#henry corbin

[loneberry]

*

—Gregory A. Lipton, "Ibn 'Arabi and the Metaphysics of Race" in Rethinking Ibn 'Arabi

This chapter succinctly captures what has never sat well with me re: Perennialist interpretations of the Sufi tradition, and Ibn 'Arabi in particular. When I was utterly confused as to why Henry Corbin so vehemently disparaged Andalusian mysticism and claimed Ibn 'Arabi (a Sunni Arab writer!) for the Persian Shia tradition, my friend Sherah explained to me that it has long been a trend in Perennialist thought to disavow the Semitic roots of Sufism/Islam (she recommended this book to me). Though this chapter deals specifically with the writings Frithjof Schuon, this tendency in Perennialist thought is rooted in 19-century racialist ideas about Aryan spiritual superiority, the Persians/Iranians being of the "Aryan" (rather then Arab/semitic) race.

*

I would like to be part of a project of developing a leftist mystical tendency, but am constantly butting up against latent reactionary/racialist thinking that is couched in civilizational and mythological terms. Hence my general suspicion toward the occult...

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Fantasy map of a flat earth by Antar Dayal

* * *

The Imaginal World

“[B]etween the universe that can be apprehended by pure intellectual perception (the universe of the Cherubic Intelligences) and the universe perceptible to the senses, there is an intermediate world, the world of Idea-Images, of archetypal figures, of subtile substances, of "immaterial matter." This world is as real and objective, as consistent and subsistent as the intelligible and sensible worlds; it is an intermediate universe "where the spiritual takes body and the body becomes spiritual," a world consisting of real matter and real extension, though by comparison to sensible, corruptible matter these are subtile and immaterial.

“The organ of this universe is the active Imagination; it is the place of theophanic visions, the scene on which visionary events and symbolic histories appear in their true reality. Here we shall have a good deal to say of this universe, but the word imaginary will never be used, because with its present ambiguity this word, by prejudging the reality attained or to be attained, betrays an inability to deal with this at once intermediate and intermediary world.”

~ Henry Corbin, Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi.

[edwordsmyth]

Henry Corbin

[halfmanhalfelectricchair]

Henry Corbin, Alone With The Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi

[raisongardee]

"L’ascendance d’un philosophe ne se décide pas en effet par des chartes et des diplômes décernés ou refusés après coup. Elle résulte ab initio de la résolution par laquelle le philosophe se choisit ses prédécesseurs, ses "ancêtres", et se donne comme tâche la revivification de leur pensée. La filiation spirituelle s’atteste et s’inscrit dans les faits spirituels."

Henry Corbin, prélude à Sohravardî, L’archange empourpré, 1976.

[c-etait-ailleurs]

Femme Vie Liberté

(dessin : Oğuz Yiğit)

Rûzbehân […] entendit une mère donner ce conseil à sa fille : “Ma fille, garde ton voile, ne montre ta beauté à personne, de peur qu'elle ne soit ensuite méprisée.” Alors, Shaykh Rûzbehân de s'arrêter et de dire : “Ô femme ! la beauté ne peut souffrir d'être séquestrée dans la solitude ; tout son désir est que l'amour se conjoigne à elle, car dès la prééternité, beauté et amour se sont fait la promesse de ne jamais se séparer.”

Rûzbehân Baqlî Shîrazî, cit. in H. Corbin, En islam iranien, tel Gallimard, vol. III, p. 28

“Reste à ta place, admire sans vouloir prendre [...]. Il ne t’est pas demandé de détourner le regard, tu ne dois pas censurer une beauté. Reste à ce niveau d'admiration, sans chercher à vouloir passer à la possession. Ce qui est à toi, même si c’est peu, c’est ta primeur.”

Erri de Luca, Et il dit, folio p. 84

[mohsint110]

Dearly beloved!

Let us go toward Union.

And if we find the road

That leads to separation,

We will destroy separation.

Let us go hand in hand.

Let us enter the presence of Truth.

Let It be our judge

And imprint Its seal upon our union

For ever.

• Ibn Arabi

From: Henri Corbin. Creative Sufism ‘Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, p. 174-75

[baron-amaro]

Time. Kronos. Saturn. Tempo. For the most part in the cosmos, but also many cultures and religions things move or are done counter-clockwise, which is ironic but also symbolic. Going against the mechanical clock, against time, against death. An attempt to almost escape the illusion, the vices of time getting tighter. Or was it instinctively done for energy, a magnetism of sorts? Many in the past and including scientists now believe the latter to be so.

“One is devoured by time not because one lives in time, but because one believes in its reality, and therefore forgets or despises eternity.” - Mircea Eliade

Is it not interesting that in recent years, that lack the spiritual and organic, time seems to be flying by us assisted by modern technology, with us in a trance like state constantly staring at this black mirror.

“The past is an interpretation. The future an illusion. The world does not move through time as if it were a straight line, proceeding from the past to the future. Instead, time moves through and within us, in endless spirals. Eternity does not mean infinite time, but simply timelessness. If you want to experience eternal illumination, put the past and the future out of your mind and remain within the present moment.” - Shams Tabrizi

Now, the folk of the past are ridiculed and regarded as backward but to me it is clear that they were far wiser and even perhaps had other technologies at their disposal. Technology does not just mean machine. Of course we are told we were once monkeys which is a total inversion of what our true origin is not only in order to glorify, justify modern excellence and progress but also to keep us down and from waking up.

When you consider the past, the rituals done, against time, against the material world, to transcend, to unify with God, it almost paints the picture of a sacred time. The Ottoman Empire at one point banned all mechanical clocks because they thought it would secularise time.

“To be acquainted with what is best and oldest in yourself, is to know yourself as you were, before the world was made, before you emerged into time.” - Henry Corbin

“Time and timelessness are connected.  This instant and eternity are struggling within us. And this is the cause of all of our contradictions, our obstinacy, our narrow-mindedness, our faith and our grief.” - Arvo Pärt