[...]f interpretation
(Mitchell
(Corbin)
Platonic archetypes in terms of Zoroastrian angelology
psalms and invocations to the beings of light
the celestial physics, which limits the number of Intelligences
victoriality
Sovereignty of Light, heralded by Zarathustra
(arch)angelic vectors
to grasp
ishragh is at the same time both the ‘illumination’ and the ‘reflection’ (zuhur
appearance
Thus, just as in the sensible world the term signifies the splendor of the morning, the first radiance of the star, in the intelligible Heaven of the soul it signifies the epiphanic moment of knowledge.
the Presence of the philosopher at the mutational appearance of the intelligible Lights
“estrangement from their bodies” was for them a philosophical question
(for hayula proj.
primordial Flame which is their source, and which Sohrevardi claims to have seen in a vision that revealed to him the authentic ‘Oriental source’. This is the ‘Light of Glory’ that the Avesta names as the Xvarnah (khurrah in Persian, or in the Parsi form fan, farrah
... the ‘negative’ intelligible dimensions of the ‘longitudinal Order’ (dependence, passive illumination, love as indigence)
produce the Heaven of the Fixed
... from this second order of Archangels there emanates a new Order of Lights, through the intermediary of which the Archangelarchetypes govern and rule over the Species, at least in the case of the higher Species. These are the Angel-Souls, the ‘Animae caelestes’ and ‘Animae humanae’ of Avicenna's angelology.
Intimated beyond the heaven of the Fixed
In opposition to what was to happen in the West, where the development of astronomy eliminated angelology, here it is angelology which takes astronomy beyond the classical schema within which it was confined.
...there proceeds eternally the universe of the Primordial Ruling Lights
... which marks the boundary between the celestial world and the material world of becoming. It is the Heaven of the Fixed
The characteristic term barzakh, when used in eschatology, means the intermediate, and when used in cosmology, it means the inter-world
That concept, therefore, that the word barzakh connotes is fundamental to Sohrevardi's system of physics. The barzakh is pure Darkness; it could exist as such even if the Light were to withdraw. Thus, it is not even a potential light, a virtuality in the Aristotlian sense; in relation to Light it is pure negativity, Ahrimanian (
the schema of Mazdean cosmology, in which the universe of being is divided into menuk
The schema of the universe, then, is arranged according to a fourfold plan
... (4) There is the mundus imaginalis (alame mesal
It appears that Sohrevardi was indeed the first to elaborate the ontology of the inter-world, and the theme once introduced was taken up and expanded by all the mystics and gnostics of Islam.
stories
The action of these Recitals, in fact, takes place in the ‘alame mesal’
We are not concerned with a series of ‘allegories’ but with the secret hierohistory, invisible to the external senses, which unfolds in the world of the malakut, and with which external and fleeting events symbolize.
crypto-Shiism
prophetic philosophy
Between a scientific treatise, a fable and philosophical discourse, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis imagines a pitch-dark world of an animal living as deep as possible down in the abyss in order to disclose a way of living opposed to the luminous one of the human being.
analogy of the cave
man with the x-ray vision
nowhere prosperous
ruinous prosperous
accidental intellects (subjects, qualities, quantities,)
light, self, presence, knowledge
One night darkness had settled in sky and a darkness that and held the hand of the brother of non-existence had been catered around the lower world.
After sleep came upon me, disappointment resulted.
I was holding a candle.
has two doors, one to the city and the other one to the desert. I went and closed the door
I then saw an eleven-layered pot thrown into the desert with some water in it and in the water were some pebbles around which here were a few animals.
The heavenly spheres were absolutely round and a straight line could not have been