THE FUTURE HUMAN: MIRCEA ELIADE AND THE FANTASTIC MUTANT
THE FUTURE HUMAN: MIRCEA ELIADE AND THE FANTASTIC MUTANT
Author(s): Jeffrey J. KripalSubject(s): Literary Texts
Published by: Romanian Assoc. for the History of Religions & Inst. for the History of Religions, Romanian Academy
Keywords: psychical; paranormal; parapsychology; Arthur Schopenhauer; Sigmund Freud; Carl Gustav Jung; Andrew Lang; Mircea Eliade; Ioan Couliano [Ioan Petru Culianu]; Francis Ford Coppola; mysticism; occultism.
Summary/Abstract: The present essay traces an intellectual history of the categories of the psychical and the paranormal through social history, philosophy, anthropology, psychology, literature, and, finally, the history of religions. It then turns to the late writings of Mircea Eliade and Ioan Couliano, demonstrating how these two men took up modern physics to think seriously about the various altered states of the history of gnosticism, esotericism, and mysticism. The essay concludes with a discussion of Francis Ford Coppola’s treatment of Eliade’s novel Youth Without Youth, focusing in on the theme of the mystic or psychic as mutant.
Journal: ARCHÆVS. Studies in the History of Religions
- Issue Year: XV/2011
- Issue No: 01+02
- Page Range: 187-208
- Page Count: 22
- Language: English
- Content File-PDF