A review by leelulah
The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion by Mircea Eliade, Willard R. Trask

4.0

It's perfect for non initiated people since it's an introductory book to the symbols of religion that still have influnce in our lives despite our actual "atheism". Maybe you'll have to look up some words at first, but it really gets better and you get the ideas across when reading so I'd recommend it to anyone interested in this topic. It reminded me a bit of Jung's work with less psychological analysis and complexity indeed. But I could pretty much say that the conclusion is the same even if Eliade's intention is not to prove the existence of the unconscious collective imagination like Jung does, but it clearly defines a common pattern besides religious symbols that explain the nature of myth compared to some asian religions and the Judeo-Christian tradition and reveals it in a completely non pretentious accesible way.