In his private notes, Eliade wrote that he took no further interest in the office, because his visits abroad had convinced him that he had " something great to say ", and that he could not function within the confines of " a minor culture ".

Wendy Doniger, Eliade's colleague from 1978 until his death, notes that " Eliade argued boldly for universals where he might more safely have argued for widely prevalent patterns ".

However, Ellwood notes that Eliade " tends to slide over that last qualification ", implying that traditional societies actually thought like homo religiosus.

Eliade notes that, in traditional societies, myth represents the absolute truth about primordial time.

Many myths, Eliade notes, " present us with a twofold revelation ":

Likewise, Eliade notes that Nazism involved a pseudo-pagan mysticism based on ancient Germanic religion.

Eliade notes that a Western or Continental philosopher might feel suspicious toward this Hindu view of history:

However, although Doniger agrees that Eliade made over-generalizations, she notes that his willingness to " argue boldly for universals " allowed him to see patterns " that spanned the entire globe and the whole of human history ".

Eliade himself referenced the story and Aldous Huxley's experiments in the same section of his private notes, a matter which allowed Matei Călinescu to propose that Un om mare was a direct product of its author's experience with drugs.

Before their friendship came apart, however, Sebastian claimed that he took notes on their conversations ( which he later published ) during which Eliade was supposed to have expressed antisemitic views.

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 parallel, according to Oişteanu ( who relied his assessment on Eliade's own personal notes ), Eliade's interest in the American hippie community was reciprocated by members of the latter, some of whom reportedly viewed Eliade as " a guru ".

Eliade and his student, Charles H. Long, developed a classification based on some common motifs that reappear in stories the world over.

Mircea Eliade argues that the imagery used in some parts of the Hebrew Bible reflects a " transfiguration of history into myth ".

Because of these arguments, some have accused Eliade of over-generalization and " essentialism ", or even of promoting a theological agenda under the guise of historical scholarship.

In some of his writings, Eliade describes modern political ideologies as secularized mythology.

An important section of the Congress was dedicated to the memory of Mircea Eliade, whose legacy in the field of history of religions was scrutinized by various scholars, some of whom were his direct students at the University of Chicago.

* The early ( pre-WWII ) novels and short stories of Mircea Eliade, as well as some later literary works originally written in Romanian

Iorga's formative influence on Trăirists such as Eliade and Emil Cioran was also highlighted by some other researchers.

Reportedly, Iorga's murder instantly repelled some known supporters of the Guard, such as Radu Gyr and Mircea Eliade.

The direction of comparative religion is represented by Mircea Eliade, and also to some extent by the literary critic René Girard.

The hypothesis was embraced outside the field of Indo-European studies by some mythographers, anthropologists, and historians such as Mircea Eliade, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Marshall Sahlins, Rodney Needham, Jean-Pierre Vernant and Georges Duby.

Deshmukh and Mircea Eliade are of the opinion that there exists some link between Rishabha and Indus valley civilization.

Eliade noted that " Although the oath taken is made in the name of God, the mythico-ritual scenario enacted by the calusari has nothing in common with Christianity " and that, in the 19th century at least, there was clerical opposition to the group, with its members being excluded from taking communion for three years in some regions.

According to Mircea Eliade, the Middle Ages witnessed " an upwelling of mythical thought " in which each social group had its own " mythological traditions ".

Eliade approached myth sympathetically at a time when religious thinkers were trying to purge religion of its mythological elements:

According to Eliade, modern man displays " traces " of " mythological behavior " because he intensely needs sacred time and the eternal return.

However, Ellwood admits that common tendencies in " mythological thinking " may have caused Eliade, as well as Jung and Campbell, to view certain groups in an " essentialist " way, and that this may explain their purported antisemitism: " A tendency to think in generic terms of peoples, races, religions, or parties, which as we shall see is undoubtedly the profoundest flaw in mythological thinking, including that of such modern mythologists as our three, can connect with nascent anti-Semitism, or the connection can be the other way.

According to Ellwood, the part of Eliade that felt attracted to the " freedom of new beginnings suggested by primal myths " is the same part that felt attracted to the Guard, with its almost mythological notion of a new beginning through a " national resurrection ".

Ellwood describes the young Eliade as someone " capable of being fired up by mythological archetypes and with no awareness of the evil that was to be unleashed ".

" Eliade sees the widespread myth of the Golden Age, " which, according to a number of traditions, lies at the beginning and the end of History ", as the " precedent " for Karl Marx's vision of a classless society.

Eliade argues that a Western spiritual rebirth can happen within the framework of Western spiritual traditions.

In its early years, it was known as Comparative Religion or the Science of Religion and, in the USA, there are those who today also know the field as the History of religion ( associated with methodological traditions traced to the University of Chicago in general, and in particular Mircea Eliade, from the late 1950s through to the late 1980s ).

According to Mircea Eliade, the medieval " Gioacchinian myth [...] of universal renovation in a more or less imminent future " has influenced a number of modern theories of history, such as those of Lessing ( who explicitly compares his views to those of medieval " enthusiasts "), Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling, and has also influenced a number of Russian writers.

According to historian Sorin Antohi, Eliade may have actually encouraged Protochronists such as Edgar Papu to carry out research which resulted in the claim that medieval Romanians had anticipated the Renaissance.

Calling Marxism " a truly messianic Judaeo-Christian ideology ", Eliade writes that Marxism " takes up and carries on one of the great eschatological myths of the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean world, namely: the redemptive part to be played by the Just ( the ' elect ', the ' anointed ', the ' innocent ', the ' missioners ', in our own days the proletariat ), whose sufferings are invoked to change the ontological status of the world ".

In Shamanism, Eliade argues for a restrictive use of the word shaman: it should not apply to just any magician or medicine man, as that would make the term redundant ; at the same time, he argues against restricting the term to the practitioners of the sacred of Siberia and Central Asia ( it is from one of the titles for this function, namely, šamán, considered by Eliade to be of Tungusic origin, that the term itself was introduced into Western languages ).

According to Eliade, Marxism " takes up and carries on one of the great eschatological myths of the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean world, namely: the redemptive part to be played by the Just ( the ' elect ', the ' anointed ', the ' innocent ', the ' missioners ', in our own days the proletariat ), whose sufferings are invoked to change the ontological status of the world.

According to Mircea Eliade, one pervasive mythical theme associates heroes with the slaying of dragons, a theme which Eliade traces back to " the very ancient cosmogonico-heroic myth " of a battle between a divine hero and a dragon.

According to Eliade, Christianity retains a sense of cyclical time, through the ritual commemoration of Christ's life and the imitation of Christ's actions ; Eliade calls this sense of cyclical time a " mythical aspect " of Christianity.

However, Judeo-Christian thought also makes an " innovation of the first importance ", Eliade says, because it embraces the notion of linear, historical time ; in Christianity, " time is no longer the circular Time of the Eternal Return ; it has become linear and irreversible Time ".

Because they contain rituals, Judaism and Christianity necessarily — Eliade argues — retain a sense of cyclic time:

According to Eliade, " Christianity strives to save history ".

Ultimately, according to Jesi, Eliade sees Christianity as the only religion that can save man from the " Terror of history ".

Thus, Eliade concludes, " Christianity incontestably proves to be the religion of ' fallen man '", of modern man who has lost " the paradise of archetypes and repetition ".