for the legitimacy and
primacy of interpretations focusing on the irreducibility of the religious,
are expressed in terms of Eliade's acceptance of the view that all data
are "historical":

This does not mean, of course, that a religious phenomenon can be

understood outside of its "history," that is, outside of its cultural and
socioeconomic contexts. There is no such thing as a "pure" reUgious
datum, outside of history, for there is no such thing as a human datum
that is not at the same time a historical datum. Every religious
experience is expressed and transmitted in a particular historical
context. But admitting the historicity of religious experiences does
not imply that they are reducible to nonreligious forms of behavior.
Stating that a religious datum is always a historical datum does not
mean that it is reducible to a nonreligious history—for example, to an
economic, social, or poUtical history. We must never lose sight of one
of the fundamental principles of modem science: the scale creates the
phenomenonr'^

Since there are no purely religious phenomena, Eliade is dependent

for his data and for some of his interpretations and explanations on the
contributions of anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, historians,
and other scholars who usually do not assume the irreducibility of the
sacred. The "autonomous" history of religions, with its assumption of
the irreducibility of the religious, cannot insulate itself and claim to be
self-sufficient. It not only provides irreducibly religious interpretations
of specific mythic and other religious data but also has the special role
of integrating and synthesizing the contributions of other specialized
approaches within its broad, coherent, meaningful, irreducibly religious
framework.
As part of his emphasis on comparative research and the need for
generalizations, Eliade criticizes his colleagues—even those accepting
20 Myth and Religion in Mircea Eliade

the irreducibility of the religious—for their self-imposed specialized

inhibitions, and he frequently argues for the indispensable function and
urgency of bold, creative, imaginative syntheses.'"' Both Eliade's
reflections on hermeneutics and his interpretation of the intentionality
and meaning of the reUgious data contain such synthesizing terms as
integration, unification, harmonious whole, revalorization, homologiza-
tion, and cosmicization. For example, religious symbolism will be seen
to have a function of unification in which diverse, fragmented, multi-
valent, often contradictory aspects of experience are synthesized within
coherent, meaningful, spiritual wholes. And much of Eliade's critique
of modem, desacralized culture will be seen as arising from his claim
that it lacks this creative power of synthesis. The essays in Eliade's The
Quest maintain that the irreducibly religious history of religions must
aim to become a "total discipline," with a method of "creative herme-
neutics," grounded in the creative power of synthetic interpretation.
This disciplinary approach will be essential for bringing about a "new
humanism" and a "cultural renewal" arising from a creative, global,
synthetic confrontation and integration.
But once again, this dependence on the confributions of other
approaches that then are subjected to a hermeneutical process of
creative synthesis in no way lessens Eliade's insistence on the need for
irreducibly religious interpretations. The history of religions' "mission
is to integrate the results of ethnology, psychology, and sociology. Yet
in doing so, it will not renounce its own method of investigation or the
viewpoint that specifically defines i t . . . . In the last analysis, it is for the
historian of religions to synthesize all the studies of particular aspects
of shamanism and to present a comprehensive view which shall be at
once a morphology and a history of this complex religious phenom-
enon.'""

NOTES
1. Throughout this chapter on reductionism, we shall use Eliade's term:
"the sacred." Only in chap. 3 will there be a precise formulation of Eliade's
interpretation of the nature and structure of the sacred.
2. See, for example, Robert D. Baird, Category Formation and the History
of Religions (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), esp. pp. 86-87,152-53; Thomas J. J.
Altizer, Mircea Eliade and the Dialectic of the Sacred (Philadelphia: