Thread by @alastairmci

1. Given that so many of the Old Believers seem to have left or are lying low on Twitter, I might as well get on with preaching to the Remnant Reprobate Heathen. Here’s some thoughts on #imagination from Henry Corbin, the great Shī’ite/Sufi scholar at The #Sorbonne, writ 1955-56.

2. “It may also seem misplaced to speak of spirituality in a study of the Imagination. We shall try to show in what sense this Imagination is creative: because it is essentially the ACTIVE Imagination … a theophanic* Imagination.” p. 6

* God-illuminating or manifesting.

3. “… the creative energy produced by the concentration of the heart (himma) … in studying Ibn Arabi’s ‘method of theophanic prayer’, the creative prayer that becomes dialogue, creative because it is at once God’s prayer and man’s prayer.” p. 40.

4. “Active Imagination perceives events, figures, presences directly, unaided by the senses … obtained neither by rational philosophy, nor by what Ibn Arabi termed a ‘God created in dogmas’. It depends on a certain decisive encounter.” pp. 43-44.

[These quotes are abbreviated]

5. Having Khidr [Islamic concept of the archetypal personification of the Holy Spirit, e.g. Gabriel, Sophia] for a master invests the disciple, as an individual, with a transcendent ‘transhistorical’ dimension. It is a personal, direct, and immediate bond with the Godhead.” p. 54

6. “Khidr [is] experienced as a person & as an archetype, as a person-archetype … and frees us from literal religion… In the voice of Khidr every [seeker] hears the inspiration of his own Holy Spirit, just as every prophet perceives … in the form of an Angel Gabriel.” pp. 60-1

7. “… the irreducible antagonism between the spiritual Islam of Sufism and legalitarian Islam…. Once again, Ibn Arabi found the figure of pure beauty … the theophany of divine Beauty, the figure of Sophia aeterna [i.e. the feminine personification of eternal wisdom]. pp. 68-69

8. [I’m sorry folks, do unfollow me, but it’s v late on a Friday night so I’m hoping I’ll get off with sharing this stuff.]

Here Corbin quotes Ibn Arabi on #CreativeWriting, on “the very soul of the chapter”.

[I sent it to one of my publishers last week … and got no reply!]

9. “This is not to doubt that Muhammad is the ‘seal of the prophets and of prophecy’… prophetic Revelation is closed, but precisely because it is closed, it implies the continued openness of prophetic hermeneutics.” p. 79

[i.e. play closed minds at their own game so they open.]

10. In the Prayer of God that is the Prayer of Man: “Beauty is the supreme theophany, but it reveals itself as such only to a love that transfigures. Mystic love is the religion of Beauty… It is the active Imagination which invests [us with] … a theophanic Imagination.” p. 98.

11. “From this idea of Creation as theophany … arises the idea of a sophiology, the figure of Sophia aeterna (the Eternal Womanly) as she appears in the theosophy of Ibn Arabi.” p. 98

[Compare with Proverbs 8, and Sophia’s/Wisdom’s vindication in Christ, Mt. 11:19 & Lk. 7:35]

12. “The divine pathos is accessible, it has existential reality… [But] this response depends then on the degree to which man renders himself ‘capable of God’, for it is the capacity which defines and measures sympathy as a necessary medium of all religious experience.” p. 111

13. “For the mystic has come to know that the very substance of his being is a breath (spiritus) of that infinite Compassion... Accordingly his prayer does not consist in a request (Sufis have always stood in horror of that kind of prayer) but in his actual mode of being.” p. 117

14. Ibn Arabi relates: “While sojourning in Mecca in AH 598 [AD 1201] I frequented a group of outstanding men and women... I found none among them to equal the wise doctor … and his sister, the venerable ancient, the learned Fakhr al-Nisa [Glory of Women] Bint Rustamp.” p. 136

15. “Suddenly Ibn Arabi’s melancholy is interrupted by the reprimand of the mystic Sophia…. He has given in for a moment to the philosopher’s doubt; he has asked questions that can only be answered … not on the laws of Logic, but on fidelity to the service of love.” p. 143

16. Cont. “… apprehended not by one of the sensory faculties, but by the Active Imagination of theophanic vision … a psycho-spiritual experience with the mystic Sophia … the Creative Feminine … the ‘Christic Sophia’ … who holds the secret of the Godhead.” p. 145

17. So, Ibn Arabi says of God: “It is He who in every beloved being is manifested to the gaze of each lover … and none other than He is adored, for it is impossible to adore a being without conceiving the Godhead in that being… So it is with love.” p. 146

18. “It is in the Image of the Creative Feminine that contemplation can apprehend the highest manifestation of God, namely, creative divinity … whose creative act is a liberation of beings. The anamnesis, or recollection, of Sophia aeterna, will start from…” p. 159 runs on👇

19. Corbin on not confusing fantasy with Imagination: “As Paracelsus already observed, fantasy, unlike Imagination, is an exercise of thought without foundation in nature, it is the ‘madman’s cornerstone’” p. 179

20. “The degradation of the Imagination into fantasy is complete [when] all forms of divinity are said to be creations of the imagination, hence unreal. What can prayer to such a Godhead be but a despairing delusion? Precisely b’se Godhead is a Godhead prayer has meaning.” p. 181

21. “Prayer is the theophany [manifestation of God] par excellence; as such it is ‘creative’; but the God to whom it is addressed … is precisely … the Godhead revealing Himself to Himself”. p. 183

22. That’s all for tonight (for anybody still standing who’s not yet unfollowed😅). This book often goes beyond my limitations. It’s a difficult but rewarding read. I’ve tried to capture the essence within limits of my grasp. I may add more quotes later, as only 2/3 way through🙏🏼

23. Back again!

The title, “Alone with the Alone”, speaks to the aloneness of the soul that meets the aloneness of God, thereby resolving the cosmic loneliness in all who search through time for love as inter-being. Recall 1969 #MoodyBlues lyric “Gypsy”:

24. Thereby, “The same theophanic Imagination of the Creator who has revealed the worlds, renews the Creation from moment to moment in the human being whom He has revealed as His perfect image and who, in the mirror that this Image is, shows himself Him whose image he is.” p. 188