Mircea Eliade and the Quest for Religious Meaning (Critical Essay‪)‬

"Creative hermeneutics changes man; it is more than instruction; it is also a spiritual technique susceptible of modifying the quality of existence itself. This is true above all for the historico-religious hermeneutics. A good history of religions book ought to produce in the reader an action of awakening." Mircea Eliade (1) Within a framework of discussion on exegesis and interpretation of religious texts, Mircea Eliade's "creative hermeneutics" calls for attention as a method that opened new possibilities for breaking knowledge limits and grasping meanings that otherwise could remain "hidden" in opaque "texts". Employing both reason and imagination, his endeavor opened up documents for the historian to "see" the spiritual message. I submit that only a person of "double vocation" like Eliade, who operated freely in two registers, scholarly and literary, could enrich the former with the creativity typical of the latter.