Mircea Eliade

"No one has done so much as Mr. Eliade to inform literature students in the West about 'primitive' and Oriental religions. . . . Everyone who cares about the human adventure will find new information and new angles of vision."—Martin E. Marty, New York Times Book Review

In volume 2 of this monumental work, Mircea Eliade continues his magisterial progress through the history of religious ideas. The religions of ancient China, Brahmanism and Hinduism, Buddha and his contemporaries, Roman religion, Celtic and German religions, Judaism, the Hellenistic period, the Iranian syntheses, and the birth of Christianity—all are encompassed in this volume. History of Religious Ideas, Volume 2...

This volume completes the immensely learned three-volume A History of Religious Ideas. Eliade examines the movement of Jewish thought out of ancient Eurasia, the Christian transformation of the Mediterranean area and Europe, and the rise and diffusion of Islam from approximately the sixth through the seventeenth centuries. Eliade's vast knowledge of past and present scholarship provides a synthesis that is...

First published in English in 1954, this founding work of the history of religions secured the North American reputation of the Romanian émigré-scholar Mircea Eliade. Making reference to an astonishing number of cultures and drawing on scholarship published in no fewer than half a dozen European languages, The Myth of the Eternal Return illuminates the religious beliefs and rituals of...

Primitive man's discovery of the ability to change matter from one state to another brought about a profound change in spiritual behaviour. In The Forge and the Crucible, Mircea Eliade follows the ritualistic adventures of these ancient societies, adventures rooted in the people's awareness of an awesome new power. The new edition of The Forge and the Crucible contains an...

Shamanism is an essential work on the study of this mysterious and fascinating phenomenon. The founder of the modern study of the history of religion, Mircea Eliade, surveys the tradition through two and a half millennia of human history, moving from the shamanic traditions of Siberia and Central Asia—where shamanism was first observed—to North and South America, Indonesia, Tibet, China,...

A groundbreaking account of the theory and practice of yoga, from the Vedas to the twentieth century. In this landmark book, renowned scholar of religion Mircea Eliade lays the groundwork for a Western understanding of yoga. Drawing on years of study and experience in India, Eliade provides a comprehensive survey of yoga in theory and practice, from its earliest antecedents...