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Rare Genius
I betray my nerdiness by revealing the first book I read on transgenderism was by a dead professor of Philosophy or Religion famous only among other profs and writers. My kind of guy. Translated from French, Eliade writes in the middle chapter of this short book describing the important role of the mythic androgyne. God can only be expressed fully as a paradoxical coincidence of opposites. If God were expressed wholly as a human, that human would be both entirely female and entirely male simultaneously. Thus Jesus, at least post-resurrection, must have been an androgyne (not merely intersex) as was the pre-Woman Adam. He traces a number of Biblical and non-canonical early Christian sources with variations on this theme, showing this idea is already built by God into our brains. I don't know that Eliade ever remarked about modern transgenderism - he liked history too much - but I am sure he would have loved genderqueer and intergender. Personally, this has become the foundation of my thinking on Transgenderism. ... Read more

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The influential scholar of religion Mircea Eliade envisioned a spiritually destitute modern culture coming into renewed meaning through the recovery of archetypal myths and symbols. Eliade defined this restoration of meaning as a "new humanism" of existential meaning and cultural-religious unity. Through a biographical exegesis of Eliade's life and writings from his earliest years in Romania to his final ones as professor of the history of religions at the University of Chicago, Cave sets forward a structural description of what this "new humanism" might have meant for Eliade, and what it signifies for modern culture. Cave concludes by endorsing Eliade's radically pluralistic vision which, he argues, offers a key to the revitalization of our demythologized and material culture. This study repositions previous Eliadean studies and places the "new humanism" as the paradigm in relation to which future readings of Eliade should be evaluated. ... Read more

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First published in 1991, "Waiting for the Dawn" is the result of a year-long interdisciplinary study of Mircea Eliade's scholarly, literary, and autobiographical works which took place at the University of Colorado in 1982. With a new preface by David Carrasco that takes into account recent developments in Eliade scholarship, this important work is now back in print at a time of renewed interest in Eliade thanks to Francis Ford Coppola's screen adaptation "Youth without Youth (2007)". ... Read more

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Ian Myles Slater on: Birth and Rebirths of a Book
This little book is a translation of a series of half a dozen lectures, with endnotes providing documentation. The history and bibliography are a little tricky. "Patterns of Initiation: The Haskell Lectures of 1956" were delivered at the University of Chicago by Mircea Eliade, a Romanian exile who had been recruited from the Sorbonne to help build up the University's Comparative Religion department. The lectures were composed in French, Eliade's main second language, and the English translation by Willard Trask was published in 1958, by Harvill Press, London, and Harper & Brothers, New York, as "Birth and Rebirth."

A new title, "Rites and Symbols of Initiation: The Mysteries of Birth and Rebirth," was introduced with the Harper Torchbook paperback edition of 1965. (The publisher had meanwhile become Harper & Row; and today is included in HarperCollins.) There was a later (1980) Harper College Division reprinting, as well. The most recent edition of the book is under this title is a reprinting with a new Foreword by Michael Meade, by Spring Publications (I have previously reviewed that edition; a slightly modified version is offered here, so you need not look for it.)

Meanwhile, a rather different French edition ("a rehandling of the material") had been published as "Naissances mystiques. Essai sur quelques types d'initiation" (Paris, 1959).

That makes three versions and four titles, if you've lost count. Plus the different imprints of the English-language version.

Eliade (1907-1986) remained connected to the University of Chicago for pretty much the rest of his life. Although from an institutional point of view he wasn't quite the well-organized driving force that had been desired, he continued to produce interesting and exciting work, not all of which has aged equally well. (For a short account of Eliade's life, work, and an evaluation of his place in the twentieth century, see "The Politics of Myth: A Study of C.G. Jung, Mircea Eliade, and Joseph Campbell," by Robert S. Ellwood.)

"Birth and Rebirth" / "Rites and Symbols" is one of a large number of small works by Eliade which stand alongside such monuments of scholarship as "Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy," and "Yoga: Immortality and Freedom," and the attempted summation of his views in the three completed volumes of his "History of Religious Ideas."

The material it contains makes it something of a companion to "Shamanism" in particular, giving a more universal context to the initiatory experiences and rituals described there. It deals with ritual responses to "changes of status" in traditional societies, from the commonly recognized "Rites of Passage" (as delineated in Arnold van Gennep's classic book of that name), such as Birth, Adult-hood, and Death, to cultural constructs, such entry into secret societies, or the company of Gods and Ancestors.

The original lecture-series title, "Patterns of Initiation," is in some ways the best, suggesting at once that Eliade is focusing on recurring themes, rather than unique instances. The more poetic titles, at least of the English-language version, may have been used because a translation of an earlier work had been published already as "Patterns in Comparative Religion."

I think that it remains useful, although according to the classicist Fritz Graf it "remains as superficial as it is dogmatic" ("Magic in the Ancient World," page 264, note 15). I would call it, rather, schematic, concise, and sometimes poorly argued. The documentation, although now obviously rather dated, often is more impressive than the slender body of quotations Eliade provides in his survey of a vast number of times and places. There are also some minor problems with the translation; probably inevitably, with the number of languages involved, in Eliade's own mind as well as the source materials he was using.

Since there are no significant changes in the texts of the English-language editions (a new Foreword makes no great difference to Eliade's work), a reasonably-priced hardcover copy, in reasonably good condition, is an attractive option. I'm not about to give up my aging copy of the Harper Torchbook edition, though. And meanwhile, Spring Publications deserves gratitude for bringing the book back into print. ... Read more