Theology: Scientist of Symbols

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To the tourist in India, the magician's rope trick is merely another clever demonstration that the hand is quicker than the eye. To Professor Mircea Eliade of the University of Chicago divinity school, the fakir's fakery is the vestige of an ancient religious rite with highly symbolic overtones: the rope is an image of the "astral cord," symbolizing the link between earth and sky, man and heaven. Originally, the trick was intended to prove to spectators the existence of an unknown and mysterious world; by climbing the rope and then temporarily disappearing, the conjurer revealed the possibility of man's transcending this world for the "real" but hidden world of the sacred.

In the subtle art of establishing the sacred origin of profane events, Rumanian-born Scholar Eliade has no peer. A pipe-smoking polymath who speaks six languages and writes fluently in three, Eliade, 58, is a prolific novelist as well as chairman of Chicago's history of religion department. His new book, Mephistopheles and the Androgyne: Studies in Religious Myth and Symbol (Sheed & Ward; $5), demonstrates why he is probably the world's foremost living interpreter of spiritual myths and symbolism. Jerald Brauer, dean of Chicago's divinity school, and other scholars compare Eliade's works to those of the modern pioneer of myth collection, Sir James Frazer (The Golden Bough). Unlike Frazer, an agnostic who deplored the mindless cruelty and superstition of pagan legends, Eliade, a Greek Orthodox Christian, comprehends ancient mythology as religious man's existential effort to understand the mystery of the universe. Little known outside university circles, Eliade has had a profound influence on a number of younger theologians—notably Emory's Thomas J. J. Altizer, one of the leading "death of God" thinkers. Another Eliade enthusiast was the late Paul Tillich, who for three years ran a joint seminar with him at Chicago on theology and the history of religion.

Mystic Light. Mephistopheles, originally a series of lectures delivered to the Eranos circle of scholars and artists influenced by Psychologist C. G. Jung, is typical of Eliade's work: sweeping in scope, it minutely traces the origin and development of several spiritual concepts through a variety of cultures. One example is the widespread experience of the "mystic light," such as that of a sober-minded, 19th century New York City businessman who was ecstatically converted to Christ after a dream in which he was suffused with light. Eliade shows how many otherwise disparate faiths offer similar experiences of the "inner light." Although defined and explained differently by various religions, these experiences all represent radical breaks with normal existence, taking man out of his ordinary life and projecting him "into a universe different in quality, an entirely different world, transcendent and holy." Beginning with a quotation from Goethe's Faust, another essay in the book explores the widespread legend that God and the Devil were brothers, and relates it to the equally ancient conception of the androgyne (hermaphrodite) as a mystical symbol of wholeness; both stories, Eliade argues, represent man's prephilosophic attempt to reconcile the existence in the world of such opposites as good and evil.