The Ritman Library

Thanks to Egil Asprem at Heterodoxology

for this note on The Ritman Library

and Wouter Hanegraaff's Opening Lecture

A Dream Interpreted Within Dream

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

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

Massignon, Corbin, Zambrano

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

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 ?

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

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

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

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

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

IISMM Bulletin Janvier 2012

7ème JOURNEE HENRY CORBIN 17 December - corrected

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

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

Daniel Proulx's essay  

La figure de la Sophia, chez Henry Corbin

<MP3 FILE>

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

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

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

IISMM - DECEMBRE - 2011

Bishop Berkeley & Esoteric Traditions

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

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

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, an immortal from China, an unconventional Zen master, an abbot from the monastery of Sinai, an uncompromising social revolutionary, an ecstatic female poet from India, a Swiss hermit who used a stone as his pillow, a Jewish scholar who searched for the hidden names of God, and a Sufi poet intoxicated by love whose poems are among the pearls of world literature.

Thanks to Steven Aftergood for drawing our attention to this.

PhD Vacancies in Amsterdam

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

More Remembrances of James Hillman

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

Pacifica's Hillman Tribute

James Hillman at Pacifica

Todd Lawson in London - Frye & the Koran

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

This is a very nice essay: Remembering James Hillman

Henry Corbin Street, Tehran

View Larger Map

James Hillman

1926 - 2011

De docta ignorantia and dialogue

Learned Ignorance: Intellectual Humility among Jews, Christians and Muslims
Edited by James L. Heft, Reuven Firestone and Omid Safi Oxford
University Press July 2011

IISMM Novembre 2011

IISMM Novembre2011

All the World an Icon

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

The Morgan's Dazzling Islamic Manuscript Paintings

by Emma Mustich in Salon

Corbin, Jung & Hillman - Nov 12

TCheetham_Fall2011

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

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

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

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

IISMM BULLETIN OCTOBRE2011

Islamic Art at the Metropolitan Museum

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

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

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

«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"

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

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

Complément d'information septembre 2011

Contemporary Esoterism: International Conference

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

Angels In-Between

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

Ronald Johnson's (1935-1998) poetry is "thoroughly devoted to the imaginal; his work is an elaboration 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

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

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


With an English summary here.

The Study of Myth - New Website

HERE

Esotericism & Mysticism Conference in Russia

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

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

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

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

IbnArabiConferenceSinglePage

Paul Colilli - The Angel's Corpse

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

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

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.

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

Some Henry Corbin citations...

On the globalization of Sohravardi...

On Jacques Replat & the imaginal...

A note on Hierohistory...

Ibn 'Arabi & Rumi in NYC

IbnArabiConfPressRelease2(1)

Cusanus & Eriugena

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

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

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.