MIRCEA ELIADE. THE FOLKLORE AND THE SUBSTANCE OF REALITY
MIRCEA ELIADE. THE FOLKLORE AND THE SUBSTANCE OF REALITY

Summary/Abstract: This article aims at analyzing « Folklore, as knowledge instrument » (1937), which is part of Eliade’s essays from younghood as perspective of his later evolution of philosopher of culture and history of religion. This study demonstrates a quite interesting way of reading ethnographic and folkloric documents, as they may lead to exploration of experience and conscience not fully rationally. Il is about real alive fossils, which inform about the mental universe of the archaic man which is connected to the real, i.e. to the transcendent. Therefore, these documents may lead the researcher (according to Eliade), to hypotheses of theories about unseen capacities of the human nature, describing apparently impossible facts, produced as a result of human direct experiences. Moreover, some scientific discoveries or contemporary experiences (contagious magic, pragmatic crypthestesie, body’s combustible etc.) attest this type of impossible experiences.

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