Any Mircea Eliade fans here? Just started reading him and his stuff is neat

Any Mircea Eliade fans here? Just started reading him and his stuff is neat.

Hi.

Very underrated author in comparison with Jung and Campbell.

i have some books but havent read them yet

Yes! Eliade is a legend. I'm studying religion at UChicago and his work heavily heavily colors the curriculum here.

Daily reminder that Eliade was a sympathizer of the clerical fascist Romanian Legionary movement and also kept correspondence with the likes of Evola.

He also wrote a book in favor of the Portuguese Salazar regime.

Whatever

His treaty on the history of religions is easily one of the most interesting books I've ever read, Eliade brought a whole new insight into the workings of civilization.

there is something about delving in metaphisics and mysticism that makes people receptive and suportive of authoritarian and militaristic systems

this is a interesting phenomena, its kind of like in the baghavat gita, when god comes down to explain in elaborate detail how all forms are transient and all bodies mortal and its all wrapped in illusion etc etc...only the true self is indistructible and so forth - therefore its perfectly fine to wage war and kill tons of people including your family, just as long as you stay above it and focus on performing your duty

but its not merely religious traditionalism in play, it could just be that a different perspective on things gives a different meaning to certain aspects of life

I hate to be that guy that bursts your bubble with Eliade. But when you are done with him you should read this book:
>pic related

Jonathan Z. Smith pretty much deconstructs the fuck out of Eliade.

Often Eliade is given to undergrads as an introduction to religious studies theory, but the field has shifted pretty far away from Eliade.

If you wish to get more up to date on where theory currently rests in Religious Studies, I recommend Daniel Pals book, Eight Theories of Religion.

I just finished his book on Shamanism and I'll be picking up The Sacred and The Profane. Anything else you guys recommend by him?

Not if you do it for knowledge of the subject, because his understanding of many aspects of religion is sketchy or skewered by either his political inclinations or mystical ones. Being Romanian, I had to read Eliade, and I found his scientific/historical research to be riddled with misinformation and his literature to be soap opera bullshit

>deconstructs the fuck out of Eliade
Yeah doesn't sound like PC liberal academy putting a cordon sanitaire on a "problematic" author at all.
>Hey we were careless and let a non-liberal slip into academia. Worst yet he is kind of a big deal
>Let's comission a book "deconstructing" his work. t. Shill Shillingstein

>his understanding of many aspects of religion is sketchy or skewered by either his political inclinations or mystical ones
It honestly sounds more like YOUR understanding of religion is skewed by your own political and anti-mystical inclinations.

The same shit they tried (and are trying) to pull out with George Dumezil
>His political views are "problematic"
>Therefore his books are "problematic" and must be put on the Index Prohibitorum
>Wait did I say forbidden? I-I meant outdated and unscholarly. Yeah, so outdated. We deconstructed him good. No need to worry about that now ;)
t. Shiller Shillberg

Deconstructions aren't refutations

I mean right? All that mysticism intruding into the scientific quantitative realm of religious studies.

You don't even know my view of things you fucking pleb, yet you make assumptions. Fuck off

I'm working with the given, user. I can't work with anything else.

Are you retarded lad? He wrote history right, the history of religions, and he added his bullshit mysticism faggotry in it, does it seem like a reasonable read for a man who seeks truth and knowledge?
Also, he was dead wrong many times

You are idiotic and not even trying to refute my point. Remove yourself fagbot

>fagbot

Are you projecting? Sounds like you want to play pretend that all scholars have preconceived biases and paradigmes, besides missing the point of religious studies entirely. That is if you're not a downright positivist, in which case you can do whatever.

That all scholars don't have*

>being told you can read something alse than Elliade
>sprout à neo-conservative conspiracy theory out of his ass
>Veeky Forums

They do, but he was writing absolute horseshit and he was making shit up as he went along. Fuck off. Again, didn't address my point

>neo-conservative
I don't think you know what that means.

>absolute horseshit
>making shit up
Wow such valid points how can I ever address this? Your points are shit

And you're not addressing them. Fag

The problem might be that you haven't provided a single concrete textual example

Should I? Are you interested in an actual discussion or are you just gonna sperg like fag?

>Should I?
This board is dedicated to the discussion of history and the other humanities such as philosophy, religion, law, classical artwork, archeology, anthropology, ancient languages, etc. Please use Veeky Forums for discussions of literature. Threads should be about specific topics, and the creation of "general" threads is discouraged.

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Veeky Forums is not /pol/, and Global Rule #3 is in effect. Do not try to treat this board as /pol/ with dates. Blatant racism and trolling will not be tolerated, and a high level of discourse is expected. History can be examined from many different conflicting viewpoints; please treat other posters with respect and address the content of their post instead of attacking their character.

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So you're just gonna sperg like a fag

Don't worry doctor Shillingstein I'm sure your books are good too. I'll make sure I'll check up on
>The empowerment of women in animistic african societies
And the classic
>The black goddess against white patriarchy

That was me telling you that you should post concrete textual examples if you want anyone to engage in a serious discussion with you.

Typical /pol/ack

Owned.

...

All right, gimme 10 minutes and I'll write something up.

Thanks.

OK, I'll just go with "From Zamolxis to Genghis Khan", where he makes shit up like nobody's business.

His assumption is that my Dacian ancestors had a wolven cult, basically conjuring this out of thin air. While it may have been true(I believe Strabon mentions it) that Dacians were calling themselves wolves, it does not prove anything about a distinct cult. Even worse, he mistakes the "dacian wolf"(pic related) for an actual wolf, when it is in fact a dragon, similar to what the neighboring Scythians were using.

Secondly, he pulls the "Romans and wolves" mythology out of his ass. Firstly, he somehow thinks Mars is antropomorphised as a fucking wolf, although there is no proof of that, and by the time Trajan's legions trampled Dacia Mars was considerably more influential as the agrarian god of the post-Marian Reforms legionnaires. His symbol was anyway not a fucking wolf, it was the spear/lance. Moreover he gives unwarranted importance to the she-wolf that fed Romulus and Remus, when the famous statue is actually dated at around 1000 AD, the Romans never gave a fuck about the She-Wolf herself, and made jokes about her being a literal whore. So that's 2 for 2 wrong.

Continued

Do you think it will be a chapter of his new book, Queer Divinity: proving that Zeus is actually a pigmy transgender god -- complete with a through deconstruction of Mircea Eliade's hetero-normative outdated theories? So excited...

Thirdly, he infers Genghis Khan brought the wolf to the Carpathians. Well not him, but Subotai and Batu, you know. And it is true that they wielded the Wolf as a symbol, the Wolf that came from the sky and fucked a deer. However, his implication is that the 2 Romanian principalities(Wallachia and Moldavia) started off as a direct result of the Mongolian Invasion, this theory I believe being "copied" from a controversial theory another historian of ours(Nicolae Iorga) stated, that the Basarab dynasty was of Tartar origin. I'm not getting into that, because it's kind of sketchy and not really related to the point. The point being that the 2 principalities were born "under the sign of the Wolf". This one is plain wrong, as no Medieval Romanian heraldry exhibits wolves, instead they used ravens, vultures, eagles, dragons, snakes(bare in mind hese 2) and especially in Moldavia, the auroch. It is assumed that hunting the aurochs was a tradition that is older than the first Dacian Kingdom, but you'll presently notice that up to this point there is no mention of wolves anywhere. Nor would I expect my medieval ancestors to pay homage to the animal that the invading Mongols brought, the invaders that probably set the medieval lands of Romania back to a degree that it took them a full hundred years more to form the 2 Voievodats, even though they were on the verge of doing it, especially after the vacuum left by the death of Ivan II Asen, whose dynasty they have helped greatly in the fight against Byzantium and the Latin Empire.

Lastly, there are no stories in our folklore about wolves. You'll find plenty of them about snakes and dragons, it's probable that the myth of St. George took the shape it has right now around the Danubian shores, as it is very very similar to the Danubian Knight myth that was very popular among the Dacians and Thracians, the Greeks identifying him as Heron.

tl;dr

Continued
Most of our folktales have an archetype of this kind(The Danubian Knight) as the main hero, but guess what, no wolves. He is fighting unidentified folkloric creatures(zmeu, sg; zmei, pl) which may very well be the snakes/drakes/dragons of old myths.

There is also no association of the wolf with a distinct quality. Hares are cowards. Foxes are cunning. Bears are strong. There is no cultural trademark of Romania that has anything to do with wolves of any kind. Not in ancient coins, not in folklore, not in fucking anything. People saw wolves as pests and nothing more, there is no mythological dimension to them in our culture.

More so, our culture and myth rarely relies on animals. Our myths are usually related to flowers(lilac, lion's foot), trees(sessile, oak, walnut, apple) or grains, since we have always been an agrarian folk.


Pic related is Iovan Iorgovan(iorgovan meaning lilac, Iovan being a Slavic name), a Herculean-type figure in our mythology, who again, fights a Hydra(notice it being a reptilian or snake like creature), myth found near the ancient Roman spa city of Aqua Herculis.

If there's anything to understand from what I wrote, it's that our myths relate to either fighting snakes or dragons(by the way, drac = satan, balaur = dragon in Romanian), or hunting the great ancient beasts of the Carpathians. Never, and I do mean never, is it about wolves.

I hope I made my point.

The Dacian war banner, it's a fucking dragon

So it's basically "We Wuz Romans" shit on par with the "We Wuz Trojans" shit in the Aeneid?

What he wrote? Yeah. We are as Roman as you can expect linguistically tho.

...

I can't condense all this stuff in a fucking paragraph or an infograph for you /pol/ack

>ur myths relate to either fighting snakes or dragons(by the way, drac = satan
Is that true? So why did Vlad Dracula used the dragon as a symbol and a Christian one at that?

It was the symbol of the Christian Order of the Dragon, not Romanian heraldry.

>The Order of the Dragon (Latin: Societas Draconistarum, lit. "Society of the Dragonists") was a monarchical chivalric order for selected nobility,[1] founded in 1408 by Sigismund who was King of Hungary (r. 1387–1437) at the time and later became Holy Roman Emperor (r. 1433–1437).
>The edict of 1408 describes two insignia to be worn by members of the Order: "...we and the faithful barons and magnates of our kingdom shall bear and have, and do choose and agree to wear and bear, in the manner of society, the sign or effigy of the Dragon incurved into the form of a circle, its tail winding around its neck, divided through the middle of its back along its length from the top of its head right to the tip of its tail, with blood [forming] a red cross flowing out into the interior of the cleft by a white crack, untouched by blood, just as and in the same way that those who fight under the banner of the glorious martyr St George are accustomed to bear a red cross on a white field..."

He was a knight of the order however he used that as heraldry for 2 political reasons:
>gaining political favor with Sigismund
>distancing himself from the other branch of the Basarab family, Danesti


However, he used it as a heraldic sign because it was easily accepted by the Wallachians.

drac means devil
as he said dragon would translate as balaur but is closer phoenetically to drac.
Modern romanian uses word dragon as well

Also, Satan is Satana (it has a feminine gender) in romanian

Auzi, ce facultate ai terminat?

Nutefutegrija, sectia Cetibaticapu

Satana is not feminine in Romanian lad. Dragon is used only as of late, due to external influence. And because "balaur" is a derogatory jokey term for gyppos

Satana is feminine and it uses femine articles

Sub soarele Satanei, unlike Sub soarele lui Satan

Shit you're right. The word is, but the personification is still masculine. And we use "drac" much more that "satana". He used to be called "necuratul" or "uciga-l toaca" which are clearly masculine.

well, maybe because masculine gender stands for neutral singular
also angels and devils don't have a gender so in theory you could use any gender when referring to them by name. (in theory as otherwise it would be awkward)
still this does't explain Satana, maybe just to be even more opposed to the masculine Dumnezeu, but linguistics is an odd territory for me and i won't go there

Adică Ștefan Gheorghiu(pardon, SNSPA)?
Marş de semidoct.

Daily reminder that that makes him more based than the usual leftshilling historian

Te trezesti vorbind pizdet? Ba manca-mi-ai pula, zi tu de ce am scris eu acolo nu de faculta in a carei buda o faceam posta pe ma-ta cu decanu

>pizdeț
Aoleu, Radule, tu eşti?

N-am nimic cu c-ai scris aici mă jită moldavă. Eram şi eu curios ce background academic ai, la care tu sari ca turbatul de parcă ți-aş fi zis ceva de mamă.

>radu
Ala e cretinul ala de Molovanon? Ce poponar. Nu, nu-s moldovean(dimpotriva) si traduceri

Myth and Reality challenged my conceptions of the importance of the illusion. Anyone who uses "myth" as a pejorative is not even worth acknowledging

Holy s***, he seems very very evil. Not going to read anything by him anymore, thanks.

Stop maymaying, he has so many inaccuracies in his books you might as well not bother.

Can you recommend a decent English-language book about Romanian mythology and such?

I'd tell you to go with Eliade since his material on Eastern religions is decent, but his work on Romanian mythology is heinously political and wrong. Culianu I believe also worked on it, but being his pupil he is just as faulty if not more.

Your safest bet is to go with foreign writers, Romanians get too touchy-feely when it comes to our past and their views are hence wrong

If you're still around you could try finding something by Lucian Boia

Daily reminder that that's a good part of why we like him

>we

You mean 'you'. Most people don't give a fuck about his political affiliations, he was just shit.

Opinion on Njagu Džuvara?

Thank you user.

Because it doesn't mean anything.

*neagu djuvara

Probably the best Romanian historian alive. Cool AF, if you want to read something about Romanian history Djuvara is the way to go

>decries multiculturalism as being the thing that will tear Europe apart
>is very cynical but logical when it comes to Romanian history
>actual son of an aristocratic family
>ambassador
>critical of US hegemony in Europe
>critical of our ultranationalistic view of history which was bred by the communist regime
>is literally 100 years old and still got swag

Based/10,

>reading Garden of Adonis
>a bull rapes a woman and everyone from the village hears it and thinks its OK