The Legacy of Henry Corbin

Mysteries of Alast by F. Kazemi

2012-02-01T00:00:00.000-05:00

Mysteries of Alast: The Realm of Subtle Entities (‘Ālam-i dharr) and the Primordial Covenant in the Babi–Baha'i Writings by Farshid Kazemi.

Abstract
One of the more esoteric terms in Shi‘i–Shaykhi thought that has found its way into the vast corpus of the Babi–Baha'i sacred scriptures is called ‘the realm of subtle entities’ or ‘ālam-i dharr (lit. world of particles). The source of inspiration for this term (dharr) in the early Shi‘i cosmology and cosmogony lies in one of the more important and dramatic scenes which informs the whole spectrum of Islamic thought, namely the Primordial Covenant of Qur'an 7:171–2. READ the full abstract. (Many references to Corbin herein.)

Henry Corbin & The Secret Chiefs

2012-01-30T08:49:00.002-05:00

Trey Spruance of Secret Chiefs 3: "I started studying the musical systems of antiquity to try to understand what made them tick"

"Actually, I was just reading Suhrawardi, who was a Persian mystical philosopher from the twelfth century. I believe in Suhrawardi; a very practical outlook comes together in him between the rational intellect and the intuitive intellect and all of this. But he's basing a lot of his rational arguments in Neoplatonic philosophy, in a way. Once I was starting to try to get at the bases he was establishing, so that he could have the other half of things, which is sort of the mystical, enlightenment part of things.

Henry Corbin, who pretty much introduced Suhrawardi to the West, called him the "Hellenite magi" because he had one foot in the Hellenic world and one foot in ancient Zoroastrian mysticism. So it was that and the subsequent schools of Ishraqi schools of philosophy and doing background research on Neoplatonic philosophy that led me back to the Stoics first." Read the interview

More on the Secret Chiefs

Tim Lilburn, Scholem, Corbin (Corbin & Poetry #35)

2012-01-28T11:13:00.000-05:00

12 or 20 questions (second series) with Tim Lilburn - with Rob Mclennan

Le bulletin de l'IISMM février 2012

2012-01-27T08:09:00.002-05:00

le bulletin de l'IISMM février 2012

Ventura on Hillman

2012-01-26T08:56:00.002-05:00

Letters at 3AM: James Hillman (1926-2011) Remembering James Hillman
By Michael Ventura, Fri., Jan. 13, 2012

Iranian Metalwork at the Freer & Sackler

2012-01-25T10:40:00.000-05:00

"Feast Your Eyes" on Ancient Iranian Luxury Metalwork at the Freer and Sackler Galleries

One of the World's Greatest Collections of Iranian Metalwork Back on View February 4

"Feast Your Eyes: A Taste for Luxury in Ancient Iran," on view at the Smithsonian's Freer and Sackler Galleries beginning Feb. 4, explores the beauty, role and function of luxury metalwork in ancient Iran. The exhibition features more than 40 works fashioned in silver and gold between the founding of the Achaemenid Empire ca. 550 B.C.E. and the beginning of the Islamic period in the seventh century.

"Together the Freer and Sackler house one of the world's most remarkable collections, which offers invaluable insight into the lives of the powerful of the period," said Julian Raby, the Dame Jillian Sackler Director of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Freer Gallery of Art.

The exhibition coincides with the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, and a large number of the objects were part of Sackler's original gift. These are juxtaposed with works from the Freer Gallery of Art, the Sackler's sister museum, one of the first institutions in the U.S. to collect ancient Iranian metalwork.

Installed in the connecting gallery between the two museums, the exhibition will highlight how rulers expressed the political power and material wealth of their empires through portable luxury objects.

The vessels on display include finely hammered bowls, cups, plates, ewers and bottles. Many of the objects were intended for elaborate, multicourse banquets, for which the Iranians were known throughout the ancient world. Others were used for more solemn religious ceremonies.

Among the most celebrated works is a silver-gilt royal hunting plate with the portrait of Shapur II (309-379 C.E.), a Sasanian ruler recognizable by his distinctive crown. Fashioned out of 19 separate components, the plate is also one of the earliest Sasanian examples to depict a king hunting-one of the most enduring royal images from the ancient Near East.

Vessels depicting rulers or royal hunting scenes, an activity long associated with kingship in the ancient Near East, had yet another function: they were used primarily as diplomatic gifts and sent as symbols of imperial authority to far-flung corners of the Iranian Empire and along the Silk Road as far as China, to strengthen diplomatic and commercial relations. Military conflict between Iran and its western neighbors, first with Alexander of Macedonia, which brought the Achaemenid Empire to a close in 331 B.C., and later with the Romans, who vied for territorial and economic control, introduced new techniques and motifs into Iranian metalwork. For example, the figure of Dionysus, the Roman God of wine, together with his female companions, appears on several vessels.

Another rare and remarkable object from the Sasanian period is a wine horn, terminating in the head of a gazelle with a small spout, used for pouring out wine. Horn-shaped drinking cups of this type were continuously popular for at least a millennium.

The art of ancient Iran had a lasting impact on the region long after the arrival of Islam in the seventh century. Several objects in the exhibition, including a magnificent gold jug, will highlight the continued use and reinterpretation of ancient Iranian motifs in the Islamic period.

"Feast Your Eyes: A Taste for Luxury in Ancient Iran" will be accompanied by an "Explore and Learn" feature on the Freer and Sackler's website, which offers an in-depth look at the artistic, technical and historical aspects of the Freer's celebrated hunting plate.

The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, located at 1050 Independence Avenue S.W., and the adjacent Freer Gallery of Art, located at 12th Street and Independence Avenue S.W., are on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. every day, except Dec. 25, and admission is free. The galleries are located near the Smithsonian Metrorail station on the Blue and Orange lines. For more information about the Freer and Sackler Galleries and their exhibitions, programs and other events, the public may visit asia.si.edu. For information about special programs for the Sackler's 25th anniversary year, visit asia.si.edu/Sackler25. For general Smithsonian information, the public may call (202) 633-1000 or TTY (202) 633-5285.

Images from top: Wine horn with gazelle protome, Sasanian period, 4th century, silver and gilt, gift of Arthur M. Sackler, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, S1987.33. Plate, Iran, Sasanian period, Reign of Shapur II (309-379 C.E.), 4th century, silver and gilt, purchase, Freer Gallery of Art, F1934.23.

Following Muhammad

2012-01-24T09:03:00.001-05:00

Ernst, Carl W. Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

Esoteric News

2012-01-23T12:29:00.005-05:00

from Egil Asprem at HETERODOXOLOGY here.

"Corbin, an unlucky author in Iran"

2012-01-21T16:55:00.003-05:00

From the Iran Books News Agency: 21 Jan 2012 12:57 "Henry Corbin and Shiite theosophy" was held on Wednesday, 18 Jan. by the Philosophy Book of the Month.

A session was held in the House of Literary in which Kamran Fani said: "Before Corbin's death, a perfect translation of his works weren’t released. However the condition improved following the Islamic Revolution and more of his books were translated but still many of his noted works weren’t converted into Persian."

READ THE ARTICLE

Jung & Swedenborg

2012-01-20T00:00:00.000-05:00

Given the connections among Corbin, Jung & Swedenborg readers of Corbin may wish to know of Eugene Taylor's work on Jung & Swedenborg - one recent example of his studies can be found in Volume 2 Issue 2 of JUNG HISTORY in Jung on Swedenborg, Redivivus.

Bylebyl, Corbin, Suhrawardi

2012-01-19T00:00:00.000-05:00

Michael Bylebyl, « From Dawn’s Art », described as "une sorte de récit évocateur, où H. Corbin joue un rôle remarquable" (Abstracta Iranica here), pp 373-380 in Angelo-Michele Piemontese. Lewis, Franklin et Sharma, Sunil (eds.) , The Necklace of the Pleiades: Studies in Persian Literature Presented to Heshmat Moayyad on his 80th Birthday. Amsterdam & Lafayette, Indiana USA, Rozenberg Publishers & Purdue University Press, 2007, 380 pp. SOME of this truly remarkable tale can be read at the amazon link above - I discover thanks to an alert reader that the full text of the book can be found at library.nu. Bylebyl produced the "Ismaili muslimism" fascicle for Charles Olson's Curriculum of the Soul. Here is an excerpt from "From Dawn's Art":

"When Corbin walked into the room, his appearance surprised me. He was short, portly and white-haired, not at all the image conjured up from reading his books. With a deep suave voice he spoke exclusively in a French which was unique for its highly original sentence structure. Some of this was due no doubt to his expansive imagination. Some was due to the fact that he was almost totally deaf. At the start of the lecture he turned off his hearing aid, closed his eyes, and for the next hour shared with us the treasures of his imagination. Even though some of the details of Corbin’s lecture escaped me, I was struck by the man’s presence and the way his voice seemed to inhabit the hall. He seemed to be “out there” in a way which was unnerving, especially when he intoned the phrase “monde visionaire” as though the lecture was being conducted from some other dimension of reality. A lifetime of belief had created a terre celeste which he clearly inhabited and made visible to others."

Marcotte on Suhrawardi

2012-01-18T15:21:00.000-05:00

"Suhrawardī's realm of the imaginal. " Marcotte, Roxanne D. (2011). In Ишрак: Ежегодник исламской философии. no 2 / Ishraq: Islamic philosophy yearbook. no. 2 (pp. 68-79) Moscow, Russia: Russian Academy of Sciences. Institute of Philosophy, Iranian Institute of Philosophy, Islamic culture research foundation. full PDF HERE

Philemon Foundation Seminar - Geneva

2012-01-14T08:49:00.000-05:00

The Unpublished Works of Jung
A Philemon Foundation Seminar

The Philemon Foundation is pleased to announce a seminar, from the afternoon of Friday, March 9th to the evening of Saturday, March 10th, 2012, at the Bodmer Foundation, in Geneva, Switzerland. The seminar is in conjunction with the Bodmer's ground-breaking exhibit,Jung and World Literature, featuring the calligraphic volume of Liber Novus, and never before exhibited manuscripts of Jung, his alchemy copy books, annotated works from his library, together with works that inspired him. Scholars including Thomas Fischer, Martin Liebscher, Sonu Shamdasani, Giovanni Sorge, Craig Stephenson and Eugene Taylor will present their current works in progress.

Further details about the program, scholars' presentations, and registration will follow.

We hope you will join us for this preview of what is to come in Jung scholarship.

Two volumes of the Philemon Series Edition have just been released by Princeton University Press: Jung Contra Freud: The 1912 New York Lectures on the Theory of Psychoanalysis, with a new introduction by Sonu Shamdasani, and Introduction to Jungian Psychology: Notes of the Seminar on Analytical Psychology Given in 1925, revised edition edited by Sonu Shamdasani.

Please remember that if books (and any other items) are ordered from Amazon via the Philemon Foundation website, www.philemonfoundation.org, a percentage of the price is donated to Philemon's present and future projects.

General Editor
Prof. Sonu Shamdasani

Board of Directors
Nancy Furlotti, Co-President, Treasurer
Judith Harris, Co-President
Beverley Zabriskie, Secretary
Prof. Eugene Taylor
Caterina Vezzoli

Staff
Jill Firestone
Controller

“Philemon and other figures of my fantasies brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life.” – C.G. Jung

Corbin & American Poetry - Another in the Series

2012-01-10T00:00:00.000-05:00

I've lost track (again) of this series of posts, but this must be #30-something. I want to draw attention, again, to the poetry of Joseph Donahue which is deeply and explicitly in sympathy with Corbin's visionary work throughout, and to announce the publication of the next volume of his long poem: Dissolves, Terra Lucida IV-VIII, from Talisman House. I remind readers to read Peter O'Leary's fascinating appreciation of Pam Rehm and Joseph Donahue in the Chicago Review : Apocalypticism - A Way Forward for Poetry. (pdf), and these reviews of the first volume of Terra Lucida by Robert Baird and John Olson. Also indispensable in our context are Donahue's review of Rosestrikes and Coffee Grinds by Seyhan Erözçelik translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat, Talisman House, 2010 and his review of Nathaniel Tarn's Ins and Outs of the Forest Rivers, New Directions, 2008. Donahue's poetry seems to me of exquisite and breathtaking intensity.

“If one thing characterizes the active imagination Donahue brings to bear on his poem, it’s his desire that the visionary reality he has entered not be merely some dream, but a place of absolute reality. His skill at conveying this feeling seems unmatched by any other living American poet, such that parts of his poem exhibit a simultaneous lightness of touch and gravitational pull, where surrealistic follies vie with imaginal intensities.” —Peter O’Leary

“This is an episode of high romance and mystical compassion within Joseph Donahue’s on-going long poem — with the intertwining of love of the luminous earth, the erotic transformations of muse-love, and the maternal gift — the love of vocation and of the prophetic name of the poet all unrolling in an elaborated strand of meditation. The work has medieval motifs (like those of Duncan or of H.D.) reanimated in our time: forbidden lovers, lyric folds inside songs of three cultures (Christian, Jewish, Muslim), the garden, the shock of desire, the shock of sci-ence that extends mystery, the shock of death and transfiguration, all compelling in their endless aftermath. This is a book of continuous yearning, a book of cosmic creation, a book of spiritual meditation all saturated by Donahue’s angelic ear and eye.” —Rachel Blau DuPlessis

“Picasso said that whenever he painted there might not be an object, but there was the fragrance of an object. In Dissolves, Joseph Donahue combines some-thing like an object with something like a fragrance. His cubism, unglazed and personal, produces magical other dimensions.” —David Shapiro

7ème JOURNEE HENRY CORBIN - Online Audio

2012-01-09T10:01:00.000-05:00

7ème JOURNEE HENRY CORBIN
Henry Corbin et le débat contemporain en sciences humaines
le samedi 17 décembre 2011
à l’Ecole Normale Supérieure, 45 rue d’Ulm, 75005 Paris
Amphithéâtre RATAUD

Christian JAMBET (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes), « Henry Corbin et Louis Massignon ».
Alexandre AHMADI (psychiatre-psychothérapeute jungien) « Jung et Corbin. Monde de l'Inconscient et Monde Imaginal ».

Manuel QUINON (Université de Strasbourg) : « Henry Corbin et Gilbert Durand ».

David BISSON (Université Rennes I), « Henry Corbin et Gershom Scholem ».

Maria SOSTER (chercheur indépendant), « Aperçus sur des textes corbiniens dans les années trente »

Many thanks to Daniel Proulx and Daniel Gastambide for making these recordings available.

Persian Music Podcast

2012-01-06T10:21:00.001-05:00

From the Freer & Sackler Galleries:

Master of Persian Music: Hossein Alizadeh, tar and setar

See Corbin's "On the Meaning of Music in Persian Mysticism"

On Dante

2012-01-03T15:37:00.003-05:00

From Ron Slate's Review of A N Wilson's Dante in Love:

Wilson writes:

“From the beginning of Dante’s serious poetic career, there exists the bold idea that in the experience of loving Beatrice, he will discover not only what is generally meant by the term Love. He will discover that Love itself (the force, as he would conclude, which moves the sun and the other stars) is going to bring about great changes in his lifetime – changes to the Church, changes to the way that society is ordered – as well as changes in the relations between men and women. To this extent, Dante and Beatrice are to be seen as subversives, as revolutionaries, in the sphere of human or secular love …”
This sounds like Corbin's Dante to me.

The Ritman Library

2011-12-30T11:07:00.002-05:00

Thanks to Egil Asprem at Heterodoxology

for this note on The Ritman Library

and Wouter Hanegraaff's Opening Lecture

A Dream Interpreted Within Dream

2011-12-27T11:31:00.002-05:00

A Dream Interpreted Within a Dream: Oneiropoiesis and the Prism of Imagination (Zone Books, 2011), Elliot Wolfson

Wolfson's own summary of the book can be found here.

The publication of any book by Wolfson is an event.

On Wolfson & Corbin, see this earlier post.

All the World an Icon, again

2011-12-22T14:25:00.002-05:00

A really lovely bit of marketing for my forthcoming book thanks to IndieBound can be read HERE.

Massignon, Corbin, Zambrano

2011-12-21T12:44:00.003-05:00

Experto extremeño: Zambrano advirtió que Occidente iba hacia su suicidio Madrid/Merida, 21 dic (EFE).- "Hoy, leyendo a Louis Massignon, he comprendido que Occidente avanza hacia su suicidio". Esta frase que ahora suena premonitora la escribió a comienzos de los años setenta la pensadora María Zambrano, Premio Cervantes de las Letras 1988 y cuyas Obras Completas ha comenzado a editar Galaxia Gutenberg... MORE Also this, in French.

Edge of Empires

2011-12-20T08:29:00.003-05:00

Edge of Empires: Pagans, Jews, and Christians at Roman Dura-Europos
New York University
September 23, 2011-January 8, 2012

Image: Drachma of the Sasanian King Shapur I, with Zoroastrian Fire Altar.

Tarkovsky & Ibn Arabi ?

2011-12-19T09:24:00.003-05:00

If there is anyone among the readers of this blog who can help Javid Anwar in his search please contact him via phone or email -

Looking for a PhD position
Project: Cinema and the Intermediate image; Perceiving the Invisible in the Visible

This is an ontological study of cinema and it focuses on what lies beyond the fast moving images. In cinema movement happens in the imaginative realm of the observer. But the realistic perception of cinema, well-articulated by its staunch exponent Sergei Eisenstein, does not consider the inner realm and they fail to beyond cinema as an episteme to its very ontological roots. The realistic perception of cinema hits roadblock, when we study film makers like Andrei Tarkovsky, Bresson, Majid Majidi and Kirostami etc, whose visions have deeper inner significations? Can we approach their work with an exoteric modality? If it has only an exoteric meaning, what is the significance of cinema in general? In this context the cinema demands a deeper analysis by combining both the ways. Tarkovsky and his films have been foregrounded in this study, though many filmmakers in his ilk are under its purview. The best way to reconstruct the meaning of Tarkovsky’s art is to know the ways human imagination works and for that one has to go beyond the limits of human reason. And the study seeks the help from the universe of Ibn Arabi’s thought to reclaim the potential of imagination to reconstruct the meaning of cinema in such a way that there are more to see in moving images than we actually see.
Contact javidanwar@gmail.com
Mobile +91 9446393396

SOCIETY FOR NEOPLATONIC STUDIES CONFERENCE

2011-12-18T17:20:00.003-05:00

CALL FOR PANELS:

THE TENTH ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR NEOPLATONIC STUDIES CONFERENCE,

JUNE 20-23, 2012,

CALGLIARI, SARDINIA

DETAILS HERE

ASE 2012 Conference Call for Papers

2011-12-17T00:30:00.000-05:00

ASE 2012 Conference Call for Papers

Association for the Study of Esotericism

Fourth International Conference

Call for Papers: Esotericism, Religion, and Culture

July 19-22, 2012

DETAILS HERE

School of Spiritual Psychology

2011-12-16T00:30:00.000-05:00

The School of Spiritual Psychology
Directors: Robert Sardello & Cheryl Sanders-Sardello

Based in the lives & works of C.G. Jung, Henry Corbin, James Hillman, Rudolf Steiner & Sri Aurobindo

Freer & Sackler Archive

2011-12-15T00:30:00.000-05:00

Freer & Sackler Gallery Squeeze Imaging Project -

The Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives hold a significant collection of 393 squeezes from ancient archaeological sites in the Near East. A squeeze is a series of sheets of paper that are layered on top of each other and moistened to create a wet pulp. This substance is pressed upon the inscriptions, creating a paper mold and capturing the impressionistic writing for a 3-dimensional negative effect. (See the Squeeze Making tab for more information). The inscriptions typically contain information on the ancient culture's history, now preserved in the squeezes. As they are often made of paper, squeezes can be fragile, which limits their accessibility and jeopardizes the historical data they hold.
The squeezes in the Archives, Ernst Herzfeld papers date from 1911-1934. The squeezes range from very high-grade, robust paper to low-grade cigarette paper. Over time, the squeezes have been transported around the world, handled and stored in ways not approved by F|S archivists, and have suffered from various issues that affect all paper products. The squeezes contain Arabic script, Middle Persian, and Cuneiform impressions from archaeological sites: Bastam, Isfahan, Rayy, Samarra, Shiraz, Sunghur, Taq-i Bustan, Tus, Sarpul, Pasargadae, Persepolis, Naqsh-i Rustam, and Paikuli. The Herzfeld papers have been vital in the research of these sites, and the squeezes he created for temporary reference have helped scholars access information from monuments that for many reasons may no longer be available.

IISMM January Bulletin

2011-12-14T09:15:00.002-05:00

IISMM Bulletin Janvier 2012

7ème JOURNEE HENRY CORBIN 17 December - corrected

2011-12-13T11:05:00.002-05:00

7ème JOURNEE HENRY CORBIN
Henry Corbin et le débat contemporain en sciences humaines
le samedi 17 décembre 2011
à l’Ecole Normale Supérieure, 45 rue d’Ulm, 75005 Paris

*Amphithéâtre RATAUD*

Matinée
Président de séance : Leili Anvar-Chenderoff (INALCO)
9h 30 : Christian JAMBET (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes), « Henry Corbin et Louis
Massignon ».
10 h 30 : Alexandre AHMADI (psychiatre-psychothérapeute jungien) «Jung et Corbin. Monde
de l'Inconscient et Monde Imaginal »
11 h 30 : Manuel QUINON (Université de Strasbourg) : «Henry Corbin et Gilbert Durand».

Déjeuner au restaurant « Mauzac », 7 rue de l’Abbé de l’Epée, 75005 Paris

Après-midi

Président de séance : Philippe Faure (Université d’Orléans)
14 h 30 : David BISSON (Université Rennes I), «Henry Corbin et Gershom Scholem »
15 h 30 : Maria SOSTER (chercheur indépendant), « Aperçus sur des textes corbiniens dans
les années trente »
17h30-19h Cocktail au « Mauzac »

Le secrétaire général, Pierre Lory

La figure de la Sophia, chez Henry Corbin

2011-12-09T09:06:00.001-05:00

I am pleased to be able to provide an audio file of

Daniel Proulx's essay

La figure de la Sophia, chez Henry Corbin

Presented at

Colloque transdisciplinaire et international
Femme, Eros et Philosophie :
Identité féminine, bio-pouvoir du discours et éros philosophique

6 et 7 décembre 2011

Louvain-la-Neuve

The full text of an edited version will be available in a few weeks.

Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art

2011-12-07T08:59:00.001-05:00

The mission of the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art
is to improve the quality of people's lives through the
study, understanding and appreciation of
Islamic arts and cultures.

Femme, Eros et Philosophie

2011-12-01T09:31:00.000-05:00

On the evening of the first day note that Daniel Proulx will present: La figure de la Sophia, chez Henry Corbin (see abstract at the bottom of this post)

Colloque transdisciplinaire et international Femme, Eros et Philosophie CFEP Programme Complet-Version Officielle

La figure de la Sophia, chez Henry Corbin

par Daniel Proulx

6 décembre 2011 à 14h30

Résumé
Il s’agit de tenter une percée dans la conscience sophianique de Henry Corbin et de se demander pourquoi la figure de la Sophia apparaît dans presque tous ses textes. Ève, Daêna, Fatima, Madonna Intelligenza, la Vierge-Mère, le féminin-créateur, la shekinah, l’Ange tutélaire, les Fravartis ne sont que quelques unes des dénominations de la figure de la Sophia. Mais qui est Sophia? Et quel est son rôle dans l’amour que porte Henry Corbin à la Sagesse?Aborder cette question fera ressortir deux éléments. Le premier est contextuel à la pensée de Henry Corbin. Il mettra en lumière la source de la sophianité dans son œuvre, à savoir l’influence de l’orthodoxie de Berdiaev et de Boulgakov. Une influence qui semble immensément plus importante que celle d’Heidegger par exemple. Le deuxième élément conduira au cœur du problème du Paradoxe du monothéisme. Ce recueil, qui constitue peut-être l’éthos de sa philosophie, propose de renouer avec son ange, avec son partenaire céleste pour résoudre le problème métaphysique du monothéisme. Ce partenaire céleste, ce témoin dans le Ciel, est-ce Sophia?Il y aura au final à se demander si l’amour de la sagesse explorée par Henry Corbin n’implique pas une théosophie plutôt qu’une philosophie. Selon la perspective corbinienne, la juxtaposition des mots formants le thème de notre colloque « femme, eros et philosophie » impliquent-ils l’ajout d’un niveau de réalité théosophique complémentaire à la philosophie?

Abstract
This is an attempt to break through the sophianic consciousness of Henry Corbin and ask why the figure of Sophia appears in almost every text. Who is Sophia? And what is its role in Henry Corbin's love of wisdom?Addressing this issue will highlight two points. The first one is contextual to the thought of Henry Corbin. It will highlight the source of the sophianicity in his work, namely the influence of Berdyaev and Bulgakov; an influence that seems to be vastly more important than Heidegger's. The second element will lead to the heart of the problem in The paradox of monotheism. This book, which is perhaps the ethos of his philosophy, proposes to reconnect with angelology to solve the metaphysical problem of monotheism. This celestial partner, this witness in heaven, is it Sophia?Finally it must be asked whether the love of wisdom explored by Henry Corbin involves rather theosophy than philosophy. In Corbin's perspective, does the theme of our conference "Women, eros and philosophy" involve an additional theosophical level of reality complementary to the philosophy?

IISMM - Decembre 2011

2011-11-30T08:15:00.001-05:00

IISMM - DECEMBRE - 2011

Bishop Berkeley & Esoteric Traditions

2011-11-28T08:28:00.001-05:00

The Other Bishop Berkeley: An Exercise in Re-Enchantment
Costica Bradatan

Costica Bradatan proposes a new way of looking at the influential a18th-century Anglo-Irish empiricist and idealist philosopher. He approache Berkeley's thought from the standpoint of its roots, rather than from how it has come to be viewed since his time. This book will interest scholars working in a wide variety of fields, from philosophy and the history of ideas to comparative literature, utopian studies, religious and medieval studies, and critical theory.

This other Berkeley read and wrote alchemical books, daydreamed of "Happy Islands" and the "Earthly Paradise" and depicted them carefully, designed utopian projects and spent years trying to put them into practice. Bradatan discovers a thinker deeply rooted in Platonic, mystical, and sometimes esoteric traditions, who saw salvation as philosophy and practiced philosophy as a way of life. This book uncovers a richer Berkeley, a more profound and spectacular one, and, it is hoped, a more truthful one.

Costica Bradatan teaches philosophy at Texas Tech University and is Senior Editor of Janus Head: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology, and the Arts.

Henry Corbin & the Secret of the Grail

2011-11-22T11:19:00.001-05:00

Henry Corbin & the Secret of the Grail

by John Carey

is now in print in Temenos Academy Review 14

which may be ordered online here.

This important essay is based on the text of a lecture presented in Oxford and London for the Temenos Academy. The London lecture can be heard online at the Temenos Academy website here. Every student of Corbin should read this piece.

"Henry Corbin, one of the twentieth century's greatest scholars of the inspired Imagination, is best known for his studies of Shi'ite and Sufi spirituality; but his dedication to that dimension of reality which he called the mundus imaginalis led him to explore many other traditions as well. One theme which particularly captured his imagination was the image of the Grail. This lecture will look at what the Grail was for Corbin: at the versions of the story to which he refers, at the contexts in which he speaks of it, and at the hints of what he may have believed its essential significance to be."

[Also readers should note another essay by Carey which appears in Sacred Web 28: The Face and the Veil: Divine Presence and Mortal Absence in Fís Adomnáin and Nicholas of Cusa. The article focuses on two ideas discussed by the anonymous author of Fís Adomnáin (‘The Vision of Adomnán’), a Celtic account of the afterlife written around the end of the first Christian millennium: “the meeting of the eyes” and “the coincidence of contradictories”. Both these ideas, independently expressed in Nicholas de Cusa’s De visione Dei, and discussed in the later writings of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, point to certain profound truths about the nature of Reality. ]

John Carey is a Statutory Lecturer in the Department of Early and Medieval Irish, University College, Cork, Ireland, and a Fellow of the Temenos Academy. His publications include King of Mysteries: Early Irish Religious Writings, A Single Ray of the Sun: Religious Speculation in Early Ireland, and Ireland and the Grail. A love of Arthurian legend drew him into Celtic studies early in life and has never left him.

Mysticism at the Reitberg Museum, Zurich

2011-11-21T08:02:00.001-05:00

Mysticism - Yearning for the Absolute

The Rietberg Museum is proud to present the world's first culturally comparative exhibition on mysticism.

This elusive religious phenomenon will be illustrated by the example of forty male and female mystics: their lives and writings demonstrate just how richly varied spiritual experience can be. The mystics chosen for the exhibition come from the great religions of the world - Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Judaism and Christianity - and span the period from the 6th century BC until the 19th century.

Among these remarkable mystics are a Tibetan ascetic, animmortal from China, an unconventional Zen master, an abbot fromthe monastery of Sinai, an uncompromising social revolutionary, anecstatic female poet from India, a Swiss hermit who used a stone ashis pillow, a Jewish scholar who searched for the hidden names ofGod, and a Sufi poet intoxicated by love whose poems are among thepearls of world literature.

Thanks to Steven Aftergood for drawing our attention to this.

PhD Vacancies in Amsterdam

2011-11-09T13:38:00.001-05:00

Want to do a PhD on Western esotericism? Two vacancies in Amsterdam

More Remembrances of James Hillman

2011-11-06T15:24:00.000-05:00

Collected by Thomas Moore here: Remembering James Hillman across the web

Pacifica's Hillman Tribute

2011-11-05T08:31:00.000-04:00

James Hillman at Pacifica

Todd Lawson in London - Frye & the Koran

2011-11-04T20:08:00.001-04:00

On Wednesday 9 November Prof. Todd Lawson of the University of Toronto will give a lecture on the late Prof. Northrop Frye, under the title "Frye & the Koran." Frye, one of the pre-eminent literary critics of the second half of the 20th century, changed the way the world thought about the connections between spiritual vision, myth and literature, first through his study of Blake (Fearful Symmetry 1947), then later by his studies of the Bible (The Great Code 1982, Words with Power 1990 and The Double Vision 1991). The insights he developed over these decades offered a new perspective on the coherence and integrity of the Bible in which the workings of myth, metaphor and apocalypse create what can be called a spiritual dimension of time. In these works he also made scattered and frequently very perceptive remarks about the Koran, its form and content. Research into his private papers at the University of Toronto, where he taught all his life, shows that his interest in the Koran started long before his published studies of the Bible. A close look reveals an imaginative domain in Frye’s consciousness common to both sacred books where the idea of the spiritual is given clear and perhaps distinctive meaning. (from the Temenos Academy Newsletter)

At The Royal Asiatic Society, 14 Stephenson Way, London NW1 2HD (nearest underground Euston or Euston Square), doors open 6.30pm, lecture 7pm. An admission charge applies. Space is limited and reservation recommended.

Thomas Moore on James Hillman

2011-11-03T11:02:00.003-04:00

This is a very nice essay: Remembering James Hillman

Henry Corbin Street, Tehran

2011-10-30T13:22:00.001-04:00

View Larger Map

2011-10-28T16:27:00.001-04:00

James Hillman

1926 - 2011

De docta ignorantia and dialogue

2011-10-26T00:00:00.000-04:00

Learned Ignorance: Intellectual Humility among Jews, Christians and Muslims
Edited by James L. Heft, Reuven Firestone and Omid SafiOxford
University PressJuly 2011

IISMM Novembre 2011

2011-10-25T13:04:00.002-04:00

IISMM Novembre2011

All the World an Icon

2011-10-19T00:00:00.000-04:00

Forthcoming in JULY 2012 from North Atlantic Books, distributed by Random House. The fourth book in the Henry Corbin Quartet. PRE-ORDER on amazon.

"For anyone attracted to the elusive realm of creative imagination, this book draws out and makes explicit what lives so strongly as a lure within the heart, the desire to find again our first home, the imaginal worlds and their inhabitants, the angels of creativity. As acknowledged master interpreter of the great work of Henry Corbin, Tom Cheetham follows Corbin’s path of seeing all the world as living symbol of the divine worlds. More, he shows how to go through the portal of the world as symbol to enter the imaginal realms in their intimate autonomy, and develop impeccable trust in their spontaneous appearance as personal images. Here, in this writing, we can learn interior listening, discovering the inherent poeticizing action of the word. This beautiful volume goes beyond, way beyond, any of our usual self-serving inclinations and leads us into being servants of the angel of the Earth." - Robert Sardello, Author of Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness

Islamic Painting at the J P Morgan Library in NYC

2011-10-17T19:35:00.002-04:00

The Morgan's Dazzling Islamic Manuscript Paintings

by Emma Mustich in Salon

Corbin, Jung & Hillman - Nov 12

2011-10-12T15:15:00.001-04:00

TCheetham_Fall2011

2011-10-07T00:00:00.000-04:00

Le Monde, October 10, 1978:

"The orientalist Henry Corbin, who died on October 7, 1978,

was buried in the cemetery of Champeaux, Rue Gallieni,

in the city of Montmorency, Val d' Oise."

Ibn 'Arabi & Rumi in NYC - Nov 4-5

2011-10-05T07:52:00.000-04:00

Listen to interview on WBAI 99.5 FM Radio with conference presenters.

Ibn 'Arabi and Rumi

Teachings for the Modern World

November 4-5, 2011, Columbia University, New York City
Co-sponsored by the Middle East Institute at Columbia University

ON FACEBOOK

Two Lectures of Interest - London

2011-10-04T10:49:00.000-04:00

Goethe’s Phenomenology of Colour
PROF HENRI BORTOFT
Monday 17 October
Chair Dr Jeremy Naydler

Frye & the Koran
PROF. TODD LAWSON
Wednesday 9 November
Chair Leonard Lewisohn

Venue: The Royal Asiatic Society

14 Stephenson Way, London NW1 2HD

(nearest underground Euston or Euston Square)
Doors open at 6.30pm
Lecture begins promptly at 7pm
Concludes 8.30pm
Admission £5 or £3.50 Members of the Temenos Academy/Concessions

Corbin - Hillman - Duncan

2011-09-30T10:10:00.000-04:00

In a move that elegantly ties together many of the threads that have made up the last 20 years or so of my life, Robert Duncan dedicated one of the late poems in his Passages series, "Whose," as follows:

[for Jim Hillman's tribute to Henri Corbin The Thought of the Heart]

It was Hillman's 1979 Eranos lecture that first turned my attention, and that of many others I know, to Henry Corbin. In it he wrote,

"You who have been privileged at some time during his long life to have attended a lecture by Henry Corbin have been present at a manifestation of the thought of the heart. You have been witness to its creative imagination, its theophanic power of bringing the divine face into visibility. You will also know in your hearts that the communication of the thought of the heart proceeds in that fashion of which he was master, as a récit, an account of the imaginal life as a journey among imaginal essences, an account of the essential. In him imagination was utterly presence. One was in the presence of imagination itself, that imagination in which and by which the spirit moves from the heart towards all origination."- James Hillman, The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World. Dallas: Spring Publications, 1992, 3. For more on Hillman's debt to Corbin see Archetypal Psychology, Volume 1 of the Uniform Edition of Hillman's works.

Duncan's poem can be found on page 263 of Ground Work: Before the War, In the Dark. Those interested in Duncan's relation to Hillman should search out a copy of Duncan's remarkable lectures to the Analytical Psychology Society of Western New York transcribed for Spring Journal (1996): Spring 59: Opening the Dreamway: In the Psyche of Robert Duncan (out-of-print but worth searching for). The audio recoding of the second lecture can be found here as "Reading on "Wind and Sea, Fire and Night" at the American Psychoanalytic Society, 1980." The audio of the first lecture will be available on PennSound in the near future.

IISMM Octobre 2011

2011-09-29T07:55:00.001-04:00

IISMM BULLETIN OCTOBRE2011

Islamic Art at the Metropolitan Museum

2011-09-26T08:16:00.000-04:00

Islamic Art Treasures at the Met

Don't miss the videos with this article.

The new exhibit opens to the public November 1.

Schiere di angeli iranici

2011-09-22T00:00:00.000-04:00

Schiere di angeli iranici
Giulio Busi

Dal «grande angelo nero, fuligginoso» di Montale, a quello «vestito di panni d'un viola azzurro, cinto di cordoni d'oro, con vaste ali bianche dal fulgore di seta», che spicca il volo verso Franz Kafka, e fino agli angeli di Rilke, con «stanche bocche» e «anime senza contorni», gli esseri celesti si muovono attraverso il XX secolo furtivi e imprendibili, incuranti delle due guerre mondiali, delle ideologie, e della conclamata morte del divino. Raramente si occupano della Storia, perlopiù continuano il loro mestiere vecchio di millenni, messaggeri troppo umani del l'aldilà, aureolati d'inquietudine.

Ma forse nessun autore del secolo scorso ha saputo evocare l'antico mistero degli spiriti immateriali come Henry Corbin, filosofo e orientalista dalla prosa incalzante e ammaliatrice. Grazie a Corbin, nella cultura europea irrompe l'angeologia iranica. Richiamati in vita dalle antiche pagine dei magi zoroastriani o degli gnostici sciti, gli spiriti messi in scena da Corbin sorprendono il lettore occidentale con costumi e compiti in gran parte diversi da quelli dei loro colleghi biblici. Se nella tradizione ebraica i mal'akim, gli angeli, sono umili servitori del Dio trascendente, esecutori di ordini altrui, gli angeli venuti dall'Iran hanno dignità propria, sono principi conoscitivi, modelli di una compiutezza non solo sovrumana ma addirittura sovradivina.

Il repertorio angelico di Corbin si arricchisce ora di un inedito, tratto dall'archivio del grande studioso conservato a Parigi, e pubblicato nella raffinata traduzione di Raphael Ebgi. Le combat pour l'ange fu composto nel 1950, un anno dopo la stampa del Mito dell'eterno ritorno di Mircea Eliade. E in effetti, il testo corbiniano deve molto alla lezione di Eliade, e al concetto di sacro come liberazione dall'ansia della storia. Non importa, sostiene Corbin, che i dati storici e geografici su Zarathustra siano contraddittori e confusi, e che l'emergere dello zoroastrismo resti avvolto in un alone mitico. Quello che conta è riuscire a interpretare questi racconti come altrettante tappe di una «ierofania». La particolare ierofania zoroastriana si può riassumere, secondo Corbin, in un insegnamento fondamentale: ogni livello di essere ha un proprio angelo, ovvero è chiamato a un grado superiore di perfezione, ad angelicarsi nella luce della propria completezza. Una nostalgia di perfezione, venuta come i magi dal l'Oriente, che non poteva non affascinare il Novecento europeo.

© RIPRODUZIONE RISERVATA
Henry Corbin, Le Combat pour l'Ange (Ricerche sulla filosofia mazdea), a cura di Raphael Ebgi, Torre d'Ercole, Travagliato, pagg. 148, € 24,00

The Divine Twin in Late Antiquity

2011-09-20T11:30:00.001-04:00

I have in hand a draft copy of an essay that will be of considerable interest to students of Corbin:

"A unus-ambo anthropology: The Divine Twin in the Gospel of Thomas, the Cologne Mani Codex, and Plotinus' Enneads," by Charles M. Stang , Asst. Professor of Early Christian Thought, Harvard Divinity School.

Dr. Stang writes, "A version of this essay was delivered at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. It will appear in a forthcoming volume edited by Kimberley Patton, entitled Gemini and the Sacred: Twins in Religion and Myth (I.B Tauris). This essay is an attempt to sketch out the contours of a new research project on the theme of the divine twin or double, tentatively titled "When You Become Two: The Divine Twin in Late Antiquity." The book owes quite a bit to Corbin's opening two chapters of L'homme lumiere. It will have chapters devoted to the Gospel of Thomas, the Acts of Thomas, the Hymn of the Pearl, the Cologne Mani Codes (and other Manichean literature), and Plotinus. Perhaps other chapters on Plato (Phaedrus and Symposium) and Hermeticism."

Here are the opening paragraphs of Stang's essay:

In 1971, Henry Corbin published a short book by the title of L'homme de lumiere dans le soufisme
iranien. Ostensibly this book explores symbols of light in the writings of several medieval Persian
sufis, but Corbin begins with an exploration of "an innovation in philosophical anthropology" from
antiquity, a notion that "the individual person as such ... has a transcendent dimension at his
disposal," "a counterpart, a heavenly 'partner,' and that [the person's] total structure is that of a biunity,
a unus-ambo." Corbin traces this unus-ambo anthropology through a variety of sources from the
ancient Eastern Mediterranean up to and including the Iranian plateau. An unus-ambo anthropology
suggests that what it means to be properly human is not to be a single, integrated subject - to be
oneself, so to speak - but somehow to be one and two simultaneously. In several of the sources
Corbin considers, such an anthropology is figured as one's encounter with one's divine double or
twin. In other words, these sources imagine that only when one encounters one's divine double or
twin, only when one recognizes that one is and has always been two, does one (now a one-yet-two,
or unus-ambo) become a proper human self.

Among the sources to which Corbin turns is the small body of literature associated with the apostle Judas Thomas, who is said to have been the "twin" (didymus) of Christ - although what "twin" means in this context is unclear. Another source for him is Manichaean literature, wherein it is said that the prophet Mani was twice visited by his divine twin, heavenly companion or counterpart. Yet another is Plotinus' Enneads, where it is said that the self is divided between lower and higher halves. Corbin, I believe, is correct that there is a peculiar anthropology animating these three roughly contemporary corpora. Together these three offer a picture of human selfhood as being properly one and yet two, an anthropology according to which the inauguration of an intimate relationship with the divine is marked by an encounter with one's double or twin. All three offer an anthropology suspicious of simple singularity and easy integration, an alternative anthropology that relies on the figure of the twin to gesture at the baffling coexistence of singularity and duality. In what follows, I will explore this alternative, unus-ambo anthropology by an examination of selections from these three corpora...

[The Cologne Mani Codex reproduced here]

«Mundus imaginalis» Анри Корбен

2011-09-18T11:27:00.003-04:00

«Mundus imaginalis» Анри Корбен

Блистательный Анри Корбен.

Блистательный, ибо свет внутренний, свет метафизический – исходит от каждой страницы его книг. Будь это переводы Сухраварди, или теоретические рассуждения о «mundus imaginalis».

«Mundus imaginalis» - призрачная страна «воображаемого», куда нас относит пурпурный архангел, одно крыло которого светлое, другое тёмное. «Воображаемое», или точнее имагинация, это не пустое фантазирование, не измышление чего-то не существующего. Имагинальный мир – место единения, священной взаимности, где божественная (духовная) любовь и человеческая любовь становятся единым целым в существе любящего. Ибо любовь, в конце концов, есть способ познания одного существа другим. Здесь теофании происходят реально, а священные истории, подобные сказанию о Граале, обретают свою истину

Жизнь и труды Корбена были связаны с Востоком. Но то, что именуют Востоком не всегда связано с географическим путешествием. Восток в эзотерической Традиции, это – Исток, Полюс, Накоджа – абад, страна Нигде, место где зарождается Свет Истины. Феномен этого Света был ведом арабским мудрецам – Ибн ‘Араби, Ширази, Сухраварди. Корбен был авторитетнейшим переводчиком их сочинений.

Его фундаментальный труд «История исламской философии» готовится к выходу в издательстве «Феория», а «Terra Foliata» хочет издать – «Циклическое время и исмаилитский гнозис». Пока же, открываем и читаем: «Световой человек в иранском суфизме», или его же «Свет Славы и Святой Грааль».

More on the "New Atheism"

2011-09-15T14:59:00.000-04:00

Beyond the New Atheism, by Gary Gutting. Of particular note is the reference to Charles Taylor's A Secular Age, which sits, alas, largely unread in the pile on my desk. I will finish it. And it deserves to be pointed to here in the context of Corbin's work.

Un Remoto Presente

2011-09-09T13:24:00.000-04:00

Un Remoto Presente
Editore: Moretti & Vitali
a cura di Francesco Donfrancesco. pp. 176, nn. ill. b/n, Bergamo Prezzo: 2002. € 16,00

Al centro di questo volume si trova un testo classico di Henry Corbin, Mundus imaginalis, che ha rappresentato uno dei cardini nella formazione del pensiero di James Hillman.

Questi è presente con un suo scritto, Immagine senso, che traccia le linee portanti di un’interpretazione dei sogni coerente con la sua visione. Francesco Donfrancesco confronta la concezione della memoria in Freud e Jung, e introduce il tema generale del volume attraverso l’analisi dei testi dei due maestri e di alcuni sogni.

Venuti, Sacco e Oddo propongono una disamina storica che mette in evidenza gli importanti punti di contatto, rispettivamente, fra l’iconologia di Warburg e il pensiero di Jung e Hillman, e fra il pensiero psicologico di Jung e le correnti vitalistiche della biologia. A questi testi si aggiungono le voci di artisti, come Ruggero Savinio e Margot McLean.

Contents:

Henry Corbin, Mundus imaginalis L’immaginario e l’immaginale
Francesco Donfrancesco, Memoria dell’ignoto
Daniele Chiaffi, Un ritorno dagli Inferi
Paul Kugler, L’eredità dei morti
Avigdor Arikha, Dalla preghiera alla pittura
Francesco Donfrancesco, Incroci
Ruggero Savinio, Immagine e Figura
Daniela Sacco, Le trame intrecciate di Mnemosyne - Jung, Warburg, Hillman in dialogo
Margot McLean, La memoria nelle cose
James Hillman, Immagine senso
Letizia Oddo, Permanenza e trasformazione - L’eredità del pensiero biologico vitalista nella teoria junghiana
Alfred J. Ziegler, Il sogno, l’angoscia e l’afflizione naturale

IISMM: Complément d'informations septembre 2011

2011-09-07T10:20:00.001-04:00

Complément d'information septembre 2011

Contemporary Esoterism: International Conference

2011-09-02T22:00:00.000-04:00

Contemporary Esoterism: International Conference
Stockholm University, Sweden, August 27-29, 2012

Keynote speakers

Wouter J. Hanegraaff,
Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents,

University of Amsterdam

Christopher Partridge, Religious Studies, Lancaster University

Kocku von Stuckrad, Study of Religion, Groningen University

Deadline for Abstracts: March 30, 2012

Details here

November Lecture in Maine

2011-09-01T22:00:00.000-04:00

The Ocean in Which We Live:

Language and Imagination in Corbin, Jungand Hillman

Lecture and Workshop

Tom Cheetham

The C.G. Jung Center

Brunswick, Maine

Saturday November 12, 2011
DETAILS HERE (Bottom of Page)

(Image: Cy Twombly, Untitled, 1985)

Angels In-Between

2011-08-31T22:00:00.000-04:00

Angels In-Between: The Poetics of Excess and the Crisis of Representation by Cosma, Ioana, Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO , 2009, 296 pages; NR72375 PDF HERE

From the Abstract: This dissertation examines the reconfiguration of the limits of representation in reference to the intermediary function of angels. The Modernist engagement with the figure of the angel entailed, primarily, a reconsideration of the problem of representation as well as an attempt to trace the contours of a poetics that plays itself outside the mimetic understanding of representation. My contention is that this transformation of literary referentiality was not simply a disengagement of art from reality but, rather, from the truth-falsity, reality-fiction, subject-object dichotomies. The angel, defined as the figure of passage par excellence , but also as the agency that induces the transformation of the visible in the invisible and vice versa, appears both as a model/archetype and as a guide towards the illumination of this intermediary aesthetic. Working with the joined perspectives from angelology, contemporary phenomenology, and poetics, this dissertation is an extended overview of the notion of intermediary spaces, as well as an attempt to probe the relevance of this concept for the field of literary studies.

Thanks to Hadi Fakhoury for pointing out this dissertation which was co-supervised by Paul Colilli and relies extensively on Corbin.

Ronald Johnson - A Poetry of the Imaginal

2011-08-30T12:05:00.000-04:00

Ronald Johnson's (1935-1998) poetry is "thoroughly devoted to the imaginal; his work is anelaboration of mesocosmic realities." - Peter O'Leary

Of Johnson's major long poem Ross Hair writes,

"Johnson's sense of cosmos in ARK pertinently echoes the ideas expressed by the depth-psychologist James Hillman in his essay "Alchemical Blue." According to Hillman: "The world is as we see it in our dreams and poems, visions and paintings, a world that is truly a cosmos, cosmetically adorned, an aesthetic event for the senses because they have become instruments of imagining." Like Hillman, ARK posits the world as "an aesthetic event for the senses" whose multifarious phenomena provide the eclectic "instruments of imagining" which offer insight and revelation about the nature and mysteries of the universe." See Hair's essay and his book-length study of Johnson.

Johnson's books include:
The Book of the Green Man, WW Norton, 1967 (available online here)
ARK, Living Batch Press, 1996 - to be reissued in 2011 by Flood Editions.
To Do As Adam Did: Selected Poems of Ronald Johnson, Talisman House, 2000
The Shrubberies - Flood Editions, 2001. Reviewed here in Jacket2
Radi Os, Flood Editions, 2005

Also indispensible is
Ronald Johnson: Life and Works, Edited by Joel Bettridge and Eric Murphy Selinger, National Poetry Foundation, 2008

A wide variety of links to poetry, interviews & resources from Peter O'Leary here.
O'Leary's recent interview discusses Johnson and is well worth attention for many reasons.

Corbin & Lubac

2011-08-24T21:00:00.000-04:00

I have this interesting bit of news from Daniel Proulx:

"Talem eum vidi qualem capere potui. Cette idée n’est peut-être pas directement de Corbin puisque je viens de trouver que Henri de Lubac donne la citation exacte dans Aspect du bouddhisme de 1951. La date de la publication de ce livre de Lubac concorde avec la première occurrence dans l’œuvre de Corbin. De plus, Lubac indique clairement le rapport au docétisme! J’en conclus que Corbin utilise de Lubac comme source de cette citation des Actes de Pierre, mais qu’il ne la nomme pas!"

Lubac citation is here:

Opera omnia

Imaginal World - in Danish

2011-08-24T08:51:00.001-04:00

Det Imaginale Livssyn
by Elisabeth Egekvist, M.A., Denmark

With an English summary here.

The Study of Myth - New Website

2011-08-22T20:34:00.000-04:00

HERE

Esotericism & Mysticism Conference in Russia

2011-08-11T11:12:00.002-04:00

Call for Papers 2011

Association for the Study of Esotericism and Mysticism
in collaboration with:
Russian Christian Academy for Humanities (Saint-Petersburg),
H. S. Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine)
Ukrainian Association of Religion Researchers
Research Center for Mysticism and Esotericism (St. Petersburg, Russia)

Fifth International Conference
Mystic and Esoteric Movements in Theory and Practice

HISTORY AND DISCOURSE
Historical and Philosophical Aspects of
the Study of Esotericism and Mysticism

December 2 – 5, 2011 - St Petersburg (Russia)

Keynote lecture:
Dr. Prof. Wouter J. Hanegraaff

DETAILS HERE

Goethe & Jung

2011-08-10T08:02:00.000-04:00

Given Corbin's affinity for the German Romantic Tradition and his close association with Jung, this volume, and the other work of Paul Bishop, may well be of interest to readers of this blog.

Spring Journal Books

(the book publishing imprint of Spring: A Journal of Archetype and Culture, the oldest Jungian psychology journal in the world)

http://www.springjournalandbooks.com/

Reading Goethe at Midlife

Ancient Wisdom, German Classicism, and Jung

By Paul Bishop

The second volume in the Zurich Lecture Series in Analytical Psychology

Co-sponsored by ISAPZURICH and Spring Journal Books

ISBN: 978-1-935528-06-7

280 pp.

Price: $26.95

To order this book, click here

This book explores the history of the idea of the midlife crisis, using the writings of C.G. Jung and Goethe to investigate its relevance for today. Tracing how the "ages of humankind" became "the stages of life," in which the midlife crisis represents a pivotal moment, Paul Bishop offers a detailed analysis of a paper by Jung on this subject. He then shifts the focus to Goethe's interest in Orphic wisdom, and one of Goethe's major later poems, "Primal Words. Orphic" (Urworte. Orphisch). Using Jungian ideas to explore the psychological implications of this poem, Bishop draws on Goethe's own commentary, and other background material, to uncover its vital message.

Reading Goethe at Midlife reveals the remarkable symmetry between the ideas of Jung and Goethe. Jung's analysis of the stages of life, and his advice to heed the "call of the self," are brought into conjunction with Goethe's emphasis on the importance of hope, showing an underlying continuity of thought and relevance from ancient wisdom, via German classicism, to analytical psychology.

*****

Praise for Reading Goethe at Midlife

At a time when many Jungians are turning to neuroscience to provide an external underpinning for Analytical Psychology, this scholarly book is very welcome: it returns to psychology's home territory, placing Jung firmly in a long cultural tradition. Impressively well-read in many fields extending from literature and the history of ideas to psychoanalysis and Jungian studies, Paul Bishop allows a text by Jung and a late poem by Goethe to mirror and enhance each other, demonstrating Jung's intellectual proximity to the tradition of German classicism. The wealth of "amplifications" that Bishop brings to the many themes treated allows us to experience a living reality - a continuity of ideas across different times and cultures.

WOLFGANG GIEGERICH, AUTHOR OF THE SOUL'S LOGICAL LIFE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART ONE

Chapter 1: The Stages of Life and the Midlife Crisis: A Brief History of an Idea

Two Visual Starting Points – From the Ages of Humankind… – …to the Stages of Life – The Stages of Life: An Idea Comes of Age – The Midlife Crisis – Walter B. Pitkin and Edmund Bergler – Erik H. Erikson and Elliott Jaques – Gail Sheehy and Daniel J. Levinson – Other Approaches, Including the Return of the Noonday Demon – Jungian Approaches to Midlife – Literature of the Nineties – Recent French Approaches: Éric Deschavanne and Pierre-Henri Tavoillot, Marie de Hennezel and Bertrand Vergely

Chapter 2: The Turning Point in Life: What Conflict the Sun Must Experience at Midday

PART TWO

Chapter 3: Goethe's Orphism

The Cult of Orpheus – Orpheus in the Age of Romanticism – Goethe's Relation to the Orphic Mysteries – Creuzer and Hermann, Zoega and Welcker – Faust as Orpheus – Orphism, and Primal Words

Chapter 4: Primal Words. Orphic

Daimon – Chance – Eros – The Necessity of Love; or, Erotic Necessity – The Necessity of Necessity; or, Necessary Necessity – Hope – Conclusion

About the Author:

Paul Bishop, B.A., D.Phil., studied at Oxford University and is Professor of German at the University of Glasgow. His research has focused on the intellectual background to analytical psychology. His books include Analytical Psychology and German Classical Aesthetics, Jung's "Answer to Job": A Commentary, and The Dionysian Self: C.G. Jung's Reception of Friedrich Nietzsche.

*****

"Iranian philosophy and comparative philosophy" reprinted

2011-08-09T00:48:00.010-04:00

From the Iran Book News Agency - A new edition of "Iranian philosophy and comparative philosophy" written by Henry Corbin will be published. The book has been published in 1990 by Iranology assembly of France and Tous publication. DETAILS HERE

ASE 2012 Conference Call for Papers

2011-08-08T08:03:00.000-04:00

ASE 2012 Conference Call for Papers

Association for the Study of Esotericism

Fourth International Conference

Call for Papers: Esotericism, Religion, and Culture

June 14-17, 2012

The Association for the Study of Esotericism (ASE) is seeking paper and panel proposals for its fourth International North American Conference on Esotericism to be held at the University of California, Davis.

DETAILS HERE

Ibn Arabi & Rumi in NYC

2011-08-07T00:20:00.000-04:00

IbnArabiConferenceSinglePage

Paul Colilli - The Angel's Corpse

2011-08-06T00:06:00.000-04:00

The Angel's Corpse, Paul Colilli, 1999.

Search text at amazon.

Colilli bases his work in very large measure on Corbin. Loaded with citations. I was unaware of his work. Thanks yet again to Hadi Fakhoury for the reference.

"With the great merit of Aristotle's Poetics, poetic logic became a theoretical activity endowed with a philosophical nature allowing it to be more philosophical than the pure representation of existence. Today, however, the theoretical status of poetic logic has been greatly demoted. The Angel's Corpse restores to poetic logic (or lyric philosophy) the cognitive and epistemological significance attributed to it by Aristotle. The Angel's corpse (the central metaphor in this restoration) is a sign-post beyond which there exists an uncharted terrain of human signification. This terrain is expressed in terms of lyric philosophy and its universal trait is a shocking into reawakening, which is linked to the dissolution of the repetitive logic of history. With this book, Colilli aims to bring to life the traits that are close to the Angel and which amount to a new philosophy of culture and interpretation. This philosophy is free from the ideological burden of previous systems, but pivots its cognito-epistemological premises on the idea of reawakening."

Le combat pour l'ange - Unpublished texts by Corbin

2011-08-05T07:24:00.002-04:00

Le Combat pour l’Ange (Ricerche sulla filosofia mazdea)
di Henry Corbin

(In Italian)

On Google Books

Le Combat pour l’Ange (ricerche sulla filosofia mazdea) è la traduzione italiana di un testo inedito di Henry Corbin, filosofo e orientalista tra i più importanti dello scorso secolo. L’opera, recentemente ritrovata fra le carte conservate nell’archivio dello studioso francese, è il frutto di uno studio dedicato alla figura di Zarathustra, nel corso del quale l’autore cerca di delineare con precisione i tempi e i luoghi della predicazione del profeta mazdeo, gli aspetti mistico-religiosi del suo messaggio di fede, e, infine, la diffusione e la rivalorizzazione della dottrina zoroastriana sia nell’ambito della spiritualità orientale, sia in quello della storia del pensiero occidentale. Non si tratta, però, di un’opera di sola erudizione; in essa, infatti, l’ampio numero di documenti testuali presi in considerazione viene interpretato a partire da un suggestivo metodo esegetico, che ha il merito di riportare alla luce i tesori spirituale tramandati e custoditi, nel corso dei secoli, negli scritti di questa antica e affascinante tradizione.

Raphael Ebgi, nato a Faenza nel 1984, si è laureato in Filosofia presso l’Università San Raffaele di Milano, dove sta ora ultimando il suo dottorato di ricerca in Metafisica. Allievo di Massimo Cacciari e Giulio Busi, i suoi studi si concentrano attorno al problema della rivalorizzazione filosofica del pensiero poetico-simbolico attuata in epoca rinascimentale. Tra i suoi lavori L’infinito intorno. Studio sul Sofista di Platone, Alboversorio, Milano 2007 e la curatela dell’edizione critica del De Ente et Uno di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Bompiani, Milano 2010.

Marco Giacalone, nato a Bergamo nel 1986, si è laureato in Filosofia presso l'Università Vita e Salute San Raffaele con una tesi sulla ‘scienza del mito’ in autori quali Schelling, Eliade, Kerényi e Jesi. Lavora attualmente alla tesi specialistica, presso l'Università di Torino, sulla Pancapadika, opera di Padmapada, allievo di Sankara, uno dei più grandi e noti filosofi e mistici del subcontinente. Ha trascorso due soggiorni di studio in India, a Thiravananthapuram, dove ha approfondito lo studio della lingua sanscrita e di alcune opere filosofiche nell’ambito dell’Advaita Vedanta. È codirettore della collana “Aevum viride” per le Edizioni Torre d’Ercole.

Sommario
Prefazione di Raphael Ebgi 1
Nota bibliografica di Marco Giacalone 5
Avvertenza 9
Le Combat pour l'Ange
Premessa 13
Introduzione 15
Parte prima: La ierofania dello spazio
1. Incertezze geografiche 21
2. Topologia liturgica 25
Parte seconda: La ierofania del tempo
3. Il Tempo cosmogonico 31
4. Cronologia sacrale 38
5. Il “Giorno dell’Angelo” 42
Parte terza: Angelofanie zoroastriane
6. Le visioni al Centro del mondo 51
7. L’angelologia fondamentale 61
8. Le Annunciazioni 66
9. Le Combat pour l’Ange 78
Parte quarta: Il mistero zoroastriano 87
10. Magi e Dervisci 89
11. Ierogamie 96
12. Liturgia d’estasi 113
Parte quinta: Le esegesi delle ierofanie mazdee nell’Iran islamico 125
13. Ishrāqīyūn 126
14. Sciiti 127
15. Sufi 131
16. Il cavaliere spirituale 133
Indice dei nomi 143

Thanks to Hadi Fakhoury & Daniel Proulx for this !!

Additions to the Bibliography

2011-08-04T09:30:00.005-04:00

Thanks to the excellent Hadi Fakhoury I have these citations which I should put in the bibliography sometime, but make available here in case I don't get to it. Many are new (to me) and a few I knew of seemed worth flagging again:

Baubérot, Arnaud. “La revue Hic et Nunc: Les jeunes-turcs du protestantisme et l'esprit des années trente.” Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire du protestantisme français 149 (2003): 569-589.

Bos, Matthijs van den. “Transnational Orientalism: Henry Corbin in Iran.” Anthropos 100, no. 1 (2005): 113-125.

Brun, Jean. “Un missionnaire protestant: Henry Corbin.” Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses 59, no. 2 (1979): 187-200.

Fenton, Paul B.. “Henry Corbin and Abraham Heschel.” In Abraham Joshua Heschel: Philosophy, Theology and Interreligious Dialogue, edited by Stanisław Krajewski and Adam Lipszyc, 102-111. Jüdische Kultur, Bd. 21. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009.

Giuliano, Glauco. Il Pellegrinaggio in Oriente di Henry Corbin. Trento: La Finestra, 2003.

Hankey, Wayne J. One Hundred Years of Neoplatonism in France: A Brief Philosophical History. Published in a single volume with Levinas and the Greek Heritage, by Jean-Marc Narbonne. Leuven: Peeters, 2006. Online as pdf file.

Jambet, Christian. “Le Soufisme entre Louis Massignon et Henry Corbin.” In Consciousness and Reality: Studies in Memory of Toshihiko Izutsu, edited by Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī, Hideichi Matsubara, Takashi Iwami, et al., 258-272. Leiden: Brill, 2000.

Mabille, Bernard. “L’absolution de l’absolu.” In L’Un et le multiple, Cahiers du Groupe d’Études Spirituelles Comparées No. 7, edited by Jean-Louis Vieillard-Baron and Antoine Faivre, 9-24. Paris: Archè Edidit, 1999.

Moncelon, Jean. “Louis Massignon et Henry Corbin.” In Louis Massignon et ses contemporains, edited by Jacques Keryell, 201-219. Paris: Karthala, 1997.

Neuve-Eglise, Amélie. “Hermeneutics and the Unique Quest of Being: Henry Corbin’s Intellectual Journey.” Journal of Shi’a Islamic Studies 2, no. 1 (2009): 3-26.

Pinto, Louis. “(Re)traductions: Phénoménologie et ‘philosophie allemande’ dans les années 1930.” Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 145 (2002): 21-33.

Roclave, Pierre. “Louis Massignon et Henry Corbin.” Luqmān 10 (1994): 73-86.

Schmidtke, Sabine, ed. Correspondance Corbin-Ivanow: Lettres échangées entre Henry Corbin et Vladimir Ivanow de 1947 à 1966. Paris: Peeters, 1999.

Stauffer, Richard. “Henry Corbin Théologien Protestant.” In Cahier de l’Herne: Henry Corbin, edited by Christian Jambet, 186-191. Paris: L’Herne, 1981.

2011-08-03T13:02:00.000-04:00

Mervin, Sabrina (Ed.). The Shia Worlds and Iran. London: Saqi, 2010

From Africa to Asia, there are areas that are home to minority and in some cases majority groups of Twelver Shia. Geography and history place Iran at the centre of these Shia worlds, but to what extent can we speak of an 'Iranian model' that these groups follow? This volume presents the Shi'a worlds in all their complexities and explores the tenuous relations between these groups and Iran. It also sheds light on little-known communities such as the Ironi Shi'a of Uzbekistan, and refines our understanding of groups studied more extensively like the Shia's in Iraq. Published in association with the Institut Francais du Proche-Orient.

AUTHOR BIO: Sabrina Mervin has been the co-director of the IISMM (Paris), from 2008 to January 2011 and is a senior researcher at the CNRS.

Miscellany

2011-08-02T09:07:00.002-04:00

Some Henry Corbin citations...

On the globalization of Sohravardi...

On Jacques Replat & the imaginal...

A note on Hierohistory...

Ibn 'Arabi & Rumi in NYC

2011-07-27T07:57:00.000-04:00

IbnArabiConfPressRelease2(1)

Cusanus & Eriugena

2011-07-19T13:52:00.001-04:00

Though not too closely linked to Corbin, I think it's worth posting a note about a book that will be of interest to some readers & that might otherwise slip under the radar:

The proceedings from the 2009 Eriugena-Cusanus conference in Lublin.

A very interesting Table of Contents.

Painting of Nicolas here.

Corbin & L'Herne

2011-07-17T08:10:00.003-04:00

Publiés à L'Herne :
Cahier Henry Corbin
Le Paradoxe du Monothéisme (Essais)
Le Livre des sept Statues (Essais)
L'Imam Caché (Essais)

2011-07-15T07:30:00.003-04:00

Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture
Wouter J. Hanegraaff, University of Amsterdam
Cambridge University Press - January 2012

"Academics tend to look on 'esoteric', 'occult' or 'magical' beliefs with contempt, but are usually ignorant about the religious and philosophical traditions to which these terms refer, or their relevance to intellectual history. Wouter Hanegraaff tells the neglected story of how intellectuals since the Renaissance have tried to come to terms with a cluster of 'pagan' ideas from late antiquity that challenged the foundations of biblical religion and Greek rationality. Expelled from the academy on the basis of Protestant and Enlightenment polemics, these traditions have come to be perceived as the Other by which academics define their identity to the present day. Hanegraaff grounds his discussion in a meticulous study of primary and secondary sources, taking the reader on an exciting intellectual voyage from the fifteenth century to the present day and asking what implications the forgotten history of exclusion has for established textbook narratives of religion, philosophy and science."

Thanks to Heterodoxology for this news.

En Islam Iranien in Persian

2011-07-14T10:10:00.001-04:00

From the Iran Book News Agency:

Corbin's Iranian Islam travels to Iran
5 Jul 2011 13:22

Two volumes of the four-volume "Iranian Islam" of Henry Corbin are rendered into Persian. According to the translator, the work encompasses different aspects of the culture and spirituality of Islamic Iran from the beginning to the moment. READ THE ARTICLE

Corbin, Goethe, Hydrodynamics...

2011-07-12T09:21:00.001-04:00

Here is a remarkable new context for Corbin... This is an abstract of an upcoming paper. (Scroll down to read it - first page is blank).

HAMBUR~2

Sacred Web 27

2011-06-29T01:58:00.001-04:00

Sacred Web 27 is now available.

It contains many things of interest to readers of this blog, on Shi'ism, the Ismailis and one piece (by yours truly) on Henry Corbin:

Barzakh, the Opened Field
by Tom Cheetham
In this essay, which was delivered as a lecture at the University of Kent, Canterbury, England, in October, 2010, Cheetham discusses in a personal way his introduction to the seminal French philosopher, Iranophile, and Islamic scholar, Henry Corbin, and deals with several of his key ideas, focusing in particular on the notion of the barzakh, the isthmus or bridge between the outer and inner worlds, the imaginal realm where the “signs” of reality can be interpreted as on opened field of meaning. The essay concludes with an exploration of the relevance of Corbin's ideas to poetics and the transformative power of language.

Full Table of Contents.

The Jung Wars revisited...

2011-06-28T14:54:00.002-04:00

Back in June 2010 I posted a very short paragraph on The Jung Wars. I was slightly annoyed at the time by the persistent refusal of so very many academics to regard Jung with anything but disdain and deep suspicion. I pointed out Shamdasani's work as something of an antidote to the prevalent misreading of Jung. I have been surprised that this post has drawn an unusually large number of page views. During my recent travels I heard tales of woe from a friend concerning the problems one can have in certain academic circles if one has an interest in Jung or in Henry Corbin. They are both persona non grata. I have tried to do my part to show why Corbin's work, in spite of some faults, might yet be useful and interesting. So, although I try now to post things not directly related to Henry Corbin on my other blog, I'll add a further note on this topic here. One other most important critic and defender of the work of Jung who I should have mentioned before is Susan Rowland. Her books so far are these: Jung: A Feminist Revision (2002), Jung As A Writer (2005) and C.G. Jung in the Humanities: Taking the Soul's Path (2010). I look forward to Psyche and Ecocriticism which is due out next summer. Rowland has recently accepted a position in the Core Faculty at the Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara. I recently retrieved a memory of her work from the recesses of my mind since it has important bearing on my current writings on Corbin, Jung and Hillman. I wish I had recalled it sooner.

Bulletin de l’IISMM Juillet 2011

2011-06-28T10:42:00.000-04:00

Bulletin de l’IISMM Juillet 2011

Hamann, again...

2011-06-23T14:43:00.002-04:00

My interest in J.G. Hamann has re-awakened recently. Readers of this blog will know of his crucial importance for Henry Corbin. I want to note this audio file (available for a modest fee) of an interview with John Betz, author of the superb After Enlightenment.

Rothenberg on Bloom

2011-06-22T11:08:00.003-04:00

Jerome Rothenberg - Harold Bloom: The Critic as Exterminating Angel

I'm so happy to have read this - thanks yet again to Ron Silliman. The essay is from Sulfur in 1981. Bloom has left his mark on Henry Corbin's legacy, through his introduction to the new edition of Corbin's Creative Imagination (renamed Alone with the Alone, I suspect at Bloom's suggestion) and through his own book Omens of Millennium. I have long had a hearty dislike for Bloom's work and I bristle at his readings of Corbin. Rothenberg's fine essay helps explain why I find Bloom's attitude so inimical to Corbin's entire project.

Jerome Rothenberg: Photo by Charles Bernstein.

ESSWE3

2011-06-17T00:00:00.009-04:00

The third biannual international conference of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE) “ESSWE3” will be held in Szeged, Hungary, on July 6-10.(Thanks to Heterodoxology for this.)

The complete Program is attached below - 10 pages in all. It looks very interesting - Moshe Idel will there, along with quite an array of others including Mark Sedgwick (Aarhus University / Center for Arabic Studies) on Sufism in the Romantic Imagination which I would love to hear.
ESSWE3 2011 Detailed Program Full

Major Corbin Texts as pdf files

2011-06-16T08:06:00.002-04:00

A variety of Corbin's texts have been posted (this time) to Scribd and can be found published HERE.
I will someday link to these separately in the Online Texts page...

The Journal of the Eckhart Society

2011-06-16T00:00:00.000-04:00

Medieval Mystical Theology, published as the Eckhart Review (ISSN 0969-3661) since 1992, is the new name of the peer-reviewed journal of The Eckhart Society. The journal’s change of title reflects a broadening of its editorial remit. The first issue under the new title will appear in 2011, but from 2012 the journal will increase to two issues per year.

Medieval Mystical Theology welcomes the submission of scholarly papers embracing all factors contributing to the understanding of medieval mystical theology. This includes not only the study of individual writers, but also movements, themes, developments, and ideas within the context of mystical theology in the Middle Ages. The journal embraces the influence of Neo-Platonism, Aristotelianism, Patristics, Judaism and Islam on Christian medieval mystical theology, as well as interpretations of the tradition for today. Comparisons between medieval mystical theology and other traditions, such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism and Confucianism, are also within the compass of the journal. As the journal of The Eckhart Society, it especially welcomes scholarly studies of the life, work, and reception of Meister Eckhart. READ MORE AT THE HOME PAGE

Reason Unbound

2011-06-15T00:00:00.001-04:00

Reason Unbound: On Spiritual Practice in Islamic Peripatetic Philosophy

Mohammad Azadpur

SUNY series in Western Esoteric Traditions

FORTHCOMING IN AUGUST

Of special note is Chapter 2:

To the Things Themselves: Corbin and Heidegger on Phenomenological Access
2.1. Phenomenology According to Henry Corbin
2.2. Heidegger’s Phenomenology
2.3. Two Contemporary Approaches to Heidegger’s Phenomenology
2.4. Back to Corbin

Peter O'Leary's Luminous Epinoia

2011-06-11T18:07:00.042-04:00

I have just received a copy of Peter O'Leary's new book of poems, Luminous Epinoia. I have mentioned his work before (see posts on Gnostic Contagion and his essay on Apocalypticism - A Way Forward for Poetry. ) Details of his works and more can be found on his fine website Lux Hominem. I am really stunned by this book. It is physically beautiful to begin with, and the content is breath-taking. Here is one review to give some sense of it. I have learned much from O'Leary's writings in the past. I recommend anything he has written and expect to have more to say about this volume and his others in the future. His writings will be important to anyone with an interest in Henry Corbin. Not to be missed.

INASWE launched with lecture on Jung and Eranos

2011-06-10T07:11:00.009-04:00

This news from the HETERODOXOLOGY blog:

INASWE launched with lecture on Jung and Eranos

The European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE) is expanding. The society was established in 2005. Since then it has encouraged the establishment of regional subgroups, to promote research and teaching about esotericism on the local level and on independent initiatives. In 2007 the first such local initiative was established in the Scandinavian countries (SNASWE). Since last year scholars at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, largely on the initiative of Professor Boaz Huss, have worked to establish an Israeli Network for the Study of Western Esotericism (INASWE). Becoming the second regional subgroup of ESSWE, the INASWE was officially launched this spring, with a small inaugural conference: “Western Esotericism: Historical Contexts & Cultural Contacts”. At that occasion the president of the ESSWE Wouter Hanegraaff had been invited from Amsterdam to give an inaugural lecture. The lecture deals with some intriguing parts of the proto-history of academic research on esotericism, namely the influence of the Eranos circle, with its perennialist, anti-historical, and very often Jungian approach to the field. While this direction has been influential on lots of 20th century esoteric thought, and thus is a central part of our object of study, it is also undeniable that it played an early formative role for the academic study of esotericism as well... READ MORE

Wouter Hanegraaff: The Archetype of Eranos: Carl Gustav Jung and Western Esotericism

THANKS ONCE MORE TO HADI FAKHOURY FOR ALERTING US TO THIS.

2011-06-08T07:56:00.019-04:00

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
STRP 2011
Islam and Contemporary Issues:
Intellectuality and Spirituality

The Short-Term Research Program (STRP), sponsored by Al-Mustafa International University (MIU)—Tehran Branch, is an annual 4-week research-intensive experience that allows students, scholars, researchers, and thinkers from the world over to come together and address the general subject of Islam and Contemporary Issues by focusing on a different aspect of it every year.

STRP 2011 will cover the topic of Intellectuality and Spirituality from the perspective of:

· Philosophy (the traditional Islamic schools of Peripatetic, Illuminationist, and Transcendent philosophy);

· Mysticism (the Sufis, ‘urafa, as well as the mystics of other religions);

· The West (modernity and the secular-liberal edifice).

Participants will participate in interactive seminars conducted by experts in the field and will go on to conduct their own original research in a subtopic of their choosing and under the supervision of a senior scholar. The goal will be to not only further advance the level of knowledge in the field, but also to provide tangible and practical solutions to the challenges posed by modernity to Islam in particular and religion in general. The result of the Program will be the awarding of an official certificate of accomplishment and the publication of the collected research articles of the participants—with awards being presented to the best three papers.

Dates:
December 16th 2011 through January 11th 2012 (20th Muharram – 17th Safar, 1433)

Place:
Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran (MIU—Tehran Branch).

Eligibility:
Graduate level students of Islamic Studies or researchers and scholars with research articles.

Cost:
All costs (tuition, food, accommodation, etc.), with the exception of international air travel, to be borne by MIU. A special discount and subsidy for students will be offered upon request.

Admission:
Interested individuals should send the filled application form (see link below), their CV, as well as a proposal for their research paper to the email address below. Applicants will be informed immediately upon acceptance and a visa will be sent to the nearest Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Submission Deadline:
August 1st 2011.

Contact:
For further information and application submission contact:
Shaykh Shuja Ali Mirza at email: strp@miu.ac.ir.
Tel: +982512938860 Mob: +989122520423

For the STRP2011 application click HERE

Jung, Pauli, von Franz & Corbin

2011-06-04T00:01:00.000-04:00

In 1996 the Princeton-trained theoretical physicist Dr. Thomas Arzt wrote a paper on the relations between Jung's depth psychology and the natural sciences in which Jung's relationship and correspondence with Wolfgang Pauli figures prominently, "Wege zu einer zeitgemäßen Naturphilosophie" ("Towards a Contemporary Philosophy of Nature") (later published in Philosophia naturalis. Beiträge zu einer zeitgemäßen Naturphilosophie). He sent it to Marie-Louise von Franz who was by then very ill. She was sufficiently impressed to invite Arzt to visit her on her deathbed. He writes,

I did then visit her in 1997 and after a long discussion about Jung and the philosophy of nature I asked her where we as westerners should turn. She immediately said: "You have to read Henry Corbin and study Arab alchemy." She then mentioned Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth: "That is where western science could get new insight regarding a broader concept of reality."

Von Franz died in February 1998 and her last published work was an extensive introduction and commentary on a 10th century Arabic alchemical text. It appeared as Volume 1A of the Corpus Alchemicum Arabicum, the series edited by Theodor Abt. Her text contains several substantive references to to Henry Corbin and will be of considerable interest to students of Corbin & Jung.

New from William Chittick

2011-06-03T00:01:00.001-04:00

DUE IN DECEMBER:
In Search of the Lost Heart: Explorations in Islamic Thought

William C. Chittick - Author
Mohammed Rustom - Editor
Atif Khalil - Editor
Kazuyo Murata - Editor

Renowned scholar William C. Chittick explores the worldview of Islam in a series of essays written over thirty-six years.

In Search of the Lost Heart brings together twenty-six essays by William C. Chittick, renowned scholar of Sufism and Islamic philosophy. Written between 1975 and 2011, most of these essays are not readily available in Chittick’s own books. Although this is a collection, its editors have crafted it to be a book “sufficient unto itself, which, when taken as a whole, can be said to explore the underlying worldview of Islam.”

Chittick draws upon the writings of towering figures such as Ibn al-‘Arabi, Rumi, and Mulla Sadra, as well as other important, but lesser-known thinkers, as he engages with a wide variety of topics, such as the nature of being and knowledge, the relationship between love and scriptural hermeneutics, the practical and theoretical dimensions of Islamic mysticism, the phenomenon of religious diversity, and the ecological crisis.

William C. Chittick is Professor of Religious Studies at Stony Brook University, State University of New York. He is the author and translator of numerous books and articles on Islamic thought, Sufism, Shi‘ism, and Persian literature. His books include The Self-Disclosure of God: Principles of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Cosmology; Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al-‘Arabi and the Problem of Religious Diversity; Faith and Practice of Islam: Three Thirteenth-Century Sufi Texts; The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination; The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi; and A Shi‘ite Anthology, all published by SUNY Press. Mohammed Rustom is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Carleton University. Atif Khalil is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Lethbridge. Kazuyo Murata is a doctoral candidate in Islamic Studies at Yale University.

The Journal of Sufi Studies

2011-06-02T00:01:00.003-04:00

Journal Homepage

JSS_CFP

Journey with me unto the Divine Throne

2011-06-01T00:01:00.001-04:00

Journey with me unto the Divine Throne
by N. Waḥíd Azal
with many significant and interesting references to Henry Corbin

Journey With Me Unto the Divine Throne

Bulletin IISMM Juin 2011

2011-05-31T12:28:00.000-04:00

BULLETIN IISMM JUIN2011