What The Symbols “Reveal”

Eliade’s understanding of religious symbolism is central to his analysis of religious phenomena. The systematic or mutually defining nature of the terms of the study are once again apparent here. In this case Eliade’s understanding of the religious symbol determines and is determined by his understanding of the role of the Historian of Religions. Originally, Eliade concentrated on the role of the Historian of Religions first. However, I wish to focus first on the understanding of the symbol and then, in a later section, to return to the related question of History of Religions methodology. Nonetheless, the implications of Eliade’s following statements for his understanding of methodology, of the coincidentia oppositorum , and of the significance of history, should not be neglected here, even though they will be dealt with in more detail below. The present excerpt is a reworking of a 1959 article, “Methodological Remarks on the Study of Religious Symbolism” in History of Religions: Problems of Methodology , edited by Eliade and Joseph Kitagawa (Chicago: Chicago University Press) and it appeared in The Two and the One , 201–11 by Mircea Eliade, published by the University of Chicago Press. All rights reserved. English translation copyright © 1965 by Harvill Press. Reprinted by permission of the Random House Group Ltd.