Arie Article 10.1163 15700593 20211007

Aries – Journal for the Study
of Western Esotericism (2022) 1–28

ARIES
brill.com/arie
Mircea Eliade and René Guénon

Patterns of Initiation and the “Myth of Affinity”
Davide Marino
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong sar, China
1155131487@link.cuhk.edu.hk
Abstract
This article analyses the intellectual relationship between the historian of religions
Mircea Eliade and the French esotericist René Guénon. Many scholars have argued for
the “the myth of affinity”, a theory according to which Eliade would have subscribed
to Guénon’s worldview (Traditionalism). The proponents of this thesis believe that
Eliade opportunistically masked his Traditionalism for fear of being considered not suf-
ficiently “scientific” for the academic career he aspired to. This article argues against
such a theory and intends to demonstrate how the “myth of affinity” arose from a
series of misunderstandings that occurred in the circle of Guénon’s closest associates,
probably fuelled by Eliade himself. A comparison of Guénon and Eliade’s works on
the theme of initiation will be used to dismiss “the myth of affinity” by indicating the
irreconcilable theoretical distance between Traditionalism and Eliadian hermeneu-
tics.
Keywords
René Guénon – Mircea Eliade – traditionalism – initiation – esotericism – myth
1 Introduction
Over the past few decades, the intellectual relationship between the histo-
rian of religion Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) and the movement inspired by the
French esotericist René Guénon (1886–1951), Traditionalism, has been the focus
of intense debate. Eminent scholars like Daniel Dubuisson, Umberto Eco and
Furio Jesi have written important pages on the matter, arguing in favor of
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/15700593-20211007

Downloaded from Brill.com08/19/2023 08:22:56AM
via free access
2 10.1163/15700593-20211007 | marino
what has been called “the myth of affinity”.1 According to this view, which has
become more popular after Eliade’s death and the wider availability of material
from his “Romanian Roots”,2 Eliade’s hermeneutics would be a kind of Tradi-
tionalism in disguise. This idea is supported by the work of several scholars,
who have depicted Eliade as a crypto-Guénonian, intimately convinced of the
truth of Traditionalist ideas, but too concerned about his academic reputation
to proclaim them openly.3 From the sources available, it is clear that Guénon
and his entourage (at least until the late 1940s) also believed that Eliade was
‘almost entirely in agreement with traditional [Traditionalist] ideas’.4 This arti-
cle is going to argue against such opinion, and to show a more complex rela-
tionship between the two authors.
If Eliade achieved huge success and received acclaim as one of the most
important scholars of the twentieth century, Guénon and Traditionalism re-
main, to quote Mark Sedgwick, a sort of ‘secret intellectual history of the twenti-
eth century’.5 Traditionalism should be understood as a movement in the loos-
est sense of the word. It is made up of relatively independent groups of indi-
viduals that share the same religious and philosophical worldview, learnt from
the work of René Guénon.6 Traditionalism emerged from the late nineteenth-
century French esoteric milieu, in which Guénon was active. It is a form of
perennialism, the view that all world religions are expressions of a single, meta-
physical Truth (perennial philosophy or sophia perennis). Guénon was also
a radical anti-modernist,7 whose rejection of modernity inspired other Tra-
ditionalist authors to take a more political direction (despite Guénon’s firm
apolitical position).8 Considering that many Traditionalist thinkers have flirted
1 The phrase can be found in Montanari, ‘Eliade e Guénon’, 131–149, republished in Montanari,
La fatica, 183–203.
2 Culianu, Mircea Eliade; Ricketts, Mircea Eliade.
3 De Martino, Mircea Eliade; Pisi, ‘I “tradizionalisti”’, 43–133; Quinn, ‘Mircea Eliade’, 147–153;
Tolcea, Eliade, Wasserstrom, Religion, 132.
4 Guénon’s own words from a letter dated 26 September 1949 mentioned in Jean Robin, René
Guénon, 10, n. 2. Robin does not provide more details about this letter that remains unpub-
lished to date.
5 Sedgwick, Against.
6 For an academic perspective on Traditionalism See Laurant, Le sens caché; and Laurant, René
Guénon. For the history of the Traditionalist movement see Sedgwick, Against. For a Tradi-
tionalist but academic point of view, see Oldmeadow, Traditionalism; Quinn, The Only.
7 Guénon, La crise; and Guénon, Le Règne.
8 Guénon condemned the exploitation of religious symbols for political purposes cfr. ‘We com-
pletely pass over, needless to say, the artificial and even anti-traditional use of the swastika
by the German “racist” who have given it the fantastic and somewhat ridiculous title of
Hekenkreuz or “hooked cross” and quite arbitrarily made it a sign of anti-Semitism, on the
Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism (2022) 1–28

via free access
mircea eliade and rené guénon | 10.1163/15700593-20211007 3
with far-right movements by using Traditionalism as a theoretical foundation

for their ultra-conservative agendas,9 the political turn taken by studies on the
“Traditionalist Eliade” is hardly surprising. Thus, the “myth of affinity” also has
a political offshoot, motivated by the liaison dangereuse between the young Eli-
ade and the Romanian ultra-nationalist movement, the Iron Guard.10
In such a politicized debate, we find various “leftist” scholars who have tried
to bring Guénon and Eliade together, holding them responsible for the prop-
agation of a hidden reactionary, racist, and anti-Semitic message.11 This “left-
ist” tendency is opposed by a series of “rightist” authors and movements that
have included Eliade and Guénon in their pantheon.12 I believe that both per-
spectives are equally problematic, and not sufficiently grounded in what both
authors have explicitly stated in the thousands of pages that they published.13
Although this article argues against an affinity between Eliade and Tradition-
alism, I do not intend to dismiss entirely the importance of Guénon in Eliade’s
foundational years.
In the first part of this study, I will trace the explicit references to Traditional-
ism in Eliade’s production and show how they changed over time. In the second
part, through an analysis of Eliade’s and Guénon’s theories of initiation, I will
challenge the “myth of affinity”.
2 Guénon on Eliade
Mircea Eliade and René Guénon never met, nor is there any correspondence
attesting to a direct relationship between the two authors. In addition, Guénon
never mentioned Eliade in his major works. However, this fact is not particu-
larly significant considering that in Guénon’s books, bibliographies and refer-
pretext that this emblem must have belonged to the so-called “Aryan race”’. In Guénon, Le
Symbolisme, 71, n. 2. On Guénon’s politics, Bisson, René Guénon: une politique.
9 The earliest example of such a trajectory was Julius Evola; Hakl, ‘Julius Evola and Tradi-
tion’. For later developments, Sedgwick, Against, 179–188, 221–240; and Teitelbaum, War
for Eternity. About France, François, ‘The Nouvelle Droite’.
10 From a sympathetic point of view, Mutti, Le penne. For a critical perspective, Idel, ‘Eliade’,
194–225.
11 Jesi, Cultura; Dubuisson, ‘Eliade e Guénon’; Eco, ‘Eternal Fascism’; Valencia-García, Far-
right; Weitzman, ‘One Knows’.
12 Fiore, Storia, 17; De Martino, Mircea Eliade.
13 A more balanced analysis of this subject can be found in Spineto, ‘Mircea Eliade’, reprinted
and revised in Spineto, Mircea Eliade storico, 133–163 and Bordaş, ‘The difficult encounter’,
143–144.
Aries – Journal for the Study of WesternDownloaded

Esotericism (2022) 1–28
from Brill.com08/19/2023 08:22:56AM
via free access
4 10.1163/15700593-20211007 | marino
ences are mostly absent. From the available documents, we know that in 1937
Guénon did not know much about Eliade and his books.14 For this reason, he
asked one of his admirers (and Eliade’s acquaintance), the Romanian Mihai
Vâlsan to ‘tell me something more specific about him’.15 Vâlsan was able to pro-
vide information about Eliade, and by 1939 Guénon was reading Eliade’s work.
1939 is an important year for our understanding of the Eliade-Guénon rela-
tionship. In fact, it is in that year that Guénon first endorsed the idea of Eliade
as a “shy Guénonian” that has since been so successful in Traditionalist histori-
ography. ‘As for Mr. Eliade, a certain fear of compromising himself, as you say,
would correspond very well to what has already been said about his character;
he is young and he may be less shy when he reaches a well-established position
in the university’.16 In the following decade, Guénon not only followed Eliade’s
academic work but he had some knowledge about Eliade’s personal life.17 In
1949, Guénon wrote:
I have reviewed several of his [Eliade’s] works, books and articles, and
I intend to do the same for the latest ones (after all, he sends me his
books). […] I treat him quite well and I try, above all, to bring out what
is good in his work. […] He is almost entirely in agreement, in substance,
with Traditional ideas, but he does not dare to show it too much in what
he writes, because he is afraid of contradicting ideas officially accepted;
this produces a somewhat annoying mixture; however, I hope that some
“encouragement” can help make him less shy.18
Guénon’s “encouragement” appeared in Études Traditionelles between 1946 and

1949 in form of reviews of eight of Eliade’s works.19 To give a taste of what
Guénon considered a positive review, we can take the page dedicated to Eliade’s
Techniques du Yoga.20 This was surely the book most enthusiastically received
14 Guénon, Lettere a Vasile Lovinescu, 69.

15 Ibid.
16 Guénon, Lettere a Coomaraswamy, 58.
17 ‘I do not know Eliade’s address, but I am able to find it easily’. Guénon, Lettere a Julius
Evola, 101.
18 See above, p. 1, fn. 3. The fact that Eliade directly sent his books to Guénon is not con-
firmed by any other source and seems unlikely. It is more plausible that either Vâlsan or
Coomaraswamy was sending Eliade’s works to Guénon.
19 These reviews are now republished in Guénon, Formes traditionnelles, 25–27; and Guénon,
Comptes, 187–189, 199; Guénon, Études sur l’Hindouisme, 210–212, 250–251, 253–254, 274–
275.
20 Eliade, Techniques.

via free access
by Guénon. However, even in this case, before saying that Techniques du Yoga
‘is a book that certainly deserves to be read by all those who are seriously inter-
ested in these topics, and certainly there are not many of whom we can say the
same thing’,21 Guénon criticizes Eliade’s vocabulary—‘I would have preferred to
see him give up the use of at least some words, for example “philosophy”, “reli-
gion”, “magic”’22—and wonders ‘why give the impression of wanting to stop
halfway out of a kind of fear of moving away from commonly accepted termi-
nology?’23 The reason for Guénon’s “positive” reviews lies in Guénon’s belief of
Eliade as ‘almost entirely in agreement with traditional ideas’, but too afraid
to compromise his rising career with an open endorsement of Traditionalism.
This is the “origin story” of the Guénonian “myth of affinity”, the idea that Eli-
ade was a fearful Guénonian. Yet, the available documents tell a different, more
interesting story.
3 Eliade on Guénon
As we have seen, Guénon believed that Eliade was ‘almost entirely in agree-
ment with traditional [Traditionalist] ideas’. Different interpretations of that
“almost” produce different ideas of Eliade’s Traditionalism. To gain an under-
standing of what these ideas are, it is necessary to read what Eliade wrote about
Guénon throughout his career.
In Eliade’s body of work,24 we can find Guénon mentioned some twenty
times.25 This may not be an impressive number but, significantly, these refer-
ences span the whole of Eliade’s career. The earliest instance is in 1926 when
Eliade was only 19 years old, and the latest occurred in the year of Eliade’s
death, 1986. When we analyze the content of such references, we can see how
the significance of Traditionalism for Eliade changed over time. Until the late
1940s, Guénon is a model for the younger Romanian scholar. The work of Tra-
ditionalist authors was clearly an inspiration for him, especially regarding the
21 Guénon, Études, 210.

22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
24 I refer here to his academic production. Surprisingly, many proponents of the “myth of
affinity” placed significant emphasis on Eliade’s novels. I do consider sufficiently grounded
the thesis that sees the Eliadian novelistic production as a method that the Romanian used
to express his “real” Traditionalist views.
25 A good but incomplete list of references of Guénon and other Traditionalists in Eliade’s
works can be found in Sanjakdar, Mircea Eliade, 360–372; a series of unedited journal
entries are quoted in Bordaş, ‘The difficult encounter’, 143.

via free access
6 10.1163/15700593-20211007 | marino
attitude of intellectuals in an era of decadence. It was the Guénonian critique

of modernity that most interested the young Eliade.
3.1 Romanian Roots

Eliade’s Fragmentarium26 is an excellent representation of this moment in
the Romanian’s intellectual trajectory. Fragmentarium is a collection of short
essays composed between 1935 and the year of publication of the volume, 1939.
This moment coincided with the end of the first stage of Eliade’s life, that
includes his Romanian formation and his sojourn in India. In this collection,
Guénon appears three times in three different contexts. In the Eliadian article
‘Valorization of the Middle Ages’, Guénon is described as a member of an intel-
lectual elite that, against the Enlightenment prejudice, has a positive opinion
about the Middle Ages.27 Here, Guénon is mentioned with other Traditional-
ists (Evola and Coomaraswamy), but also with non-Traditionalist authors like
Maritain. In fact, this favorable attitude toward the Middle Ages was not unique
to Traditionalist thinkers. Instead, it was quite common in antimodern circles
which were seeking an alternative to the liberal legacy of the French Revolu-
tion, as well as to socialism and Marxism.28
A second article, ‘Technique of Contempt’ is more explicit about Eliade’s
position. Here, Eliade admires Guénon’s aristocratic attitude against the mod-
ern world, an ‘anti-historical attitude, that is an apocalyptic attitude’29 and
praises Guénon for his
formidable ability to despise the modern world as a whole: I don’t think

there was anyone who despised contemporaneity more categorically than
this prodigious René Guénon. And never does a trace of anger, a hint of
irritation or even of melancholy transpire in his compact, Olympic con-
tempt. He is a true master.30
The third appearance of Guénon in Fragmentarium is in ‘Resistance to Genius’.

It is again a polemical attack against the fame enjoyed by many mediocre
authors who were opposed to ‘someone like René Guénon, Julius Evola, or
Coomaraswamy, unknown outside a small circle of readers’.31 Eliade explains
26 Eliade, Fragmentarium.
27 Ibid., 57.
28 Amalvi, ‘The Middle Ages’.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid., 162.
31 Ibid., 181.

via free access
this unfortunate phenomenon in quite Traditionalist terms, ‘the inability of

modern man to think impersonally’.32
Overall, when we read Eliade’s works before the 1950s, we get a picture of
a young scholar extremely disappointed with the world he was living in. In
this context, Traditionalists and their ‘formidable ability to despise the modern
world as a whole’ surely hit the right chord. However, what is completely miss-
ing is any endorsement of the core of Traditionalist thinking: perennialism. In
his “Romanian period”, Eliade was an anti-modernist and someone interested
in symbolism.33 Furthermore, Eliade’s interest in India was surely another rea-
son for his early encounter with some Traditionalist works.34 It is thus striking,
for someone who is considered a Traditionalist, that none of the fifteen men-
tions of Guénon in the pre-war period are about the “Perennial Tradition”, nor
about any other important components of the Guénonian project (e.g. esoteri-
cism, initiation). In all the books that Eliade published in this period, we find
an interest in comparativism and symbolism, but his overall framework is not
perennialist.
Guénon himself, even though convinced of Eliade’s Traditionalism, was puz-
zled about his production. As we have seen, Eliade’s books gave to Guénon the
impression ‘of wanting to stop halfway out of a kind of fear of moving away
from commonly accepted terminology’35 and that Eliade ‘does not understand
all that is symbolic meaning, or (but, then, for what reason?) that he does not
want to deal with it’.36 These are valid questions from a Traditionalist point
of view. The easiest answer is that Eliade wanted to ‘stop halfway out’ exactly
because he never embraced the totality of Guénon’s ideas.37
After all, Eliade never tried to contact Guénon (to our knowledge). It would
have been easy for him to find Guénon’s address, considering that from the
1930s, Eliade was well acquainted with at least three other members of the
Romanian “Young Generation” who became Guénon’s correspondents, Mihai
Vâlsan, Vasile Lovinescu, and Marcel Avramescu.38 In addition, Eliade was in
32 Ibid.
33 We find Guénon’s Le symbolisme de la croix in the section ‘General Ideas on Symbolism’ of
one of Eliade’s most significant books of the period. See Eliade, Traité, 306.
34 In his 20s, Eliade had certainly read Guénon’s Theosophisme, L’ homme et son devenir selon
le Vedanta, L’Esoterisme de Dante, Le Roi du monde, Orient et Occident, and La crise du
monde modern; as well as several issues of Ètudes Traditionelles. See Spineto, Mircea Eli-
ade, 135.
35 Guénon, Études, 207.
36 Guénon, Lettere a Coomaraswamy, 54.
37 In Sedgwick’s terms, even in his youth Eliade was not a “hard” Traditionalist. See Sedgwick,
Against, 111.
38 Mutti, Eliade, Vâlsan, Geticus.

via free access
8 10.1163/15700593-20211007 | marino
correspondence with two of Guénon’s closest associates, the Anglo-Ceylonese

historian of art Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy,39 and the fascist philosopher
Julius Evola.40
Such behavior is extremely unusual for a Traditionalist. In fact, a common
consequence of the encounter with Guénon’s books was (and still is) the desire
for a personal connection with the Tradition through a valid ‘initiatic affilia-
tion’.41 This led many people to send letters to Guénon in search of spiritual
guidance. On the contrary, the same Eliade who wrote to Evola in 1930 and
Coomaraswamy in 1936 apparently had no interest in communicating with
Guénon. This attitude alone seems to be a convincing argument against “the
myth of affinity”.
3.2 From Paris to Chicago

René Guénon died in 1951. The same period was crucial for Eliade’s career, with
the great success of the first English edition of his Le Mythe de l’ éternel retour
(1954) and the subsequent appointment at the University of Chicago (1956) that
would soon bring Eliade worldwide fame. With his professional and intellectual
maturation, Eliade gradually distanced himself from the excessive polemical
side of Guénon’s work.42 Most of the mentions of Guénon in Eliade’s postwar
work are exactly about this issue. Moreover, with the beginning of his post-
war academic career, Eliade nuanced his early rejection of all contemporary
culture, and tried to build his hermeneutics on what he considered a more
scientific ground. In this period, he began to publicly distance himself from
Traditionalism. In 1952, he had written:
René Guénon presupposed a “primordial tradition” whose existence I

could not believe since I was wary of its non-historical, artificial charac-
ter. […] Limiting the hermeneutics of European spiritual creations exclu-
sively to their “esoteric” meanings repeats, in the opposite sense, the
materialistic reduction proposed so successfully by Marx or Freud.43
39 Eliade, ‘Some Notes’, 167–176.

40 De Turris, ‘L’iniziato’; Bordaş, ‘The difficult encounter’.
41 Guénon, Initiation, 46.
42 Eliade’s antipathy for Guénon’s style is testify by the following unedited diary entry, dated
26 August 1947: ‘Only after you’ve studied Coomaraswamy’s writings in detail do you
discover, suddenly, the poverty, the “elementarism”, [rom. primarism] of René Guénon’s
œuvre. And the insufferable self-importance with which he hides, so often, his ignorance!’
quoted in Bordaş, ‘The difficult encounter’, 143–144.
43 Eliade, Les Moissons, 124.

via free access
The parallel between Guénon, Marx, and Freud, scandalous from a Tradi-
tionalist perspective, is found again over a decade later when Eliade wrote:
What Guénon and the other “hermeticists” of “tradition” say must not be
understood on the level of historical reality (as they claim). These specu-
lations constitute a universe of systematically articulated meanings; they
must be compared to a great poem or a novel. This also applies to the
Marxist or Freudian “explanations”: they are true if we consider them
as imaginary universes. The “proofs” are few and uncertain, they corre-
spond to historical, social, psychological “realities” of a novel or poem. All
these global and systematic interpretations are, in reality, mythological
creations, very useful for understanding the world; but they are not, as
other authors think, “scientific explanations”.44
These quotations show that, from the 1950s, Guénon stopped being a source for
the Eliadian project and became instead an ‘object of interpretation’.45 Thus, for
the postwar Eliade, Traditionalism remains an interesting phenomenon, but
something that has to be understood in the context of the history of religion.
This idea finds its culmination in the book Occultism, Witchcraft and Cultural
Fashions,46 published in 1976. In this work, a section of the chapter ‘The Occult
and the Modern World’ was dedicated to Guénon,47 described as the author
of a ‘learned and brilliantly written book [Le Théosophisme]’, and someone
who ‘considering himself a real initiate and speaking in the name of the ver-
itable esoteric tradition, denied not only the authenticity of modem Western
so-called occultism but also the ability of any Western individual to contact a
valid esoteric organization’.48 Occultism marks the final stage of Eliade’s under-
standing of Traditionalism. In the 1970s, the emerging academic study of West-
ern esotericism likely influenced the Romanian scholar,49 and Guénon and his
work are interesting for him only in this context.50
44 Eliade, Jurnal, 572.

45 Thesis expressed by Montanari, ‘Eliade e Guénon’, 187.
46 Eliade, Occultism.
47 Ibid., 65–68.
48 Ibid., 66.
49 Antoine Faivre has noticed that in Occultism Eliade ‘celebrates the fact that “contemporary
scholarship” (as represented by Frances A. Yates, in particular) had felicitously discovered
“the important role magic and Hermetic esotericism played […] in the Italian Renais-
sance”’ see Faivre ‘Modern Western’, 150.
50 Eliade’s interest in Western esotericism as part of the intellectual history of Western cul-
ture is attested by this reflection, dated October 1977: ‘I come to know many exciting details

via free access
10 10.1163/15700593-20211007 | marino
In the same years, answering a question about Guénon, Eliade confirmed

and further elaborated his final position about Traditionalism. After the aston-
ishing claim to ‘have read René Guénon quite late’,51 Eliade continued:
some of his books interested me a lot, in particular L’ homme et son devenir

selon le Vedanta, which I found very beautiful, intelligent and profound.
But there was a whole side of Guénon that irritated me: his polemical side
to the bitter end; and its brutal rejection of all modern Western culture: as
if teaching at the Sorbonne were enough to lose any possibility of under-
standing anything. […] As far as tradition is concerned, or Tradition, the
subject is complex. […] In our days, the term “Tradition” very often des-
ignates “esotericism”, a secret teaching. Consequently, whoever declares
himself an adept of “Tradition” suggests that he is an “initiate”, that he is
the holder of a “secret teaching”. And this, at best, is an illusion.52
In Occultism, Eliade also remembers how Guénon had been ‘a rather unpopu-
lar author’53 in his lifetime and highlights that ‘he had fanatical admirers, but
their number was limited’.54 These ‘fanatical admirers’ are the last trait d’union
between Eliade and Traditionalism left to consider.
4 Fanatical Admirers and the “Trojan Horse Strategy”
Traditionalism had a remarkable resonance in Romania between the two

World Wars.55 As we have seen, Guénon’s anti-modernist works, and his inter-
pretation of Hinduism fascinated the young Eliade. Eliade’s enthusiasm for Tra-
ditionalism was shared with a soon-to-be “hard Traditionalist”: Mihai Vâlsan. In
about the origins of Traditional thought (Philosophia Perennis), to which René Guénon
appealed: simply the books of philosophy and occultism of the early nineteenth century.
To tell the truth, René Guénon ended up discovering, towards the end of his life, the true
sources, both Eastern and Western, of esoteric traditions, and above all he understood
their meaning … This “problem of origins” also has another aspect. It can be said that
these apparently banal books dealing with philosophy, freemasonry, occultism, and which
Guénon read in his youth, were all that existed at the beginning of the nineteenth century,
degraded, mutilated and even disguised, of the content of the Western esoteric tradition,
partially rediscovered in the Renaissance’. In Eliade, Jurnal 1970–1985, 336.
51 As already demonstrated, this is simply not true.
52 Eliade, L’épreuve, 170.
53 Eliade, Occultism, 66.
54 Ibid.
55 Mutti, Eliade, Vâlsan, 15.

via free access
1937, Vâlsan recommended Eliade’s work to Guénon, letting him believe Eliade
was ‘almost entirely in agreement with Traditional ideas’. Guénon’s belief was
further reinforced by another of his friends, Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy.
In 1935, Eliade has written to Coomaraswamy:
What I admire above all in your works, other than his immense and pre-
cise erudition, is the understanding of the symbolic and theoretical world,
an understanding that I do not find among other Orientalists. It is only
in the writings of Mr. R. Guénon and in some of J. Evola’s that a similar
capacity of understanding and sympathy can be found.56
Even though Eliade’s words are not precisely a confession of Traditionalist faith,
the letter’s ambiguous formulation let Coomaraswamy believe in Eliade’s Tradi-
tionalism, which he promptly communicated to Guénon. Coomaraswamy died
in 1947. Like Guénon, he died before the Guénonian entourage made public
their disbeliefs in Eliade’s Traditionalism. In a letter sent by Vâlsan to Lovinescu
in 1957 we can read:
[Eliade] uses Guénon a lot without ever mentioning him. In 1948 I met
him, and we chatted about his beliefs and his work in my house. He told
me that he agreed with Guénon on everything, but that his position and
his university projects prevented him from recognizing it openly. […] Eli-
ade told me that he thought of making use of the “Trojan horse” strategy:
once he was well established in academia, and after accumulating “scien-
tific” evidence of Traditional doctrines, he would have finally exposed the
Traditional truth publicly.57
This passage features two important elements. First, Vâlsan argues that in 1948
Mircea Eliade told him he agreed ‘with Guénon on everything’. It is very unlikely
that, by that time, Eliade could have made such a statement in good faith.58
By the time he was writing his letter, Vâlsan also doubted Eliade’s honesty and
caustically concludes:
56 Eliade, Europa, Asia, America, Vol, i, 120.

57 Unpublished letter mentioned in Mihaescu, ‘Mircea Eliade e René Guénon’, 17.
58 On 2 August 1946 Eliade wrote in his diary: ‘What Vasilie Lovinescu or Vâlsan would
have done without René Guénon? The former would have continued to be a mediocre
essayist-journalist, a pedestrian commentator on the latest book of philosophy published
by Cartea Românescă, while Vâlsan would have remained a mediocre official and would

via free access
12 10.1163/15700593-20211007 | marino
Two years ago, I met him on the street, and I told him that his projects
were going slowly. He replied that he was going to publish something; in
any case, he never mentioned the name of Guénon, […] but some of his
accusations against Traditionalists were pathetic.59
The second important point of this letter is the mention of the “Trojan horse
strategy”. This expression is of extreme interest. In fact, Eliade gave a similar
answer to another Traditionalist, Julius Evola. In 1951, Evola wrote to Eliade:
It is striking that you are extremely cautious not to mention in your works
any author who does not strictly belong to the most official academic lit-
erature […] there is not a single word not only about Guénon, but not even
about other authors whose ideas are much closer to those that allow you
to orient yourself with confidence in the subject you deal with.60
Even though we do not have Eliade’s reply, we can guess it from Evola’s follow-
ing letter:
As for your clarifications about your relationship with academic “mason-

ry”, I find them quite satisfactory. It would therefore be less a question of
methodology than of pure tactics, and nothing could be done against the
attempt to introduce some Trojan horse in the university citadel.61
From all that has just been said, it is clear that, at least until the early 1950s, the
Traditionalists had felt that Eliade was one of them, but they were also puz-
zled about the absence of explicit references to Guénon in Eliade’s works. From
the letters in our possession, it seems that Eliade himself had fueled “the myth
of affinity”. Paola Pisi has argued that, in the 1930s, Eliade had disingenuously
told Coomaraswamy about his “Trojan horse strategy” to convince the Anglo-
Ceylonese of his adherence to Traditionalism. The reason for Eliade’s behavior
would be his hope for an American university career, aided by a recommenda-
not even allow himself his pointed beard, so full of traditionalist allusions (with his con-
version to Islam, Vâlsan grew a sort of Arab beard). Today, each of them holds the key
to the mysteries, and after each new issue of “Études Traditionnelles” each of them feels
closer to the Absolute. “I think”, they say, “through a Tradition”; that is to say, they do not
think at all, but all they do is refer to Guénon’s latest article.’ Unpublished text, mentioned
in Mutti, Eliade, Vâlsan, 47.
59 Unpublished letter, mentioned in Mihaescu, Mircea Eliade, 17.
60 Evola, Lettere, 45.
61 Ibid.

via free access
tion from Coomaraswamy, who was then a distinguished art historian and the
Curator of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.62 In this view, the opportunistic
statements made with Coomaraswamy would have spread in the small circle of
the Parisian Guénonians, and this would be the reason for Eliade’s difficulties
in his later meetings with Vâlsan.
This interpretation of the facts is convincing. However, we should also not
forget the real admiration of the young Eliade for part of Guénon’s work. At that
time, he surely shared his enthusiasm with two of his fellow “revolutionaries”,
Vâlsan and Lovinescu.63 Yet, while the latter two became “Hard Traditionalists”,
Eliade took a different path. The increasing distance between people who have
shared a juvenile passion can also explain the later resentment between Eliade
and his Traditionalist compatriots.
Over twenty years later, the now world-famous professor Eliade reflected on
these past events in his diary:
One day, I received a rather bitter letter from Evola, in which he re-
proached me for never mentioning him nor Guénon. I answered him for
my part and one day it will be necessary to give an explanation of the
reasons for my answer. My argument is one of the simplest: the books I
write are intended for today’s public and not for “initiates”. Contrary to
Guénon and his followers, I believe that I do not have to write anything
that is specifically intended for them.64
This passage shows explicitly the position of the mature Eliade. He intended
to talk to ‘today’s public’ and not specifically to the Traditionalist “intellectual
elite” and this surely had an impact on the methods and style chosen by Eli-
ade.65
62 Pisi, ‘I “tradizionalisti”’, 77. Coomaraswamy had actively sought a teaching position in

America for Eliade, a project that was abandoned after the death of Coomaraswamy in
1947. Regarding this matter, Eliade notes in a letter: ‘unfortunately Coomaraswamy died.
He died before we had the possibility to meet […] He arranged everything before dying
and before I had time to get in touch with the director of the new University, which will
open its doors in autumn 1948’. Eliade, Europa, Asia, America, vol. iii, 460.
63 Mutti, Eliade, Vâlsan.
64 Eliade, Jurnal 1970–1985, 194.
65 On 25 November 1943 Eliade had written on his journal ‘I’m no longer interested in speak-
ing and writing for a public that, even if it understood me, could not create a worldwide
resonance for my ideas. […] My ideas and methods could spark a reform and have conse-
quences for European thought as a whole. But only provided that my ideas and methods
are made accessible’. Eliade, The Portugal, 98.

via free access
14 10.1163/15700593-20211007 | marino
His personal history with Traditionalism (and Traditionalists) seems to have

left a poor impression in Eliade’s memory. In fact, Evola’s letter was by no means
‘bitter’. On the contrary, Evola agreed with Eliade’s contempt for Traditionalist
dogmatism:
in France, but also in Italy, groups have formed that follow the teacher
in the manner of the “top of the class”, doubling dogmatic certainty and
pretending to be the only ones administering “orthodoxy”; which is quite
annoying and can only harm what is good in Guénon.66
5 Patterns of Initiation
In his classic study on Traditionalism, Mark Sedgwick describes Eliade as a “soft

Traditionalist”.67 In this second part, while in agreement with Sedgwick when
he argues that ‘to excavate the Traditionalism in the work of a “soft” Tradition-
alist is more difficult than to survey the thought of a “hard” Traditionalist’,68 I
argue that Eliade’s Traditionalism was too “soft” to consider him a Tradition-
alist. I have chosen “initiation” as the theme of my analysis for three reasons.
First, both Eliade and Guénon wrote extensively on this matter. Secondly, Eli-
ade’s work on initiation marks the end of the European phase of his life and
can be considered the beginning of the “mature” stage of his intellectual tra-
jectory. Lastly, and most importantly, the issue of initiation lies at the heart
of Traditionalism. The possibility of a reconnection with the Perennial Tradi-
tion through a “valid initiation” animated most of Traditionalist’s discussions
and anxieties, for which Guénon elaborated a very recognizable theory of ini-
tiation. That Eliade had a different understanding of such a central theme is
further proof that the “myth of affinity” is wrong.
5.1 Initiation or Mystical Birth?

In 1956, Mircea Eliade delivered the Haskell Lectures at the University of Chica-
go, a series of lectures entitled ‘Patterns of Initiation’, later published as Birth
and Rebirth.69 Ten years earlier, in 1946, René Guénon had collected a series
of his articles on initiation, originally published on Études Traditionnelles, in
66 Evola, Lettere, 53.

67 Sedgwick, Against, 111.
68 Ibid. p. 112.
69 Eliade, Birth.

via free access
a book titled Aperçus sur l’Initiation.70 The chronological and thematic sim-
ilarities of the two works offer an ideal ground for comparison. Despite being
written with similar intentions, the two books show the irreconcilable distance
between Eliadian hermeneutics and Traditionalism.
The first remarkable divergence is in the title. Eliade opted to publish the
French edition of his work as Naissances Mystiques [Mystical Births].71 It is
hard to imagine something further away from Guénon, especially considering
that the French esotericist started his book on initiation ‘dispelling some con-
fusion’72 between ‘the Initiatic and Mystical Paths’,73 where Guénon argues that
‘initiation is, by its very nature, strictly incompatible with mysticism’.74 Guénon
continues by describing mysticism as an exclusively Western (and specifically
Christian) phenomenon, characterized by the “passivity” of the mystic towards
spiritual realities.75
Eliade’s understanding of mysticism is very different. Already on the first
page of the first chapter of Birth and Rebirth he argues that the mystical voca-
tion is one variant of initiation.76 Against Guénon’s view, what identifies the
mystic for Eliade is not its passive character but the predominance of the indi-
vidual experience over the collective one. The mystic is an initiate because he
is someone who, having passed initiatory ordeals, ‘acquires a higher religious
status [… and] participates in a more intense religious experience than that
accessible to the rest of the community’.77
This difference in the use of “mystic” alone is not enough to mark the dis-
tance between the two authors on the theme of initiation. Eliade and Guénon
are antithetical to each other, especially in their definitions of what initiation
is (and is not). The main divergence in their theories lies in their respective
focuses. If what matters for Eliade is the relevance of initiation for the archety-
pal structure of the human psyche, Guénon cares about the Tradition and the
ontological significance of ritual actions. These divergent focuses underlie all
the differences that we will see below, starting from the very definition of initi-
ation.
70 Guénon, Aperçus.
71 Eliade, Naissances. The Italian edition was also published with the same title. See Eliade,
La nascita.
72 Guénon, Aperçus, 31.
73 This is the title of Guénon’s very first chapter in Aperçus.
75 Ibid. 31.
76 Eliade, Birth, 18.
77 Ibid., 19.

via free access
16 10.1163/15700593-20211007 | marino
5.2 Initiation or Initiations?

Guénon is extremely careful in distinguishing between ‘true initiation’ and
‘counterfeits’. In fact, according to Guénon, ‘nothing but the connection to a
regular traditional organization’78 can be the starting point in the quest for
knowledge. Given this assumption, the problem shifts to what is (and is not)
a ‘regular traditional organization’. This problem will not be discussed in detail
here. What matters is that for Guénon, the various forms of initiation that
have historically appeared are different forms taken by the Perennial Tradition.
Beyond the different modes of expression, all forms of “regular initiation” are
nothing but the emanation of the “Supreme Centre”.79
These esoteric technicalities have no importance for Eliade and his clas-
sification of initiation. Instead, he uses the term “initiation” to refer to three
different phenomena:80
1) the collective rituals of passage from childhood to adulthood;
2) the rites of entry into a secret society (and the Greek-Oriental mysteries);
and
3) the mystical vocation.
For Eliade, “initiation” defines every ritual that sanctions a change in the exis-
tential status of the individual. It is easy to see that, in perfect conformity with
Eliade’s taxonomical intentions, such a general definition can include an enor-
mous range of phenomena. In fact, Eliade holds to an inclusive attitude in his
attempt to remark the innate man’s desire for initiation.81 Such a project is
essentially opposite to that of Guénon, who creates a dense network of restric-
tions around the idea of initiation that originated from Traditionalist elitism.
These interpretative differences reflect Guénon’s and Eliade’s intended audi-
ences. Guénon writes from an “operational” point of view and aims ‘to pro-
vide some information from which those who are capable may benefit to the
extent that their dispositions and circumstances permit’.82 For Guénon, distinc-
tions, clarifications, and refutations serve to orient the reader and to warn him
against the ‘multiple counterfeits […] and […] the pseudo-initiatory forms of
the present West’.83 Since he proceeded from a strictly anti-evolutionist per-
spective,84 deduced from his interpretation of the Hindu cosmic cyclic doc-

79 Ibid., 94. On this “Centre”, see Guénon, Le Roi.
81 ‘Initiation lies at the core of any genuine human life’. Eliade, Birth, 135.
83 Ibid., 21.
84 Guénon considered “progress” as one of ‘the preconceived ideas and trends prevailing in
the modern mentality’. See Guénon, The Reign, 43–44.

via free access
trine, Guénon wanted to equip his reader with the tools that might save him
from falling into the deceptions of the “dark age” (Kali-yuga). These concerns
account for all the meticulous distinctions that abound in Guénon’s writings
on initiation.
Unlike Guénon, Eliade insisted on his scholarly role and understood himself
as a historian of religion, someone who can discover ‘the existential situation
assumed by the religious man in the experience of initiation and to make that
primordial experience intelligible to his own contemporaries’.85 It is clear that
starting from this point of view, there cannot be, as for Guénon, “real” or “false”
initiations. Instead, Eliade is concerned about the initiate’s ‘existential situa-
tion’. Thus, in the Eliadian description we do not find any reference to initiatory
elitism, nor to the need for special qualifications to obtain an initiation (deci-
sive aspects in the Guénonian view). With the initiatory birth, one, everyone,
acquires the mythical, ritual, and symbolic knowledge of reality, and he has the
possibility to experience the link between all things. After the initiation, man
becomes complete. For Eliade, ‘it is the initiation that gives men their human
status’.86 Conversely, a Guénonian initiate has a much longer and more com-
plex path in front of him. The reconnection to a ‘regular traditional form’ is,
etymologically, only an initium:87
this virtual initiation is, therefore, an initiation understood in the strictest

meaning of the term, that is to say as an “entry” or a “beginning”; which, of
course, does not mean in the least that it can be considered as something
sufficient in itself, but only the necessary starting point for all the rest.88
Here another point of divergence between the two authors is explicit. If for Eli-
ade the initiation coincides with the full entry of the individual into the human
condition (seen as an achievement), for Guénon the initiate enters a path that
aims to overcome the same human condition in its individual state (seen as a
limitation), seeking ‘the “extinction” of “the ego” in the return to the “primordial
state”’.89
To sum up, beneath superficial similarities in both the field of study and
the “operational” approach to the subject, we find an irreconcilable divergence
between the two authors. The Perennialist initiate needs to “activate” his initia-
86 Ibid., 19.
87 “Virtual initiation” in Guénonian jargon.
89 Guénon, Le Symbolisme, 67, n. 3.

via free access
18 10.1163/15700593-20211007 | marino
tion through ascetic practice, and this process can be carried out only under the
sign of the “transcendent intellect”, the divine faculty embedded in man.90 In
contrast, the Eliadian initiate does not aim to transcend the world. If anything,
he is called to live more deeply in it. The Eliadian initiate, having received the
mysteries of the cosmos, fully becomes part of human society. Only when he is
initiated can he understand the profound symbolic meaning of reality. For Eli-
ade, initiation is not a matter of overcoming the human condition “vertically”,
toward an absolute transcendent Principle (as for Guénon), but to expand the
human condition “horizontally” and to embrace the totality of the cosmos. This
“horizontal realization” can be also found in the Guénonian theories, described
as ‘everything that has to do with the development of the possibilities of the
human state considered in its entirety’.91 However, this path, associated with
the “Lesser Mysteries” is only a preparation for the proper aim of the initiatic
path that remains transcendent (“vertical”).
Thus, the poles between which Eliade’s discourse moves are “man” (under-
stood both as an individual and as a society) and “cosmos” (nature). As perti-
nently noted by Mac Linscott Ricketts, Eliade has a lexical preference for the
word “cosmic” in discussions where Guénon prefers to use “intellectual” (aka
“spiritual”).92
This seems to be the main irreconcilable difference between the two au-
thors. In the Eliadian system, “experience” is predominant, while for Guénon,
what the initiate feels is irrelevant considering that ‘all manifested things […]
are nothing and their importance is strictly nothing with respect to absolute
Reality’.93
5.3 Ordeals of Initiation

Further confirmation of the thesis presented above is found in a ramification of
the discourse on initiation, that of “initiatory ordeals”. In Birth and Rebirth, we
find many examples of trials undertaken by the initiate, from simple symbolic
actions to extreme forms of brutality and torture. For Mircea Eliade, ‘the aim
remains always the same: to ensure the experience of ritual death’.94
The keyword here is, once again, “experience”. What Eliade means is to
show how through a well-planned staging, full of sensory suggestions (musi-
cal instruments, paintings, costumes, perfumes, etc.), the initiate can directly
90 For the Traditionalist gnoseology, see Guénon, Les États.

91 Guénon, Aperçus sur l’Initiation, 248.
92 This observation is found in Ricketts, Mircea Eliade, 857.
93 Guénon, Aperçus sur l’ésotérisme, 18.

via free access
experience a fracture in common reality and encounter the sacred. This is a

typical example of the “rupture of plane” concept, so recurrent in Eliadian
hermeneutics. Once again, this discussion proceeds on a “cosmic” level. Ini-
tiatory knowledge consists of ‘a revelation of the sacred’95 but also ‘of death,
sexuality and the struggle for survival’.96
Guénon’s argument stands, once again, on a completely opposite ground.
Guénon found it necessary to dedicate a long chapter of Aperçus sur l’ Initiation
to the ‘initiatory qualifications’.97 In his view, not everyone can receive an ini-
tiation as certain characteristics (which may be psychological or physical) can
make an individual unfit for initiation. All these distinctions emphasize the
elitist character of his system. The Traditionalist idea of initiation is not about
the Eliadian ‘mysteries of social and human life’, but rather access to the ‘higher
states of being’. Considering that we live in the darkest of all ages, the terminal
phase of Kali-Yuga (“modernity”), only an increasingly restricted minority of
people remains qualified enough to access it.
It would be natural to imagine that someone who proposes such restricted
access to initiation would focus on initiatory ordeals that are particularly diffi-
cult to overcome. Yet in Guénon work we find exactly the opposite. While “the
inclusive” initiation described by Eliade can involve harsh trials (sub-incision,
avulsion of the incisor, etc.), in Guénon’s elitist system, initiatory proofs are only
symbolic (emblematic journeys, lustrations, and ablutions). How do we make
sense of this apparent paradox? The answer is again found by looking at the
philosophical difference between Eliade’s and Guénon’s systems.
Traditionalism is strongly monistic, with a metaphysics based on a pyrami-
dal structure typical of Western esotericism. In this context, initiation is the
indispensable means for reaching the summit of the pyramid, in a process
guided by the “active intellect”. Given this strong intellectualistic orientation of
Traditionalism, it is not surprising that the initiatory proofs are first and fore-
most symbolic. The trials only represent a preliminary step that purifies the
novice and ensures the effectiveness of the initiation ritual. For example, the
“initiatory death” will not be any less real because it is performed through a non-
bloody ritual. On the contrary, it will be real and effective precisely because it is
performed ritually, since only the rite can have an effective connection with the
deep ontological nature of the initiate. For Guénon, the novice’s death is real
precisely because is symbolic, so it “really happens”, yet on a different (higher)
95 Ibid.
96 Ibid.
97 Guénon, Aperçus, 96–108.

via free access
20 10.1163/15700593-20211007 | marino
level of reality. On the contrary, Eliade is more interested in seeing how an ini-
tiation ritual can give a real experience of death and rebirth, and not about a
repercussion on the deep ontological structure of the individual (which is never
mentioned in his book on initiation). This explains the emphasis he gives to the
staging of such rituals, as well as to the social and psychological effects that the
initiation carries.
It is perhaps necessary to clarify the concept of “real effect” of initiation, used
here to describe the theories of both authors. In Guénon’s view, although rites
and symbols are themselves representations, they are “more real than reality”
since they convey the “spiritual influence”, a force that is neither material nor
psychic, but purely spiritual. It follows that “initiatory death” for Guénon, far
from being fictitious, is on the contrary, more real even than death understood
in the ordinary sense of the word.
[because] the initiatic order is truly the only one that goes beyond the
contingencies inherent in the particular states of the being, and conse-
quently the only one that has a profound and permanent value from the
universal point of view.98
All this explains the Guénonian doctrine of symbol and rite. Symbols and
rites are real because they actually connect the world of the sacred to that
of humans. Conversely, for Eliade, the reality of symbols and rituals does not
come from a postulated link with the spiritual world, and their effects are not
found in a metaphysical universe. Instead, the Eliadian “principle of authentic-
ity” should be searched in a set of beliefs about symbols shared by a community
that accepts them as real. In this context, “initiatic death” is real for Eliade as
an experience that credibly represents and anticipates human death, and not,
as for Guénon, as an actual death on another level of reality.
The respective relationships between symbol and symbolized that Guénon
and Eliade theorize are perfect mirror images of each other. Rather than relying
on metaphysical realities, as in Guénon’s philosophy, Eliadian symbols come
from the Jungian notion of “the collective unconscious” or from “creativity”.
These notions function as counterparts to the classical ontology in Guénon’s
philosophy.
In short, the discussion on initiatic ordeals shows us a “vitalist” and “experi-
ential” Eliade, a philosopher who values and finds the sacred inside life. Diamet-
rically opposed to him is Guénon, who is “intellectualist” and “metaphysical”,
and values the sacred beyond life.

via free access
5.4 Middle Ages, Literature, and Modernity

Guénon devoted a large part of his work showing the unbridgeable distance
between modernity and the “traditional world”.99 His rejection of modernity
is so radical that his definition of modernity itself is a negation. For Guénon,
“modern” is the literal opposite of “traditional”; the category of “modernity”
(and indeed that of “the West”) is thus not (mainly) historical (or geograph-
ical) but rather ontological. From this point of view, it is not surprising that
Aperçus sur l’Initiation is strewn with continuous clarifications, distinctions,
and specifications that aim to falsify some widely accepted concepts.100 What
matters most here is Guénon believed that “modernity” and “the West” are
virtually incompatible with the possibility of “real” initiation (in Guénonian
terms). Conversely, in the last pages of Birth and Rebirth, dedicated to the sur-
vival of initiatory motifs in the arts,101 Eliade is less categorical. Nevertheless, he
agrees with Guénon on the survival of some types of initiation among certain
restricted circles in medieval Europe.102 This agreement represents a moment
in which Guénon’s influence on the young Eliade re-emerges in the latter’s
mature work. For Guénon, the Middle Ages had its regular initiations because
it was a fully “traditional”, pre-modern society (a matter which Eliade agreed
on).103
Once again, underneath the superficial similarities between the two authors
lies an enormous theoretical difference. For Eliade, the fact that medieval ini-
tiatory societies were secret and reserved to a small elite is a symptom of their
degeneration, a sign that the phenomenon was on the verge of disappearing.
Yet for Guénon, elitism and secrecy, far from proving the degeneration of such
societies, represented the normal and even necessary characteristics of any reg-
ular initiatory organization. Eliade links the appearance of chivalric literature
towards the end of the Middle Ages with the disappearance of Western ini-
tiatory organizations, again following the Guénonian concept of folklore as a
repository of traditional data. Nevertheless, Guénon certainly disagreed that
‘this literature […] is valuable for our research, because of its public success’.104
Again, Eliade is not interested in decrypting the esoteric symbolism of folk leg-
99 The young Eliade was most impressed by this aspect. See above, 5.
100 This is evident from just scanning through the titles of Guenon’s book. In Aperçus sur
l’Initiation, we find ‘Magic and mysticism’ (chapter 2), ‘Different errors concerning initia-
tion’ (chapter 3), ‘Synthesis and syncretism’ (chapter 4), etc.
102 The same as those that Guénon describes. See Eliade, Birth, 180.
103 As we have seen, the young Eliade had praised Guénon for his positive opinion of the Mid-
dle Ages. Guénon’s theory of medieval social organization is found in Guénon, Autorité.

via free access
22 10.1163/15700593-20211007 | marino
ends.105 Instead, he notes: ‘the fact that legendary stories where the initiatory
clichés were repeated to satiety, proves, in our opinion, that these adventures
met a profound need of the medieval man. The initiatory scenarios only fed
the imagination; but the life of the imagination, like the life of the dream, is
as important for the psychic totality of the human being as the real-life’.106 At
this point, it almost seems pleonastic to point out how among the terms ‘imag-
ination’, ‘dream’, and ‘the psychic totality of the human being’ little or nothing
would have interested Guénon, who would have agreed with Eliade when he
affirmed that these problems ‘belong by right to the psychologist’.107
Talking about initiatic literature, Eliade and Guénon start from the same
assumption, only to proceed in divergent directions. If for Guénon the camou-
flage of traditional data is nothing but the proof of the definitive disappearance
of authentic esoteric knowledge in the West, for Eliade the transmission of folk-
loric themes to modern Westerners, however apparently desacralized, shows
the uninterrupted ‘structure of symbols, rituals, and myths’ in the Western col-
lective psyche.108 For Eliade, ‘the unconscious is religious’, and religion, far from
disappearing in the modern world, ‘lies buried in the deepest layers of its being,
[and] it continues to play an essential role in the economy of the psyche’.109
From this theoretical assumption (the Jungian “religious unconscious”), Eli-
ade can “save” modern culture. Unlike Guénon, what Eliade “saves” is not the
esoteric knowledge of the “intellectual elite”, which he considered as being ‘of
irreparable sterility’.110 On the contrary, Eliade tries to emphasize the spiritual
significance of the contemporary cultural industry that exists to satisfy the
secular man’s thirst for symbols. Modern men relive initiatory archetypes by
reading Dedalus’ wanderings in Ulysses or watching a film in which the hero
saves his beloved.111
105 Thus, from a Traditionalist perspective, Eliade ‘does not understand all that is symbolic
meaning, or (but, then, for what reason?) that he does not want to deal with it’, Guénon,
Lettere a Coomaraswamy, p. 54.
106 Ibid.
107 Ibid.
108 Ibid., 185.
109 Ibid.
110 Ibid., 192.
111 ‘The majority of the pseudo-occult groups are hopelessly sterile. No important cultural
creation whatever can be credited to them. On the contrary, the few modern works in
which initiatory themes are discernible—James Joyce’s Ulysses, T.S. Eliot’s The Waste
Land—were created by writers and artists who make no claim to have been initiated and
who belong to no occult circle. […] Initiatory motifs are even to be found in the terminol-
ogy used to interpret these works. For example, such and such a book or film will be said
to rediscover the myths and ordeals of the Hero in quest of immortality, to touch upon

via free access
The above differences demonstrate to what extent Eliade’s perspective di-

verges from Traditionalism. Guénon, denying any initiatory value to the ordi-
nary facts of life, once wrote: ‘It is not clear to me why any painful event in one’s
life is commonly qualified as “proof” (French preuve), and why we call someone
who is suffering “proven” (French éprouvé, which also means “tested”); it is diffi-
cult not to see here a simple abuse of language’.112 Contrariwise, Mircea Eliade
concluded his book on initiation with these words: ‘ “initiation” accompanies
every authentic human existence. […] Every authentic human life implies the
crisis in-depth, testing, anguish, loss, and regaining of the ego, “death and res-
urrection”’.113
6 Conclusion
The comparison of Birth and Rebirth with Aperçus sur l’ Initiation is signifi-
cant for three reasons. First, Eliade’s and Guénon’s definitions of “initiation” are
remarkably divergent. For the latter, initiation represents the entrance to the
path of the Perennial Tradition, a path that leads to the overcoming of individ-
uality and eventually to extinction ( fanā’) in the metaphysical Principle. For
Eliade, the way of initiation is also “an entrance”, but one that integrates the
individual into a community. Even the mystic, the most individual form of ini-
tiation, finds his meaning to be an exemplary model for the rest of society.
Second, the two authors diverge greatly on rites associated with initiation in
their respective works. For Eliade, a ritual should be as impressive as possible
to strike the collective imaginary. Harsh ceremonies like ritual mutilations are
very important to the success of an initiation. The efficacy of these rites is indis-
solubly linked to the emotional impact that they have on the initiate and the
community at large. Guénon had a very different understanding of symbols as
being real per se. The emotional involvement of people in a ritual is not a pre-
condition for the efficacy of the symbols on the individual. On the contrary,
emotions and feelings may even harm the initiatic path that should remain
a purely intellectual endeavor. Thus, the rites that Guénon describes are less
impressive for the profane masses, but irreversible for “those who know”. Muti-
lations may modify one’s body, but non-bloody rituals go much deeper since
they modify the very structure of one’s being.
the mystery of the redemption of the world, to reveal the secrets of regeneration through
woman or love, and so on’. Eliade, Birth, 134.

via free access
24 10.1163/15700593-20211007 | marino
The third point of tension between the two authors lies in their diagnoses
of modernity. Guénon rejected all modern Western culture without exception.
He tried to find the knowledge needed to rescue a minority of Westerners still
qualified for initiation (“the intellectual elite”) in the far reaches of space (“the
Orient”) and time (“Traditional society”). Eliade was also extremely concerned
about the disappearance of “the sacred” in the modern world. Yet, while the
young Eliade admired Guénon’s diagnosis of modernity, he later softened his
own position, repudiating Traditionalism’s ‘outrageously polemical side and its
brutal rejection for all modern Western culture’, as well as the pedantic con-
formism of many of Guénon’s followers. For Eliade, it is the ‘pseudo-occult
groups’ that are ‘hopelessly sterile’ and not modern culture. In our modern
world, the arts maintain their traditional value as a ‘depository of symbols’ that
continue to reveal ‘myths and ordeals’ and ‘initiatory motifs’ to the contempo-
rary public.
From the above, I do not see how one can say that, even ‘from a purely
descriptive standpoint, Eliade’s analysis of occult initiatory rituals in Rites and
Symbols of Initiation bears a great deal of similarity to the rhetoric common in
Traditionalist circles’.114 Instead, I believe I have demonstrated the irreconcil-
able distance between Eliade’s hermeneutics and Guénon’s esotericism.
Furthermore, their differences make me question the possibility of a sup-
posed “ideological front” made between the two authors. Mircea Eliade and
René Guénon surely belonged to those European intellectuals that felt unease
with (what they perceived as) “modernity”. However, in the first half of the
twentieth century, and especially in the interwar period, this was hardly some-
thing exclusive of these two authors and this alone is not sufficient to demon-
strate their ideological affinity. In fact, despite the undoubtedly political impli-
cations of the works of Eliade and Guénon, I believe that excessive attention
has often been given to this aspect, overlooking the two authors’ philosophical
relevance.
Today, as stated by the eminent historian Carlo Ginzburg, ‘the age of sim-
ple dichotomies is over’.115 It would be desirable that such an important lesson
can be applied also to the study of those authors who subscribed to value sys-
tems different from today’s dominant ones, so to avoid ideologically one-sided
models that unjustly trivialize the complexity of reality as experienced by great
intellectuals of the past.
114 Fisher, ‘Fascist Scholars’, 273.

115 Ginzburg, ‘Mircea Eliade’, 323.

via free access
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Mark Sedgwick and James Frankel for their comments on
a draft of this article, Dan Adjudeanu and Daniele Diroccia for their help with
the Romanian sources and Claudio Mutti for showing me an unpublished copy
of Eliade’s diary in his possession. A special thanks to Derek Paylor and Scott
J. Smith for proofreading the manuscript.
Bibliography
Amalvi, Christian, ‘The Middle Ages: Support for Counter-Revolutionary and Reac-
tionary Ideology, 1830–1944’, in: Flocel Sabaté (ed.) Ideology in the Middle Ages:
Approaches from Southwestern Europe, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press
2019, 413–422.
Bisson, David, René Guénon: une politique de l’esprit, Paris: Pierre Guillaume de Roux
2013.
Bordaş, Liviu, ‘The Secret of Dr. Eliade’, in: Bryan S. Rennie (ed.) The International Eli-
ade, Albany NY: suny Press 2007, 101–130.
Bordaş, Liviu, ‘The Difficult Encounter in Rome. Mircea Eliade’s Post-War Relation with
Julius Evola—New Letters and Data’, International Journal on Humanistic Ideology,
iv:2 (2011), 125–158.
Bordaş, Liviu, ‘Faptul magic și faptul mistic. Prima întâlnire a lui Eliade cu opera lui
Evola’, Revista de istorie şi teorie literară, xlviii:1–4 (2012), 355–400.
Culianu, Ioan Petru, Mircea Eliade, Assisi: Cittadella 1978.
De Martino, Marcello, Mircea Eliade esoterico. Ioan Petru Culianu e i “non detti”, Roma:
Edizioni Settimo Sigillo 2008.
De Turris et al., Delle rovine ed oltre. Saggi su Julius Evola, Roma: Antonio Pellicani Edi-
tore 1995.
Dubuisson, Daniel, ‘Eliade e Guénon: esoterismo e storia delle religioni’, Strumenti cri-
tici, 16:2 (2001), 187–188.
Eco, Umberto, ‘Eternal Fascism’, The New York Review of Books, 22 June 1995, 12–15.
Eliade, Mircea. Traité d’histoire des Religions. Paris: Payot 1948.
Eliade, Mircea, Birth and Rebirth: Rites and Symbols of Initiation, London: Harvill Press
1958.
Eliade, Mircea, Naissances mystiques. Essai sur quelques types d’initiation, Paris: Galli-
mard 1959.
Eliade, Mircea, La nascita mistica. Riti e simboli di iniziazione, Brescia: Morcelliana 1974.
Eliade, Mircea, Occultism, Witchcraft, and Cultural Fashions, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press 1976.

via free access
26 10.1163/15700593-20211007 | marino
Eliade, Mircea, L’épreuve du Labyrinthe, Entretiens avec Claude Henri Rocquet, Paris: Bel-
fond 1978.
Eliade, Mircea, Le Mythe de l’éternel retour. Archétypes et répétitions, Paris: Gallimard
1976.
Eliade, Mircea, ‘Some Notes on “Theosophia Perennis”: Ananda K. Coomaraswamy and
Henry Corbin’, History of Religions 19:2 (1979), 167–176.
Eliade, Mircea, Les Moissons du Solstice, Paris: Gallimard 1988.
Eliade, Mircea, Fragmentarium, Bucharest: Humanitas 1994.
Eliade, Mircea, Jurnal 1941–1969, Bucharest: Humanitas 2004.
Eliade, Mircea, Jurnal 1970–1985, Bucharest: Humanitas 2004.
Eliade Mircea, The Portugal Journal, Albany: State University of New York Press 2010.
Eliade Mircea, Handoca, Mircea (ed.), Europa, Asia, America … Corespondenţă (A–H),
vol. i, Bucarest: Humanitas 1999.
Eliade Mircea, Handoca, Mircea (ed.), Europa, Asia, America … Corespondenţă (R–Z),
vol. iii, Bucarest: Humanitas 1999.
Ellwood, Robert S., The Politics of Myth: A Study of C.G. Jung, Mircea Eliade, and Joseph
Campbell. New York: State University of New York Press 1999.
Evola, Julius, Lettere a Mircea Eliade 1930–1954, Napoli: Controcorrente 2011.
Faivre, Antoine, ‘Modern Western Esoteric Currents in the Work of Mircea Eliade: The
Extent and Limits of their Presence,’ in: Doniger Wendy and Christian K. Wedemeyer
(ed.), Hermeneutics, Politics, and the History of Religions: The Contested Legacies of
Joachim Wach and Mircea Eliade, New York: Oxford University Press 2010, 147–158.
Fiore, Crescenzo, Storia sacra e storia profana in Mircea Eliade, Roma: Bulzoni Editore
1986.
Fisher, Elaine, ‘Fascist Scholars, Fascist Scholarship: The Quest for Ur-Fascism and the
Study of Religion’ in: Doniger Wendy and Christian K. Wedemeyer (ed.), Hermeneu-
tics, Politics, and the History of Religions: The Contested Legacies of Joachim Wach and
Mircea Eliade, New York: Oxford University Press 2010, 261–284.
François, Stéphane, ‘The Nouvelle Droite and “Tradition”’. Journal for the Study of Rad-
icalism 8:1 (2014), 87–106.
Ginzburg, Carlo, ‘Mircea Eliade’s Ambivalent Legacy’ in: Doniger Wendy and Chris-
tian K. Wedemeyer. Hermeneutics, Politics, and the History of Religions: The Contested
Legacies of Joachim Wach and Mircea Eliade, New York: Oxford University Press 2010,
307–324.
Grottanelli, Cristiano, ‘Mircea Eliade, Carl Schmitt, René Guénon 1942’, in: Natale Spine-
to (ed.) Interrompere il Quotidiano, La costruzione del tempo nell’esperienza religiosa,
Milano: Jaca Book 2005, 139–171.
Guénon, René, L’Ésotérisme de Dante, Paris: Bosse 1925.
Guénon, René, La crise du monde moderne, Paris: Bossard 1927.
Guénon, René, Le Roi du Monde, Paris: Éditions Traditionnelles 1927.

via free access
Guénon, René, Autorité spirituelle et pouvoir temporal, Paris: Vrin 1929.

Guénon, René, Le Symbolisme de la Croix, Paris: Éditions Traditionnelles 1931.
Guénon, René, Les États multiples de l’être, Paris: Véga 1932.
Guénon, René, Le Règne de la Quantité et les Signes des Temps, Paris: Gallimard 1945.
Guénon, René, Aperçus sur l’Initiation, Paris: Éditions Traditionnelles 1946.
Guénon, René, Formes traditionnelles et cycles cosmiques, Paris: Gallimard 1970.
Guénon, René, Aperçus sur l’ésotérisme islamique et le taoïsme, Paris: Gallimard 1973.
Guénon, René, Comptes Rendus, Paris: Éditions Traditionnelles 1986.
Guénon, René, Lettere a Julius Evola, Carmagnola: Arktos 2005.
Guénon, René, Lettere a Coomaraswamy 1938–1939, Parma: Edizioni all’Insegna del Vel-
tro 2007.
Guénon, René, Lettere a Vasile Lovinescu 1936–1940, Parma: Edizioni all’Insegna del Vel-
tro 2007.
Hakl, Hans Thomas, ‘Julius Evola and Tradition’, in: Mark Sedgwick (ed.), Key Thinkers
of the Radical Right, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2019, 54–69.
Idel, Moshe, Mircea Eliade: From Magic to Myth, Bern: Peter Lang Publishing 2014.
Jesi, Furio, Cultura di Destra, Milano: Garzanti 1979.
Laurant, Jean-Pierre, Le sens caché dans l’oeuvre de René Guénon, Lausanne, Suisse:
L’Âge d’homme 1975.
Laurant, Jean-Pierre, René Guénon. Les enjeux d’une lecture, Paris: Dervy 2006.
Laurant, Jean-Pierre, Guénon au combat; des réseaux en mal d’institutions, Paris: L’har-
mattan 2019.
Mihaescu, Florin, Mircea Eliade e René Guénon, in: Claudio Mutti (ed.), ‘Mircea Eliade’,
Origini, 13:1 (1997), 15–18.
Montanari, Enrico, ‘Eliade e Guénon’, Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni, 61 (1995),
131–149.
Montanari, Enrico, La fatica del cuore. Saggi sull’ascesi esicasta, Milano: Jaca Book 2003.
Montanari, Enrico, ‘Eliade ed Evola: aspetti di un rapporto sommerso’, in: Giovanni
Casadio, Pietro Mander (eds.), Mircea Eliade. Le forme della Tradizione e del Sacro,
Roma: Edizioni Mediterranee 2012, 93–111.
Mutti, Claudio, Le penne dell’arcangelo. Intellettuali e Guardia di Ferro, Saluzzo: Società
Editrice Barbarossa 1981.
Mutti, Claudio, Eliade, Vâlsan, Geticus e gli altri: la fortuna di Guénon tra i Romeni,
Parma: Edizioni All’Insegna Del Veltro 1999.
Oldmeadow, Kenneth, Traditionalism: Religion in the Light of the Perennial Philosophy,
Colombo: Sri Lanka Institute of Traditional Studies 2000.
Pisi, Paola, ‘I “tradizionalisti” e la formazione del pensiero di Mircea Eliade’, in: Vv (ed.),
Confronto con Mircea Eliade, Milano: Jaca Book 1998, 43–133.
Quinn, William W, The Only Tradition, Albany: State of New York University Press
1997.

via free access
28 10.1163/15700593-20211007 | marino
Quinn, William W, ‘Mircea Eliade and the Sacred Tradition (A Personal Account)’, Nova
Religio 3:1 (1999), 147–153.
Ricketts, Mac Linscott, Mircea Eliade: The Romanian Roots, 1907–1945, New York: Colum-
bia University Press 1988.
Robin, Jean, René Guénon. Témoin de la Tradition, Paris: Guy Trédaniel 1978.
Sanjakdar, Lara, Mircea Eliade e la Tradizione: Tempo, Mito, Cicli Cosmici, Rimini: Il Cer-
chio 2015.
Sedgwick, Mark, Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual
History of the Twentieth Century, New York: Oxford University Press 2011.
Sedgwick, Mark, Key Thinkers of the Radical Right: Behind the New Threat to Liberal
Democracy, New York, NY: Oxford University Press 2019.
Spineto, Natale, ‘Mircea Eliade and Traditionalism’, Aries 1:1 (2001), 62–87.
Spineto, Natale, Mircea Eliade storico delle religioni. Con la corrispondenza inedita di
Mircea Eliade-Károly Kerényi, Brescia: Morcelliana 2006.
Tolcea, Marcel, Eliade, L’ésotérique, Bucharest: Samuel Tastet 2017.
Teitelbaum, Benjamin R., War for Eternity: The Return of Traditionalism and the Rise of
the Populist Right, London: Penguin Books 2020.
Valencia-García, Louie Dean, Far-right Revisionism and the End of History: Alt/Histories,
New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 2020.
Vâlsan, Michel, La fonction de René Guénon et le sort de l’ Occident, Paris: Editions Tra-
ditionnelles 1951.
Wasserstrom, Steven M., Religion after Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and
Henry Corbin at Eranos. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1999.
Weitzman, Mark, ‘“One Knows the Tree by the Fruit That It Bears”: Mircea Eliade’s Influ-
ence on Current Far-Right Ideology’, Religions 11:5 (2020), 250–262.

via free access

Arie Article 10.1163 15700593 20211007

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Arie Article 10.1163 15700593 20211007

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Aries – Journal for the Study

of Western Esotericism (2022) 1–28

Mircea Eliade and René Guénon

René Guénon – Mircea Eliade – traditionalism – initiation – esotericism – myth

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/15700593-20211007

Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism (2022) 1–28

with far-right movements by using Traditionalism as a theoretical foundation

Aries – Journal for the Study of WesternDownloaded

Guénon’s “encouragement” appeared in Études Traditionelles between 1946 and

14 Guénon, Lettere a Vasile Lovinescu, 69.

Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism (2022) 1–28

21 Guénon, Études, 210.

Aries – Journal for the Study of WesternDownloaded

attitude of intellectuals in an era of decadence. It was the Guénonian critique

3.1 Romanian Roots

formidable ability to despise the modern world as a whole: I don’t think

The third appearance of Guénon in Fragmentarium is in ‘Resistance to Genius’.

Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism (2022) 1–28

this unfortunate phenomenon in quite Traditionalist terms, ‘the inability of

Aries – Journal for the Study of WesternDownloaded

correspondence with two of Guénon’s closest associates, the Anglo-Ceylonese

3.2 From Paris to Chicago

René Guénon presupposed a “primordial tradition” whose existence I

39 Eliade, ‘Some Notes’, 167–176.

Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism (2022) 1–28

44 Eliade, Jurnal, 572.

Aries – Journal for the Study of WesternDownloaded

In the same years, answering a question about Guénon, Eliade confirmed

some of his books interested me a lot, in particular L’ homme et son devenir

4 Fanatical Admirers and the “Trojan Horse Strategy”

Traditionalism had a remarkable resonance in Romania between the two

Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism (2022) 1–28

56 Eliade, Europa, Asia, America, Vol, i, 120.

Aries – Journal for the Study of WesternDownloaded

As for your clarifications about your relationship with academic “mason-

Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism (2022) 1–28

62 Pisi, ‘I “tradizionalisti”’, 77. Coomaraswamy had actively sought a teaching position in

Aries – Journal for the Study of WesternDownloaded

His personal history with Traditionalism (and Traditionalists) seems to have

In his classic study on Traditionalism, Mark Sedgwick describes Eliade as a “soft

5.1 Initiation or Mystical Birth?

66 Evola, Lettere, 53.

Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism (2022) 1–28

Aries – Journal for the Study of WesternDownloaded

5.2 Initiation or Initiations?

78 Guénon, Aperçus, 46.

Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism (2022) 1–28

this virtual initiation is, therefore, an initiation understood in the strictest

Aries – Journal for the Study of WesternDownloaded

5.3 Ordeals of Initiation

90 For the Traditionalist gnoseology, see Guénon, Les États.

Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism (2022) 1–28

experience a fracture in common reality and encounter the sacred. This is a

Aries – Journal for the Study of WesternDownloaded

98 Guénon, Aperçus, 178.

Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism (2022) 1–28

5.4 Middle Ages, Literature, and Modernity

Aries – Journal for the Study of WesternDownloaded

Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism (2022) 1–28

The above differences demonstrate to what extent Eliade’s perspective di-

Aries – Journal for the Study of WesternDownloaded

114 Fisher, ‘Fascist Scholars’, 273.

Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism (2022) 1–28