Review of Moshe Idel, Mircea Eliade. De la magie la mit (Mircea Eliade. From Magic to Myth), translation by Maria‑Magdalena Anghelescu (Iași: Polirom, 2014).

The article discusses the contribution of Moshe Idel’s vast research to the field of religious studies. The terms which best capture his overall approach are “plurality” and “complexity”. As a result, Idel rejects essentialist definitions of “Judaism”, or any other religious tradition. The ensuing question is: to what extent does his approach allow for the characterization of Judaism as a singular phenomenon which can be differentiated from other religions? The answer seems to lie in Idel’s definition (...) of the “connectivity” between the human and the divine as a relationship which “underlies the basic notion of religion as such”. Opposing Rudolph Otto’s description of the holy as remote, Idel explains holiness in terms of closeness and connection. This reading of religion is supported by that of sociologist Daniéle Hervieu-Léger, who describes religious practice as constructing a “chain of memory” - a term which echoes with Idel’s analysis of Jewish ritual as the construction of “enchanted chains” of connectivity. Hervieu-Léger’s study points towards the possibility of regarding Judaism, as a family-centered tradition, as paradigmatic for traditional religion. Indeed, in recent studies, Idel describes the construction of memory through ritual practice as the most important means of shaping identity for all forms of traditional Judaism. The model of “chains of memory” can be located in classical Jewish texts, such as a much-quoted passage by Nahmanidies - the extremely important thirteenth-century Kabbalist and legal authority. This text describes Jewish rituals as maintaining continuity across generations. We see then that the notion of connectivity moves us closer to the concerns found in central Jewish texts, rather than imposing modern agenda on them. It can also be used to determine to what extent a given idea or practice is connected to the chain of connectivity constructed by a given tradition or is rather tangential to it. In this sense, it is a corrective to the danger of “dispersion” that is implicit in Idel’s focus on plurality and complexity. (shrink)

This anthology is a collection of key essays by and about the Romanian-American Historian of Religions, Mircea Eliade. It introduces the beginning student to the terms and categories of Eliade's understanding of religious behaviour as a universal phenomenon: apprehension of the sacred by homo religiosus, humanity's religious mode, through hierophanies, revelatory events and objects. The analysis of religious behaviour as the restoration of illud tempus, an alternative continuum of sacred time, through myth, ritual, and symbol is a central feature (...) of that understanding, assumed to have an authentic application in the struggle for freedom from the human condition. As well as Eliade's own understanding and its implication for the study of Religions, the collection alerts the reader to the critical response to the problems of his thought. This includes the issues raised by Eliade's biography, politics, and career as one of the most successful and influential historians of religion of the late 20th Century. Moving from inter-war Romania, through India during the struggle for independence, to war-time London and Lisbon, post-war Paris, and finally to America in the 60s and 70s, Eliade's career traces a complex trajectory involving many problems central to the academic study of religion and culture. (shrink)

The definition and the aspects of myth, regardless of the time in which they appeared and the religion in which they were known, is present in Eliade’s thought throughout his life and work. The myth talks about the outbreak and manifestation of the sacred in the world, underlying realities as we know them. The myth explains human existence. The man, imitating the divine model, is able to transcend the profane time, returning to the mythical time. The sacred is equivalent with (...) the reality. It is central for understanding in the hermeneutical effort to define homo religiosus. (shrink)

Moshe Idel, Hasidism între extaz si magie Ed. Hasefer, Bucuresti, 2001.

As Mircea Eliade’s translator and biographer Mac Linscott Rickett states, Eliade involved the whole discipline of the history of religions in the quest for meaning. The paper examines Eliade’s approach of religious documents, with benefits and shortcomings as appraised by some of his American critics, and looks closely at the Eliadean creative hermeneutics and the ambitious mission he envisaged for the discipline he has founded in the United States.

The present article argues that the Hasidic exegesis differs dramatically from most of the Kabbalistic schools that preceded it. Symbolic exegesis based upon the importance of a theosophical understanding of divinity was relegated to the margin. One major characteristic of the Hasidic masters is that they preferred binary types of oppositions that in their view shape the discourse of the sacred texts. They became much less interested in the Bible as a reflection of the inner and dynamic life of God, (...) than in the understanding of the text as referring to the inner spiritual development of the mystic. From this point of view, Hasidism was closer to the metaphorical approach of the ecstatic brand of Kabbalah, which also emphasized the paramount importance of inner transformation. What is also characteristic of Hasidic exegesis is the monadization: a combination of the atomization of the biblical text, with both magical and mystical understandings of the verbal human activity related to ritual. (shrink)

Moshe Idel, Golem Ed. Hasefer, Bucuresti, 2003. Traducere de Rola Mahler-Beilis.

This article opens with a brief phenomenological comparison between Gershom Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism and Moshe Idel’s Kabbalah: New Perspectives. Scholem’s book is diachronic or historical in approach while Idel’s is primarily synchronistic, focusing on devekut (devotion) in Jewish Mysticism, the concept of Unio Mystica, a variety of mystical techniques, Kabbalistic theosophy, theurgy, and Kabbalistic hermeneutics. The author concentrates on four characteristics of Idel’s studies in Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism: ecstatic Kabbalah, the definition of (...) Jewish mysticism, Hasidism as a spiritual movement and the study of Jewish magic. In addition he discusses key criticisms leveled at Idel’s treatment of these subjects. (shrink)

Moshe Idel, Ascension on High in Jewish Mysticism: Pillars, Lines, Ladders Budapest:Central European University Press, 2005.

800x600 Normal 0 21 false false false RO X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 The dominant approaches to Kabbalah in modern scholarship are basically historical and philological. This is the manner in which the founder of modern scholarship in the field, Gershom Scholem, described his school. Though he also embraced more phenomenological analyses, this approach is less represented in the first stages of Kabbalah scholarship, though it becomes more evident in the last decades. In the writings of Schlomo G. Shoham, an existential approach (...) to Kabbalah - as to humanities in general - has been offered, one in which the experiential dimensions of this lore have been put in sharp relief. In the following pages I shall attempt to underscore some existential interpretations of the concept of Paradise in Jewish mysticism, emphasizing the different spiritual structures that informed the various schools. In a manner reminiscent of Shoham's emphasis on different structures that explain human spiritual life and behaviour, the following remarks will juxtapose the divergences between the ecstatic and theosophical-theurgical schools of Kabbalah. (shrink)

Ceea ce ne uneşte: istorii, biografii, idei. Sorin Antohi în dialog cu Moshe Idel (Those things that bind us: histories, biographies, ideas. Sorin Antohi in dialogue with Moshe Idel) Ed. Polirom, Iaşi, 2006.

Androgyny has more than one meaning. It may refer to the anatomical coexistence of two sorts of sex organs in the same body; or else to the allegory of a form of spiritual perfection. In other cases, it is related to the explicit coexistence of male and female qualities in the same entity. From a study of the various expressions used in the Hebrew of the Bible to evoke the dual nature of the first human, an attempt is made here (...) to show how this theme has been treated in certain theosophicotheurgical schools of Kabbalah, and more particularly with regard to the question of equality between men and women in Jewish tradition. (shrink)

The religiosity of the first settlers shaped the American spirit, the essence of national traits, shared values and ideals that define the American nation. Influential in public discourse in the colonial times and beyond, religious expression has its place in contemporary American political discourse. This article is concerned not so much with the intermingling of religion and politics in theUnited States of Americaas with the religiousness that has permeated political speech. For illustration, we look for religiousness inU. S.presidential (...) inaugural addresses and other speeches to the nation. Inspiring and a good start in our enterprise are Mircea Eliade’s reflections on myth and on religiousness, which is sometimes unconscious and camouflaged without ceasing to be a constant value of humankind, or in his frequent expression, a human universal. (shrink)

Moshe Idel, Kabbalah - New Perspectives, Nemira Publishing House, Bucuresti, 2000.

Moshe Idel, Perfectiuni care absorb: Cabala si interpretare Ed. Polirom, Iasi, 2004, prefata de Harold Bloom, traducere de Horia Popescu.

Mircea Eliade’s ideas developed in the scientific and literary works had considerable influence over the past century, both among historians of religions, imposing the discipline that he promoted in many prestigious universities from America and from around the world, and among other researchers in related fields of the history of religions. The question today is about what is left of Eliade’s work after a careful analysis according to the grids of thought of our century. The question that has not (...) yet found a definitive answer is of special interest, because the themes dealt by the Romanian scientist are universal and permanent. Among them, the problem of the timeliness of myth occupies the essential rank closely related with all the concepts developed by Eliade in his works. In this sense, the relationship between the man of archaic societies, often called homo religious, and the Christian man is also defined by how the myth is perceived by the two of them. Through its exact understanding human religiosity from forever and everywhere can always be redefined. (shrink)

The publication of Moshe Idel’s book, Kabbalah: New Perspectives marks a turning point in the field of Jewish mysticism. In this volume, Moshe Idel offered phenomenology as an alternative key to appreciating the history and ideas of Jewish mystical traditions. This study returns to this book in order to assess and critique the meaning and function of phenomenology in his early scholarship, as a prelude to the developing and possibly changing methodologies that he has employed in (...) numerous studies published since the appearance of his now classic study. The study considers the connection between phenomenology and experience and its role within the multiple perspectives suggested in the volume. Moshe Idel’s methodology is thus appreciated within the larger context of his work, positioned within the history of scholarship in the field and serves as a measure of the turn to new perspectives. (shrink)

It is not without fear and trembling that a historian of religion approaches the problem of myth. This is not only because of that preliminary embarrassing question: what is intended by myth? It is also because the answers given depend for the most part on the documents selected by the scholar. From Plato and Fontenelle to Schelling and Bultmann, philosophers and theologians have proposed innumerable definitions of myth. But all of these have one thing in common: they are based on (...) the analysis of Greek mythology. Now, for a historian of religions this choice is not a very happy one. It is true that only in Greece did myth inspire and guide epic poetry, tragedy and comedy, as well as the plastic arts; but it is no less true that it is especially in Greek culture that myth was submitted to a long and penetrating analysis, from which it emerged radically ‘de-mythicised’. If in every European language the word ‘myth’ denotes a ‘fiction’, it is because the Greeks proclaimed it to be such twenty-five centuries ago. What is even more serious for an historian of religion: we do not know a single Greek myth within its ritual context. Of course this is not the case with the paleo-Oriental and Asiatic religions; it is especially not the case with the so-called ‘primitive’ religions. As is well known, a living myth is always connected with a cult, inspiring and justifying a religious behaviour. None of this of course means that Greek myth should not figure in an investigation of the mythical phenomenon. But it would seem unwise to begin our kind of inquiry by the study of Greek documents, and even more so to restrict it to such documents. The mythology which informs Homer, Hesiod and the tragic poets represents already a selection and an interpretation of archaic materials, some of which had become almost unintelligible. In short, our best chance of understanding the structure of mythical thought is to study cultures where myth is a ‘living thing’, where it constitutes the very ground of the religious life; in other words, where myth, far from indicating a fiction , is considered to reveal the truth par excellence. (shrink)

Linguistic magic can be divided into three major categories: the fiatic, the Orphic and the talismanic. The first category includes the creation of the signified by its signifier, the best example being the creation of the world by divine words. The Orphic category assumes the possibility of enchanting an already existing entity by means of vocal material. Last but not least is the talismanic, based on the drawing of energy by means of language, in order to use this energy for (...) magical purposes. While the fiatic view assumes the complete superiority of the creator over the created object, the Orphic presupposes a certain similarity between the subject-magician and its object, whose role is to understand and follow the instructions of the magician. In these two categories meaning seems to be a crucial part of the magical linguistic activities. In the third category, the talismanic, linguistic powers are used in order summon higher powers which then descend to take possession of it. By talismanic I refer to the inherent ability of an entity, material, a moment in time, or a human act to draw upon these powers. Unlike amulets, which are usually taken to be objects that protect their possessor, the talisman is able to add power. (shrink)

Analyzes the theories of myth of Cassirer, Barthes, Eliade, and Hillman and offers an alternative original account of myth-making as an essential strand of cultural production.

In the first part of this text, the author includes a synthesis of Mircea Eliade and Ioan Petru Culianu’s thoughts regarding the actuality of ancient mythologies and their camouflaged presence within the cultural, political, social, and entertainment practices of the contemporary human being. The main idea of this text is that the Eliade-Culianu paradigm of the myths’ interpretations is of actuality because, in the first place, does not deceive the specific of mythology and explains myths through myths. The (...) text then presents the author’s ideas regarding the camouflaged presence of certain mythological phantasms within the games of the quotidian. Basically, these phantasms refer to the social mythologies reactivated in the world after September, 11, 2001, to mythological content of the neighborhood subcultures’ practices, as well as to the need of reinventing the “black sheep”. The author also mentions the mythological sequences disguised in a successful book - The Da Vinci Code - or in the extravagant car promotions in the contemporary Occident. (shrink)

“Religion” is a conglomerate of ideas, cosmologies, beliefs, institutions, hierarchies, elites and rites that vary with time and place, even when one “single” religion is concerned. The methodologies available take one or two of these numerous aspects into consideration, reducing religion’s complexity to a rather simplistic unity. In order to avoid this situation, the ensuing conclusion is a recommendation for methodological eclecticism. The text attempts to characterize not specific scholars or schools but major concerns that define the specificity of particular (...) styles. I propose that they may be grouped in eight main categories of approaches: the theological approach, the historical approach, the psychological approach, the textual-literary approach, the comparative approach, the ritualistic-technical approach, the phenomenological approach and the cognitive approach. This proposal for methodological eclecticism is supplemented with another concept: perspectivism. The last part of the article deals mainly with topics found in a vast literature designated by the umbrella term “Kabbalah”, addressing especially the approach proposed by Gershom Scholem. (shrink)

Moshe Idel, Cabalistii nocturni Traducere de Ana-Elena Ilinca, Ed. Provopress, Cluj-Napoca, 2005.

This article is about Mircea Eliade’s rapport to exile, both his and other Romanians’. His approach of the exilic experience allows an incursion into the “diaspora” semantic field in the study Theorizing Diaspora by Jana Evans Braziler and Anita Mannur and a look at Eliade as a “diasporic subject”. To Eliade, the relationship with homeland and the diasporic identity assume religious significance. He urges members of the Romanian diaspora to hold the native country sacred as a ‘Jerusalem in the (...) Sky’. A strong believer in the salvaging power of cultural creation over the political factor, he wanted his work to be a response to the communist regime in Romania. (shrink)

Mircea Eliade, often described by scholars and in the popular press as the world's most influential scholar of religion, symbolism, and myth, was trained as a philosopher, received his Ph.D. in philosophy, and taught in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Bucharest in the 1930s. Although he became a historian and phenomenologist of religion within the field of religious studies, his approach, methodology, and analysis are informed by philosophical assumptions and philosophical normative judgments. In several of his (...) writings, he goes far beyond the history and phenomenology of religion and presents a strong critique of contemporary Western philosophy as part of his larger critique of contemporary Western culture. He submits that contemporary philosophy,as a development of the Enlightenment, claims to be universal, but is in fact ethnocentric and provincial; claims to be innovative and creative, but is in fact increasingly trivial, insignificant, and uncreative. Eliade repeatedly charges that contemporary philosophy is bankrupt and desperately in need of renewal. I shall provide his philosophical critique of dominant Western philosophy, his analysis of self-other encounters, and his alternatives for philosophical renewal through the emerging confrontations, engagements, and creative dialogues between Asian, other non-Western, and Western philosophical perspectives. (shrink)

This text deals with Moshe Idel’s perspective on the connections between Maimonide’s philosophy and Abulafia’s esoteric thought. Idel analyses their thinking under the aspect of their appearance, inter-relation, and inner dynamics. Idel’s analysis reveals that Maimonide’s attempt to issue an esoteric book, one that would give back to Judaism a lost esoteric science, gave a particular impulse to the development of Jewish mysticism, and especially to the ecstatic Kabbalah. Maimonide attempted to transform philosophy into a mystic (...) instrument of understanding the secrets of the Torah. This fact determined Abulafia to re-signify the Maimonidean thought and to integrate it into a limit experience of “unio mystica”. In this context, several aspects concerning the arcanization and the super-arcanization of philosophical and mystical texts are discussed. (shrink)

Moshe Idel, Cabalistii nocturni Editura Provopress, Cluj-Napoca, 2005, 81 pp.

If archaic symbolism can be regarded as representative of a dimension of consciousness, the question of interpretation is primary. This chapter debates this question by reference to a hermeneutic developed by the historian of religions and phenomenologist, Mircea Eliade. It outlines Eliade's structural hermeneutic, and suggests its potential as a program for philosophical interpretation. There is a polemic in Eliade's thought which provides the negative foundation for his hermeneutic, namely, the polemic against reductionism. The attempt to understand the sacred (...) as an irreducible form is accompanied by the technical attempt to capture its intentional mode. Eliade has suggested that encounter with the myths and symbols of non‐Western and archaic cultures may “lead to a renewal in the philosophic field, in the same way that the discovery of exotic and primitive arts half a century ago opened up new perspectives in European art”. (shrink)

This study consists of two parts. The first is an examination of the hermeneutical presuppositions underlying the theory of models that Moshe Idel has applied to the study of Jewish mysticism. Idel has opted for a typological approach based on multiple explanatory models, a methodology that purportedly proffers a polychromatic as opposed to a monochromatic orientation associated with Scholem and the so-called school based on his teachings. The three major models delineated by Idel are the theosophical-theurgical, (...) the ecstatic, and the magical or talismanic. Idel’s hermeneutic rests on the assumption that the phenomenon of Jewish mysticism (as the phenomenon of religion more generally) cannot be essentialized, and therefore no one methodological approach should be privileged as the exclusive means to ascertain it. In the second part of this study, I raise the possibility that affirming set patterns of thought and a unified system of symbols that link together kabbalists from different historical periods might not inevitably implicate the scholar in a methodological reductionism. Moving beyond a binary logic, which is still operative in the postmodern dichotomy of truth and dissimulation, I surmise that the polysemic nature of the text that may be elicited from kabbalistic sources is not dependent on the rejection of laying claim to an inherent and original intent that is recoverable through proper philological attunement. Multivocality and essentialism are not mutually exclusive. Kabbalah, I submit, is a cultural-literary phenomenon that illustrates an open system in which each moment is a mix of newness and repetition, each event a renewed singularity. The hermeneutical praxis appropriate to this system displays a temporality linked to the conception of time in its most rudimentary form as an instant of diremptive reiteration, the repetition of the same as different in the renewal of the different as same. The tendency to generalize, therefore, should not be misconstrued as viewing the variegated history of Jewish mystical doctrines and practices monolithically. (shrink)

Petru Moldovan, Moshe Idel. Dinamica misticii iudaice Provopress, Cluj, 2005.

Moshe Idel, Maimonide şi mistica evreiască Trad. rom. Mihaela Frunză, Ed. Dacia, Cluj, 2001.

This volume comprises papers presented at a conference marking the 50th anniversary of Joachim Wach's death, and the centennial of Mircea Eliade's birth.

Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) is one of the most famous and significant authors in the history of western esotericism. Crowley has been long ignored by scholars of religion whilst the stories of magical and sexual practice which circulate about him continue to attract popular interest. "Aleister Crowley and the Temptation of Politics" looks at the man behind the myth - by setting him firmly within the politics of his time - and the development of his ideas through his extensive and extraordinarily (...) varied writings. Crowley was a rationalist, sympathetic to the values of the Enlightenment, but also a romantic and a reactionary. His search for an alternative way to express his religious feelings led him to elaborate his own vision of social and political change. Crowley's complex politics led to his involvement with many key individuals, organisations and groups of his day - the secret service of various countries, the German Nazi party, Russian political activists, journalists and politicians of various persuasions, as well as other writers - both in Europe and America. "Aleister Crowley and the Temptation of Politics" presents a life of ideas, an examination of a man shaped by and shaping the politics of his times. (shrink)

Aleister Crowley is one of the most famous and significant authors in the history of western esotericism. Crowley has been long ignored by scholars of religion whilst the stories of magical and sexual practice which circulate about him continue to attract popular interest. "Aleister Crowley and the Temptation of Politics" looks at the man behind the myth - by setting him firmly within the politics of his time - and the development of his ideas through his extensive and extraordinarily varied (...) writings. Crowley was a rationalist, sympathetic to the values of the Enlightenment, but also a romantic and a reactionary. His search for an alternative way to express his religious feelings led him to elaborate his own vision of social and political change. Crowley's complex politics led to his involvement with many key individuals, organisations and groups of his day - the secret service of various countries, the German Nazi party, Russian political activists, journalists and politicians of various persuasions, as well as other writers - both in Europe and America. "Aleister Crowley and the Temptation of Politics" presents a life of ideas, an examination of a man shaped by and shaping the politics of his times. (shrink)

Of the stories describing the adventures full of deep significances of the various rabbis from the glorious Talmudic era, the most famous but also the most exploited is undoubtedly that of the “four sages who entered the Pardes”. If in the Talmudic-Midrashic literature it was used to point out the dangers and achievements that were related to speculations, rather than experiences, and in the mystical literature it was used to point out the dangers that could befall the mystic on his (...) way to God, to the kabbalists, Pardes was an unexplained parable for an unrevealed secret, a generalized metaphor for the danger zones of religious experience, seen as something which was good for the few, but pernicious for others. This article traces the manner in which Moshe Idel analyzes, in his books and lectures, the meanings of this legend, taking the reader on a fascinating journey in time and space, throughout various types of kabbalistic thinking and even maimonidean philosophy. (shrink)

We live in an age dominated by money. As capitalism has intensified and expanded as a social form, money has increasingly colonised the production and reproduction of the human condition. We live in an age of monetarism: an age in which social and political regulation are increasingly subordinate to the dictates of ‘sound money'. We live in an age of national lotteries: an age where millions attempt each week to garner enough money to ‘free’ themselves from the grinding agony (...) of wage labour. We live in an age in which people increasingly grasp the alienation inherent in the domination of society by money and attempt to reassert a sense of human community through the introduction of local currency and barter schemes. But we also live in an age where Marxism is supposedly dead; where we can only gaze in ironic postmodern wonder at the increasing domination of the human condition by money and its social forms. In this paper we go beyond this postmodern orthodoxy to suggest that it is not only possible to develop a historically materialist analysis of money and its social forms but also that this project is essential if we are to reclaim our humanity from the deadening alienation of money and its social forms. We explore the magical qualities of money, the qualities which have enthralled and transfixed bourgeois social science from the classical economy of Adam Smith to the present day postmodernists. We argue that the lasting legacy of Marx was to uncover the historical materiality underlying the magical appearance of money: a discovery of the alchemic properties of money capital through which money becomes more money and which involves the material subordination of living labour to the valorisation of money capital. (shrink)