Isabel and the Devil's Waters continues to illustrate the tension of Eliade's spirit between the magical and the mystical, between will and grace, between the self-realization of the ego and the loss of self in God, also visible in the serials he sent to the Word, in the fact that The Spiritual Itinerary (1927) seemed to have closed the cycle of his evolution from theosophy. The indecision to completely detach himself from the horizon of magical deification, of the creation of the immortal soul through one's own will and effort, received new nourishment once he arrived in India. The realistic metaphysics he speaks of in the novel turns out to be almost a synonym for tantra. It is put in terms of the manifestation of the real through play and of creation through logos, as understood by Indian philosophy (more precisely, as Eliade understood it at the time). LIVIU BORDAȘ