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 ".

Kirk concludes, " Eliade's idea is a valuable perception about certain myths, not a guide to the proper understanding of all of them ".

Robert Ellwood, a professor of religion who did his graduate studies under Mircea Eliade, saw this type of nostalgia as one of the most characteristic themes in Eliade's life and academic writings.

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.

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

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.

According to one scholar, " Eliade may have been the most popular and influential contemporary historian of religion ", but " many, if not most, specialists in anthropology, sociology, and even history of religions have either ignored or quickly dismissed " Eliade's works.

Whether they were true or not, she argues, Eliade's theories are still useful " as starting points for the comparative study of religion ".

Daniel Dubuisson singled out Eliade's concept of homo religiosus as a reflection of fascist elitism, and argued that the Romanian scholar's views of Judaism and the Old Testament, which depicted Hebrews as the enemies of an ancient cosmic religion, were ultimately the preservation of an antisemitic discourse.

Moreover, the connection between mythology and politics differs for each of the mythologists in question: in Eliade's case, Ellwood believes, a strong sense of nostalgia (" for childhood, for historical times past, for cosmic religion, for paradise "), influenced not only the scholar's academic interests, but also his political views.

Furthermore, some see a connection between Eliade's essentialism with regard to religion and fascist essentialism with regard to races and nations.

In part, they also serve to illustrate or allude to Eliade's own research in the field of religion, as well as to the concepts he introduced.

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 ".

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

* 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 ;

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.

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 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.

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.

Ellwood sees evidence of this in Eliade's concept of the " Terror of history " from which modern man is no longer shielded.

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.

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.

According to Eliade's interpretation, religious man apparently feels the need to live not only near, but at, the mythical Center as much as possible, given that the Center is the point of communication with the Sacred.

* List of Terms Used in Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and The Profane

Eliade's scholarly work includes a study of shamanism, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, a survey of shamanistic practices in different areas.

Mircea Eliade's novel, Noaptea de Sânziene ( translated as The Forbidden Forest ), includes references to the folk belief about skies opening at night, as well as to paranormal events happening in the Băneasa Forest.