When1: 1936
When2: 1981
Who: Mircea Eliade [Eliade, Mircea]
What: anthropologist
Where: Romania/France
works\ Yoga [1936]; Patterns in Comparative Religion [1949: symbols in religion]; Myth of the Eternal Return [1949: religious ideas about time and history]; Shamanism [1951]; Images and Symbols [1952]; Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries [1957]; Sacred and the Profane [1957]; Two and the One [1962]; Journal III [1970 to 1978]; Ordeal by Labyrinth [1978]; Autobiography [1981]
Detail: He lived 1907 to 1986, studied folk religion {archaic religion}, and compared religious behavior, symbols, and feelings.
Religion is about the sacred. The sacred has unity and is living, sexual or energetic, redemptive or regenerative, clean, and permanent. The sky, sun, moon, water, stones, Earth, trees, ancestors, heroes, and gods can be sacred. The sacred is powerful, awesome, beautiful, and mysterious.
People intuit the sacred and want to be part of it or return to it. People have religious feelings about the sacred and religious experiences of transcendence. Performing sacraments affects person's beliefs and feelings. Religions use symbols, symbol systems, and myths to refer to the sacred.
People want to end history and start over {eternal return myth} {myth of eternal return}, so life will have meaning. Judaic prophets proclaimed that life was trials, punishments, and blessings from God and so was meaningful.
Modern society removes the sacred from history and nature.
Social Sciences>Sociology>History>Religion
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Date Modified: 2022.0224