Henry Corbin Facebook Page(s)

There seem to be three such groups:

Henry Corbin - with 266 members.

Henry Corbin - with 145 fans.

Henry Corbin - with 6 members.

The Theory of Visionary Knowldege in Islamic Philosophy by Henry Corbin

"The Theory of Visionary Knowledge in Islamic Philosophy" by Henry Corbin. Temenos 8, pp.224-237 (1987) - Translated by Liadain Sherrard.

Icon of Moses Removing His Sandals from Before the Burning Bush. Early 13th century, Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai. In Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons from Sinai. Ed. Robert Nelson & Kristen Collins. Los Angeles: Getty Museum, 2006. See the Exhibition online.

Theory of Visionary Knowledge in Islamic Philosophy - Henry Corbin

"Falnama: The Book of Omens" Updates

"Falnama: The Book of Omens" at the Sackler Gallery Offers First Exhibition of Rare Manuscripts

Sackler GalleryExhibit Page with link to Images

BBC World News America Web site and Newscast Features "Falnama" exhibition in "Behind the Book of Omens"

Exhibit Review in the New York Times: The Beginnings of Divination

From the Press Release:

A group of unusual, illustrated manuscripts called the Falnama that were once used by sultans, shahs and commoners to explore the unknown will be on view Oct. 24 through Jan. 24, 2010, at the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. "Falnama: The Book of Omens" is the first exhibition ever to be devoted to these rare works, which were created in 16th- and 17th-century Iran and Turkey. The Sackler Gallery will be the sole venue for this international exhibition featuring works of art from public and private collections.

Arresting images, supersaturated color and dazzling detail confronted seekers of omens in these oversized books. Adam and Eve ride out of paradise on the backs of a spectacular, dragon-like serpent and an equally fanciful peacock while startled angels look on. On another page, the angel of death in the guise of a ferocious gray demon drops out of the sky to pounce on Shaddad ibn Ad, who, according to the Koran, transgressed by daring to recreate paradise on Earth. On yet another page, the most celebrated physician of antiquity, Hippocrates, looks calmly over his shoulder as he travels through deep azure skies on the back of a mythical bird.

"Falnama illustrations possess a theatricality that sets them apart from other contemporary works," said Massumeh Farhad, chief curator and curator of Islamic art at the Freer and Sackler galleries and organizer of the exhibition.

While some versions of Falnama were popular in the streets and marketplaces of Isfahan, Iran, and Istanbul, Turkey, where fortunetellers improvised divinations for paying customers, four "monumental" volumes, notable for their scale, bold compositions and brilliant palette, were created for use in more affluent and courtly circles. Three of these volumes will be on display in the exhibition.

The works on view come from the Topkapı Palace Library in Istanbul, the Metroplitan Museum of Art in New York, the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, the Louvre Museum in Paris and the Freer Gallery of Art. The exhibition will include more than 20 of the 29 folios of the so-called dispersed Falnama, created during the reign of the Safavid ruler Shah Tahmasb (reigned 1524-76), as well as never-before-seen folios from Ahmed I's copy and a third unpublished volume.

The most widely published and now dispersed copy of the Falnama was created in the late 1550s to early 1560s at the court of Shah Tahmasb at a time when he had become increasingly preoccupied with his legacy and recounted his memoirs in seven vivid dreams. Another copy of the Falnama was compiled and illuminated by Kalender Pasha, a vizier at the court of Ahmed I (reigned 1603-17), the Ottoman sultan and patron of the celebrated "Blue" mosque.

To consult the wisdom of the Falnama, a seeker would first perform ritual ablutions and recite certain prayers before opening the manuscript randomly to an image and its accompanying text. Much like a talisman or a planetary configuration, the image was the key to unlocking the meaning of the omen. "They appeal to our common desire to know what the future holds and our need for guidance and protection in an uncertain world," said Farhad.
The manuscripts contain a range of images, from planets and zodiac signs to the lives and deeds of Abrahmic and Islamic saints and prophets, and were meant to aid a seeker in the process of making difficult decisions—from embarking on a voyage to waging war against an enemy. When seen as a group, the images suggest a vibrant and shared religious culture, embracing universal moral and ethical values. Seekers were encouraged to emulate the ethical and moral behavior of the prophets and saints portrayed in the Falnama.

"People clearly enjoyed the more fanciful aspects of divination, but they also took seriously the precepts of religion and morality reinforced in these very powerful images and prognostications," said Farhad.

The fully illustrated exhibition catalog, co-edited by Farhad and Serpil Bağcı, professor of art history at Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey, will offer the first comprehensive exploration of the Falnama and the practice of bibliomancy in Islamic culture. Essays by a number of eminent historians will shed light on a chapter of Ottoman and Safavid history that is largely unexplored.

Events surrounding the opening of "Falnama: The Book of Omens"will include family programs, concerts, lectures and film screenings. For more information about "Falnama" opening events, visit www.asia.si.edu or call (202) 633-1000.

The exhibition has been made possible with the support of an anonymous donor, The Folger Fund and the Hagop Kevorkian Fund. Other contributors include Mr. and Mrs. Farhad Ebrahimi and the Smithsonian Scholarly Studies Program. The catalog was underwritten by Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute.

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 is welcome to visit www.asia.si.edu. For general Smithsonian information, the public may call (202) 633-1000 or TTY (202) 633-5285.

Review of Creative Imagination - Lenn Evan Goodman, 1971

Book Review: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi by Henry Corbin. Reviewed by Lenn Evan Goodman, Int. J. Middle East Stud., 2 (1971), 278-81.
Review of Creative Imagination - Lenn Evan Goodman, 1971

3 Clergymen Bond Over Differences - NYTimes

From left, Sheikh Jamal Rahman, Pastor Don Mackenzie, and Rabbi Ted Falcon read from their respective holy books during their presentation at the Second Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tenn., in October.
3 Clergymen Bond Over Differences
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: November 23, 2009 - New York Times

Roberts Avens on the Theosophy of Mulla Sadra

"Theosophy of Mulla Sadra" by Roberts Avens. Hamdard Islamicus Vol IX, No. 3, Autumn 1986.

Theosophy of Mulla Sadra - Roberts Avens

View of Iwan & court at the Vakil mosque at Shiraz, Fars province, Iran, April 2009

5e JOURNEE HENRY CORBIN

5e JOURNEE HENRY CORBIN

Les religions abrahamiques et l’eschatologie

Le samedi 19 décembre 2009

à l’Ecole Normale Supérieure, 45 rue d’Ulm, 75005 Paris

salle Dusanne

Matinée

Président de séance : Leili Anvar-Chenderoff (INALCO)

9h 30 : Natale SPINETO (Université de Turin),

« Fin des temps et vie après la mort – Modèles d’eschatologie dans les religions ».

10 h 30 : Serge MARGEL (Université de Lausanne),

« Le témoignage, ou la vision eschatologique du martyr dans les religions du Livre »

11 h 30 : Christian JAMBET (Lycée Jules Ferry) :

« L’eschatologie abrahamique du vrai fidèle dans le Commentaire du Verset de la Lumière de Mullâ Sadrâ ».

Après-midi

Président de séance : Christian Jambet

14 h 30 : Jean-Pierre LAURANT (EPHE),

« Quelques dérives eschatologiques chez les occultistes français du XIXe siècle »

15 h 30 : Mojane MEMBRADO (INALCO / CNRS)

« L’eschatologie chez les Ahl-e Haqq »

Un déjeuner pour les orateurs et anciens orateurs aura lieu au restaurant « Le Mauzac », Rue de l’Abbé de l’Epée.

Un cocktail sera offert à tous les membres de l’Association à l’Hôtel Claude Bernard de 17h30 à 20h

Cotisation annuelle 15€ à adresser à Daniel Gastambide, Président de l’Association des Amis de Henry et Stella Corbin, 7 Rue Nicolas Houël, 75005 Paris

DOUBLE-FOLIO FROM THE HAFTAWRANG (SEVEN THRONES) BY JALLIL (D. 1492): THE MIRAJ OF THE PROPHET (F. 275A) 1556-1565 Safavid period  Probably Mashad, Khurasan, Iran  Purchase F1946.12.275 Freer & Sackler Galleries.

Emblematic Cities by Henry Corbin

"Emblematic Cities: A Response to the Images of Henri Steirlin," by Henry Corbin. Temenos 10, pp. 11-24 (1989), Translated by Kathleen Raine.

See: Steirlin, Henri. Ispahan: image du paradis. Lausanne: La Bibliothèque des arts, 1976

Emblematic Cities - Henry Corbin

Robert Creeley & Henry Corbin

One of the readers of this blog some time ago mentioned in passing that he had first heard of Corbin in "something Creeley wrote" & I have ever since wanted to find what that might have been. Thanks to the Robert Kelly issue of Vort I have got my hands finally on what I suspect is the first reference in print that Robert Creeley makes to Corbin, though I would be happy to be proven wrong. The piece is a lecture given on October 31, 1972 at Johns Hopkins University as "Creativity: The Moving Force of Society?" as part of the Milton S. Eisenhower Symposium. This was subsequently published in Sparrow 6 (Black Sparrow Press, Los Angeles) March, 1973, as "The Creative by Robert Creeley" (each issue of Sparrow was devoted to a single author). I hesitate to reproduce the entire lecture  (9 pages) without permission - which I have not sought - so I will only repeat here the sections in which Corbin is mentioned, leaving the interested reader to seek out the rest -

What is here to discover is neither new nor significantly esoteric. Henry Corbin, in the introduction to Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi, makes this useful point: "Today, with the help of phenomenology, we are able to examine the way in which man experiences his relationship to the world without reducing the objective data of this experience to data of sense perception or limiting the field of true and meaningful knowledge to the mere operations of the rational understanding. Freed from an old impasse, we have learned to register and to make use of the intentions implicit in all the acts of consciousness or transconsciousness. To say that the Imagination (or love, or sympathy, or any other sentiment) induces knowledge, and knowledge of an 'object' which is proper to it, no longer smacks of paradox." Thus you will recognize the sadly familiar, and useless, difficulty William Carlos Williams meets with in "The Desert Music": "You seem quite normal. Can you tell me? Why / does one want to write a poem?// Because it's there to be written.//Oh. A matter of inspiration then?//Of necessity.// Oh. But what sets it off?// I am that he whose brains/ are scattered/ aimlessly . . ." At the close of this extraordinary poem the moment of revelation is literally accomplished: "I am a poet! I/ am. I am. I am a poet, I reaffirmed, ashamed// Now the music volleys through as in/ a lonely moment I hear it. Now it is all/ about me. The dance! The verb detaches itself/ seeking to become articulate..." The word dances, in the literal garden of desire.

Louis Zukofsky wrote, "Out of deep need . . ." But what nature of need is it? To eat, to sleep, to find a form merely? I question that. In Berlin I am delighted to discover that the eminent scientist Heisenberg, himself in Munich, has fallen upon the arts as though upon a blissful bed of flowers, knowing, in his age, as Gregory Corso would say, that the conceptual dilemma of the sciences leads them round and around the careful maze of their various contexts, true Bottoms but alas no Shakespeares to love them and get them home. Zukofsky also writes of these things made, these poems, as being source of profound solace—where the heart finds rest. It is the need to enter what we loosely call the vision, to be one with the Imago Mundi, that image of the world we each of us carry within us as possibility itself. What can we say otherwise? Peace, brother. It's going to be all right. It's soon over and it won't hurt.

But the heart aches—"Out of deep need . . ." Corbin: "This power of the heart is what is especially designated by the word himma, a word whose content is perhaps best suggested by the Greek word enthymesis, which signifies the act of meditating, conceiving, imagining, projecting, ardently desiring—in other words, of hav¬ing (something) present in the thymos, which is vital force, soul, heart, intention, thought, desire . . . The force of an intention so powerful as to project and realize ('essentiate') a being external to the being who conceives the intention, corresponds perfectly to the character of the mysterious power that Ibn 'Arabi designates as himma . . . Thanks to his representational faculty . . . every man creates in his Active Imagination things having existence only in this faculty. This is the general rule. But by his himma the gnostic creates something which exists outside the seat of this faculty ... In the first case, as it is exercised by most men, its function is representational; it produces images which are merely part of the conjoined Imagination . . ., inseparable from the subject. But even here, pure representation does not, eo ipso, mean 'illusion,’ these images really 'exist,’ illusion occurs when we misunderstand their mode of being. In the case of the gnostic . . ., the Active Imagination serves the himma which, by its concentration, is capable of creating objects, of producing changes in the outside world . . . When in contemplating an image, an icon, others recognize and perceive as a divine image the vision beheld by the artist who created the image, it is because of the spiritual creativity, the himma which the artist put into his work. Here we have a compelling term of comparison, by which to measure the decadence of our dreams and of our arts . .."

Well, no use no way, and comparisons are odious— and the plan we had was that all this was going to get it together and be a happy place to be in, like. But that himma shit, man, that's really my kind of people. Heart-felt...

- Robert Creeley
Photo here.

Jung's Red Book - Even More News

The mainstream media seem to be interested in Jung's Red Book. National Public Radio did a piece this week. The New Yorker also took note. And there are odd goings on at the Rubin Museum which is having a series of programs to coincide with the Red Book on display. And now the Washington Post's Michael Dirda has done a review here.

Goethe's Die Geheimnisse in English

Of Goethe's late, unfinished poem Die Geheimnisse (The Mysteries) Corbin writes

"the meaning given by Goethe to the pleroma of the twelve Knights corresponds to the meaning of the pleroma of the twelve Imams in a most striking manner, significant for the religious history of humanity. It is in the field of consciousness thus delimited by the assembly of the Twelve united around the Friend of God of the Oberland and by the assembly of the Twelve Knights that Goethe unites around the summit of an ideal Mont-Serrat, that we may observe at work the lines of force that blossom in the heart of Shi'ism in the idea of a spiritual chivalry common to the entire Abrahamic tradition, which also opens out in the work of Wolfram von Eschenbach in the idea of a chivalry common to the knights of both Christianity and the Orient, that is to say, in Islam." (En Islam Iranien IV, 393).

I said in an earlier post that "Goethe's poem can be found in English in only one place that I am aware of. It is translated in this rare volume by Rudolf Steiner: The Mysteries: A Christmas and Easter Poem by Goethe = Die Geheimnisse. Spring Valley, N.Y.: Mercury Press, 1987."  I now have a photocopy of this work as published by the Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co., 54 Bloomsbury St., London, 1946. The title page reads  "A Lecture by Rudolf Steiner given at Cologne on 25th December, 1907. Authorized translation from a shorthand report unrevised by the lecturer." I still know of no other English translation, though I would like to be proven wrong by anyone who can do so. I have excerpted the poem, which appears in fragments in this transcribed lecture.

Die Geheimnisse

Phenomenology Through the Eyes of an Iranologist

"Phenomenology Through the Eyes of an Iranologist: Henry Corbin (1903-1978)", by Dr. Roxanne Marcotte, Bulletin of the Henry Martyn Institute, Vol. 14, Jan. - June 1995, 55-70.



Phenomenology Through the Eyes of an Iranologist


BOTTLE 17th century Safavid period Stone-paste painted under glaze Iran Gift of Charles Lang Freer F1903.4 

Where Heaven and Earth Meet: Jerusalem's Sacred Esplanade

Where Heaven and Earth Meet: Jerusalem's Sacred Esplanade 

See this article from the New York Times:

Unusual Partners Study Divisive Jerusalem Site

Omens of Millennium by Harold Bloom

Henry Corbin's work has been brought to the attention of many people through the work of Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale. He contributed the Preface to the most recent edition of Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi, (re-titled Alone with the Alone).  Bloom's 1996 volume Omens of the Millennium: The Gnosis of Angels, Dreams, and Resurrection is an extended analysis of  "gnosticism," ancient and modern, and is substantially influenced by Corbin. Though I do not agree with his reading of Corbin, or gnosticism, I would be remiss not to mention this most interesting book. It is reviewed by the excellent Lee Irwin in Esoterica Volume II here.

Imagination and Contemporary Theory

A blog post not to be missed from Adrian J.Ivakhiv, Ph.D., York University, 1997, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Vermont. His post on imagination and contemporary theory will be useful to many readers. I found it because in the post he links to this blog. As a biologist & former Associate Professor of Environmental Studies myself, I have much in common with Dr. Ivakhiv.  -
>Imagination & Contemporary Theory 

This reminds me too that Gaston Bachlard's Earth & Reveries of Will is due out in English translation soon. See the Bachelard facebook page!