The stance taken by Eliade resulted in his arrest on July 14, 1938 after a crackdown on the Iron Guard authorized by King Carol II.

[...] Tradition was not for him exactly Burkean ' prescription ' or sacred trust to be kept alive generation after generation, for Eliade was fully aware that tradition, like men and nations, lives only by changing and even occultation.

According to Sebastian, Eliade had been friendly to him until the start of his political commitments, after which he severed all ties.

Handoca opined that Eliade changed his stance after discovering that the Legionaries had turned violent, and argued that there was no evidence of Eliade's actual affiliation with the Iron Guard as a political movement.

Ten years after its premiere, the play was reprinted by Legionary refugees in Argentina: on the occasion, the text was reviewed for publishing by Eliade himself.

An endowed chair in the History of Religions at the University of Chicago Divinity School was named after Eliade in recognition of his wide contribution to the research on this subject ; the current ( and first incumbent ) holder of this chair is Wendy Doniger.

In 1990, after the Romanian Revolution, Eliade was elected posthumously to the Romanian Academy.

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 ).

Religion after Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos.

In May, after witnessing the result of Nazi pressures on Austria ( see Anschluss ), Călinescu decapitated the Guard by ordering arrests of its leaders, beginning with that of Codreanu, as well as many of its members and sympathisers ( including Nae Ionescu and Mircea Eliade ).

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 ).

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

It was based on the novella of the same name by Romanian author Mircea Eliade.

Mircea Eliade, a professor of the history of religions, declared that myth did not hold religion back, that myth was an essential foundation of religion, and that eliminating myth would eliminate a piece of the human psyche.

" Eliade wrote about ' sky and sky gods ' when Christian theology was shaken at its very foundations by the ' death of God ' theology.

In Strabo's opinion, the original name of the Dacians was " daoi ", which Mircea Eliade in his De Zalmoxis à Genghis Khan explained with a possible Phrygian cognate " Daos ", the name of the wolf god.

* Some take the passage seriously, and consider Zalmoxis to have created a ritual of passage ; this theory is mainly supported by Mircea Eliade, who was the first to write a coherent interpretation of the Zalmoxis myth ;

* 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.

The most coherent and perhaps also original interpretation about Zalmoxis is due to Mircea Eliade who believes that Getae actually had a religion based upon a ritual of passage where a ritual death symbolized by the disappearance in a cavern, was followed by a ritual rebirth which was the leaving of the cavern.

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 ".

Mircea Eliade (; – April 22, 1986 ) was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago.

Early in his life, Eliade was a noted journalist and essayist, a disciple of Romanian far right philosopher and journalist Nae Ionescu, and member of the literary society Criterion.

Born in Bucharest, he was the son of Romanian Land Forces officer Gheorghe Eliade ( whose original surname was Ieremia ) and Jeana née Vasilescu.

In one instance during the World War I Romanian Campaign, when Eliade was about ten years of age, he witnessed the bombing of Bucharest by German zeppelins and the patriotic fervor in the occupied capital at news that Romania was able to stop the Central Powers ' advance into Moldavia.

As a child, Eliade was fascinated with the natural world, which formed the setting of his very first literary attempts, as well as with Romanian folklore and the Christian faith as expressed by peasants.

In parallel, Eliade grew estranged from the educational environment, becoming disenchanted with the discipline required and obsessed with the idea that he was uglier and less virile than his colleagues.

At one point, Eliade was flunking four subjects, among which was the study of Romanian language.

Despite his father's concern that he was in danger of losing his already weak eyesight, Eliade read passionately.

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

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.

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 ".

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.

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.

Eliade also became acquainted with the modernist short stories of Giovanni Papini and social anthropology studies by James George Frazer.

Before reaching the Indian subcontinent, Eliade also made a brief visit to Egypt.

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.

In 1930, while living with Dasgupta, Eliade fell in love with his host's daughter, Maitreyi Devi, later writing a barely disguised autobiographical novel Maitreyi ( also known as " La Nuit Bengali " or " Bengal Nights "), in which he claimed that he carried on a physical relationship with her.

Assessments of Eliade's work were in sharp contrast to one another: also in 1936, Eliade accepted an award from the Romanian Writers ' Society, of which he had been a member since 1934.

Eliade was simply released on November 12, and subsequently spent his time writing his play Iphigenia ( also known as Ifigenia ).

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.

Beginning in 1954, with the first edition of his volume on Eternal Return, Eliade also enjoyed commercial success: the book went through several editions under different titles, which sold over 100, 000 copies.

It was also during that period that Mircea Eliade completed his voluminous and influential History of Religious Ideas, which grouped together the overviews of his main original interpretations of religious history.

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.

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.

Thus, argues Eliade, religious behavior does not only commemorate, but also participates in, sacred events:

According to Eliade, most religions that accept the cyclic view of time also embrace it: they see it as a way to return to the sacred time.

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 ).

Kirk also believes that Eliade overextends his theories: for example, Eliade claims that the modern myth of the " noble savage " results from the religious tendency to idealize the primordial, mythical age.

She also argues that Eliade's theories have been able to accommodate " new data to which Eliade did not have access ".

Notably, Eliade was also preoccupied with the cult of Zalmoxis and its supposed monotheism.

In his study of Eliade, Jung, and Campbell, Ellwood also discusses the connection between academic theories and controversial political involvements, noting that all three mythologists have been accused of reactionary political positions.