Vol. 17. Nos. 1-2.

Shaman Spring/Autumn 2009

Quest for Primal Knowledge: Mircea Eliade,

Traditionalism, and “Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy”

Andrei Znamenski University of Memphis

The paper is an attempt to answer a question about what might have

prompted Mircea Eliade, who never considered himself an expert on
shamanism and tribal peoples, to write his classic Shamanism: Archaic
Techniques of Ecstasy. It is suggested that for Eliade with his mindset,
which was heavily affected by the philosophy of traditionalism, it was a
logical step to enter the field of shamanism studies. An intellectual and
cultural movement in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s with numerous links
to esotericism, traditionalism fostered quests for “archaic” roots and an
authentic primal tradition. The paper also discusses how humanities and
social science scholars responded to his book and how Eliade’s vision of
shamanism as a cross-cultural primal religion inspired numerous spiri-
tual seekers in the West in the 1960s and the 1970s.

In post-war Paris, in a small apartment stuffed with books a Romanian

émigré scholar was absorbed into writing a volume for which he invent-
ed an enchanting title—Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy.
The name of the scholar is Mircea Eliade (pl. 1). The book, which deals
with tribal religions all over the world, was published in 1951 (fig. 1).
It seemed that the text was destined to vanish into obscurity, like many
other books on similar topics. At least, few people noted its publica-
tion in French. Yet, as the students of shamanism know well, the book
did not vanish. Since the publication of its revised edition in English
(1964), the text became not only the classic in shamanism studies but
it also began to inspire various spiritual seekers who were on the quest
for an alternative to the mainstream Judeo-Christian tradition. The
question this paper addresses is why Eliade chose the topic of shaman-
ism in the first place. What prompted the Romanian émigré scholar to
enter the field that at that time was familiar only to a small group of
26 Andrei Znamenski

Fig. 1. The first French edition (1951) of Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy.

anthropologists specialized in Siberia and North America? For Eliade,

who was the student of Hinduism, Yoga and Oriental mythology, it was
indeed a strange intellectual enterprise. Moreover, the scholar never
considered himself an expert on shamanism and tribal peoples. The
timing for such a project did not appear appropriate either: Eliade was
already working on another project—a mystery novel Forbidden For-
est (1978). Nevertheless, he found it necessary to compose a lengthy
treatise on shamanism. Addressing the posed question not only will
help us understand the motives that drove Eliade to write his famous
shamanism volume but it will also provide an additional insight into
the ideas that shaped Eliade’s intellectual world, particularly during
Quest for Primal Knowledge 27

his earlier career. Since for the past thirty years Eliade has been the
object of various ideological accusations, it might make sense to see
how valid some of them are.1

Revolt against the Modern World: An Excursion

into Traditionalism
To understand why Eliade wrote his book on “archaic techniques of
ecstasy,” I suggest that we take a better look at the intellectual tradi-
tion that might have inspired him to undertake that project. Sentiments
manifested in the Romanian scholar’s writings and intellectual friend-
ships he struck before the World War II clearly point in the direction of
traditionalism. Many critics of Eliade, especially those who label him
an Eastern Orthodox Christian writer, dismiss or underestimate the
influence of this widespread tradition on the formation of his intellec-

1
For an example of a superficial criticism of Eliade, see an entry dealing with his
biography in a popular on-line encyclopedia “everything2.com”: “He [Eliade] was
deeply concerned with religion in and of itself, and was interested in knowing what we
can learn about it if we accept in on its own terms. Eliade was an Orthodox Christian. He
remained one all his life, despite a stint with the Shamans of Yakutsk and at least a two
year stint in a cave with a Yogi master. He was also a facist sympathizer, connected to the
Legion of the Angel Michael in Romania, who believed that the main result of the study
of comparative religion would be to prove that Christianity, and specifically, the narrow
brand of Greek Orthodox Christianity practiced in Romania was the most ‘advanced’
religion in the world.” Jordan M, “Mircea Eliade,” http://everything2.com/e2node/
Mircea%2520Eliade (accessed 09/23/08). Except the first sentence, all other pieces of
information are here either false or only partially true. Eliade was never an Orthodox
Christian. He did not visit either Siberia or Russia, and certainly he never observed a
Yakut shaman. In fact, he did not observe any shaman alive. Although he did visit India
and apprenticed with some spiritual masters, he did not have any two year stint in a cave
with a Yogi master. Although Eliade could be called a fascist sympathizer, he never used
comparative religion field to prove that any branch of Christianity was the most advance
religion in the world. In fact, his scholarship was directed against mainstream Christian-
ity, which was one of the reasons his writings became so appealing to spiritual seekers
in Europe and North America in the 1960s and the 1970s. There are numerous studies
dealing with various aspects of Eliade’s biography and scholarship. In my view, one of
the most balanced accounts is Allen 1998.
28 Andrei Znamenski

tual world. Traditionalism was a loose movement that spread in the tur-
bulent European atmosphere of the 1920s and the 1930s. Grounded in
Romanticism and linked to European esotericism, it united conserva-
tive European ideologists, writers, and spiritual seekers who crusaded
against the legacy of Western civilization, particularly Enlightenment,
capitalism and materialism. Overwhelmed by modernity, these people
were seeking to solace themselves in their own indigenous roots and
soil. Quest for roots meant the retrieval of ideal ancient indigenous
spirituality that, as they argued, was erased by cosmopolitan Judeo-
Christian tradition—the foundation of the Western civilization. Julius
Evola, one the prominent ideologists of traditionalism, explicitly con-
veyed the intellectual stance of this movement in the title of his major
book, Revolt against the Modern World.2
In pre-war Europe, young Eliade and the greater part of Romanian
intellectuals were seeking to root themselves in their indigenous soil,
inventing ancient Romanian tradition, promoting Romanian national-
ism, holding in a high esteem popular Christianity and organic “soil”
spirituality.3 The sentiments manifested by Eliade were not marginal
intellectual leanings but a cultural discourse immensely popular in
Europe at that time. Moreover, in such countries as Germany, Hungary,
Italy, and Romania, where large groups of population felt that they were
somehow mistreated or cheated by the West, those sentiments turned
into the dominant discourse and eventually expanded beyond culture
and folklore into the realm of politics and social movements. Although
later Eliade downplayed his pre-war right-wing intellectual leanings
and writings, traditionalism never ceased to affect his scholarship,
including his shamanism book and numerous writings he produced in
the United States in the 1960s and 1970s.
Eliade’s kindred souls were such prominent traditionalist writers
as Rene Guenon (1886–1951), Julius Evola (1898–1974), and Frithjof
Schuon (1907–1998). Moreover, with one of them (Evola) Eliade was
on friendly terms through correspondence and occasional meetings.
Like Eliade, these and other like-minded writers crusaded against
Western civilization and modernity, and propagated anti-capitalism.
They romanticized traditional non-Western cultures and spiritualities,

2
Evola 1995. For a comprehensive history of traditionalism, see Sedgwick 2004.
3
For more about Eliade’s prewar career as a “soil and blood” conservative writer
and scholar, see Laignel-Lavastine 2002.
Quest for Primal Knowledge 29

revered the Middle Ages, popular Christianity, nature and organic life,
archaic symbols and mythology. They were equally attentive to all
things local and national at the expense of the global and cosmopolitan.
Before World War II, such ideas and sentiments were usually associ-
ated with the conservative circles and the Right. Yet, many of the same
sentiments became resurrected by counterculture and environmental-
ism during the second major crusade against Western civilization in
the 1960s and the 1970s. Ironically, this later cultural revolt against the
modern world more often than not manifested itself on the left-liberal
side of a political spectrum. Jumping ahead, I want to stress that this
was precisely the reason why such writers and scholars as Eliade sud-
denly found themselves in a spotlight, becoming intellectual celebri-
ties in the 1960s and the 1970s. This also might explain why to some
authors later Eliade appeared not as a conservative thinker but as a
“radical modernist” (Ellwood 1999: 119).
Not a small thing in traditionalism was a desire to go beyond Europe
to supplement the quest for indigenous roots with the search for inner
spirituality in places that were not yet “spoiled” by Judeo-Christian
tradition. As is known, Eliade travelled to India, where he lived for a
short while apprenticing with Hindu spiritual masters. In the 1930s,
his experiences materialized in a book on Yoga (1958) and in a novel
Bengal Nights (1994). This surgeon to the Orient left a profound
imprint on Eliade’s entire scholarship and helped shape him not only
as a comparative historian of religions but also as a visionary writer
and esotericist who blended elements of Western and Eastern “wis-
doms.” In a similar manner, other prophets of traditionalism conducted
their own reality or imaginary surgeons beyond Europe. Thus, Evola
partook of Eastern spirituality by writing a book on Buddhism, which
in fact represented his own message about what should be considered
traditional rather than a description of actual Buddhism. After a brief
romance with several esoteric orders, Guenon, the intellectual father of
traditionalism, immersed into the study of Muslim spiritual techniques
and eventually left his native France for Egypt where he converted to
Islam. Schuon similarly moved away from Judeo-Christian tradition
to Islam, later supplementing his spirituality with what he viewed as
Native American religion.
The gist of traditionalism is that modernity represents not a progress
but a fall of humankind. Like many prophets of anti-modernity in the
East and in the West, traditionalists have argued that, the Western
30 Andrei Znamenski

Civilization with its Enlightenment and capitalism is not a blessing

but a curse, which should be overpowered by the return to traditional
roots that should help to spiritually anchor disenchanted humankind.
Thus, Guenon begins one of his major works, Orient et Occident, with
an accusation: “Western Civilization appears in history as an anomaly.
Among all known civilizations this is the only one that moves fast
forward toward materialism. This is a harmful trend that started dur-
ing the time they usually call Renaissance, and it is accompanied by
intellectual degeneration.” (Guenon 1941: page numbers) Conventional
Judeo-Christian religion could not provide a way out because, as he
argued, it was itself part of Western civilization and therefore equally
corrupt and degenerate. Although the Orient similarly became spoiled
by the intrusion of materialism and rationalism, in that area tradition
was not yet erased to such a degree as in the West and, therefore, it could
be reawakened. To be exact, for Guenon the Orient was not so much a
geographical entity but rather an ideal spiritual state. Another impor-
tant element of traditionalism was what one can describe a present-day
expression cultural pluralism. In their opposition to reigning Eurocen-
trism, Guenon, Evola, Eliade and like-minded writers viewed all civi-
lizations as inherently valuable, unique and equal to each other. The
only exception was contemporary Western tradition that they treated as
anomaly. Crusading against the West, the traditionalists tended to pri-
oritize non-Western cultures and spiritualities, holding them in a high
esteem and contrasting them with the corrupt and materialistic Judeo-
Christian tradition. Incidentally, the latter intellectual stance resonates
well with the reverence of the “non-Western ones” that became popular
in Europe and North America since the 1960s onward.
It is also important to stress again that historically traditionalism,
which draws on European Romanticism and its irrationalism, symbol-
ism and non-conventional spirituality, has numerous links to Western
esotericism (Versluis 2007: 143–147). All past and present writers and
scholars associated with traditionalism have been very interested in
various types of occult and inner knowledge. Eliade was not an excep-
tion in this case. As part of Western esotericism, traditionalism claims
that it is possible to regain ultimate spiritual knowledge and truth. It
also insists on illuminating people through reshaping their conscience.
Avatars of traditionalism have stressed that the true knowledge is not
available to wide masses, whose minds are clouded by materialism,
rationalism and trivialities. Guenon believed that it was only intel-
Quest for Primal Knowledge 31

lectual elite in the West that was able to be illuminated and then to
become a “ferment” that would breed in regular human minds the
reverence of tradition.
The traditionalism project invited people to go down to the most
archaic layers of culture. A message here is very simple: the older the
better. If contemporary religion was corrupted by modernity and did
not contain anything worthy of revival, if some early modern traditions
were equally ambivalent as a source of inner knowledge, it meant that
it was necessary to dig farther in our most ancient archetypes for the
most traditional and therefore the most reliable spiritual blueprints and
eventually bring them to light. For some traditionalist writers it was
not so much Oriental religious traditions and European Middle Ages
but rather what had preceded them that were to provide the sources
for spiritual regeneration. Hinduism and Buddhism were certainly bet-
ter than contemporary mainstream Christianity and contained much
traditional material to serve the spiritual revitalization of Westerners.
Yet, what if we dig deeper, moving toward the most ancient layers
of human tradition such as pagan, tribal and Stone Age civilizations
that were presumably purer than later cultural additions? Shall not we
stumble in the process of this movement upon something that is more
archaic and therefore more authentic? I suggest that this was precisely
the direction that Eliade was moving at when he decided to embark on
his shamanism project.
Eliade saw his own mission as one of uncovering common ancient
patterns hidden under the thick layer of “civilization.” Writing the
book on shamanism was part of the effort to descent to the depth of
the human spiritual tradition, to find the roots of the primal religion
and to decipher its universal archaic patterns that could be retrieved for
future spiritual regeneration. Incidentally, Eliade became enchanted by
the very word archaic, which he frequently used as a synonym for the
ancient or the primordial. On many occasions, he indiscriminately used
this word to describe Stone Age people, classical civilizations, and
modern “primitives,” all of whom he considered to be the carriers of
primordial wisdom lost by modern civilization. Shamanism appeared
to him as the manifestation of the most archaic primal spirituality
that sprang up independently among all peoples. Furthermore, Eliade
implied that this knowledge could be brought back to help his contem-
poraries reestablish a direct contact with the sacred.
32 Andrei Znamenski

Learning from the Tribal and Ancient Ones

According to Eliade, what “archaic” peoples could do and what modern
ones were unable to do was returning to the primal time through the
myth and ritual. In so-called primal societies, the whole life moved in
a cycle, which brought a spiritual order, security and stability. One can
express this view with the famous Native American metaphor of the
sacred circle so popular in present nature spiritualities of Europe and
North America. Eliade speculated that the downfall of Western society
happened when it squeezed the sacred cycle from its life and, like an
arrow, headed forward toward progress. That was when Westerners cut
themselves from their primal roots. Living under a constant “terror of
history,” people belonging to Judeo-Christian civilization had to pay a
high price: meaningless existence, stress, and eventually death. Eliade
believed that many contemporary problems originated from denigrat-
ing the sacred and spiritual in the Western tradition and creating idols
of science and technology. It was only natural that throughout his
career the scholar remained a stout critic of the Enlightenment tradition
with its stress on rationalism and linear development.
Eliade explained his keen attention to archaic spirituality by his
desire to correct the bias of Eurocentrism, which systematically dimin-
ished and ignored archaic myths and beliefs: “I’m trying to open win-
dows onto other worlds for Westerners—even if some of these worlds
foundered tens of thousands of years ago. My dialogue has other inter-
locutors than those of Freud or James Joyce: I’m trying to understand
a Paleolithic hunter, a yogi or a shaman, a peasant from Indonesia, an
African, etc., and communicate with each one.” (Allen 1998: 301) The
scholar contended that before it was too late, Europeans and Americans
should learn from the non-Western other in order to see the surround-
ing world through the lens of the myth and the spiritual, which would
bring people back to the original harmony.
Eliade repeatedly stressed that although we were condemned to live
within Western culture and history, people should find out ways to
shield themselves against their powers. At least for himself, the writer
outlined the following agenda: “My essential preoccupation is precisely
the means of escaping History, of saving myself through symbol, myth,
rites, archetypes.” To Eliade, such a mindset was a fulfillment of a
natural human need to go beyond the ordinary realm into the world
of dreaming, mythology, and imagination. After all, as he emphasized
Quest for Primal Knowledge 33

in his autobiography, “the thirst for the fantastic, for daydreaming, for
adventure has remained as unquenched as ever in the soul of modern
man.” (Allen 1998: 273)
Since Western civilization had relegated the ancient knowledge to the
level of the subconscious, our job would be to reactivate it and bring it
to the conscious level. Eliade argued that the first step for Westerners
toward the sacred was to learn how to take seriously symbols, meta-
phors, and stories—everything that might bear the remnants of ancient
archetypes. The most accessible way for modern people to escape
profane time and space and return to the mythological past was fiction.
Eliade was convinced that in contemporary society literature was one
of the remaining strongholds of ancient mythological conscience; he
called fiction the “residue of mythological behavior” in modern world.
Although the scholar admitted that the time spent reading a novel was
certainly not the same as the reenactment of a myth by an “archaic”
person, it was still some way to abolish linear history. Eliade himself
was a fiction writer directly involved in the production of this Western
version of mythological consciousness. In his autobiographical notes,
he repeatedly talked about himself as a person of the dual vocation—a
scholar and a writer.
As I have already mentioned in the beginning of this essay, while writ-
ing his Shamanism, Eliade simultaneously worked on a mystery novel,
The Forbidden Forest. At one point, torn between these two projects,
he put aside his research on the “archaic techniques of ecstasy” and
totally devoted himself to the fiction. It is also important to note that in
the beginning of his career in the 1930s, Eliade was a noticeable figure
in Romania’s literary world as an essayist and the writer. His scholarly
texts should not be disentangled from his fiction. On the surface, they
are formatted as academic texts with endnotes and appropriate jargon.
Yet, like the works of his traditionalist colleagues, Eliade’s scholarly
books and articles are not, strictly speaking, conventional academic
writings. Injected with a large dose of imagination, they are located
somewhere in the middle ground between mainstream scholarship and
literature. In his shamanism book, addressed to all contemporaries who
are ready to fly on the wings of their imagination, Eliade immersed
his readers in the fabulous world populated by gods and magicians, the
world where everything was possible. Here, the dead returned to life;
people disappeared and reappeared or turned into animals and vice
versa; laws of nature were abolished; and human beings were endowed
34 Andrei Znamenski

with the power to freely ascend heavenly heights. I think the term
“visionary scholar” best defines such writers as Eliade.

Archetypes of Primal Religion: Eliade’s Vision

of Shamanism
Eliade believed that learning about religions of modern and ancient
tribal people, one could identify the blueprints or, using Carl Jung’s
famous expression, archetypes of the primal religion, which were cor-
rupted and distorted by later civilizations. In his Shamanism book and
other writings, Eliade identified and described a number of primal
archetypes. Thus, one of the chief universal blueprints that manifested
itself in shamanism was ecstasy (altered state), which shamans used
worldwide to interact with the sacred. Another universal pattern he
detected was the shamanic ascent (flight) to the heavenly world.
As an example, let us see how Eliade explained the universal origin of
the latter archetype. The scholar began his book on “archaic techniques
of ecstasy” with an example of the Altaian shaman ritually climbing a
birch tree during his séance—the ascent to the “heavenly” sphere. For
the description of the typical shamanic séance, Eliade relied on Wil-
helm Radloff’s Aus Sibirien (1884). If we assume for a moment, said
Eliade, that the idea of ascension came from the Tibetan Buddhism,
which was in close proximity to the Altai, it would be a false sugges-
tion. One could find similar rituals of ascension to heaven all over the
world among people who had nothing to do whatsoever with the ancient
Orient. Therefore, concluded the scholar, we must assume that the very
symbol of celestial ascent was wired into the spirituality of people all
over the world. In this case, it “belongs to man as such, not to man as a
historical being” (1964: xiv). In the same manner, Eliade discussed the
religious experiences of other ancient and modern people.
Eliade also devoted much attention to another important universal
idea, the symbolism of the center (axis mundi). He pointed out that
manifestations of this symbol could be diverse among various peoples:
the shamanic world tree, the sacred mountain, the bridge that Sibe-
rian shamans use to access the world of spirits during their spiritual
journeys, the smoke hole in a nomadic yurt, the shaman drum, and
temples or sacred towns in more “advanced” civilizations (fig. 2). Still,
Quest for Primal Knowledge 35

Fig. 2. On the quest for archetypes of primal religion; according to Eliade, one of
these archetypes was the cosmic center (axis mundi), which, for example, manifested
itself in the cross-cultural idea of the world tree. Drawing from Philpot (1897: 115).

in essence, all of them conveyed the universal archetypical idea of the

center. For example, to Eliade, the fact that the Siberian shamanic drum
was made of wood of ritually selected trees pointed to the link with the
world tree, which again mirrored the idea of the mystical center.
He also stressed that the shamanic universe worldwide consisted
of three levels (another archetypical pattern): the upper, middle, and
lower worlds, which are connected by the central axis (the world tree
or the sacred mountain). Eliade certainly knew well that the picture
of spiritual universes varied among different cultures. For example,
in his shamanism book, he indicated that, among the Altaians, some
people believed that there were seven “heavens,” while others talked
about nine “heavens.” Still, eager to locate universal patterns, Eliade
called such variations later additions that “contaminated” the deeply
grounded universal archaic idea of three worlds. For example, he
suggested that the idea of the seven-layered cosmos reached several
Siberian indigenous groups through the classical Orient. Always on
36 Andrei Znamenski

the quest for ancient cross-cultural religious symbolism, Eliade stood

close to Jung, another visionary scholar who later became popular in
countercultural circles and who shared a somewhat similar vision of
the sacred. Although Jung’s ideas were grounded in the scholarship of
psychology, like Eliade, he was interested in identifying cross-cultural
archetypes of spiritual life.
The particular universal symbols Eliade identified in shamanism
entered his scholarship through Finnish folklore writings that discuss
Eurasian mythologies. Especially important were Der Baum des Leb-
ens (1922) and Die religiösen Vorstellungen der Altaischen Völker
(1938) by Uno Harva-Holmberg. Eliade took the archetypical sym-
bolism that Harva-Holmberg found in the mythology and spirituality
of Eurasian peoples and extended it to the rest of the world. Another
influence came from the ethnographies of Siberian regionalists, who
also searched for universal patterns in Eurasian mythology and whose
works Eliade knew from German translations and renditions.
It is notable that in “The Formation of North Asian Shamanism,”
which represents the conclusion to his shamanism book, Eliade chal-
lenged those who believed that shamanism was a regionally based
spiritual practice characteristic of northern Asia—a stance popular
among many scholars from the 1920s to the 1940s, when the expres-
sion “shamanism” was not yet used so loosely as today. Just as Sergei
Shirokogoroff found a Buddhist connection in Tungus (Evenki) sha-
manism, Eliade acknowledged the link between Tibetan Buddhism
and the indigenous beliefs of southern Siberia. Did this mean that Bud-
dhism molded Evenki shamanism, as Shirokogoroff suggested? Eliade
did not think so and stressed that Tungus shamanism was not a creation
of Buddhism; he even italicized these words (1964: 498).
The scholar wrote that Oriental tradition might have affected the
form of Evenki shamanism. After all, their spiritual pantheon did
include Buddhist deities. The crux of Eliade’s point was however that
such an influence hardly affected universal archaic patterns of shaman-
ism: the concept of the center, the world tree, the ecstasy, and the celes-
tial ascent to the heaven. The scholar insisted that, despite all of the
changes and innovations, the core elements of shamanism, which were
deeply wired in all archaic cultures, remained the same. It was there-
fore natural for Eliade to surmise that each shamanism, if cleansed
of local cultural traits and alien “coatings,” would always manifest its
universal primal archetypes.
Quest for Primal Knowledge 37

Christian Allegories
How can one differentiate between archaic and modern elements in
shamanism in this case? Eliade answered this question by relying on his
creative imagination, which was certainly informed by his background,
intellectual leanings and biases. For example, he somehow assumed that
the magic flight of the shaman to the heavenly sphere (upper world) to
secure help from celestial beings was an idea that went back to archaic
times, whereas the descent of the shaman to the lower world was a later
innovation. The scholar implied that, in archaic times, spiritual forces
were divided into good, benevolent deities, which resided in the heavenly
sphere, and evil beings, which inhabited the underworld. In reality, many
indigenous tribal societies never knew such a division. For example, many
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century ethnographic accounts tell us that
indigenous peoples of Siberia and North America treated all spiritual
forces, no matter where they resided, as neutral. The spirits could become
benevolent or evil depending on how well humans appeased them.
In contrast, Eliade’s ultimate shaman yearned for flights to the heavens
and viewed spiritual journeys to the lower world as descents to hell. The
scholar treated these lower-world shamanic journeys as a later innova-
tion layered over the archaic spirituality. Eliade characteristically called
them “infernal” travels to the land populated by “demons.” Note his use
of Christian allegories. Following the blueprint of archaic shamanism he
built for himself, Eliade (1964: 500) suggested that Evenki shamanism
was “decadent” because their spiritual practitioners devoted too little
attention to the ascent to the sky (the archaic technique).
Critics correctly contended that in prioritizing the upper world
over the lower world, Eliade betrayed his Christian bias rather than
described the actual evolution of shamanism. The biblical metaphors
were certainly detrimental to his project of composing a cross-cultural
portrait of shamanism, an effort that otherwise might be sound. For
example, Eliade linked the very origin of the shamanic vocation world-
wide to the idea of the human “fall.” He wrote that, from various myths
worldwide, we learn that in some unidentified primal time people had
lived in a sacred manner in intimate harmony with the natural world.
Animals had talked to people, and people had talked to animals. In
fact, they had been so close to each other that human beings could turn
into animals and then back into human beings. At that time of spiritual
paradise, everybody could directly access the sacred.
38 Andrei Znamenski

In “The Yearning for Paradise in Primitive Tradition,” which rep-

resents a condensed summary of his shamanism book, Eliade noted
that as soon as humans broke their intimate connection with “heaven”
by separating themselves from the natural world, they lost their easy
access to the sacred. At the same time, people immediately began to
long for its return, feeling “nostalgia for paradise.” Fortunately, noted
the scholar, ancient and modern tribal societies were able to stay in
tune with the sacred through special mediators—shamans—who helped
common folk “to reconstitute the state of primordial man” (1962: 86).
Shamans were those few individuals who through their esoteric practices
maintained the original ability of people to talk with sacred animals, to
turn into them, and to come back to the ordinary world. All ritual activities
of shamans appeared to Eliade as exercises in the mystical reconstruction
of the primordial natural state lost by humans. As an example, the scholar
used the widespread shamanic practice of imitating the voices of animals.
While for many earlier observers, who viewed tribal spiritualities through
the eyes of psychiatry, this practice was evidence of shamans’ bizarre
behavior, to Eliade, such mimicking meant the establishment of “friend-
ship with animals,” which led to the acquisition of “animal spontaneity”
and eventually advanced the spiritual practitioners “far beyond the general
situation of ‘fallen’ humanity” (1962: 88, 90–91, 98).
Eliade believed that, through shamans, tribal people learned how to
deal with this original fall and therefore never lost their connection with
the natural heaven. In contrast, those societies that stepped on the shaky
path of civilization and organized religions experienced a second fall,
which proved to be fatal. According to Eliade, the circle of traditional
spirituality, represented by myths and shamanic rituals and used to sym-
bolically return people to the state of paradise, became broken. At that
point, the spiritual became not only distant and less accessible but also
went underground to the level of the unconscious. Eventually, the “fall”
into civilization led people to the swamp of secularism, stressed Eliade.
In Western civilization, the sacred was doomed to linger as nostalgia on
the level of fantasies, literature, art, music, or social theory. The excep-
tion was Christian mystics, whom Eliade considered to be modern ver-
sions of shamans. In all other respects, in his view, modern society was
not capable of producing any human agents who, like the shamans of old,
could spiritually return people to the lost paradise.
Although Christian allegories have flawed Eliade’s scholarship, they
might have simultaneously added to the popularity of his books among
Quest for Primal Knowledge 39

spiritual seekers in the 1960s and 1970s. After all, the biases he spilled into
his writings were the biases of an ecumenical writer scholar open to all kinds
of spiritual experiences as long as they fit his Romantic traditionalism and
went beyond mainstream Judeo-Christian religion. The mind of Eliade was
affected not only by biblical idioms but also by a variety of Occidental and
Oriental metaphors. Among them were the ones that came from European
mysticism and astrology, nature-oriented Christianity of Eastern European
peasants, Hindu tradition and from other spiritual systems outside of the
Western historical religions. Philosopher Douglas Allen (1998: 123), who
produced a balanced intellectual biography of Eliade, stresses, “Eliade was
an eclectic, synthesizing, universalizing thinker whose religious orienta-
tion was influenced by a combination of non-Western archaic phenomena,
Hindu and other forms of Asian spirituality, cosmic Christianity and other
forms of ‘cosmic religion,’ and other expressions of the sacred.”
Eliade himself stressed that all his life he struggled to understand the
variety of people whose sole “job” was to believe: the shaman, the yogi,
and the Australian aborigine along with famous Christian saints such as
Meister Eckhart or Saint Francis of Assisi (Allen 1998: 121). With such
a mindset, Eliade certainly never was a Christian religious scholar, as
his critics sometimes depict him. The intellectual world and scholarship
of Eliade rather revolved around the search for parallels among religions
and mythologies world wide, keen attention to marginal and occult spiri-
tual experiences, to the human fall and a possibility of future illumination
in order to gain inner knowledge. In fact, these intellectual leanings allow
us to place Eliade not only into the rank of traditionalist writers but also
into the broad tradition of Western esotericism.
Later on, in the 1960s, Eliade’s scholarship loaded with the above-
mentioned sentiments began to appeal to American and European spiri-
tual seekers who revolted against Western civilization and who felt at
home with all his eclectic cross-cultural symbolism. Like Eliade, many
of these people came from the same Judeo-Christian tradition, which
they distrusted, and similarly fed on the variety of non-Western, pre-
Christian, early Christian, and Western esoteric spiritualities.

Responses of Western Spiritual Seekers and Academia

It is important to remember that Eliade himself sought to reach out not only
to academics but also to general audiences that appreciated the world of the
spiritual. Thus, contemplating his shamanism book, Eliade (1990: 91) espe-
40 Andrei Znamenski

cially stressed that he did not want to restrict himself to writing an academic
treatise: “It would please me if this book, Le Chamanisme et les techniques
archaïques de l’extase, would be read by a few poets, dramatists, literary
critics, and painters. Perhaps some of them would profit more from the read-
ing of it than would certain orientalists and historians of religion.”
In his foreword to the book, Eliade again pointed out that his text
was primarily designed for the non-specialist. It was quite a brave hope
to harbor such an expectation in the early 1950s, the time of reigning
positivism and psychoanalysis. And the scholar understood this. In fact,
while nourishing that hope, he had no illusions about attracting a large
audience among his contemporaries. Moreover, in the same foreword he
admitted that his descriptions of shamanism and its paraphernalia would
most probably leave many readers cold. Indeed, when in 1951 the first
French edition of his shamanism book was published, non-Western and
especially tribal spirituality was still the object of a marginal, mostly
ethnographic interest. Nevertheless, Eliade prophetically wrote that the
fate of European culture depended on dialogue with the non-European
spiritual universe. And, sure enough, when Westerners became troubled
about their own Judeo-Christian civilization in the 1960s, they increas-
ingly turned to the books of such intellectual avatars as Eliade, who
promoted both the spiritual legacy of the “non-Western ones” and the
marginalized traditions of European esotericism. Also, Eliade might
have sensed that the era of intellectual positivism was coming to its end.
Hinting in his shamanism book that “things change,” he stressed that the
world of modern and ancient archaic peoples was neither less consistent
nor less interesting than the contemporary Western world. Moreover, he
pointed out that any cultivated person who was a true humanist could
benefit from learning about non-Western beliefs, “for it has been some
time since humanism has ceased to be identified with the spiritual tradi-
tion of the West, great and fertile though that is.” (Eliade 1964: xx)
Indeed, things changed. In the 1960s and 1970s, counterculture came
to challenge mainstream Judeo-Christian tradition and environmental-
ism became elevated to the status of a new secular religion. A wide
circle of scholars and spiritual seekers became interested in tapping
archaic layers of spirituality, including shamanism. This new revolt
against the modern world encompassed much wider circles of people
than traditionalist movement in the 1920s and in the 1930s. Although
some current seekers who are interested in “archaic techniques of
ecstasy” do criticize Eliade for factual flaws, for many of them, his
Quest for Primal Knowledge 41

book remains a major text on classical shamanism. The power of

Eliade’s scholarship is his ability to capture the anti-rationalist aspira-
tions of his contemporary Western audiences and point the direction in
which the spiritual seeker might search for alternatives.
In addition to the rehabilitation of nature religions in the eyes of
Westerners, he stretched out the geographic borders of the shamanism
metaphor. In a sense, Eliade made shamanism go global. His predeces-
sors tended to restrict this phenomenon to Siberia, arctic areas, and
western North America. In contrast, Eliade invited scholars and seek-
ers to apply this idiom to all non-Western and pre-Christian European
spiritualities, which did not fit the format of organized world religions
and in which spiritual practitioners worked in altered states.
In the wake of the Eliade book, which exonerated tribal beliefs and
broadened the meaning of the term “shamanism,” scholars and writ-
ers gradually began to revisit such old labels as possession, sorceress,
magician, and witch doctor, which they had earlier used to describe
tribal spiritual practices. By the end of the 1960s, this dated usage
looked anachronistic and begged for change. In these circumstances,
the Eliadean usage proved very attractive. The words shaman and sha-
manism were certainly convenient substitutes because they lacked the
negative aura associated with the above-mentioned terms. Although
such popular expressions as medicine man and medicine woman did
survive in academic and popular writings, they were tied too much to
the North American ethnological realm. For this reason, these gender-
colored terms did not always look as general and neutral as shaman to
serve as effective descriptions of traditional spiritual practitioners.
Another attraction of the shamanism as a definition was its emphasis
on the sovereignty of tribal spiritual practitioners. Eliade’s shamans acted
as charismatic heroes who called in their spirit helpers at will and boldly
transcended time and space, establishing contact with the forces of other
worlds. Dwelling on Shirokogoroff’s book on Evenki shamans, Eliade
stressed that tribal spiritual practitioners cemented their communities,
bringing stability, order, and security. Without these individuals tribal
groups were doomed to disintegrate.4 Overall, this portrayal of the shaman

4
Later, some post-modernist anthropologists, who came to view shamans as spiri-
tual anarchists, who through their “carnival sessions” reenacted contradictions existing
in society, dismissed such vision of shamanism as a “fascist fascination.” For more on
this, see Znamenski 2007: 230–231.
42 Andrei Znamenski

fit the changing attitude toward non-Western cultures, which reemerged

from obscurity in the 1960s and 1970s. A student of African traditional
religions, I. M. Lewis captured well this changing attitude when he wrote:
“The shaman is thus the symbol not of subjection and despondency but
of independence and hope.” (1989: 169) This was a statement that in fact
said not so much about shamanism proper but catered more to the cultural
aspirations of emerging African nations that did not want their spirituali-
ties to be marginalized as sorcery and witch doctoring.
For better or worse, with his volume, Eliade rehabilitated spiritual
practitioners in nature religions, whom earlier scholars had marginal-
ized as mental deviants, sorcerers, and witch doctors (pl. 2). Placing
tribal spiritualities on the same level with so-called world religions, he
stressed, “The manifestation of the sacred in a stone or a tree is neither
less mysterious nor less noble than its manifestation in a ‘god.’” (Eliade
1964: xvii) Thus, shamanism, which had been earlier considered primi-
tive, in the eyes of educated Westerners now was shining as the spiri-
tual foundation that could anchor disenchanted Western seekers.
Neo-shamanism became one of the Western spiritualities that capi-
talized on the Eliadean vision of “archaic techniques of ecstasy.” Thus,
this vision had a profound effect on anthropologist Michael Harner, the
“founding father” of neo-shamanism in the West. Thus, the intellectual
legacy of Eliade is clearly visible in “core shamanism,” a psychothera-
peutic technique Harner developed by singling out what he viewed as
common archetypes of shamanism from all over the world. Introducing
the “core shamanism” techniques in his classic manual The Way of the
Shaman, Harner wrote (1980: 41), “It is precisely because of the con-
sistency of this ancient power and healing system that Eliade and oth-
ers can speak with confidence of the occurrence of shamanism among
peoples long isolated from one another.”
To some extent, “core shamanism” became a fulfillment of Eliade’s
dream about recovering the archaic knowledge for the benefit of modern
humanity. Like Eliade, Harner wrote about a time of golden paradise
when animals and humans lived in unity, which was subsequently lost.
He similarly noted that, after humanity’s fall, shamans remained the only
people who were able to stay in contact with the animal world. Again,
like Eliade, the founder of “core shamanism” stressed that, despite dra-
matic historical changes, modern tribal groups living in remote areas still
maintained the basics of their shamanic knowledge intact.
Quest for Primal Knowledge 43

A characteristic feature of the entire Eliadean scholarship was his dis-

like of any approach that placed religion in specific contexts; he called
these contexts “parasites on the religious phenomenon.” The scholar
was convinced that the sacred should be singled out and discussed on
its own terms without being reduced to social life, history, economics,
and brain function. This method became known as the phenomenologi-
cal approach. Eliade stressed that he looked into “dreams, hallucina-
tions, and images of ascent found everywhere in the world apart from
any historical or other ‘conditions.’” He explained that his goal was
not to ground shamanism in a particular culture, history, or place but
to capture its universal nature. In the late 1940s, when Eliade was still
contemplating his volume on “archaic techniques of ecstasy,” scholars
preferred to scrutinize shamanism through the eyes of psychiatry. With
his shamanism book, Eliade revolted against this particular approach.
In 1946, he noted in his diary (Eliade 1990: 18), “I must present sha-
manism in the general perspective of the history of religions rather than
as an aberrant phenomenon belonging more to psychiatry.”
Eliade was interested in shamanic experience for its own sake and
naturally downplayed its mundane aspects. An example was the manner
in which Eliade explained the origin of the respect for and reverence
of shamans among non-literate people. Thus, he suggested that tribal
spiritual practitioners gained prestige and power not by curing the sick,
producing rain, or protecting their communities from aggression, but
through surpassing people around them in the amount of sacred power
they accumulated. He insisted that this was how ancient and modern
elementary societies thought about successful shamans.
Although popular with spiritual seekers, Eliade’s phenomenological
approach and his entire scholarship are now out of favor in mainstream
academia, especially among anthropologists. To be exact, Eliade’s
interpretation of shamanism remains appealing to scholars who work
in religious and literary studies. It appears that these disciplines more
easily accommodate impressionistic vision of shamanism than does
anthropology, which is keen on cultural particulars. Anthropologists,
who are considered the major experts on tribal and elementary societ-
ies, distaste his attempt to dilute spiritual techniques of modern and
ancient tribal peoples to locate the archetypes of “generic shamanism.”
Moreover, Eliade’s cross-cultural and universal vision of shamanism
does not exactly fit the present-day postmodernist thinking that favors
the unique, the different, the particular and treats with suspicion any
44 Andrei Znamenski

grand comparison—the method Eliade used in his numerous books

and articles. It is notable that in the 1960s, before the rise of post-
modernism, many anthropologists did express an interest in Eliade’s
scholarship, frequently referring to his shamanism book.
There is certainly a legitimate reason for the skeptical attitude to cross-
cultural generalizations. Namely, this is a concern about the sources of
these generalizations. Are these sources representative enough? Or they
are simply accidentally acquired facts filtered through Western eyes?
Unsure about drawing broad conclusions and plagued by permanent fear
of somehow offending “non-Western ones,” today many anthropologists
shy away from drawing broad comparisons and conclusions. They feel
more comfortable restricting themselves to specific cultures and letting
“natives” speak up about their own traditions. These scholars argue that
such Eliadean concepts as ecstasy, celestial flight, the three world spheres,
and the cosmic center (world tree), which he canonized as universal pillars
of shamanism worldwide, fall part when cast against specific beliefs.
In fact, many anthropologists have tried to change or totally discard the
very definition of shamanism. This trend began in the 1960s with Clif-
ford Geertz, the late dean of American postmodernism, who argued that
such abstractions as shamanism or totemism, which had been invented
by Westerners, were meaningless and only served interested scholars as
convenient tools to sort their materials. In an attempt to part with the
Eliadean cross-cultural vision of shamanism, anthropologist Jane Mon-
nig Atkinson (1992) intentionally introduced the plural expression “sha-
manisms” to underline the fact that tribal spiritual practices were unique
and resisted generalization. Archaeologist Robert J. Wallis (2003) picked
up the same expression to describe the diversity of spiritual practices of
modern neo-shamanism.
More serious concerns have been raised regarding the credibility
of Eliade as a researcher. Indeed, Eliade was a perfect example of an
armchair scholar—extremely well read in secondary sources, he never
observed a single shaman. For anthropologists who consider field expe-
rience a prerequisite for any solid insight into the culture of others, this
“arrogant” bookish approach discredits his whole scholarship. Critics
have also pointed out that his shamanism treatise contains factual mis-
takes, especially when he talks about cultural particulars. In all fairness,
the absence of such mistakes would have been strange in any scholarly
project that involves cross-cultural comparisons. Unless we silently agree
to weed out any generalizations from humanities and social sciences and
Quest for Primal Knowledge 45

“tribalize” our knowledge staying within the realm of the particular,

unique and individual, this type of mistakes will be unavoidable.
Critics also pointed out that Eliade’s scholarship, including his shaman-
ism book, reveal ideological biases. For example, anthropologist Wallis,
the author of one of the most comprehensive studies of neo-shamanism,
and several others pointed to Eliade’s Christian biases. As we have seen,
there is certain truth in this statement. At the same time, these biases
are no more “Christian” than those of current New Age, neo-pagan, and
nature spirituality writers who, although being raised within Christian
tradition, are also informed by the host of Buddhism, Hinduism, Nordic
and Native American ethnographic, folklore and other “biases.”
More serious are accusations of the Romanian scholar in pro-fascist
sympathies, which goes back to Eliade’s prewar public media essays
that spoke favorably about Romanian nationalism and praised indig-
enous soil and tradition in general. Thus, philosopher Kelley Ross
has argued that, since the writings of the Romanian émigré scholar
privileged non-rational “archaic religion,” Eliade’s scholarship should
be linked to the “neo-pagan amoralism of the Nazis” (Sedgwick 2004:
109–117). It appears that to some writers the mere mentioning of pagan
symbols or spiritual quests that involve pagan and especially Nordic
folklore is still associated with Nazi tradition.5
On a final note, in her recent book anthropologist Barbara Tedlock
has claimed that psychoanalysis popular in the 1940s and 1950s heav-

5
Occasionally, the mere mentioning of Nordic pagan deities serves as a red flag. After
Timothy White, the editor of Shaman’s Drum, suggested that Western spiritual seekers follow in
the footsteps of Odin, reader Hal Litoff became immediately concerned about the implications
of this statement. Litoff pointed out that Odin was a warrior god, which, in his view, contra-
dicted the benevolent nature of modern Western shamanism. He noted that Odin was included
in the state religion of Nazi Germany and served as the foundation for the occult practices of
Heinrich Himmler’s SS. Litoff’s particular fear was that following a shaman’s path by using
such symbols as Odin might be a truly Faustian bargain. In his reply, White noted that it is not
about who used particular deities but about how spiritual seekers use them and what manifesta-
tions of deities we choose to appropriate. Acknowledging that Odin was a god of war, White
also stressed that this deity was also the god of prophecy. As such, he continued, this deity
manifested the Nordic shamanic vision-questing tradition and can be safely restored without
bringing back Norse war practices. Interestingly, as an analogy, White uses the Plains Indians’
Sun Dance. Originally linked to the Indian warfare tradition and brutal self-mutilation, in the
hands of modern Indian and Western spiritual seekers, the tradition evolved into a benevolent
ritual of renewal and the continuation of life. “Letters,” Shaman’s Drum 56 (2000): 10.
46 Andrei Znamenski

ily affected Eliade’s shamanism book, which is simply not true. In

fact, as we saw, one of the major goals of Eliade’s Shamanism was to
completely revisit psychological and psychoanalytical interpretations
of the “archaic techniques of ecstasy.” Tedlock (2005: 64) also insisted
that, under the influence of psychoanalysis, Eliade downplayed the
role of female shamans in history. It is true that Eliade privileged male
shamanism and denigrated the historical role of female practitioners of
shamanism. Yet it has nothing to do with psychoanalysis. If one puts
Eliade’s shamanism book in the context of time, it will be clear that
the writer simply mirrored the general Victorian patriarchic attitudes
toward women—a practice that was still widespread in intellectual and
cultural life in the post war Europe.
By separating valid criticism of Eliade from unwarranted accusa-
tions, putting his scholarship in the time context, and exploring ideas
that shaped him as a scholar and writer, one will better understand
what motivated him to embark on his grand shamanism project, which
spread the shamanism metaphor into Western humanities and social
sciences and eventually affected numerous spiritual seekers.

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Andrei Znamenski, Associate Professor of History, Alabama State Univer-

sity, is currently Assistant Professor of History at the University of Memphis.
His most recent book, The Beauty of the Primitive: Shamanism and Western
Imagination (2007) has been published by Oxford University Press.