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This article examines the genealogy of the concept of "transconscious," a key notion in the work of Mircea Eliade. It argues that the "transconscious" is the inheritor of a long psychological tradition in the study of religion, namely that of the religious faculty. The first section looks at the religious faculty in the work of Max Müller and some of his German post-Kantian precursors, namely, Friedrich Jacobi and Jakob Fries. The subsequent sections examine the history of terms such as "super-conscious," "supra-conscious," and "trans-conscious" in turn-of-the-century philosophy and theology in the period before 1947. I argue that there are four intellectual strands that go into the making of Eliade's "transconscious," namely: (1) psychology of mysticism; (2) occultism; (3) interpretations of yoga; (4) contemporary philosophy and theology. The final section looks at Eliade's uses of the "transconscious" and at his debate with C. G. Jung regarding religion and the mind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the debates around the "miracle of Maglavit", a shepherd's vision of God that took place in 1935 in Romania and attracted much contemporary popular and intellectual interest. The debates drew in arguments from doctors and theologians, who discussed the psychology of divine revelation and tried to elaborate the implications that such an event could have for the life of the Romanian nation. The paper places these debates in the context of wider contemporary discussions about psychology and religion. I argue that what Maglavit shows is that, in Romania at least, public debates about visionary experience in the 1930s were not only debates about its psychology, but of a psychology thoroughly imbricated with political concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]