Bulgakov, Corbin and Sophia

I am dabbling, and I mean dabbling, in Bulgakov. While I am transfixed by Corbin's writing and its 'eastern' bent it seems to me in many ways that he is trying to find a substitute for the Incarnation. While it seems that Bulgakov did not intend for Sophia to replace the Incarnation, as Corbin's metaphysics does, it does, if I understand Lossky, give a sense of 'substance' to God's essence making the hypostases of the Son and Spirit 'draw' not from the Father's ousia as Source but making all three of the hypostases drawing on a singular Source which, at first glance, seems to make this 'outside' or 'other' than the ousia of the Father.

I may be reading that all wrong but wanted to put that down in writing to help clarify what it is I am reading.

If Sophia is the bridge between God and Man, what place the Spirit?

And then I find this in the comments section of my favorite theological blog, Eclectic Orthodoxy:

The figure of Sophia, admittedly, arouses more than a little suspicion among even Solovyov’s more indulgent Christian readers, and some would prefer to write her off as a figment of the young Solovyov’s dreamier moods, or as a sentimental souvenir of his youthful dalliance with the Gnostics. To his less indulgent readers, she is something rather more sinister. And indeed it is difficult to know what exactly to make of the two visions of Sophia that Solovyov had in 1875–the first in the British Museum, the second in the Egyptian desert–or the earlier vision he had at the age of nine. 

But it is important to note that, in Solovyov’s developed reflections upon this figure (and in those of his successor “Sophiologists,” Pavel Florensky and Sergei Bulgakov), she was most definitely not an occult, or pagan, or Gnostic goddess, nor was she a fugitive from some Chaldean mystery cult, nor was she a speculative perversion of the Christian doctrine of God. She was not a fourth hypostasis in the Godhead, nor a fallen fragment of God, nor a literal world-soul, nor an eternal hypostasis who became incarnate as the Mother of God, nor most certainly the “feminine aspect of deity.” 

Solovyov possessed too refined a mind to fall prey to the lure of cultic mythologies or childish anthropomorphisms, despite his interest in Gnosticism (or at least in its special pathos); and all such characterizations of the figure of Sophia are the result of misreadings (though, one must grant, misreadings partly occasioned by the young Solovyov’s penchant for poetic hyperbole).

European scholars and "mystical" Islam...

I've really been reading deeply into Henry Corbin's works now for a number of years.  I find his views of mystical Islam as found in Shi'ite/Isma'ili "gnosis" very curious and very spiritually enlightening.

I've read the works of many other scholars who fall under the Traditionalist/Perennilaist banner, the majority of whom are of European descent.  Some became Muslims, usually in an attenuated version, others did not but found their work to enrich their own spiritual life (usually, in some fashion or other, Christian).

I recently stumbled across a recent book called Pathways to an Inner Islam by Patrick Laude which focuses on Massignon, Corbin, Guenon and Schuon, names which should all be familiar to anyone dealing with a more "mystical" Islam.

While the book is dense and difficult in places, especially if unfamiliar with the works of the authors, it draws out some essentials necessary to putting the authors' understanding of Islam in proper perspective.  Of all the authors focused on it is Corbin with whom I am most familiar.  I've read some Schuon and Guenon but very little Massignon, though he's on the list.

There was a little nugget, however, that gave me that 'aha!' moment about Corbin's works.  Lately I've been feeling that, in many ways, the Christianity in much of the modern church often falls in line with the alternate Christianity he points out ultimately manifested in the particular form of Shi'ite mysticism found in Isma'ilism. 

In the modern church (i.e. in charismatic/Pentecostal circles) the "Trinity" is paid lip service but the deeper theological underpinnings are often missing and "Jesus is God" is all that is taken from it.  You may find various books on spelling out the Trinity but usually it comes down to quotes from the Bible and maybe even the Church Fathers (often out of context) as if proof texts mean something in and of themselves.  Such is the nature of the worship of the book post scientific revolution.

But this has led to a distorted or disregarded view of what Jesus means in light of the Trinity.  The Incarnation is watered down and the "God Man" starts to sound like some kind of superhero.  In this, I understand Corbin's desire though, I admit, most of my nourishment on the Trinity came through reading Orthodox theology. 

According to Laude, Corbin considered himself a "Protestant" or "Evangelical" Christian.  I'm not quite sure what this means exactly but if you read Corbin's works you realize that he is not your traditional Christian.  He gravitates to a more "personalized" Christianity which he, in this case, found in his studies of Islam.  His view tends to be that the trajectory from the Christian gnosis that was shunned by the institutional church did not disappear but ultimately manifested in Shi'ite/Isma'ili mysticism. 

The "True Prophet" is not the human prophet, as such, but is that particular essence that seeks his "place of repose".  It is this essence that is understood in the saying attributed to Muhammad: "I was a Prophet while Adam was between water and clay."  In many ways, this bears a striking parallel to Jesus' statement that "Before Abraham was, I am." While traditionally understood to refer to his pre-existence, it can also be understand that the "I" is paralle to the idea of the "True Prophet" which found his place of repose in the person of Jesus.

Laude contrasts view of Massignon that Islam is lacking and incomplete to that of Corbin who shares a different view:

"While the incompleteness of the Prophet is reflected, according to Massignon, in the incompleteness of Islam, this incompleteness - or rather the incompleteness of prophethood as such, does not result, for Corbin, in any sense of lack in the spiritual economy of Islam taken as a whole.  For Henry Corbin, the incompleteness of prophethood is confined to the domain of Sunni Islam, but brought to a resolution in the context of Shi'ism." (p. 76)

While Massignon certainly respects Islam and owes a great deal of his spiritual certitude to the study of it, ultimately he finds it lacking in light of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and Christianity's essence of love.  For Corbin, however, there is no such judgment of Islam as a whole.

Much like Corbin takes issue with the institutional Christian church, so too does he take issue with the Sunni "institutional" encapsulation of Islam.  Corbin sought spiritual freedom and could not find it within traditional Christianity and, through his study of an Islam outside of the "institution" he sought to free up the spirituality found in Islam and, by so doing, freeing himself from the fetters of a "confined" Christianity.

Another quote from the book explains this in some detail:

"What had to be 'imported' by Massignon into Islam through the mediation, or rather the substitution, of a Christic, if not Christian, apotropaism, beside the Prophetic mission...was to be found by Corbin in a Shi'ite imamology that completes the prophetology...without...implying...a...deficiency of the Islamic tradition itself...nor narrowing the scope of the Prophet himself..." (p. 86)

The apotropaism (I had to look it up...) is a sort of ritual or magical charm to ward of evil.  Interesting choice of words.

The point of this, and the reason for my continued interested, is that Christians (and, perhaps, Muslims) today are seeking similar things.  Tired of the confines of dogma and the drudgery of theological minutiae, people want something personal, unmediated, unfiltered and untainted.  God, no chaser.

While there is certainly no substitute for reading the actual works of the authors, Laude has shown himself to be an excellent guide to their backgrounds.  I look forwad to digging further into the book.  May be one for the shelves.

Henry Corbin, Ibn 'Arabi and modern Christianity...

"I was a Treasure unknown then I desired to be known so I created a creation which to which I made Myself known, then they knew Me."

This a saying attributed to Prophet Muhammad.  For notes on the soundness of the tradition go here.

I'm reading Corbin's Creative Imagination In The Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi (also retitled Alone with the Alone) and am astounded by some of the parallels to modern Christianity (at least in the circles in which I have run lately).  Corbin's presentation is a contrast not only with orthodox Islam but with "incarnationist" Christianity.  There may be an agenda behind his writings but I can't help but feel in many ways that the view of many of today's Christians veer more toward how he presents the Isma'ili Shi'ite Islam, the idea that there is an "intermediary" world in which the believer finds the "Imam of his own being" that carries him ever upward to his true self, his paredros/fravarti/Daena/Angel. 

"But in Ibn 'Arabi's own terminology Al-Lah is the Name which designates the divine Essence qualified and invested with the sum of His attributes, whereas al-Rabb, the Lord, is the personified and particularized Divine in one of its attributes (hence the divine Names designated as so many "lords," arbab)." (p. 122)

In many ways, this is how Jesus is viewed by the Christian.  He is called "God" but that isn't really a meaningful phrase as "God" remains undefined.  What is defined is "Jesus" so as Jesus is so we tend to view God.  However, based on where we are is how we view Jesus.  So our view of Jesus depends on our mode of perception.

In many ways, this mode of perception, the "Holy Spirit" of Christianity running a somewhat striking parallel to Corbin's presentation of the "Holy Spirit" (i.e. the Angel) as that faculty in man that enables him to perceive the divine figure (mazhar), his "celestial self" in that imaginal world that carries him ever upward.

It could be just me but these two run a very parallel course.  What is most interesting to me is that this is certainly not orthodox Islam but is the Sufi/Shi'ite/Isma'ili strain of Islam.  I can't help but think that there is a need in man for relationship with the divine and that this particualr strain of Islam is the manifestation of this longing.

Of course, the reductionist in me tends to think of "influences" as Islam developed, especially those strains that operated on the fringes that may have certainly had contact with other faiths, in this case more "Christologically" correct Christianity.  Perhaps its development was a response to the claims of the Christian as filtered through an Islamic paradigm.  More accommodating than polemical, the end result is the "theosophy" of which Corbin speaks.

It does, however, pose a possible alternative.  One can remain a Christian and yet gravitate and glean from an Islam such as this as the demarcation between the two tends to blur as we are in the realm of the spirit and not the realm of doctrine.

For the Shi'ite (as far as I can ascertain), the Imam tends to me what Jesus is for Christians.  There are, of course, differences (primary among them being primarily the resurrection of Jesus and the meanings that arise from this claim).  It isn't his divinity as the term "divinity" can be spun in such a way that any meaning it has blurs and not only Jesus but the Imam can be considered "divine" in some fashion. 

May not please the orthodox theologian but there is a realm in which this mode of exegesis finds life and does not strip away the fact that the believer is in fact still a believer in the original revelation.

I lost the point I was getting at...doesn't matter, really.  Even in neo-Protestant circles, with all the doctrinal squabbling, the average Christian believer may be compared phenomenologically to a Shi'ite that Corbin within Islamic tradition that to the traditional Christianity of, say, an Athanasius or Augustine. 

The Trinity tends, if it is considered at all, to be just a belief that comes with the faith.  The subtleties of the Trinity are lost in those who try to reason that "Jesus is God" is the basic tenet of the faith.  Just listen to the lyrics of many modern Christian worship songs and you'll hear that the nuances and subtleties of doctrine are nowhere to be found.

So in reading Corbin and others like him I find more freedom in my Christian walk.  Doesn't mean I've gone Muslim, mind you, but it does mean that I do not find myself bound to the text of the Bible.  My freedom is found in the "Holy Spirit" as the Bible is not the Word...Jesus is.  The Bible may ground us but it is not to the text that we devote our faith.

Any difference between Christianity and any other faith or, for that matter, between Christians, comes down to the answer to the question Jesus asks: "Who do you say that I am?"

Shi'ite, Isma'ili and Christian gnosis...

I must say that the spritual path that has been a constant curiosity to me over the past few years falls under the title of this post.  Most of this comes from the writings of Henry Corbin and Peter Lamborn Wilson and the trails followed in their bibliographies.

A recent article I was linked to which uses frequent references to a recent book by Todd Lawson on The Crucifixion and the Qur'an spells out my understanding of what the Qur'an says on the crucifixion and the way in which the "common" understanding entered Islamic tradition came to be (which, in my opinion, is a misunderstanding of what the text says).  If you dig deeply into the tafsir you find a variety of opinions from the scholars of Islam as to what really happened.  There is no one answer. 

This has always been the sticking point for me when it come to Islam.  The Qur'an, to me, is a book of amazing power and beauty (a few verses notwithstanding...).  However, the hadith and tafsir pose great challenges which, to me, require just as much faith as Christians are accused of needing to believe in the vast and varied tradition of Bible transmission.

Anyhow, the point is that the Qur'an does not not deny the crucifixion itself; it denies the power to those who thought they had the power to crucify him.  The idea of a "substitute" is, to put it bluntly, a silly idea.  It would mean that either Jesus lived to a ripe old age and died or resides physically in space somewhere.

So the "angelology" and the "gnosis" of these paths as spelled out by Corbin, Wilson and similar ilk I could easily absorb.  Even the idea of the "hidden" and/or "eternal" Imam (and his hujjat) would not be too difficult for me to accept. 

However, there is one question that lingers: what of the resurrection?  The Crucifixion is not the crux of the Christian faith unless the Resurrection is right there with it.  Both are necessary.  No resurrection, dead Jesus.  End of story.

The Isma'ili view gives an understanding of what this would mean from an Islamic perspective.  However, the deeper question is this: had he been crucified with no resurrection claimed, there would most likely have been no Christian faith.  Faith in what? 

Even gnostics, though obviously with a different interpretation, understand there to have been a "resurrection" of some kind and to a very large extent it would appear that Isma'ilism picked up this thread as filtered through Neoplatonic thought. 

If Christianity had existed without a resurrection what would it have been?  What message would have been so substantial for it to have spread as it did?  Would there have been an Islam?  A Shi'ite or Isma'ili Islam?

So again, the question I have yet to find from a Shi'ite, Isma'ili or Shi'ite Isma'ili viewpoint is their take on the Christian view of the resurrection.  Would the idea of it being a "spiritual" or "esoteric" event have been enough of a message for it to have spread as it did for hundreds of years prior to the advent of Islam?

Henry Corbin, Ismaili Gnosis and Modern Christianity

I am reading Henry Corbin's Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis again (just saw it on Amazon for $25 for a used copy...least expensive I've ever seen it...).

As I'm reading it, I'm listening to my wife's recent fascination with "heaven" after having read Heaven Is For Real and now moving on to Nine Days in Heaven, a "modern" rewrite of a nineteenth century book (at which I quipped "what's next, 30 days in heaven, then 3 months in heaven, each one upping the game?").

She questioned how we know they aren't true. A valid point. Of course, how do we know they are?

At which point I remembered the statement from the Acts of Peter quoted by Corbin in his book:

Talem eum vidi qualem capere potui ("I saw him in such a form as I was able to take in").

And the lightbulb came on...

As for the child who was behind the Heaven Is For Real book, I realized, he, having been raised in a pastor's home, had no doubt heard stories and has experienced images of things he saw. He had a framework through which to filter what he experienced. His openness (his 'capacity' to use Corbin's term) allowed him to have the vision he had.

He lost me here:

“So what did the kids look like? What do people look like in heaven?”

“Everybody’s got wings,” [he] said."

At that point the story lost traction. While the father scours the Scriptures for other of his boy's descriptions, this one gets no such scrutiny. While I certainly can't deny his experience, the idea that humans have wings when they die is not supported by Scripture. This falls in the category of myth/folklore/tradition (or a child's imagination).

However, the idea of 'capacity' explains the different accounts in all the other books (and there are countless...) out there. Each one's capacity is framed within a certain context and it is through that context that these visison are filtered. After all, if they are, as Paul mentioned, beyond words, then we can only express them in the words and images that we know.

Modern Christianity has become, in many ways, Gnostic in this sense. This is not the "Gnostic" as opposed to "real" Christianity (whatever that is) but is a form of gnosticism, personal knowledge, that is present within churches, even, or perhaps especially, of the so-called fundamentalist/evangelical variety.

This drive for the "real" Jesus means many churches rise and fall with the vision of the pastor. It is often "pastor" not "church" centered. Of course these churches emphasize the "Holy Spirit" as their guide but it is peculiar that there are so many churches all claiming to be led by the same spirit and many of them have different litmus tests (Jesus prayer, speaking in tongues, your dress code, zip code, etc.).

We might argue that as long as they preach Jesus and him crucified we're all on the same team.

However, the "modern" church today seems to be quite gnostic in essence. Each Christian experiences "Jesus" according to his/her capacity for the theophanic vision of which Corbin speaks.

Personally, I'm ok with that. This actually helps me make sense of the New Testament (and, with it, the Hebrew Bible) and allows me the freedom to glean from Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant theology, along with books such as Corbin's.

If these things increase my capacity to experience "Jesus" then talem eum vidi qualem capere potui.

Vladimir Lossky, Henry Corbin and "Eastern" spirituality

Over the past several years, "Western" Christianity has left me a bit hungry, and jaded, seeming to be something of an amalgam of Christianity conflated with the "American" spirit, as if the two are directly connected, that God somehow favors America.  I won't go there but let me just say that God does not play favorites - God isn't interested in nation building.

Anyhow, this, along with the often baffling theology of Christianity, caused me to search out Islam as a viable path.  It's an old story on this blog but it led me to Henry Corbin's writings.  It also led me to the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition.  It was through reading Vladimir Lossky's works, specifically The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, that I began to get a good grasp on the Eastern church's theological perspective.  I find, in many ways, my Christian thought life aligning with this view.

While not radically different than that of the Christian West, specifically the American West, it is different.  More intellectual, more reasoned and less emotionally driven than the Christianity I am familiar with, it provides a solid foundation and helps me to understand more deeply Christianity as it evolved.

Henry Corbin, on the other hand, while not denouncing Christianity, as such, providse a more 'gnostic' view, giving approval to the "docetic" view of Christ (though understanding his definition of docetic is key to understanding what this means).  Yet in reading his writings and those of Vladimir Lossky I have come to realize that there is common ground here, there are similarities, even if certain theological constructs are different.

Though I have only begun to research this, there is a similar approach to God's communication in the world in Lossky's dissection of God's "essence and energies" and Corbin's fascination with the "emanation" and "angelology" present in 'gnostic' Christianity as well as in the Shi'ite/Isma'ili variations within Islam.

This isn't to elevate Corbin or Lossky's writings to authoratative.  Accepting the basic premise of "People of the Book" no one's writings achieve this status.  However, it does reveal to me that there is something similar in Eastern Christianity and that of the Islam that evolved in the lands of the Eastern Church.  To what extent one influenced the other is difficult to say and it's quite possible that "causality" is an oversimplification of a worldview that is inherent in the people who populated this region.

I don't know that Corbin rejected Christianity wholesale or embraced Islam or if he just lived out his own faith that he had carved.  But it's interesting that in trying to present an alternative "Christian" spirituality via Islam, Corbin has stepped writing into the spiritual universe of the Orthodox Church.  It seems, in preliminary thoughts, that the two would find much to talk about were they to have ever met.

Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth and Henry Corbin

I went through a Joseph Campbell stage of my faith walk, an intellectual freeing that enabled me to see something beyond what I thought was just crazy belief.  It was this book that opened my eyes to the power of "myth" (not in the sense of make believe but in the sense of symbol pointing to a deeper reality).

However, there was one sentence I remembered and it only came blazing into my brain after becoming immersed in the world of born-again Christianity and Islam.  Campbell completely, at least in this book, overlooks, ignores, and is even ignorant of, the power of these traditions in the lives of the faithful. 

"MOYERS: Is there something like this common in the experience of our culture? I'm thinking particularly of the born-again experience in our Southern culture.

CAMPBELL: There must be. This is an actual experience of transit through the earth to the realm of mythological imagery, to God, to the seat of power. I don't know what the born-again Christian experience is...."

Now, I'm not sure if he ever discusses the born again Christian experience anywhere else in his writings but this little statement is a powerhouse.  Granted, the man could not be expert on every religion everywhere ever but this little lacunae is significant.

I've noticed also that in all the pleading in Henry Corbin's writing and those who interpret him (e.g. Tom Cheetham), he too seems unaware of the born-again Christian's emphasis on living in the "spirit".  Those things he pleads for are in fact sought by born-again Christians. 

It's an interesting parallel worth looking into.  I am hoping to continue this line of thinking as I finish Tom Cheetham's remarkable Green Man, Earth Angel.

Before and after events...

We all have those moments where we measure time as before and after an event. Some are more significant than others. I'm not really talking about such things as having children, losing your virginity or even getting your driver's license.

No, I'm talking about things like dropping acid for the first time, the first time you heard music that ripped your soul out or various religious or spiritual experiences, perhaps being baptized or taking the shahada, those moments that changed the way you viewed the world.

I was fortunate enough to have one of those moments today, this one of a religious nature. Often they come in the strangest of ways and places. I haven't been doing anything overly "spiritual" as of late though I do believe in the Zen-like idea of being present as a form of spirituality, something I've always struggled with actually doing.

I have, however, been intensely focused on several daily facts of life: budgeting, doing the dishes and work, primarily the latter, the other two primarily focusing or grounding rituals. I currently work in a labor job, not exactly where I thought I'd be at 40 years old. However, the diversity of experience of my career path and, especially, the diversity of duties at my current occupation in a stamping and tool and die facility keeps it from being truly monotonous. And I'm grateful to be employed.

After a 25% wage cut several months ago, being taken from salary to hourly, the pendulum has swung and I've been reaping the benefits of an hourly wage as we've been working 10-hour days, five and six days a week for the past few weeks. Add to that an extra 16 to 24 hours at job two on the weekend, my weekly log has been ranging from 56 to 80 hours at work per week.

Between working, sleeping and eating there isn't time for too much else. It would seem that the most "spiritual" thing I do all week is an hour and a half at church once a week. However, as with most things, it is our attitude that determines what comes of a situation.

Recently, I've been running a laser cutter to make special parts for a project slated to start in the next few weeks. It takes upwards of three minutes per part to cut so after prepping I have roughly two minutes of dead time. I could sit and stare or watch the cutting or do nothing. As I learned a long time ago, always have reading material at your disposal. I often choose the longest line at the grocery store and pick up a magazine to read. Very Zen.

So I have on hand Henry Corbin's The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism. Seriously. I've been on a Henry Corbin kick lately; well, not lately, as I've immersed myself in his works more and more over the years. This isn't your mother's comparative religious studies. When you read his stuff you will really see how religious ideas are transmitted through history. His writing is dense and packs a whallop, ideas and concepts and terms coming at you at rapid speed, the kind of writing where one chapter can take you days to digest. The work is hard and requires effort but when that 'aha!' moment comes it borders on ecstasy.

Ecstasy. At work. So in between parts I'm reading this book and, having begun to make sense of his works after reading Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis for about the fourth or fifth time, it is becoming more and more clear. I've tried to read Man of Light book before but it just didn't make sense. Suddenly, today, at work, running a laser machine, I began having one epiphany after another. Here, in this book, in words, is a clear exposition of where I've been but haven't been able to put into word. It was a moment, though certainly not in as glorious a setting, that paralleled another 'aha!' moment whereby everything changed.

To put it into words, of course, is a struggle. Over the past few years, as I've wrestled with the Jesus question, I've begun to have visions and ideas about who he is, one recurring them being that Jesus is who we are. He is a mirror into which we see ourselves and through which we see who God is. He is, in essence, our truest self. As we journey through life he is there, from the highest highs and the lowest lows, from heaven to hell, he is there, leading us on and up.

I can quote some Scripture that would seem to verify this view but for some reason the "sense" I get in the various churches we have attended is that worship of him is not this. The sense I get in church is that he is "other" than us, even though he lives in us through the Spirit, and our worship of him is because he is the Other. I get that and don't disagree. Yet I can't seem to shake the feeling that he is somehow who we truly are. He is that Figure we all seek.

He is to some degree the repository of all our hopes and dreams and ideas of perfection, of who and what truth is, the best of man accumulated into a corporate view of this Figure of Jesus. Yet he remains somehow objective and reflects back to us the truth of our attempts at projecting onto him our own views of truth.

And as a Figure he continues to grow in me. I can't help but think my trajectory is beginning to leave the traditional bounds of Christianity. This doesn't make me "mystical" (a tag that has become cliche and void of content) or somehow better or different than anyone. My biggest fear is to find myself immersed in the "all relgions are the same" stew of religious gobbledygook where Man is the measure of all things and I sound like I'm shlepping New Age Amway.

This is perhaps the reason why I'm drawn to those religious scholars where the fancy letters after their names, though they certainly have them, are not touted as somehow giving them clout. The intellectual rigor and 'spirit' that bursts forth from their words speaks for itself. Henry Corbin is one of those scholars. Read his works and then read many of modern apologetic or comparative religious works today and you will notice the difference. There really is no comparison.

Perhaps it is my addictive, obsessive self longing for unique, for attention, for "mine". But, truly, I want to know who he is. It is the fundamental question for a Christian. And many of the answers in today's Christian landscape lacks depth. This is perhaps why I have always been drawn to the study of other religious traditions.

I enjoy the church we attend. It's "earthy" and practical and simple. The core focus is love. This is not the wishy washy kind of love but the hard stuff, dying to self. However, while it helps balance out my overly analytical view of the world, it leaves my intellect longing. The simple "Jesus is the only way" approach doesn't mean much to me. If he is the only way, then, as Christians, the issue isn't about being right but displaying why. In the meantime, I still passionately study other faith traditions. It highlights what is unique (and not uniqe) to Christianity yet keeps my spiritual worldview broad. God's light shines in the strangest of places.

In reading Corbin today, it hit me hard. My leanings have become 'gnostic' in nature. My view is not uncommon and shares ground with the gnostics from all traditions through time. Corbin's Man of Light breaks down this Figure I've come to see in stunning detail. It came as a relief. The 'aha'!' moment was that in reading him he is explaining not only where I am but where I am going.

Origen, Vladimir Lossky and Henry Corbin

The Kontakion (hymn) of the Feast of the Transfiguration in the Eastern Orthodox Church sings:

On the Mountain You were Transfigured, O Christ God,

And Your disciples beheld Your glory as far as they could see it;

So that when they would behold You crucified,

They would understand that Your suffering was voluntary,

And would proclaim to the world,

That You are truly the Radiance of the Father!

According to Vladimir Lossky, the disciples saw the divine glory "according to their capacity". That is a rather interesting choice of words as it corresponds to how Henry Corbin has translated several passages from the Acts of Peter and Acts of John.

Corbin points out the following from Origen's Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew:

For when he has passed through the six days, as we have said, he will keep a new Sabbath, rejoicing in the lofty mountain, because he sees Jesus transfigured before him; for the Word has different forms, as He appears to each as is expedient for the beholder, and is manifested to no one beyond the capacity of the beholder. (Book XII, Chapter 36)

It would seem there are shades of familiarity with Origen in Lossky's translation as he references Origen more than a few times in his works.

What is striking is how differently such an idea is interpreted in each. Lossky is straight up orthodox (Eastern Orthodox in particular) in his thinking; Corbin's approach is of a Gnostic nature, following this idea of "capacity" not in the kenotic sense of Orthodox Christianity but to the idea of the Qa'im, the final Imam, in Shi'ite, and in particular Ismaili Shi'ite, Islam.

Though it is apparent that the Imam bears resemblance to a Christ-like "type" of figure, Corbin points out that the figure of the Imam bears resemblance not to the Jesus of historical Christianity but to the Ebionite variety in which, in Jesus, the True Prophet has found "the place of repose".

This also cracks open the shell of the idea of "influence" a bit further than the "causal reduction peculiar to historism" and the reductionism of a scientific worldview so popular today in which "before" equates to "influence" which is ultimately a superficial approach to how religious ideas develop. As Corbin notes, "the concrete spiritual fact of 'transformation' itself cannot be causally deduced" (Corbin, Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis, p. 66)

Henry Corbin and Docetism

Trying to further elaborate on the post on Henry Corbin's discussion on Angelology, he delves further into the gnostic idea and its trajectory. As should be pretty clear, Corbin's writings have had a tremendous impact on me. In terms of comparative religion, he puts to shame the superficiality of many so-called comparative religious studies and gets to a genuine "core", the real crux of where relgions meet, not in doctrine and dogma, which are areas where divisions have been drawn, but in those fringe areas where religions truly intersect and interweave.

The Christ of the Acts of Peter and John has been called Docetic. Corbin notes, however, that Docetism is not a set doctrine but a "tendency" (63). He points out that the Christology of the Qur'an is Docetic as is the Imamology particular to Shi'ite Gnosis and that the "Buddhology" of Mahayana Buddhism is Docetic as well. In terms of a Christian Docetism this is in contrast to the hypostatic union which was "a material fact that entered into history" and became an "external and objective datum" 62). In other words, this is not your "orthodox" variety of Christianity.

This Docetic Christology does not view Christ as a "phantasm" or a spook or a ghost but as a "real apparition" which is "proportionate to the theophanic dimension of the soul, that is, its aptitude for being shown a divine Figure". The soul, therefore, is thus not a witness to an external event but "the medium in which the event takes place" (62).

Peculiar to Ebionite Christianity is the idea of the True Prophet or Prophet of Truth, not the God incarnate or God-man of what would become "orthodox" Christianity.

"Running through the ages since the beginning of the world, he hastens toward the place of his repose".

All that matters to the Ebionites is whether or not Jesus is this Prophet. The first Adam was the first epiphanic Form of the True Prophet, what Corbin calls the Christus aeternus, i.e. Adam-Christos. The True Prophet, having in him the breath of the divine nature, cannot sin. In Ebionism, the True Prophet appeared to Moses and Abraham and in Adam and Jesus the True Prophet was present.

In Jesus, then, the True Prophet finds his "final repose." He is not messianic Lord because his death effects redemption; according to Corbin it is because a community was "waiting for the Epiphany of the...Angelos Christos, the return of him who dispenses Knowledge that delivers and who will thereby establish a supraterrestrial kingdom...of Angels." (71) He is an Illuminator, not a Redeemer.

Now if Adam, the initial Prophet, could not sin, what of the "fall" of man? Providing a unique spin of Satan/Iblis, Adam's "fall" was not sin but of divulging the secret of the end of the Cycle of history, the knowledge of the Last Imam of the Cycle, the Resurrector (Qa'im) and the Resurrection. But this may only be divulged in symbols proportionate to the spiritual adept's "degree of dignity and capacity." (84)

This is where Corbin gets into the meat of his essay. He discusses the hadd, the limit, of each spiritual adept. It is the degree of consciousness, the mode of knowledge proportionate to the mode of being realized by the adept. The next higher hadd is, then, the Lord - that is to say, the Self - of its own mahdud ("limited"), the Self of what which it limits, that whose horizon it is." (85)

Our spiritual journey, in this scheme, is a journey through levels, or horizons or, as Corbin calls them, Angels. Each adept must rely upon his imam who is responsible for leading him up to the next level which thus becomes his hadd and the adept too is responsible for leading the one below him up to his former hadd. Each ascent of degrees, or horizon, is called a qiyamat, a "resurrection." So Adam, as True Prophet, is the repository of all souls, each individual soul on its journey toward the Qiyamat al-Qiyamat, or Grand Resurrection. In Shi'ite Islam this is the advent of the Qa'im, the last Imam. This, according to this schema, is the consummation of all religion.

So where does this leave us besides bewildered? Though this is a weak summation of what is truly a dense distilation of comparative religion in Corbin's work, it is leading somewhere.

Several concepts as generally understood in Christianity are tweaked:

1) Docetism is presented in a different form that is stereotypically understood as mere "appearance" or "phantasm"

2) Jesus is not an incarnate God; he is the repository of the True Prophet and is thus, at least according to Ebionite Christianity, messianic in the sense of bringer of Knowledge

3) Each spiritual adept (i.e. all of us) is where he/she us based on the adept's "horizon" or ability to see

4) The Qiyamat al-Qiyamat (Grand Resurrection) is when the Qa'im (the Final Imam), akin to the parousia of traditional Christianity, will appear to "recapitulte" all souls and religion, the Epiphanic Cycle of this Gnostic vision will be complete.

This connects to another of my favorite writers, Vladimir Lossky and his writings on Eastern Orthodox Theology. The connection between Christianity's "eastern" coloring and its influence on Islam is unmistakable. What is surprising is that in a work as "orthodox" as Lossky's there seems to be a connection, no matter how slight, with Corbin's vision of the Christianity almost lost to the paradise of archetypes.

A great blog about Henry Corbin's works

Here is the link to the blog:

The Legacy of Henry Corbin

A new book is due in August of 2009 which looks quite adventurous and tags right along with Corbin's Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis. Norman O. Brown's The Challenge of Islam: The Prophetic Tradition looks to be an interesting read.

Henry Corbin and Angelology

In Henry Corbin's densely packed book on the trajectory of "gnosticism" from Zoroastrianism through Christianity to its final "resting" place of Shi'ism he discusses the theophanic vision, as I've posted elsewhere quoting the Acts of Peter and Acts of John.

This stuff is heady and my summation is not as clean as I'd like but it's a start. Corbin's stuff is the densest thing I've ever read. But the work is worth it for those nuggets, when they come, make it all worth while.

Here's what he has to say about the theophanic vision:

"There is actual perception of an object, of a concrete person: the figure and the features are sharply defined; this person presents all the "appearances" of a sensuous object, and yet it is not given to the perception of the sense organs. This perception is essentially an event of the soul, taking place in the soul and for the soul. As such its reality is essentially individuated for and with each soul; what the soul really sees, it is in each case alone in seeing." (Henry Corbin, Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis, 60).

And here is the key to this entire essay in the book:

"The field of its vision, its horizon, is in every case defined by the capacity, the dimension of its own being: Talem eum vidi qualem capere potui" (60-61)

Quoting Origen's discussion of the Transfiguration he notes that Jesus appeared in the form in which he was normally seen but also in his transfigured form "he appeared to each one according as each man was worthy."

The core of Corbin's book is in essence the transformation of such a "gnosis" in Islamic, specifically Ismaili, soil. Having traced its origins in Zoroastrianism, Corbin goes on to discuss the connection between Zoroastrianism, Christianity (specifically Ebionite Christianity) and Islam (specifically Shi'ite and, more speficially, Ismaili Shi'ite) in a mindbending trip. Corbin has "no wish to debate the question of historical filiation...nor to determine the 'influences'" which, he says, "reads causality into things" (31). The connection between them is not doctrinal: it is a common angelology.

By angel he is not talking about the winged variety or the Touched By An Angel variety or any of those other media caricatures. For Corbin the "angel" is the "celestial Idea" of all human beings. Writing on Ibn Arabi, he says:

"...that which a human being regains in the mystical experience, is the "celestial pole" of his being, which is to say his "person" whereby and as which, the Divine Being from the very beginning in the origin of origins in the world of Mystery, manifested himself to himself, and made himself known to it in this Form [its own form, the form it was given to assume] which is equally the Form in which he knew himself in it. It is the Idea, or rather the "Angel" of his person whose present self is no more than the terrestrial pole."

And again:

"I am your own Daênâ", -which means: I am, in person, the faith that you professed and that which inspired it in you, she for whom you have answered and she who guided you, she who comforted you and she who now judges you, for I am, in person, the Image proposed to you from the birth of your being and the Image which finally you have yourself wished for ("I was beautiful, you have made me still more beautiful").

These paragraphs draw out the distinctions behind Corbin's aversion to traditional Christianity and its teaching of the singular event of the Incarnation of Christ. Rather than a universal, singular Christ, this Angel of which Corbin speaks is personal, unique to each soul, and is the Image to which the soul longs to unite.

He further breaks down this angelology. Rather than being a "metaphorical luxury" the Angel's significance is twofold, theophanic and soteriological ("salvific"). It can be thought about in several ways. There are angels who have remained in the celestial world, the intermediary between heaven and earth, and other angels who have fallen to Earth. The angels in the celestial world (the pleroma) are "angels in actu" and the angels who are on earth are the "angels in potentia".

Another way of looking at it is that this division may refer to a single being, an unus ambo. The Spirit is the person or Angel who has remained in heaven, the "celestial twin", while the soul is his companion who has fallen to Earth, to whose help he comes and with whom he will be reunited if he issues victorious from the cosmic battle between good and evil. (103)

The human lot is thus, quoting Nasir Khusraw, a transitory status, the "horizon" of which Corbin speaks. Man is a "not-yet": an angel (or demon) in potentia awaiting reunion with his celestial twin, the angel in actu.

Heady? Yeah. And I can't do it justice. But there is a certain logic to it that is quite appealing. Rather than a heavenly Jesus to whom we turn, we all have inherent in us this "Idea" of perfection, this idea of the "Divine" and it is this "Idea" that Corbin terms the Angel with whom we seek union or re-union. It has been placed in us from the very beginning; it is this that guides us and it is to this we seek to return.

Corbin's main thrust is this:

"Man is called, by right of his origin and if he consents, to an angelomorphosis, his acceptance of which precisely regulates his aptitude for theophanic visions." (64)

It is this angelomorphosis (Corbin invents mroe than a few terms in this work) that is the key. Ismailian Gnosis, according to Corbin, in a sense saves a Christianity, specifically of the Ebionite variety, that had long ago been lost to the "paradise of archetypes" (65).

Talem eum vidi qualem capere potui...

I saw him in such a form as I was able to take in.

And when the ninth hour was fully come, they rose up to make prayer. And behold certain widows, of the aged, unknown to Peter, which sat there, being blind and not believing, cried out, saying unto Peter: We sit together here, O Peter, hoping and believing in Christ Jesus: as therefore thou hast made one of us to see, we entreat thee, lord Peter, grant unto us also his mercy and pity.

But Peter said to them: If there be in you the faith that is in Christ, if it be firm in you, then perceive in your mind that which ye see not with your eyes, and though your ears are closed, yet let them be open in your mind within you. These eyes shall again be shut, seeing nought but men and oxen and dumb beasts and stones and sticks; but not every eye seeth Jesus Christ. Yet now, Lord, let thy sweet and holy name succour these persons; do thou touch their eyes; for thou art able -that these may see with their eyes.

And when all had prayed, the hall wherein they were shone as when it lighteneth, even with such a light as cometh in the clouds, yet not such a light as that of the daytime, but unspeakable, invisible, such as no man can describe, even such that we were beside ourselves with bewilderment, calling on the Lord and saying: Have mercy, Lord, upon us thy servants: what we are able to bear, that, Lord, give thou us, for this we can neither see nor endure.

And as we lay there, only those widows stood up which were blind; and the bright light which appeared unto us entered into their eyes and made them to see. Unto whom Peter said: Tell us what ye saw.

And they said: We saw an old man of such comeliness as we are not able to declare to thee; but others said: We saw a young man; and others: We saw a boy touching our eyes delicately, and so were our eyes opened.

Peter therefore magnified the Lord, saying: Thou only art the Lord God, and of what lips have we need to give thee due praise? and how can we give thee thanks according to thy mercy? Therefore, brethren, as I told you but a little while since, God that is constant is greater than our thoughts, even as we have learned of these aged widows, how that they beheld the Lord in divers forms. (Acts of Peter, XXI)

Talem eum vidi qualem capere potui.

Men and brethren, ye have suffered nothing strange or incredible as concerning your perception...inasmuch as we also, whom he chose for himself to be apostles, were tried in many ways: I, indeed, am neither able to set forth unto you nor to write the things which I both saw and heard: and now is it needful that I should fit them for your hearing; and according as each of you is able to contain it I will impart unto you those things whereof ye are able to become hearers, that ye may see the glory that is about him, which was and is, both now and for ever.

And so when we had brought the ship to land, we saw him also helping along with us to settle the ship: and when we departed from that place, being minded to follow him, again he was seen of me as having rather bald, but the beard thick and flowing, but of James as a youth whose beard was newly come. We were therefore perplexed, both of us, as to what that which we had seen should mean.

And after that, as we followed him, both of us were by little and little perplexed as we considered the matter. Yet unto me there then appeared this yet more wonderful thing: for I would try to see him privily, and I never at any time saw his eyes closing (winking), but only open. And oft-times he would appear to me as a small man and uncomely, and then againt as one reaching unto heaven. Also there was in him another marvel: when I sat at meat he would take me upon his own breast; and sometimes his breast was felt of me to be smooth and tender, and sometimes hard like unto stones, so that I was perplexed in myself and said: Wherefore is this so unto me? And as I considered this, he . .

And at another time he taketh with him me and James and Peter unto the mountain where he was wont to pray, and we saw in him a light such as it is not possible for a man that useth corruptible (mortal) speech to describe what it was like. Again in like manner he bringeth us three up into the mountain, saying: Come ye with me. And we went again: and we saw him at a distance praying. I, therefore, because he loved me, drew nigh unto him softly, as though he could not see me, and stood looking upon his hinder parts: and I saw that he was not in any wise clad with garments, but was seen of us naked, and not in any wise as a man, and that his feet were whiter than any snow, so that the earth there was lighted up by his feet, and that his head touched the heaven: so that I was afraid and cried out, and he, turning about, appeared as a man of small stature, and caught hold on my beard and pulled it and said to me: John, be not faithless but believing, and not curious.

And I said unto him: But what have I done, Lord? And I say unto you, brethren, I suffered so great pain in that place where he took hold on my beard for thirty days, that I said to him: Lord, if thy twitch when thou wast in sport hath given me so great pain, what were it if thou hadst given me a buffet? And he said unto me: Let it be thine henceforth not to tempt him that cannot be tempted. (Acts of John 88-90)

And he gave me his hand and raised me up; and when I arose I saw him again in such a form as I was able to take in. (Acts of Peter, XX)

Talem eum vidi qualem capere potui.

Still wrestling...

The more in-depth I read Henry Corbin, the more clearly I see the dogma of the Church. This isn't a judgment (yet, anyhow). It's simply a fact. I seek to 'believe' the dogma of the Trinity, of the God-man idea, of the Incarnation rather than just 'get' them as one can 'get' these things and yet not believe them.

Just when I think I'm about to go there, I find something else that verifies or corroborates what I believe. The latest of these finds has to do with Isaiah 9:6, a proof-text often used to go beyond just that of proving Jesus to be Messiah but proving that Jesus and, historically speaking, the Messiah, will be divine, nay, will be God. But I know far too well the role of translation so this has never been a big deal to me.

It is often quoted as a proof-text and as I am no Hebrew scholar, I merely let it roll. Well today I dug a bit deeper. I have been reading Michael S. Kogan's brilliant book Opening the Covenant. It threw me right back into the Jewishness of Jesus once again bringing forth my belief that once Christianity left the environs of Jerusalem and went abroad there was no turning back. Once it went beyond the apostles and Paul and entered into a non-Jewish and thoroughly Gentile/pagan educated clergy it was over. It has become a predominantly Greek religion thus uprooting the true Jewishness of the faith. But when these roots are removed it becomes a malleable faith, one that latches itself onto the dominant culture.

In this day and age and for the past several hundred years that dominant culture has been Protestant, European and, most recently, American. This culture has attached itself to the faith of Christianity and has thus been associated, perhaps unjustly, with colonialism. This is changing, however, as the largest growth is coming from South America and Africa and these cultures are changing the Christian landscape. It will be interesting to see the theological impact as well.

Anyhow, as for this book, it is a profound and honest attempt at Jewish-Christian interfaith dialogue, really scrutinizing, to a refreshing degree, Christianity in its roots through a Jewish lens. Chapter 2 of the book tackles 'The Qusetion of the Messiah.' In essence, he takes apart the idea that there is a 'messianic pattern', some normative idea of a Messiah that all Jews of Jesus' day held. Anyone who knows a bit about Jewish history of this period knows that there were a multitude of ideas about the Messiah. There were, in his words, messianisms. To think otherwise is to deny history.

He hits on the major verses used in Christian proof-texting. In my example here I am looking at Isaiah 9:6. The traditional translation is this:

"...his name will be called

Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."

I wish to look at the 'Mighty God' claim.

Kogan's translation is this:

"...his name will be called

'A wonderful counselor is the Mighty God,

The Everlasting Father.' [He will be a] peaceful prince."

Kogan notes that the name (and it is a name, not a statement of ontology) "does not imply divinity, but rather indicates that the appearance of this child-king is a sign that God has not and will not abandon the Davidic line no matter the failings of [Hezekiah] (and the abomination of his son Manassah)" (42). Placed in its context, there is no declaration of the Messiah being divine.

El is a component of many names, yet these names are not seen as statement of ontology. Here are a few examples:

Daniel – Judged by God or Judgement of God

Ezekiel – God will Strengthen

Ishmael, Ishamael – Heard by God, Named by God, or God Hearkens

Israel – Struggles with God

Joel – Jah is God

Samuel – Name/Heard of God

Not one of these figures was seen to be divine, let alone God. So when Jesus is called, for example, Emmanuel, it is a name not a statement of his nature. 'God with us' does not mean that it is Jesus that is God but that it is in Jesus that God is with us.

Let's break this down a bit further. 'Mighty God' translates the Hebrew gibbor el, el being 'God' and gibbor being 'mighty'.

El is the word most often translated as 'God' in the Hebrew Bible. But this is not the God specific to Israel. This is not YHWH. This is not the LORD. It is the root of the word elohim, the word most often associated with the word 'God', though the word elohim is used of men and of angels (see, for example, Psalm 82:6, which Jesus quotes in John 10:34).

The Hebrew for this passage is Pele-joez-el-gibbor-Abi-ad-sar-shalom. Yet in many passages in the Hebrew Bible, the word el (or elohim) means mighty or powerful and is not a stand alone address for God. For example in Psalm 50:1, mighty God is actually el elohim, el meaning mighty and elohim meaning God.

Pslam 82:1:

"God (elohim) standeth in the congregation of the mighty (el); he judgeth among the gods (elohim)."

Is this an acknowledgment of others gods? Is this a throwback to former times when YHWH was competing amongst a pantheon of gods? It's interesting to me that the word el here is translated as mighty and gives room to believe that other 'gods' might also be among the el in the sense of 'mighty'.

But in Ezekiel 31:11 it is Nebuchadnezzer who is called el, the mighty one. In Ezekiel 32:21 we see both el and gibbor in the same sentence:

"The strong (el) among the mighty (gibbor) shall speak to him out of the midst of hell with them that help him..." (KJV)

This speaks not of God but of men.

Gibbor el is frequently translated as 'Mighty God' in various other places in the Hebrew Bible (Isaiah 10:21, Jeremiah 32:18, etc.)

In essence, it comes down to more than tossing out one verse in a particular translation. It comes down to context, both of the passage and of the use of the terms in the greater context of the various places throughout the Hebrew Scriptures which, of course, also means keeping the books in the context of the times in which the passages were written or written about. In other words, there is no one 'messianic pattern' to these texts used as proof. If we study the development of the idea of an individual Messiah rather than a dynastic king back to its Zoroastrian roots up through the Second Temple period we find an amazing diversity in the concept and realize that there is simply no one understanding of the idea of the Messiah.

My point is simply this: proof-texting Isaiah 9:6 to claim that Jesus, or the Messiah, is God is not enough. In fact, standing alone, it doesn't prove anything. It's just a soundbyte. The passage as a whole may be seen as Messianic (or it may simply be referring to the historical person of Hezekiah) but this isn't the same as saying that the Messiah is God.

For if, in this verse, Jesus is God then he is also literally, not figuratively, the Father. And while this may align perfectly well with Oneness (i.e. modalist) theology it is certainly not compatible with Trinitarian theology. So as for Isaiah 9:6, it is at best Messianic. But proof that the Jews of Jesus' day held it to mean the individual in question would be divine, let alone God Himself? That's a tough sell.

The essence of Corbin's work...

This, to me, is really the essence of his work:

"...when it comes to understanding the humanity (nasut) of the Iman, that is, to translating Imamology into anthropological terms as an event lived by the soul, the data of the problem will not partake of the physiology that imposes itself on sense perception and ordinary consciousness. It is an archetypal Image which will function as an organ of perception, replacing the faculties of sense perception and making perceptible an object...

and yet the humanity of the Imam is not reduced to what our "realist" exigencies would qualify as a "hallucination" and does not fit in with the idea of a hypostatic union.

The problem is, then: how can a humanity which is mazhar of the godhead be constituted, to what order of reality must it belong, that is to say, what transfiguration of it is presupposed in order that the epiphany (zuhur> mizhar) of this epiphanic Figure (mazhar) may be produced not to the eyes of the body but to the soul's "eyes of light"?

pp. 108-109

As it relates to Christianity, in place of Imam think of a Gnostic, Docetic (though Corbin qualifies what this term means) Christ. This is not the Christ of orthodoxy; this is not God incarnate. This is the Christ of those labeled "Gnostics" as found in the Acts of John and other apocryphal gospels.

This is the Christ encountered in Islam. Yet its continued development in Shi'a and Ismaili thought is not causally connected to some renegade sects of Christianity. In other words, these ideas are not borrowed or hijacked as such. As Corbin notes: "This is a problem which in any case cannot be elucidated by the current methods of purely static and analytical exegesis, by a historicism limited to an essentially causal type of explanation which reads causality into things." (p. 31n7)

These ideas are inherent within the human soul, a longing for a connection to the divine, a longing for a mediator, a savior figure, one in whom we can see our image and have reflected back to us the Divine. It is in this sense that what is commonly deemed "borrowing" occurs.

This figure is found in most, if not every, religious tradition. This is why, as Corbin points out, it can be seen as Archetypal. Christian orthodoxy is obviously against this and thus holds Christ up as the one true, real, bodily revelation of God. It is this claim that ultimately separates "orthodoxy" from every other claim about Christ.

From an orthodox point of view it validates the truth of the claim; for those who follow a more "gnostic" tendency this rends Christ from his true place and forever places him, traps him even, in the mess of humanity (which, of course, is basically what orthodoxy claims is the truth of the matter and therefore the reason he can thus save us).

But is this necessarily true?

Henry Corbin and Hakim Bey

Seems that traditional religion isn't cutting it. Not knocking traditional religion but I am bored by it. Sure you get out of it what you put into it. Fine. But the muttness approach to religion has led me to this middle ground, the interstitial, that place where they all merge yet are all very much different, both the same and not the same. It was here where I stumbled across Henry Corbin's works via Peter Lamborn Wilson's Sacred Drift. I found this book in a second hand bookstore (now closed thanks to B&N moving in...) and picked it up because it had "Essays on the Margins of Islam" as the secondary title. It has since become one of my favorite books, with pages dog eared, passage after passage underlined, so much so that most passages are underlined. I began seeing religion in a different light.

Wilson references Corbin's works in regards Ismailism, y'know, the Assassins (which, he notes, does not come from the same word as 'hashish' but from...). Corbin's Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis, placing three very dense articles into one book, is a mind blower. It is so dense that I continue to revisit it and my brain is still turned to mush trying to tackle it. It's usually only after I quit thinking that it begins to sink in.

But Corbin's work takes those interstitial regions where I find myself and he breaks them open, like the physicist in search of the Higgs boson (the so-called 'God' particle) zipping particles around a particle accelerator, bursting them apart into smaller and smaller bits, deeper and deeper into areas that border on the fringe of non-existence, ethereal, almost mystical in nature.

I'm not talking about the Dancing Wu Li Masters hippy-dippy stuff. I'm talking about that place where it is elusive yet you can almost feel it but the senses fail, the intellect fails and some other form of 'knowing' takes over. It is perhaps intuitive in the sense that years and years of deep seeking have provided a heightened sensitivity to answers that the ordinary mind will miss.

You can't just intuit such things (though you may get temporary glimpses unrecognizable to the unprepared mind/soul). No there is much training, much disicpline, much to build up and, at the same time, lay aside in order to make the mind/soul fertile for such experience when it comes. And it will come.

Corbin's work and, to a lesser degree, Wilson's work (his is much more fun as he embraces those acts of faith deemed hertical with reckless abandon), provides fertile soil to help prepare one's mind/soul for these experiences, even within traditional religious practice but, in general, at that place where mere religion fails to satisfy, when one must journey on alone, beyond the bounds of those things that have traditionally kept us both safe and bound.