Eliade indicates that, if repetitions of mythical events provided sacred value and meaning for history in the eyes of ancient man, modern man has denied the Sacred and must therefore invent value and purpose on his own.

Early on, a public polemic was sparked between Eliade and Camil Petrescu: the two eventually reconciled and later became good friends.

In 1946, Ionesco indicated to Petru Comarnescu that he did not want to see either Eliade or Cioran, and that he considered the two of them " Legionaries for ever "— adding " we are hyenas to one another ".

In one of his writings, Eliade says, " Against the terror of History there are only two possibilities of defense: action or contemplation.

Eliade differentiates between types of initiations in two ways: types and functions.

Other, more controversial, explanations are grounded in Jungian psychology and the views of Mircea Eliade.

Eliade writes, " Legend, as was natural, bestowed upon him the attributes of St. George, famed for his victorious fight with the monster.

The Gloranthan world is characterised by its complex use of mythology, heavily influenced by the universalist approaches of Joseph Campbell and Mircea Eliade, its Howardian ethos, its long and distinctive history as a setting for role-playing games, its community development and expansion, and ( unusual among early American fantasy role-playing games ) its relative lack of Tolkienesque influence.

Mircea Eliade argued that one of the foremost functions of myth is to establish models for behavior and that myths may also provide a religious experience.

the works of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Ernst Cassirer, Mircea Eliade, Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, and Northrop Frye for various interpretations ).

The Romanian historian of religion Mircea Eliade also noted that Arada, along with Irodiada, was a name used for a Romanian folkloric Queen of the Fairies ( Doamna Zinelor ), whom he believed was a " metamorphosis of Diana ".

Several times during the late 1930s, Eliade publicly expressed his support for the Iron Guard, a fascist and antisemitic political organization.

Noted for his vast erudition, Eliade had fluent command of five languages ( Romanian, French, German, Italian, and English ) and a reading knowledge of three others ( Hebrew, Persian, and Sanskrit ).

Finding that the Maharaja of Kassimbazar sponsored European scholars to study in India, Eliade applied and was granted an allowance for four years, which was later doubled by a Romanian scholarship.

After contributing various and generally polemical pieces in university magazines, Eliade came to the attention of journalist Pamfil Şeicaru, who invited him to collaborate on the nationalist paper Cuvântul, which was noted for its harsh tones.

Eliade later recounted that he had himself enlisted Zilber as a Cuvântul contributor, in order for him to provide a Marxist perspective on the issues discussed by the journal.

Their relation soured in 1935, when the latter publicly accused Eliade of serving as an agent for the secret police, Siguranţa Statului ( Sebastian answered to the statement by alleging that Zilber was himself a secret agent, and the latter eventually retracted his claim ).

They displayed his rejection of liberalism and the modernizing goals of the 1848 Wallachian revolution ( perceived as " an abstract apology of Mankind " and " ape-like imitation of Europe "), as well as for democracy itself ( accusing it of " managing to crush all attempts at national renaissance ", and later praising Benito Mussolini's Fascist Italy on the grounds that, according to Eliade, " Italy, he who thinks for himself is promoted to the highest office in the shortest of times ").

In 1936, Eliade was the focus of a campaign in the far right press, being targeted for having authored " pornography " in his Domnişoara Christina and Isabel şi apele diavolului ( similar accusations were aimed at other cultural figures, including Tudor Arghezi and Geo Bogza ).

Eliade decided to sue the Ministry of Education, asking for a symbolic compensation of 1 leu.

Eliade was kept for three weeks in a cell at the Siguranţa Statului Headquarters, in an attempt to have him sign a " declaration of dissociation " with the Iron Guard, but he refused to do so.

Eliade also claimed that such contacts with the leader of a neutral country had made him the target for Gestapo surveillance, but that he had managed to communicate Salazar's advice to Mihai Antonescu, Romania's Foreign Minister.

Eliade and Wach are generally admitted to be the founders of the " Chicago school " that basically defined the study of religions for the second half of the 20th century.

Romania's secret police, the Securitate, also portrayed Eliade as a spy for the British Secret Intelligence Service and a former agent of the Gestapo.

An unprecedented event occurred with the interview that was granted by Mircea Eliade to poet Adrian Păunescu, during the latter's 1970 visit to Chicago ; Eliade complimented both Păunescu's activism and his support for official tenets, expressing a belief that

In his work on the history of religion, Eliade is most highly regarded for his writings on Alchemy, Shamanism, Yoga and what he called the eternal return — the implicit belief, supposedly present in religious thought in general, that religious behavior is not only an imitation of, but also a participation in, sacred events, and thus restores the mythical time of origins.

Eliade is noted for his attempt to find broad, cross-cultural parallels and unities in religion, particularly in myths.

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 ".

He also recorded that Eliade applied this concept to human creation, and specifically to artistic creation, citing him describing the latter as " a magical joy, the victorious break of the iron circle " ( a reflection of imitatio dei, having salvation for its ultimate goal ).

Later, Mircea Eliade expressed his regret at not having had the chance to redeem his friendship with Sebastian before the latter was killed in a car accident.

For instance, Eliade depicted his arrest as having been solely caused by his friendship with Nae Ionescu.

In his Felix Culpa, Manea directly accused Eliade of having embellished his memoirs in order to minimize an embarrassing past.

In 2005, the Romanian literary critic and translator Antoaneta Ralian, who was an acquaintance of Bellow's, argued that much of the negative portrayal was owed to a personal choice Bellow made ( after having divorced from Alexandra Bagdasar, his Romanian wife and Eliade disciple ).

Since the 1970s Mircea Eliade, a prominent historian of religion, fiction writer and philosopher, has been criticized for having supported the Iron Guard in the 1930s.

In 1927, Eliade traveled to Italy, where he met Papini and collaborated with the scholar Giuseppe Tucci.

It was during his student years that Eliade met Nae Ionescu, who lectured in Logic, becoming one of his disciples and friends.

At the time, he also became interested in the actions of Mahatma Gandhi, whom he met personally, and the Satyagraha as a phenomenon ; later, Eliade adapted Gandhian ideas in his discourse on spirituality and Romania.

Also during the war, Eliade traveled to Berlin, where he met and conversed with controversial political theorist Carl Schmitt, and frequently visited Francoist Spain, where he notably attended the 1944 Lusitano-Spanish scientific congress in Córdoba.

It was during his trips to Spain that Eliade met philosophers José Ortega y Gasset and Eugeni d ' Ors.

However, according to Robert Ellwood, the Eliade he met in the 1960s was entirely apolitical, remained aloof from " the passionate politics of that era in the United States ", and " eportedly [...] never read newspapers " ( an assessment shared by Sorin Alexandrescu ).

Upon his entrance into the University, he met Eugène Ionesco and Mircea Eliade, the three of them becoming lifelong friends.

In May of that year, he met with the ousted Nicolae Rădescu, and financed him money to start issuing an anti-communist magazine titled Luceafărul ( of which philosopher Mircea Eliade was editor ).