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HSS II.1 (2013) DOI: 10.2478/v10317-012-0017-y

“If I were a supreme being, you’d be a «trickster»…” A Brief Analysis of the Unpublished Academic Correspondence between Ioan Petru Culianu and Ugo Bianchi1 Daniela Dumbravă

Institute for the History of Religions, Romanian Academy Bucharest, Romania [email protected] Abstract The idea of presenting the correspondence between Ioan Petru Culianu and Ugo Bianchi involves reviewing the topics specific to Bianchi’s school of History of Religion for a period of more than a decade (1974−1986) and the manner in which the Romanian-born historian of religions builds his academic career. The academic relation between Bianchi and Culianu has a major common point: an acute preoccupation with the epistemological construction of the HR discipline. What is it that separates Culianu from Bianchi and even from a large majority of the academic community in his ultimate view on religion and the religious phenomena? From a historical and religious point of view, the answer is very simple: Culianu developed a holistic theory about religion whose conceptual directions led to what Bianchi called reductio ad unum. This article focuses on presenting the biographical data correlated to the most solid scholarly education that Culianu ever had in Italy. I will also reiterate the idea that the centre of gravity of Culianu’s ultimate concerns does not necessarily fall on the methodological disputes of HR, but especially on a new understanding of cognitive sciences in general. Keywords Historiography of the History of Religion, History of Ideas, Ioan Petru Culianu, Ugo Bianchi, Cognitive sciences, Religion

1. Ioan Petru Culianu: the debut of the academic career in exile In what follows, I will focus mainly on correspondence information showing the circumstances that made possible Culianu’s access to the

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Daniela Dumbravă, Unpublished Academic Correspondence HSS, vol. II, no. 1 (2013): 103−124

Milanese academic world, from 1974 to 1976, including the period of his research internship at Divinity School, Chicago, during the 1975 academic year.2 Despite the small number of letters from Bianchi to Culianu, they often communicate – sometimes implicitly, other times explicitly – the careful, thorough and strict coordination of the manuscripts, volumes and articles that Culianu was working on, the master’s tireless encouragements and preoccupation to direct Culianu’s reviews and articles to specialized publications. Additionally, during his residence in Milan, as well as in Groningen, Culianu had a fruitful contact with Mircea Eliade, first by epistolary means – he had written the first letter when he was in Romania (Eliade will reply to Culianu on August 4, 1972)( CulianuPetrescu, 2003: 64 ) – and then in person – meeting him in Paris in 1974 and then in Chicago. Thus, in 1975 Culianu was already supported by two major historians of religions of the twentieth century: Ugo Bianchi and Mircea Eliade. The double exchange of letters turns out to be complementary in the case of Culianu’s scientific biography: it marks his evolution as a historian of religions, the thematic priorities in this subject, and the dynamics of his scholarly publications. Hence reading and quoting them in parallel seem useful to me. Thus, while Ugo Bianchi opens academic perspectives in Italy to Culianu, Mircea Eliade strengthens his beliefs regarding Oriental studies in Italy, as well as studies in the history of religions, advising him to remain in the Peninsula and work, for at least one year, with a leading Italian scholar: “An Italian diploma or working a year or two with a great Italian scholar counts in the US” (Eliade to Culianu, February 5, 1973). In addition, in a letter dated October 30, 1973, Mircea Eliade congratulates Culianu for the scholarship obtained at the Università Cattolica di Milano, which would allow the young Romanian “to be able to research undisturbed for a few years, but also a great chance to work directly with Ugo Bianchiˮ (Eliade to Culianu, January 30, 1974). As I mentioned above, a parallel reading of the correspondences Culianu-Bianchi and Culianu-Eliade emphasizes that Bianchi’s scientific and moral support will make an excellent combination with that of Eliade and Culianu will only benefit from it, despite poor material conditions in Italy. His perfect knowledge of Italian and a solid academic training will enable Culianu to enter easily into the atmosphere of religious studies at the

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Dipartimento di Scienze Religiose [DSR] of the Catholic University in Milan. He starts off as a scholarship recipient (1973−1976), and then becomes teacher with a fixed-term employment contract (1976−1977), substituting his maestro right from his first year in the Milanese department. Culianu’s thematic orientation within the HR Milanese school was much more difficult, however, as it is shown both by Culianu’s letters to Bianchi, and by Eliade’s to Culianu. Bianchi manages to direct him towards the historical and historiographical issues of Gnosticism in Late Antiquity, an option that will be greeted with enthusiasm by Eliade: “(...) Gnosticism and its roots are indeed a research theme worthy of your training” (Eliade to Culianu, January 30, 1974). At the same time, however, Culianu decides to dedicate his time to a monograph on the work of Mircea Eliade,3 a choice determined by the heated debates on the Peninsula about Eliade’s past as a legionnaire, for example the well-known reactions of Furio Jesi to “the Toladot file.”4 I will not dwell on this but only specify that, in fact, both correspondences summarize details regarding Culianu’s numerous hesitations in choosing a topic in the history of religions. We know from the biographical information provided by Teresa Culianu Petrescu5 that the young historian of religions had not only opted for this subject before arriving in Milan, but he had already began to study Sanskrit while he was a student in Bucharest, being concerned with Indian themes, namely those that led to Buddhism. As librarian of the Association of Oriental Studies of Bucharest, he was undoubtedly familiar enough with Oriental studies and took on the effort of studying Asian languages, be it at an early stage. Consequently, I do not think that Culianu’s subsequent hesitations in thematic choices, which had to be redirected suddenly according to requirements of a homogeneous group dedicated to the study of Gnosticism, can be minimalized. This is a new phase, not easy at all, of attempting a quick methodological adjustment and a linguistic conversion to read primary sources. Sustained by the scientific, moral and pedagogical support of professor Bianchi, who suggested improvements and conversations to each of his writings, the young Culianu started early to publish his first reviews, notes and articles (1974−1975) in journals such as Aevum: rassegna di scienze storiche, linguistiche e filologiche, Studi e Materiali per la Storia delle Religioni,

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Numen. According to the information provided by the correspondence with Bianchi, 1974 seems to be a crucial for Culianu, taking into account both his productivity and the period of study at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the first meeting with Eliade in September, and especially a nine-month fellowship at Divinity School of Chicago. I quote: Il professor Eliade, avendo visto parecchi articoli fatti da me questo anno, ha pensato che potevo trascorrere un periodo a Chicago a partire da questo autunno. Naturalmente, si tratterebbe di vedere se Lei e il R. P. Cantalamessa sarebbero d’accordo con questo e se il regolamento del Dipartimento me lo consentirebbe. Io tornerò presto a Milano, con materiale per un secondo articolo (sulla “terra purificata” nello gnosticismo e in vari mitologemi analoghi di altre religioni). Cercherò di parlare con il R. P. Cantalamessa di questo argomento. Il prof. Eliade mi ha proposto una fellowship di nove mesi, che io vorrei accettare solo con il Loro consenso, per tornare dopo a Milano e finire gli stessi studi presso il DSR. Naturalmente, durante questi nove mesi, io potrei seguire anche Wayman, che è un ottimo sanscritologo, e buddhologo a Chicago. La pregherei molto di tenere conto, nella Sua risposta, anche del mio intenso desiderio di studiare un tempo col prof. Eliade e del fatto che ciò, nell’alternativa della mia permanenza in Italia, mi potrebbe aiutare molto. (Culianu’s letter to Bianchi, September 24, 1974, Dumbravă, 2010: 103)

Ugo Bianchi will not fail to answer him from Rome, but sending the letter from Milan on October 1st, 1974: Caro Culianu, arrivando a Roma l’altro ieri ho trovato la Sua lettera del 24 settembre. Le rispondo perciò a Milano. Sono lieto dei progressi del Suo studio. Inoltre sono favorevole al progetto di un Suo soggiorno di studio a Chicago, e in questo senso mi sono espresso parlando ieri per telefono con il P. Cantalamessa. Le invio i più vivi auguri per il Suo lavoro, e sarò lieto di essere informato delle Sue cose.

In addition, only two days after this positive response, Bianchi will write a letter of recommendation, certifying Culianu’s attendance at courses within the DSR of Università Cattolica di Milano in the 1973−1974 academic year, adding that:

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(...) egli ha attivamente cooperato al mio corso, che aveva come oggetto l’anima e la salvezza in alcuni movimenti religiosi del mondo tardo-antico, elaborandone un testo scritto ad uso degli studenti e sviluppandone alcune parti con suoi contributi personali. L’attività di studio del Culianu si caratterizza per ampiezza di conoscenze che si estendono a diverse culture, europee ed asiatiche, e per la varietà dei problemi cui si applica. (Bianchi’s recommendation letter, October 3, 1974, Dumbravă, 2010: 104)

Meanwhile, the certificates requested by the Magnifico Rettore, Professor Giuseppe Lazzati (1909−1986), did not arrive from the Rectorate of the University of Bucharest and, consequently, Culianu would have to write a new undergraduate thesis, as indicated by R.P. Cantalamessa, the head of DSR at that time. Again, there appear doubts about the topics on which he should focus and devote time to: Comunque, se Loro ritengono utile la tesi su Jonas, io sono pronto di [sic!] farla. Sono molto interessato alla storia delle idee in campo storico-religioso, ma anche il prof. Eliade, quando gli scrissi dell’intenzione di proporLe una tesi sulle ricerche pubblicate sulla collezione degli “Eranos Jahrbücher”, mi dissuase di fare un tale lavoro, suggerendomi di farlo magari più tardi. Comunque, sono sicuro che Loro giudicheranno meglio di me, potendo intravedere meglio i miei limiti e capacità. (Culianu’s letter to Bianchi, November 16, 1974, Dumbravă, 2010: 105−106)

There is a permanent balance between researches that refer to the history of ideas in the historical-religious field and the comparative method itself. Culianu has a certain linguistic disadvantage, i.e. direct access to first-hand sources. On the one hand, he is no match for the Greek language skills of other disciples of Bianchi, but, on the other hand, his acuity on subjects like comparative study of some mythologemes – e.g. “Pure land” in Gnosticism and in some similar traditions (mahāyāna Buddhism, Judaism, early Christianity, Iran, etc.), the ascent of the soul, etc. – seems to be highly enhanced, constantly surprising his master. Returning to the issue of his thesis, it is well known that, finally, Culianu decides to write a thesis on Hans Jonas, following the advice of R.P. Cantalamessa, not only because of his master’s suggestions. Bianchi urges him to contact Jonas in the US, which will happen in April 1975: as

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shown in the letter sent by Culianu to Bianchi on May 1, 1975: “Fatto sta che sono stato nel frattempo a New York, ho visto il prof. Jonas, che Le invia i migliori saluti, e ho preso un’intervista che ritengo molto interessante.” On November 5, 1975 Culianu will defend his undergraduate thesis (i.e. “laurea”) at the Catholic University of Milan on the topic of Gnosticismo e pensiero contemporaneo: Hans Jonas. Later, he will send Eliade a telegram informing him that the DSR professors awarded him the distinction summa cum laude. None of his colleagues within the DSR had faced similar problems and Culianu, who did not always have a choice, would often choose depending on the circumstances. In April 1978 he proposed to Bianchi the publication of the monograph dedicated to Gnosticism from the point of view of Hans Jonas, on the occasion of the scholar’s 75th anniversary: Intanto, in occasione del 75 anniversario del prof. Hans Jonas, ho pensato di scrivere una piccola monografia su di lui. Ho ricevuto oggi una sua lettera, in cui mi dice, con la solita gentilezza, di essere molto contento della mia iniziativa. Ho proposto la monografia al professor Italo Mancini, il quale l’ha accettata in principio, consigliandomi di rivolgermi direttamente all’Editrice, dalla quale non ho avuto ancora nessuna risposta. Se questa risposta dovesse essere negativa, non saprebbe per caso suggerirmi a chi rivolgermi? Si dà il caso che ormai la lingua (l’unica) in cui riesco ad esprimermi con più facilità rimane l’italiano e si dà ancora il caso che all’Italia mi leghi qualcosa di più dei ricordi – buoni o cattivi – dei cinque anni di permanenza. Per cui preferirei scrivere in italiano questo libricino di c. 200 pp. (ovviamente, i diritti d’autore non m’interessano; preferirei tuttavia non essere io a preparare la stampa). (Culianu’s letter to Bianchi, April 26, 1978, unpublished)

The book will be published only in 1985, in the “Storia delle Religioni” series, coordinated by Ugo Bianchi, at the publishing house L’«Erma» di Bretschneider, Rome. Thus, the master will intervene again for his disciple, intermediating for him a new publication in Italy, while Culianu was in Groningen. For Culianu, however, this was no more than another volume joining several others already published in Italy, the Netherlands and France, the most important of which include: Psychano-

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dia: A Survey of the Evidence Concerning the Ascension of the Soul and Its Relevance, Leiden, Brill, 1983, and Éros et magie à la Renaissance. 1484, Paris, Flammarion, 1984. Opening a door to the publishers in Italy is doubled, as I mentioned before, by corrections and a very careful supervision of Culianu’s manuscripts by Bianchi, even when the latter did not have a particular interest in the topics covered by his disciple. Thus, the professor assumes the correction of the manuscript submitted to Cittadela Editrice, Assisi, namely the monograph dedicated to the work of Mircea Eliade published in 1978. There is an obvious methodological disagreement between Bianchi and Eliade, an aspect analyzed in depth by Natale Spineto,6 but that will not prevent him from providing Culianu with thorough and unbiased corrections. Moreover, Culianu will be constantly summoned to the annual meetings of SISR and the international congresses organized by Bianchi, continuing to work on subjects germinated inside Bianchi’s school of history of religions. 2. Culianu-Bianchi: “the ascent of the soul,” a case of methodological convergence Considering Bianchi’s interest for the controversial issue of the origin of Gnosticism in the frame of the debate raised by the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule, the young historian of religions prepares a long article focused on the Himmelsreise der Seele from a historical-comparative perspective, as well as a thorough status quaestionis, a theme that would later become the subject of his first doctoral thesis, defended at the Sorbonne on June 17, 1980 and on which the volume Psychanodia I is based. Culianu takes over from Bianchi the basic terms of the criticism against the notorious group of Protestant scholars who supported the thesis of the Iranian (syncretistic) origin of pre-Christian Gnosticism. In this respect, I will mention his contribution to the Colloquio internazionale sulla soteriologia dei culti orientali nell’impero romano, held in Rome from 24 to 28 September 1979, whose papers were published by Ugo Bianchi together with Maarten J. Vermaseren at Brill, Leiden in 1982. Culianu manages to attract the attention of specialists present at the seminar through a pertinent and highly critical analysis, stating that the theme of the “ascent of the soul” is not a unique mythologeme, but an “ensemble inextricable de problèmes concernant l’histoire des religions.” Therefore,

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Culianu argues, the scholarly effort to explain the origins of this religious phenomenon involving so various historical and religious meanings is a chimera, and the idea of locating it in Iran, Egypt or inside such phenomena as shamanism or any form of mystery cults or gnosis is a futile effort. There is no “country of origin for the “ascent of the soul,” much less a reason to practice such an approach.”7 The tendency to integrate the “ascent of the soul” phenomena in a general theory of religious forms, says Culianu, resulted in obsolete forms of interpretation, ranging from the cultural historical flawed doctrine promoted by the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule up to the wide ranging diffusion advocated by the Vienna School. Conversely, structuralism has generated a methodology that prevents the formulation of a general theory of religious phenomena, but produces the beneficial effect of imposing prudence on religious historians in formulating general concepts (Culianu, 1982: 277). Culianu continues with a very thorough historiographical analysis of the “ascent of the soul” argument, distinguishing very clearly the analytical perspective of a simple soteriological or ecstatic technique from a technique integrated into one of the many religious forms or a more general phenomenon. This distinction is crucial and, undoubtedly, is related to Bianchi’s approach; notice, for example, the similar vein in which the master responds during the discussions following Culianu’s communication (Culianu, 1982: 300−301). Accordingly, Ugo Bianchi supports the chronological interpretation of planetary ascension for the klimax in Celsus (Origen, Contra Celsus VI, 21), thus, reinforcing the idea of a careful analytical grid for a complex phenomenon such as comparing the Mithraic scheme with the Orphic and Gnostic ones. This is very clear example, of expanding the analytical framework and methodological acuity that supports a sympathetic relationship between Culianu and Bianchi: Il me semble que la théorie de M. Bianchi s’integre dans un ensemble dynamique, un work in progress, qui part de la Religionsgeschichtliche Schule. En Italie, c’est R. Pettazzoni qui, d’une manière encore imparfait, en a donné un ébauche en 1923. Le problème était d’arriver à composer un série phénomenologique (M. Bianchi dirait «typologique») qui puisse comprendre toutes les manifestations religieuses de la Spätanike et qui explique aussi leur origine historico-culturelle. Les hypotèses révolues de Reitzenstein, ensuite 110



celle de Patazzoni, enfin celle – moins connue aujourd’hui – de W. Koppers (1945) représentent les chaînons historiographiques suscités par la même question: quel est le rapport entre l’initiation ches les peuple archaiques, les cultes de la fécondité, les mystères et, enfin, la gnose? M. Bianchi a donné lui aussi un réponde à cette questio dans un article publié en 1965. Personnellement, je trouve cet article tout à faire convainçant. Mais au delà de nos convictions personnelles, j’aimerais insister sur le fait que la terminologie employeé par M. Bianchi devrait nous être familière à nous tous, puisqu’elle provient d’un long débat qui a commencé il y a presqu’une centaine d’années. (La Soteriologia dei culti orientali [discussion], 889.)

Subsequently, the (general, then specific) historiographic examination of “ascent of the soul” is conducted according to: a) a taxonomy specific to religious phenomena in their varied historical context and not as simple mythologemes – celestial eschatology, celestial hell, demonization of cosmos, stages of ascent, symbolism of ascension, astral origin of the soul, the cosmological space where psychanodia takes place, etc., and b) a phenomenology of the visionary – the protagonist of ecstasy, its preparation, its means, the vehicle of the vision, the content of the vision, etc. In short, Culianu’s position differs not only by a severe and extremely thorough historiographical examination, diverse from a typological point of view, but also by doctrinal aspects specific to “ascent of the soul.” For example: as regards the descent of the soul through the spheres, the Romanian scholar brings as an argument a text from Servius, namely, the Panaretos astrological treatise, which belongs to the Hellenistic Hermetic Vulgata. The text, taken over by Paul of Alexandria in IV−V A.D. and subsequently by Heliodor, contains an astrological theory about those kleroi or sortes of the soul, a theory where the origin of the “ascent of the soul” doctrine should actually be sought. Culianu’s contribution will be welcome, “(...) son petit travail est une merveille,”8 as it turns out from the debates of the Congress. Scholars like J. Flamant, Bianchi, R. Turcan, R. Beck will intervene in this occasion with critical remarks. Nonetheless, his conclusions are considered with some reservation, due to the confidence with which they are articulated. However, no intervention, except that of Bianchi, who is in favour of Culianu, responds to the analytical objections brought against the

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young historian of religions. Undoubtedly, the analytical focal points are the result of a methodological exercise that transpires in Bianchi’s works: (...) si deve preferire, per la scienza particolare l’immagine di un settore di cerchio, di cui si è definito l’angolo, cioè l’apertura dei lati, che la delimitano verso altre scienze particolari, ma di cui non è definita la lunghezza dei lati medesimi: in modo da lasciare indefinita la profondità del settore stesso.9

3. Tensions, conversions, visions The methodological tensions between Culianu and Bianchi will appear after 1980 and will continue until 1991, the year of Culianu’s assassination in Chicago. The major divergence will be epistemological, that is, Culianu will cover subjects that link him inextricably to Bianchi’s school, but making use of a totally different type of paradigms. Typology, analogy, comparison, historical records of religious phenomena and their taxonomy based on history and/or phenomenology are methods to be interpreted according to a new hermeneutical filter even though the cognitive processes are not modified. In a very interesting essay Freud – Jung – Wittgenstein published in 1976, Culianu writes of the evolution of the psychological and philosophical thought regarding the changes culture strives to register.10 Religion is an experience, and it is a code. As for Freud, the origin of religion lies in a primary Oedipal complex. If one were to remove religion from European civilization, claims Freud, then this can be done through an alternative doctrine system assuming all psychological characteristics of religion and imposing the same kind of prohibitions to the thought. Culianu contrasts Freud’s views in Die Zukunft einer Illusion, 1927 and Jung’s criticism in the volume of lectures at Yale University – Psychologie und Religion (1940). Thus, he argues that the view of psychology – the case of the theories about the original religious experience (Jung) – is an exclusively phenomenological one, and religion is studied by psychologists just by virtue of being there, not because it is more or less true (Culianu, 1976: 126a). Due to the fact that, according to Jung, “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, that is, the mental body of every individual is the depository of the universal history of the species,” (Culianu, 1976: 127a) the unconscious becomes a working hypothesis, dreams research emerges as a subject of study, and they are nothing but the result of a collective material (Culia112



nu, 1976: 128b). Within this material is placed an amount of mythical or folkloric elements which for some reason are repeated in an identical form (Culianu, 1976: 129a). Much later (1991), Culianu will call them general maps of history and will conceive of their history as simply the result of the interaction of many mental systems.11 Finally, in the analysis of Wittgenstein’s essay, Bemerkungen über Frazers «The Golden Bough», the Romanian historian of religions considers that the notes on Frazer’s classic book display “a disturbing modernity, in the anthropological field, for the time they wrote” (Culianu, 1976: 128a). Following his assessment of Wittgenstein’s critique on Frazer’s crude explanations regarding primitive customs, Culianu brings into question a very interesting analogy between the notes of the Austro-British philosopher and Jung’s considerations on the parallel genesis of different customs: All these different habits show that it is not a derivation of one from another, but a common spirit. And someone might invent for themselves (to create with imagination) all these ceremonies. And the spirit that will make them invent is their very common spirit.12

In 1991, Culianu will approach technology, religion and magic as cognitive games.13 Leaving aside for now the epistemological connotations, I believe that reading Wittgenstein will influence him later: a) he assimilates in toto the philosopher’s critiques against the obsolescence of the interpretations of religious phenomena in the nineteenth century, “a field marked by Enlightenment tradition”; b) he accepts those possible ways man can reconstruct events of the spirit towards their common spirit. In an interview with Emmanuela Guano, at Arezzo, in 1990, Culianu makes the following statement which clearly indicates his affinity with Wittgenstein’s assertions mentioned above: Direi che, se il mito è davvero un progetto narrativo, ogni barriera tra scienze e mito finisce per crollare. È inevitabile che un processo narrativo alla ricerca di un senso approdi al mito. La scienza hard cade nel mito ogni volta che crea un modello cosmologico. In questo senso non c’è alcuna differenza tra il mito protostorico di una religione “primitivaˮ e il mito di uno scienziato, come Einstein o Hawking. (...) Io stesso sono passato dalla concezione del mito come modello stabile a quella del mito come schema

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narrativo vuoto, pronto a riempirsi di qualsiasi contenuto. Insomma: il mito non è affatto immutabile, e Lévi-Strauss lo ha dimostrato in maniera magistrale.14

In his note published in Magic and Cognition, he will continue to justify from a scholarly perspective the idea of the correspondence between religion and structure, resorting to historians of religion and anthropologists like Emile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, George Dumézil, Mircea Eliade and Claude Lévi-Strauss. Thus, Culianu notes that Durkheim expresses the idea of a heteronomous religious system, a system that, in turn, codifies another system, namely that of the social relations within a group; Dumézil remained faithful to the concept of myth seen as a dramatic expression of a fundamental ideology of human society, noting that studying linguistics with Antoine Millet, he began to see myth and rite through the grid of some originary (proto-Indo-European) institutions; Mauss defines magic as a social, totally rational code, based on three principles (metonymy p., homeopathy p., allopathy p.), which can be well understood by rational operations where the emphasis moves from understanding the magical phenomena using social theories to understanding through cognitive processes; and finally, Lévi-Strauss, at the opposite of Durkheim’s and Dumezil’s positions, first considered as inadequate the separation of the spheres “religion,” “science” and “magic” because the three areas are not defined structurally. Culianu develops LéviStrauss’s position critically, but retains the idea of meta-sociology, a cognitive discipline that, instead of being able to recognize social distinctions between the territories of human knowledge, should be just the product of a computation of all human minds operating in the world. LéviStrauss is also useful to Culianu and is placed next to Mircea Eliade, as they both have something in common: they emphasize the rules according to which religion can be constructed and, therefore, its systemic nature, emphasizing the autonomy of religion in relation to society.15 Also, the polarity between nature and culture, between the human being as part of nature and the human being that is defined as being part of culture, brings Culianu to the idea of a binary structure of the mind. His theoretical structuralist directions, especially those of Lévi-Strauss, will be severely criticized by one of the most formidable reviewers of Culia-

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nu’s volumes, Robert A. Segal, an issue that I will address towards the end of the article. Returning now to the synchronous evaluation (Jung, Wittgenstein, Lévi-Strauss) of religion information and its diachronic distribution based on infinite causalities, dimensions, “fractals” arranged in a highly complex network (Mandelbrot), we can say that the 1990s see a visible change of paradigm in Culianu. On the one hand, history appears as a sequence dislocated from a complex system: (…) the mere morphology of a system, which is the aim of a structuralism description, is integrated into a dynamic process of extraordinary proportions that is the temporal interaction of all such systems. This process with an infinite number of dimensions we call history. I favor a cognitive approach that would involve diachronic as an obligatory dimension of the world, not one we can dispense with.16

On the other hand, history is an integral part of some cosmologies circulated in physics, following Einstein’s relativity theory, and Culianu is ready to completely rebuild the methodology of humanities: D’ora in poi, tutto quello che farò si integrerà in queta prospettiva sistemica: è dall’interazione dei sistemi complessi, in fondo, che si forma la storia. La storia è un processo di infinita complessità, in cui oggetti invisibili concorrano a formare un insieme, un insieme totalmente imponderabile. Questi oggetti invisibili sono le menti umane, veri e propri schermi tridimensionali su cui le percezioni innescano una rappresentazione del mondo circostante. Per studiare i sistemi di idee è necessario abbattere le barriere tra il visibile e l’invisibile, tra l’interno e l’esterno: solo così si può arrivare a capire i meccanismi della mente umana.17

This would be, very briefly, Culianu’s incipient project in the ’90s and will also generate the publication of Incognita, which would later go out of print because of his assassination. As we know, in 1986 Culianu was appointed Visiting Professor and Hiram Thomas Guest Lecturer at Divinity School, University of Chicago. During this period he began to develop his own “vision” on the HR method, not necessarily in counterpoint to Bianchi’s historical-comparative meth-

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od, but through a total “conversion” of his ideas, in an epistemological shift. This methodological “conversion” involves the contextualization of religious phenomena and religions tout court through the filter of the new cultural revolutions and the fluctuating report between science and religion over time. It is interesting that this also transpires in the pages of his science fiction prose – Tozgrec, a name that points us to the tradition of a magic text, Clavicula Salomonis attributed to Ptolemy the Greek –, where Culianu does not hesitate to quote in extenso his new considerations about the mechanisms of the human mind and the cognitive approach to the humanities.18 Indeed, he tries to explain extra- or intra-sensory religious phenomena, often using analogies drawn from theories of quantum mechanics: i.e. the mental experiment known as Schrödinger’s cat paradox or Wigner’s friend paradox. The problem is that these mental experiments, Schrödinger’s and Wigner’s, are reported strictly to quantum systems and their superposition inside the interpretations of quantum mechanics, even if there is no indeterminacy at the level of macroscopic observation. How reality is viewed from the perspective of quantum mechanics generates variants of the construction of cosmological models, recently studied by physicists, not necessary by historians of religions. Consequently, Culianu tried to bring close the two visions, completely different from one another, not necessarily with the intention of opposing them, but rather intending to familiarize them with each other, to put them in analogic relation. Now, however ironic it may seem, his idea of using analogy – the knowledge process whereby two objects or concepts can be related while knowing at the same time their characteristics, but assuming there are similar properties in both one and the other – is a reflex congenial to Bianchi. In addition – but no less ironically, considering the methodological abyssal distances – Culianu’s choice to work tirelessly inside the general theories of knowledge and of cognitive processes to which the historian of religions had easy access in the knowledge of religious phenomena, seems to me just as evident in his master, too. Nevertheless, Culianu does not stop at a simple cognitive evaluation of the HR field or religious phenomena or religions tout court. His constant appeal to epistemology and interpretive paradigms that radically influence the ways of perceiving reality – Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn,

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Paul Feyerabend, Hans Peter Duerr – partially explains his desire to understand their workings or their strength in determining cultural revolutions and, implicitly, changes in culture. Thus Culianu suddenly decides to focus on a clavis universalis as Leibniz would say, namely a method that would allow the scientist to decipher the ideal structures constituting the essence of reality beyond phenomenological appearances or “shadows of ideas.”19 No matter how paradoxical it might sound, Culianu is not the only one who will refer to Ramón Llull in his attempt to develop such a theory. Leibniz described how to address the fundamental problems of the Logic of Invention: Étant donné un sujet, trouver tous ses prédicates possibles; étant donné un prédicat, trouver tous ses sujets possibiles; en d’autre termes, trouver toutes les propositions vrais où un concept figure, soit comme sujet, soit comme prédicat. Or un proposition est une combination de deux termes, au sujet et un prédicat; par conséquent, le problème revient à un problème de combinaisons.20

Louis Couturant (1868−1914) is the scholar who not only published many of Leibniz’s unpublished manuscripts, but also commented on fragments from Leibniz on logic, confirming that, when in order to find all possible sentences between nine terms, he ordered them around a circle, then combined them finding 36 variants, representing sentences, Leibniz did nothing but follow a Llullian method presented in Ars Magna. Among other things, in Leibniz’s Nachlass there is a manuscript Cyclognomica ex Lullio, Gregorio Tolosano.21 R. Llull’s great art, Couturant goes on to say, is finding a more general method that would generate all possible sentences.22 The mechanical image of Llull’s combinations will find an equivalent in the combination rules applied by Leibniz.23 So, here we have a concrete example of understanding how to operate inside Leibniz’s inventive logic with the categories of combinatorial medieval art. Much of the history of logic and its dynamics starts from such speculations or forays into combinatorial art, without excessively emphasizing its importance. Culianu probably aimed at the same type of thought in his approaches. With his revolutionary theories, Culianu is no less serious in his intentions than Leibniz with his Alphabet des pensées humaines, specifying that his 117



approach is not that of a mathematician or logician, but of the historian of ideas who circulates ideas that revolutionized the history of human thought, among which many of them have a purely cognitive basis. While he was in Chicago, Culianu had proposed new projects to several publishing houses, including two books: The Birth of Infinity: The Nominalist Revolution, 1250-1450 and Memories of the Future: The Computing Machine of Raymundus Lullus as a System of Magical Memory, as well as a fourvolume encyclopedia, A History of Mind, whose first volume would be entitled Religion. His appetite for deciphering the realities of the world is Llullian in origin: the idea of discovering a precise correspondence between the sign and the divine spirit, and the perfect correspondence between the originary forms and the methods of human knowledge, or an ordered classification corresponding to cosmic harmony. His projects do not necessarily represent the way to that clavis universalis, I showed above, but rather the discovery of a cultural history that places it in the centre. Reading the structure of these volumes, fragment of which have been published in Romanian after the originals in English, shows me an effort that characterizes Culianu more as a historian of ideas, not necessarily a historian of religions, and not in the least an epistemologician. Sometimes it is good to keep these nuances in mind, even if the definition of competences is not essential in revolutionary cognitive issues like those that the Romanian scholar apparently intends to produce. For example, in Culianu’s appeal to the Anthropic principle (i.e. this world exists for this man, and this man exists for this world)24 and the Principle of ecosystemic intelligence (i.e. in relation to human intelligence, the intelligence of the solar ecosystem is superior, the ecosystem can therefore be a much more perfect “being” than man),25 it should not surprise us that there are references that remain unanswered in the scholarly world of the history of religions or of tout court philologists. But if these two principles are considered to be a myth which in turn creates other myths, and they enable intelligent systems for propagating life, then, from the point of view of Culianu, a historian of religions, they not only make sense, but are worth being the subject of a philosophical and/or historical-religious reflection. In fact, if the subatomic particle called the Higgs boson or “God particle” has fundamental connotations on matter and cosmological concepts,

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why would a historian of religions remain unaffected by the historical and religious implications of this discovery? Such examples are many. Of course, the effort to popularize the theories and scientific revolutions made by Culianu remained largely unanswered, except for Moshe Idel,26 Elemiré Zolla27 or Grazia Marchianò,28 i.e. a small number of scholars. The first is the greatest and most esteemed historian of Kabbalah, the other two are representatives of a “scuola tradizionalista” type of filosofia perennis, with important contributions in Asian studies and the history of religions. A separate study of the reception of Culianu’s last theories by these scholars seems to me more than welcome because it is better suited to the transformative substrate of a phenomenological tradition, such as that of the act of creation in Sefer Yetzirah, or the esoteric one. One of Idel’s criticisms (200: 14) refers to the fact that “the system acquires omnipotent and omniscient qualities” in Culianu, in other words it becomes godlike: In the Kabbalistic or Llullian theories the divine warrants the inertia of system and its actualization from the very beginning; in Culianu’s secular version, it is difficult to understand the stasis of system in a pure form, without interferences from various cultures or dramatic inner changes in the meaning of the constitutive elements. (Idel, 2000: 14)

He is not the only one to note this inconsistency. One of the most vocal reviewers of the volume of The Tree of Gnosis, Robert A. Segal will criticize the erroneous way Culianu operates in interpreting structuralism and the concepts of Claude Lévi-Strauss. First, Segal believes that Gnosticism does not express any thought, only mechanisms, structures of thought. Culianu defines Gnosticism as dualistic, while for Lévi-Strauss the Gnostic myth or the Gnostic system is a redefinition of another myth or system. Segal continued sarcastically: Yet his hero, Lévi-Strauss, himself sees no incompatibility between the mind and experience. On the contrary, for Lévi-Strauss human beings project their proclivity to think in terms of opposites – what he (i.e. Culianu) calls the binary structure of the mind – onto the world and consequently experience the world as filled with polarities. In saying that for Lévi-Strauss myth is not “a symbolic conveyor of any social or psychological meaning”

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and that “what myth mirrors is only the play of the mind itself”, Culianu misses the reverse relationship for Lévi-Strauss between the mind and the world.29

The manner in which Culianu rejects the implications deriving from the interaction of Gnosticism with the social, political, economic, psychological and philosophical register appears to be, in Segal’s view, fully unjustified. Culianu not only supports other relations, but simply abolishes them. Finally, Segal condemns the excessive historiographic criticism of Culianu directed towards Wilhelm Bousset, Richard Reitzenstein and Rudolf Bultmann, the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule representatives, saying that the critique of the alleged origins of Gnosticism in Iran is justified, but that he goes too far “as to ascribe the Germans’ quest for a nonJewish origin to incipient Nazi proclivities.” Thus, Segal concludes, The Tree of Gnosis does not have many virtues.30 A no less harsh reply to the same volume is that of the American Professor Birger A. Pearson (University of California, Santa Barbara), an expert in Gnosticism and late Christian antiquity, famous for being one of the translators of the Nag Hammadi documents and one of the scholars who have turned to the question of the origin of Gnosticism.31 The idea of reducing a Western dualism or religion in general to a mind game that consists of the binary switching of a system appears as reductionist to the American scholar. The result, he goes on to say, seems to be a sort of history of dualistic Gnosis and its Western variants, plus a discussion of medieval and ancient myths, liberally sprinkled with potshots taken at other scholars. Pearson concludes sarcastically, saying that: “Western dualism overlapped with, and was ultimately destroyed by, the adherents of the Christian mind game in an exercise of power.”32 Finally, nobody would have wanted such a review of a volume with a large audience. Culianu received, to my knowledge, about seven reviews of Eros and Magic, mostly negative, but they are the subject of a separate discussion because they involve Culianu’s competences in Renaissance studies, a topic only tangent to this article. Most likely, the so-called “last” Culianu offers from a Bianchi perspective a point of view related to religious phenomena: (a) excessively dependent on what epistemologicians and physicists call reductio ad absurdum, considering the paradoxes or the mental experiments specific to 120



quantum mechanics with which it operates to define his methodological approach inside a discipline that he would have shaped much more clearly if he were still alive; (b) reductionist because the essere est percipi principle or religions seen as systems may lead to a predominantly logicalconceptual or exclusively cognitivist reading. To understand what remains Bianchian in Culianu’s volumes after 1980, their letters exchange, as well as the prefaces to volumes mentioning his Italian master can be useful. In this article I especially highlighted the epistolary exchange and I contrasted some critical notes. Clearly, a systematic assessment of all his volumes in terms of the influences of Bianchi’s school is a desideratum. 1

This article represent the paper presented at the conference “If I wew a supreme being, you’d be a «trikster»…” A brief analysis of the unpublished academic correspondence between Ioan Petru Culianu and Ugo Bianchi organized by the Departamentul de studii interdisciplinare, Universitatea “Al. I. Cuza”, Iaşi, November 29, 2012. Research funded within the Project Social and Human Sciences in the context of global development – the development and implementation of the program of studies and postdoctoral research –Contract code: POSDRU/89/S/1.5/49944, project co-financed by the European Social Fund, Sectoral Operational Project Human Resources Development 2007-2013, which takes place at “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University, Iasi, Romania. 2 In 1971 Culianu had been offered a one month scholarship at Siena University, but at the first attempt he failed to obtain the visa. Subsequently, he was offered a one month scholarship at Università per gli Stranieri, Perugia. This time he obtained the visa but only two weeks prior to his graduation. Perhaps, after the communist regime had stopped the publication of one of Culianu’s volumes, this was the way in which the communist regime invited him to leave the country. July 4, 1972 marked not just the USA national day, but also the day when Culianu left Romania for good, despite his later plans to return, subsequent to 1989. What happened after Culianu left is emblematic for the Bucharest University administration and its refusal to deliver a document confirming the conclusion of his undergraduate studies. Tereza Culianu-Petrescu tells of how, due to seeing him as a “betrayer,” the communist regime condemned Culianu to six years in prison at the end of a “surreal political trial.” Furthermore, his family will suffer long term hardships. For an extensive and extremely useful biography of Culianu see T. Culianu, D. Petrescu, “O bio-

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grafie.” Ioan Petru Culianu: omul și opera, I. S. Antohi. Ed. Iaşi: Polirom, 2003 (Biblioteca Ioan Petru Culianu), 63−65; about his scholary achievements see E. Ciurtin, Encyclopedia of Religion, III (20052), 2079−2081, s.v. Ioan Petru Culianu, and G. Casadio, “Ioan petru Culianu, ovvero la storia delle religioni come vita e come arte.” Archaeus. Études d’Histoire des Religions 6.3−4 (2002): 313−324; about Culianu’s private life and ideas see G. Romanato, “Culianu: ricordo di un amico, in Ascension et hypostases initiatiques de l’âme. Mystique et escathologie à travers les traditions religieuses.” Actes du colloque international d’histoire des religions «Psycanodia», Paris, Inalco, 7-10 septembre 1993. A.A. Shishmanian, D. Shishmanian. Eds. Paris: Les Amis de Culiano, 2006 (Atti 1), 9−15; 525−551. 3 See Culianu’s letter to Bianchi of July 17, 1974. Daniela Dumbravă, “The Unpublished Correspondence between Ugo Bianchi and Ioan Petru Culianu.” Archaevs 14 (2010): 100. 4 In this regard see R. Scagno, “Alcuni punti fermi sull’impegno politico di Mircea Eliade nella Romania interbellica: un commento critico al dossier «Toladot» del 1972.” Esploratori del pensiero umano. Georges Dumézil e Mircea Eliade. J. Ries, NT. Spineto. Eds. Milano: Jaca Book, 2000. 259−289. 5 Ibid., nt. 13. 6 See N. Spineto, “Ugo Bianchi e Mircea Eliade.” Ugo Bianchi. Una vita per la Storia delle Religioni. G. Casadio. Ed. Roma: Il Calamo, 2002 (Biblioteca di Storia delle Religioni 3). 401−422. 7 I.P. Culianu, “L’«ascension de l’âme» dans les mystères et hors des mystères.” La Soteriologia dei Culti Orientali nell’Impero Romano. Atti del Colloquio Internazionale su La soteriologia dei culti orientali nell’Impero Romano, Roma 24-25 settembre 1979. U. Bianchi, M.J. Vermaseen. Eds. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1982. 296. 8 Cfr. J. Flamant, “Discussione” related to the article I.P. Culianu, L’«ascension de l’âme». 300. 9 U. Bianchi, “Dizionario teologico interdisciplinare” 3 (1977): 308−323, s.v. Storia delle religioni. I will develop more fully on this issue on another occasion. 10 I.P. Culianu, “Freud – Jung – Wittgenstein.” Il Ragguaglio Librario 46 (1976): 130b. 11 I.P. Culianu, “Religion as a System.” The Eliade Guide to World Religions, New York – San Francisco: Harper Collins, 19992. 3−30. 12 L. Wittgenstein, R. Rhees, “Bemerkungen über Frazers «The Golden Bough».” Synthese 17.3 (1967): 233−253. 13 I.P. Culianu, Magic and Cognition, Incognita 2.1 (1991): 3−8. 14 Excerpt from an interview with Emmanuela Guano, Arezzo, 1990 (the Italian version is unpublished); for the Romanian translation see Daniela Dum-

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bravă, “Mărturia ultimei «secvențe imprevizibile». Interviu Ioan Petru Culianu cu Emmanuela Guano.” Revista 22 (September 15, 2006, available on-line: http://www.revista22.ro/ioan-petru-culianu--inedit-3044.html.) 15 See supra, nt. 26. 16 Culianu, The Tree of Gnosis. xii. 17 See supra, nt. 27. 18 I.P. Culianu, Tozgrec.[Păianjenul Hermiont. 4 Conflictul programelor], 122−124. 19 P. Rossi, Arts de la mémoire, logique combinatoire et langue universelle de Lulle à Leibniz, Grenoble, Editions Jérôme Millon, 1993, 13. 20 L. Couturant, La Logique de Leibniz d’après des documents inédits, Paris, Felix Alcan Editeur, 1901, 36. 21 Ibid., 38, nt. 2. 22 Ibid., 35. 23 Ibid., 36, nt. 4. 24 I. P. Culianu, “Principiul antropic.” Revista 22 3.121 (22−28 mai 1992): 14. 25 Ibid. 26 M. Idel, “Ioan Petru Culianu.” Archaeus 5. 1−2 (2000): 11−14. 27 E. Zolla, “Culianu.” La filosofia perenne. Milano: Mondadori, 1999. 179−205. 28 G. Marchianò, “I primi dieci anni postumi di Culianu: congetture su un pensiero fermato.” Archaeus 5.1−2 (2000): 7−10. 29 R.A. Segal, The San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal, 13.2 (1994): 6771, in part. 67−68, rec. I.P. Culianu, The Tree of Gnosis. 30 Ibid., 70. 31 B.A. Pearson, The Journal of Religion 73 (1993): 468, rec. I.P. Culianu, The Tree of Gnosis. 32 Ibid. Biographical Note Daniela Dumbrava holds a BA in Theology (“Lucian Blaga” University, Sibiu, 1999), MA degrees in sociology (University of Bucharest, 2001) and in the history of the Eastern Christianity (Oriental Pontifical Institute in Rome (2002). She holds a PhD con lode in Humanities from the Istituto Studi Umanistici, University of Florence, with a thesis dedicated to Nicolae Milescu’s Mission in Northern Asia (1675-1676), coordinated by Prof. Nicola Di Cosmo (Institute for Advanced Studies, East Asian Studies, Princeton). Subsequently she was a Mellon East-Central European Visiting Scholar at the American Academy in Rome (Italy), an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at Warburg Institute, Londra, UK (2008−2009), and a Jr. Researcher & Lecturer Fellow al Pontificio Istituto Orientale − Rome, with fund-

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ing from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2009−2010). Currently she is researcher at the Institute for the History of Religions, Romanian Academy, Bucharest and post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iaşi (2010−2013).

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