Mirna Eliade is one of the leading religious scholars and culturologists of our time. His books on various aspects of primitive culture, rituals, the modern life of myth, the archetypal components of the consciousness of a temporary person are well known to the Russian reader. The proposed book is a statement of the main theoretical views of Eliade regarding the problems of archaic culture and mythological thinking, which, according to the author, serve as the archetypal foundations of the consciousness of a modern person.