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21 sats \ 4 replies \ @Bitman 24 Feb \ on: Book Report: A History of Religious Ideas Vol. 1 by Mircea Eliade - Ch 13-15 BooksAndArticles

Not wanting to dilute your excellent post, but hopefully add to it, here's an article gently talking about arguably the world's most famous celebrity who was raised in a Zoroastrian culture - Freddie Mercury.

Freddie Mercury’s Zoroastrian Faith Inspired him to Follow his Dreams

Mercury may not have actively practiced Zoroastrianism, but it certainly played a role in his determination and outlook on life.

His sister, Kashmira Cooke, discussed this in an interview in 2014: “I think what [Freddie’s] Zoroastrian faith gave him was to work hard, to persevere, and to follow your dreams.”

The religion is also known for its motto ‘Good thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds.’ It teaches sharing, generosity and kindness as part of its doctrine and Mercury was known to be all of those things.

He was an extravagant spender, not just on material goods and parties, but he also privately gave large sums of money to charities and was known to lavish gifts on friends and to help those close to him.

Some critics during Mercury’s lifetime accused him of ignoring his heritage. Looking back on the debate, it seems that there may have been a misunderstanding of what it means to be Persian.

In response to those critics, Mercury is famously quoted as saying “I’ll always walk around like a Persian popinjay and no one’s going to stop me, honey!”.

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/09/13/freddie-mercury-was-a-zoroastrian/

Eliade was a great scholar and produced such a tome of great work.

Although I don't want to take away the importance of his work, Eliade's methodology - believing that he, or indeed anyone else, could drop their subjectivity to study each religion (or anything else) has been criticized as being unscientific and will remain a bit of a pipe dream...

21 sats \ 3 replies \ @Se7enZ OP 24 Feb freebie

That's a very sweet description of Freddy and a nice contemporary look at Zoroastrian influence. I will admit, that chapter was the most difficult for me to relate to -- it felt like foreign territory. So I had questions about my ability to summarize it.

And yeah, your point about science vs subjectivity is well taken. I actually came to interest in this book through reading about various depth psychological topics from Jungian authors. The chapters in this book are so short, that it's kind of mind-blowing how concise Eliade is in dropping a torrent of information on the reader. That said, it's glaringly obvious there is a lot of missing context if taken as a scientific treatise. For me, and I conjecture Eliade as well, the subjectivity is embraced and the interest lies moreso in the interpretive -- the colored, tumultuous experience of humans tripping and falling into consciousness through a lot of trial and error. Reading it was as much an exploration of myself as the history of ideas. For a scientist, it might be hair-raising, but for me, it's an incredibly succinct compendium from which to relate to large, collective psychological trends and patterns.

I fully intend to someday read what might be Eliade's own explicit synthesis Patterns in Comparative Religion someday, too :)