* Some authors insist on Zalmoxis ' relation with Pythagoras, stating that he has founded a mystical cult ; partly this theory may be found in Eliade's work ;

According to Eliade's theory, only the Sacred has value, only a thing's first appearance has value and, therefore, only the Sacred's first appearance has value.

Wendy Doniger noted that Eliade's theory of the eternal return " has become a truism in the study of religions ".

Even Wendy Doniger, Eliade's successor at the University of Chicago, claims ( in an introduction to Eliade's own Shamanism ) that the eternal return does not apply to all myths and rituals, although it may apply to many of them.

However, Eliade's understanding of Judaeo-Christian eschatology can also be understood as cyclical in that the " end of time " is a return to God: " The final catastrophe will put an end to history, hence will restore man to eternity and beatitude ".

Because the gods ( particularly the High God, according to Eliade's deus otiosus concept ) were closer to humans during the mythical age, the shaman's easy communication with the High God represents an abolition of history and a return to the mythical age.

Robert Ellwood describes Eliade's approach to religion as follows.

In Eliade's view, two roads await man in this process.

Summarizing Eliade's statements on this subject, Eric Rust writes, " A new religious structure became available.

After completing his primary education at the school on Mântuleasa Street, Eliade attended the Spiru Haret National College in the same class as Arşavir Acterian, Haig Acterian, and Petre Viforeanu ( and several years the senior of Nicolae Steinhardt, who eventually became a close friend of Eliade's ).

Eliade's views at the time focused on innovation — in the summer of 1933, he replied to an anti-modernist critique written by George Călinescu:

Mariana Klein, who became Şora's wife, was one of Eliade's female students, and later authored works on his scholarship.

Eliade's articles before and after his adherence to the principles of the Iron Guard ( or, as it was usually known at the time, the Legionary Movement ), beginning with his famous Itinerar spiritual (" Spiritual Itinerary ", serialized in Cuvântul in 1927 ), center on several political ideals advocated by the far right.

For instance, Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane partially builds on Otto's The Idea of the Holy to show how religion emerges from the experience of the sacred, and myths of time and nature.

Eliade's understanding of religion centers on his concept of hierophany ( manifestation of the Sacred )— a concept that includes, but is not limited to, the older and more restrictive concept of theophany ( manifestation of a god ).

Anthropologist Alice Kehoe is highly critical of Eliade's work on Shamanism, namely because he was not an anthropologist but a historian.

French researcher Daniel Dubuisson places doubt on Eliade's scholarship and its scientific character, citing the Romanian academic's alleged refusal to accept the treatment of religions in their historical and cultural context, and proposing that Eliade's notion of hierophany refers to the actual existence of a supernatural level.

Many of Mircea Eliade's literary works, in particular his earliest ones, are noted for their eroticism and their focus on subjective experience.

" A specific aspect of this focus on experience is sexual experimentation — Călinescu notes that Eliade's fiction works tend to depict a male figure " possessing all practicable women in given family ".

Polemically, Călinescu proposed that Mircea Eliade's supposed focus on " aggressive youth " and served to instill his interwar Romanian writers with the idea that they had a common destiny as a generation apart.

The notion was in turn linked to Eliade's own thoughts on transcendence, and in particular his idea that, once " camouflaged " in life or history, miracles become " unrecognizable ".

One of Eliade's earliest fiction writings, the controversial first-person narrative Isabel şi apele diavolului, focused on the figure of a young and brilliant academic, whose self-declared fear is that of " being common ".

One of Eliade's best-known works, the novel Maitreyi, dwells on Eliade's own experience, comprising camouflaged details of his relationships with Surendranath Dasgupta and Dasgupta's daughter Maitreyi Devi.

Allan himself stands alongside Eliade's male characters, whose focus is on action, sensation and experience — his chaste contacts with Maitreyi are encouraged by Sen, who hopes for a marriage which is nonetheless abhorred by his would-be European son-in-law.

Eliade's 1934 novel Întoarcerea din rai (" Return from Paradise ") centers on Pavel Anicet, a young man who seeks knowledge through what Călinescu defined as " sexual excess ".

Eliade's fantasy novel Domnişoara Christina, was, on its own, the topic of a scandal.

Paul Cernat notes that Eliade's statement includes an admission that he " counted on support, in order to get back into Romanian life and culture ", and proposes that Eliade may have expected his friend to vouch for him in front of hostile authorities.

In August 1954, when Horia Sima, who led the Iron Guard during its exile, was rejected by a faction inside the movement, Mircea Eliade's name was included on a list of persons who supported the latter — although this may have happened without his consent.

Based on Mircea Eliade's admiration for Gandhi, various other authors assess that Eliade remained committed to nonviolence.

Andrei Oişteanu, who proposed that Eliade's critics were divided into a " maximalist " and a " minimalist " camp ( trying to, respectively, enhance or shadow the impact Legionary ideas had on Eliade ), argued in favor of moderation, and indicated that Eliade's fascism needed to be correlated to the political choices of his generation.

" He suggests that this nostalgia, along with Eliade's sense that " exile is among the profoundest metaphors for all human life ", influenced Eliade's theories.

The same passages led philosopher and journalist Cătălin Avramescu to argue that Eliade's behavior was evidence of " megalomania ".

* Some see in Zalmoxis a Christ figure who dies and resurrects ; this position was also defended by Jean ( Ioan ) Coman, a professor of patristics and orthodox priest, who was a friend of Eliade and published in Eliade's journal " Zalmoxis ", which appeared in the 1930s.

As one of the figures in the Criterion literary society ( 1933 – 1934 ), Eliade's initial encounter with the traditional far right was polemical: the group's conferences were stormed by members of A. C. Cuza's National-Christian Defense League, who objected to what they viewed as pacifism and addressed antisemitic insults to several speakers, including Sebastian ; in 1933, he was among the signers of a manifesto opposing Nazi Germany's state-enforced racism.

Dadosky quotes Robert Segal, a professor of religion, who draws a distinction between Platonism and Eliade's " primitive ontology ": for Eliade, the ideal models are patterns that a person or object may or may not imitate ; for Plato, there is a Form for everything, and everything imitates a Form by the very fact that it exists.

He explained the use of his signature, his picture, and the picture's caption, as having been applied by the magazine's editor, Mihail Polihroniade, to a piece the latter had written after having failed to obtain Eliade's contribution ; he also claimed that, given his respect for Polihroniade, he had not wished to publicize this matter previously.

During the final years of Mircea Eliade's life, his disciple Culianu exposed and publicly criticized his 1930s pro-Iron Guard activities ; relations between the two soured as a result.

Maitreyi Devi, who strongly objected to Eliade's account of their encounter and relationship, wrote her own novel as a reply to his Maitreyi ; written in Bengali, it was titled Na Hanyate ( translated into English as " It Does Not Die ").

In Mircea Eliade's opinion, " Every Microcosm, every inhabited region, has a Centre ; that is to say, a place that is sacred above all.

Eliade's Romanian disciple Ioan Petru Culianu, who recalled the scientific community's reaction to the news, described Eliade's death as " a mahaparanirvana ", thus comparing it to the passing of Gautama Buddha.

Eliade often uses the term " archetypes " to refer to the mythical models established by the Sacred, although Eliade's use of the term should be distinguished from the use of the term in Jungian psychology.

However, Dadosky also states that " one should be cautious when trying to assess Eliade's indebtedness to Plato ".