The Legacy of Henry Corbin: The Test of the Veil

"...the Imagination (or love, or sympathy, or any other sentiment) induces knowledge, and knowledge of an 'object' which is proper to it..."

Henry Corbin (1903-1978) was a scholar, philosopher and theologian. He was a champion of the transformative power of the Imagination and of the transcendent reality of the individual in a world threatened by totalitarianisms of all kinds. One of the 20th century’s most prolific scholars of Islamic mysticism, Corbin was Professor of Islam & Islamic Philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris and at the University of Teheran. He was a major figure at the Eranos Conferences in Switzerland. He introduced the concept of the mundus imaginalis into contemporary thought. His work has provided a foundation for archetypal psychology as developed by James Hillman and influenced countless poets and artists worldwide. But Corbin’s central project was to provide a framework for understanding the unity of the religions of the Book: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. His great work Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabi is a classic initiatory text of visionary spirituality that transcends the tragic divisions among the three great monotheisms. Corbin’s life was devoted to the struggle to free the religious imagination from fundamentalisms of every kind. His work marks a watershed in our understanding of the religions of the West and makes a profound contribution to the study of the place of the imagination in human life.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

The Test of the Veil

My new essay The Test of the Veil, with considerable reference to Henry Corbin, is now published in Sophia: The Journal of Traditional Studies. The piece is also available online here.

"In his profound and beautiful book on the great Islamic mystic Ibn 'Arabi, Henry Corbin recounts an incident from the Master's life that illuminates the question at the heart of the soul's journey. It lingers in my mind as one of the most powerful passages in all of Corbin's great opus. In Mecca in the year 1201 (A.H. 598) the mystic and poet was a guest in the home of an Iranian family originally from Isfahan..."