Initiations, rituals, secret societies
E-book, Czech
Initiations, rituals, secret societies
Initiation is a set of rituals, cults, ceremonies, and tests followed by a fundamental change in the religious and social status of the person undergoing initiation. She enters chaos and undergoes ritual death, becoming a kind of blank slate and starting over, so that she can go from being a natural creature to becoming part of the spiritual life of her community - a being connected to the gods, ancestors, and how things " in the beginning" happened.
In his carefully documented work, Eliade compares archaic initiations within different cultures on all continents (America, Australia, shamanism, India…), deals with the initiation of men and women, the role of secret societies, warrior rites and initiations within the great religions, especially Christianity. In all initiations, he confirms a similar sacred experience – the experience of an inseparable bond between people and the world of gods, spirits, animals, ancestors, and nature.
Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) was one of the world' s most famous religious scholars and a writer of Romanian origin. He was born in Bucharest and lived in India from 1929 to 1931, preparing for his doctorate on yoga. He then taught philosophy at the University of Bucharest and worked in the diplomatic service. In 1945, he finally left for France and taught at the Sorbonne, and since 1956 he has lived in the United States, where he heads the Department of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago. Eliade is valued for his emphasis on the sacred as one of the modalities of being and for his writings on shamanism, yoga, cosmological myths, etc.
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