Mircea Eliade--one of the most renowned expositors of the psychology of religion, mythology, and magic--shows that myth and symbol constitute a mode of thought that not only came before that of discursive and logical reasoning, but is still an essential function of human consciousness. He describes and analyzes some of the most powerful and ubiquitous symbols that have ruled the mythological thinking of East and West in many times and at many levels of cultural development.
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Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French
Original Language: French
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68 of 69 people found the following review helpful
By "mythologue"
Format:Paperback
This insightful book features a central element of Eliade's work as a whole: a humanistic impulse which envisions the study of symbols as the best possible way to overcome close-mindedness and provincialism, and which holds that a liberation from the traps of historicism is necessary in order to reach the archetypes that somehow inform the multiple 'symbolic incarnations' throughout the ages and peoples. Eliade here considers symbols of centre, time, binding (relying a lot on Dumezil on that topic), waters and shells. The relationship between symbol and history is constantly examined in the book: Eliade suggests that each new meaning ascribed by history to a symbol does not alter the latter's fundamental structure, since the symbol can properly be considered 'transhistorical'. This is as good a work as any to start reading Eliade; many quintessential Eliadian themes are treated here.
0 of 10 people found the following review helpful
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My son requested this book along with others for his studies. He said He Loved it. He asked for more information on the Author. I think the other books he requested are from the same person. THANX !! tires4u@comcast.net
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- Myths and Songs from the South Pacific by William Wyatt Gill on page 107
- Myths, Dreams and Mysteries: The Encounter Between Contemporary Faiths and Archaic Realities by Mircea Eliade on page 119
- The Great Mother (Mythos Books) by Erich Neumann in Back Matter
- Mohenjo-Daro and the Indus Civilization (3 Volume Set) by John Marshall on page 122
- Greek Religion: Belief and Experience in Back Matter
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- Myth and Religion in Mircea Eliade (Theorists of Myth) by Douglas Allen on 23 pages
- Yoga: Immortality and Freedom (Bollingen Series, Vol. LVI) by Mircea Eliade on 6 pages
- 10 Steps in Writing the Research Paper (Barron's 10 Steps in Writing the Research Paper) by Roberta Markham on 5 pages
- Northrop Frye and the Phenomenology of Myth (Frye Studies) by Glen Robert Gill on 4 pages
- Map is not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions by Jonathan Z. Smith on 4 pages
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