[...]ojects of connecting religion to the world]

‘exit religion’: it will have lost any pretence of influencing the course of events, its impact will only be decorative

(Descola:) ‘naturalism’ is only one of four ways in which connections between humans and nonhumans can be established


contrasts:
*reference chain*
*reproduction*

(Latour use of the term) *contrast* = mode of existence

immutable mobiles: to reach something far away through long arrays of instruments, you need to make sure that *necessities and constants are transported* with as little transformation as possible ==> to “reach” those entities

geometry, mathematical entities, inscriptions of all sorts ==> carry heavy-duty immutable mobiles

(Hoda's immutable mobiles are: [?])

[*]matter = highly elaborated, historically dated, and anthropologically situated hybrids***
(=/= ‘transportation of indisputable necessities through chains of cause and effect’ <-- a category mistake)

(for physicist:) “the ways we know the world = the ways in which the world behaves”
(less for chemist)
(not at all for engineer)


([in a way my work has been about investigating vectors and] *directions*) from knower to what is to be known

the beings of ajayeb face lots of causes and lots of effects


metaphysical consequences of evolutionary theory


***(Latour's positive veiw on) to be a Darwinian: you have to abandon the notion that all of those ‘organisms’ rest in ‘nature’ --> [*]organim: a hybrid production of representation & reference


*the widespread ideology of the *blind watch maker* : a blind cause acting from behind and reaching the optimum haphazardly
(has substituted the ‘mere transportation of indisputable necessities’ for *the risks taken by individual organisms to perpetuate, sustain, and reproduce themselves*)
&
*the widespread ideology of the *intelligent designer* :an intelligence dragging organisms towards the optimum by some predefined plans
}--> both are grounded in the *ideology of making and mechanism* ==>
•organisms are erased as individual actors
•organisms are transformed into the carriers if indisputable necessities
--> both tried to save individual organims from their apparent meaninglessness by adding to them an overarching narrative recited by an otherworldly divinity

(‘necessities’ are often imported)


(Assmans's) *mosaic division*
(=/= a sort of relaxed attitude towards truth)
divisions ahad never beed asked before whether or not they were the “true” ones. they could be added to one another, translated into one another, piled on top of one another for additional safety --✕--> *contesting the claims to existence of all divinities but one*
==> a connection between the question (irrelevant until then) of worship and a question of an absolute (=/= relative) difference between true and false

[*]iconoclast: “if they are made, then they cannot be real”

monotheism ==allowed==> humans to escape from a too close adhesion چسبنده to the natural world
Moses's project ==> we have exctracted ourselves from the world

(Assmans:) without the transcendence of monotheism we would be left with the mere immanence of the natural world *** [--> the problem of transcendence/immanence as only options of relatedness]
(a bad story:) secular narratives that: the stark immanence of the natural world will save us from an escapist adherence to the transcendent world of beyond [--✕--> my Zolmat text is was about the problematization of that view (transcendent world of beyond) in Islamicated ecological consciousness in ajayeb]


****to move from ideology to recognition**** (of the many different contrasts we have lived by without granting them enough room)


the drab and entirly mythical drama of light overcoming darkness


religious traditio operates by its abilities of two transformation:
1. a radical transformation of the far away into the close and the proximate [#Zolmat] (dead is alive)
2. a positive view of all artificial transformations (=/= tendencyo conserve what it is)

**what happens if religion is allowed to weave its highly specific form of transcendence (salvation?) into the fabric of the other two modes of existence: reproduction and reference?

Leo's dream (and also deep sin): the urge radically to transform *that which is given* into *that which has to be fully renewed* --> alternative, dream of a different world
[=/= to grasp this world (and only this world) otherwise]

...................................

look at spec over the spectacular
(in ajayeb)

i can't give you a dialectical conclusion

maybe a mouth-full

...................................

[Paul Shepard]

our perception of animals as the language of nature in Thinking Animals and The Others; the “natural” way of childrearing in Nature and Madness; and the bear as a dominant sacred animal connecting people ceremonially to the earth in The Sacred Paw.

Octavio Paz reminds us: “The past reappears because it is a hidden present. I am speaking of the real past, which is not the same as ‘what took place.’ . . . What took place is indeed the past, yet there is something that . . . takes place but does not wholly recede into the past, a constantly returning present.”

...................................

[Corbin]

it is so dangerous to say any thinker, writer, artist, or phiosopher ‘was of his/her own time.’ nobody has ever been in their own time, never. we are constantly out of time.

things occur in Malakut, not in the time of this world.
it is a matter of interior history, exoteric in the etymological sense of the word, subtle history whose events do not take place in the exterior world of objects, but in the subtle world of lived states, events in the Malakut, in the world of the ‘Soul,’ in the ‘Heaven’ or the ‘Hell’ which man carries within himself.
(and this is precisely what is ‘changing someone's story’ is about. ‘let me change the rhythm of your story. let me change your history.’ ~= storytelling)
this history----interior wild facts----intermingles with his wills, and objectives itself in the web of exterior facts. these are events of ajayebnameh, Shahname شاهنامه, Qur'an قرآن, Grail Cycle and so on, the events of this history (inspire parables? and) make up sacred history (tarikh-e ghodsi تاریخ قدسی‌) =/= empirical historicity
*the question always remains:
-what *is of this world?
-what is the organ of perception?
-does oneself need to ‘belong’ to this sacred history in order to come to pass (in the Malakut ملکوت)? (being born in it, etc.)

[what was your fetish again? what was your Qibla قبله? what would be...]

platonic ideals, periodization of sacred history

ملا صدرا Mullah Sadra revolutionized the metaphysics of being, in reversing the order of priority of essence (mahiat ماهیت). he gives priority to existence (vojud وجود) : that means, it is the act and mode of existing that determine the nature of essence. the act of existing is in effect capable of multitude of degrees of intensification or of degradation.

(عجایبِ ajayeb-e) man: human-faced demon (ajene ensan-nama اجنه انسان‌نما) / ... / ... / sublime state of perfect Man
-and body passing through a multitude of states : Hayula هیولا? / ... / jesm (جسم corruptible worldly body) / ... / divine body (jesm-e elahi جسم الهی)

Mullah Sadra is the philosopher of metamorphoses and palingenesis (estehaleh-ha استحاله‌ها & rastakhiz-ha رستاخیز‌ها)
*phenomenology of the act of existing*


there was a time (12th century--my favorite) when Avicenna ابن سینا was translated into Latin (in Toledo,) a moment when our cultures in east and west corresponded to the same type, a moment when the concept of science was inseparable from its spiritual context. ----> think of the alchemists for whom the operation undertaken in the laboratory only attained its end if it was accompanied by an interior transmutation of the man--that is to say only if it effected the interior birth (of spiritual man)

Alchemist's chemistry
Nicolas Oresme's geometry
[out of history]
Descartes’ geometry is also out of history, discontinuous

(for Corbin) Modern / Western venture = application of the intelligence to the scientific investigation of a nature that has been desacralised, which must be violated in order to find out its laws (and to subject its forces to the human will)


the dichotomies or dissociation of thought/being, being/action



حیدر آملی Haydar Amuli's delinkings (destroying precisely certain dialectics or dichotomies:)

...................................

Holul حلول, Sodur صدور, Tajasod تجسد
(immanence, transcendence, incarnation)
(the eidos reflected in the mirror--divine in the prophet--remains untouched by the mirror, because the real is not ‘incarnated’ in the eidos, the reflected image)

-alame khiali عالم خیالی: imaginaire/Hollywood
-khiale khallagh خیال خلاق (--> alame mesal عالم مثال =/= alame ajsad عالم اجساد) :
1-khiale mottasel خیال متصل: imagining inherent in human
2-khiale monfasel خیال منفصل: imaginal apart from human
-alame hess عالم حسس: molk ملک --> universe of forgetfulness


Tonekaboni, is against: “mojudate moghayade vahmi faghede tagharor mibashand.” (موجودات مقید وهمی فاقد تقرر میباشند)
--> vahdate vojud وحدت وجود =/= vahdate mojud وحدت موجود
*danger: tarde amre mesali طرد امر مثالی ==> ma'ad dar amre khiali معاد در امر خیالی


death, life, past, and future are not properties of objects, rather of subjects (anha sefate nafs hastand آنها صفات نفس هستند) [Corbin]
and you bestow them to objects that you think they are “dead,” “alive,” “from past,” or “of future”


“khorre” or “khorne” according to zaratustra: a light originated from the essence of the divine being and because of that some apparitions have gained hierarchy, and each human capable of a certain techne.


the idea of a divine presence in *heikal* هیکل

according to Socrates: bodies are frames and tools of the selves (nofus نفوس)
according to Plato, what the self (nafs نفس) does not had essentially that it had to descend into the material world? what the senses told the self that itself could not say?


an islamic-iranian cosmology:
 -jabarut جبروت (alame oghule karubi عالم اقول کروبی) (Nous)
 -malakut ملکوت (alame nofus عالم نفوس) (Psyche) --organ--> khiale fa'al خیال فعال (= jesme latife nafs جسم لطیف نفس. niruye khial نیروی خیال is trainded still in middle east. this inter-monde is where mater --> immaterial & immater --> material; jesm ruhani جسم روحانی‌ & ruh jesmani روح جسمانی ==> constant happenings of historic nature ==> Ma'ad معاد) --> amre mesali امر مثالی
 -molk ملک (omure mshhud امور مشهود) (Sarx)


[Ashtiani, 2nd vol, p44, footnote]
ensane okhravie daraye badan (انسان اخروی دارای بدن) --> nash'eye jesmanie alame akherat (نشئه جسمانی عالم آخرت)
(baghaye) badane okhravie alame made (بقای بدن اخروی عالم ماده) --> hades zamanie (حادث زمانی)


لطیف latif ~= immaterial

actual/real ~= a dream between earth and sky


asemanhaye napeydaye nojumi آسمانهای ناپیدای نجومی (celectial skies invisible)
dadehaye vahyi داده‌های وحی (data of revelation)


Avicenna (selselemaratebe ebn-sinaie oghul سلسله‌ مراتب ابن سینایی عقول):
[each aghl عقل or angle with its own sky and nafs نفس ==> a whole universe for itself]
sending from one aghl to the other, till the 10th aghl = unlimited human nafs
10th aghl ~= philosopher's active aghl ~= ruh al ghodos روح القدس

(سهروردی) in Sohrevardi: angle and nafs are in the same trip

aghle hayulayi عقل هیولایی


[Averroesian/ابن رشدی =/= Avicennian/ishraghi/اشراقی] ==> destruction of the intermediate world of angles ==> secularization :
sociology <-- theology <-- angelology
(divine materiliazation --> social materialization)
totalitarianism <== ideology <-- spirituality (~=? intellectual immaterialism)

(?signing in iran:)
ghodsi shodane nahadha = orfi shodane maba'adotabi
قدسی‌ شدن نهادها = عرفی شدن مابعدالطبیعه
sacredization of institutions = secularization of metaphysics


the tragedy is not the affirmation of individualism, it is rather the forgetting of the infinite entity :
non-mystic monotheism ==> a personalized (incarnation of) God (--> everything ‘personal’ is subject to death and negation) ==> entrance of God in collectivism


تغییر ماهیت عالم taghyire mahiate alam (change in the essence of the universe) is the subject of study for iranian ancient philosophies and cosmologies

contemplation (moshahede nazari مشاهده نظری) ~= action
knowledge ~= creating (that insensible speculative world) (the world of ajayeb and its siblings is created and stated in my inner vision)
[hush-e nazari هوش نظری, ability to abstract, is the ability to look from above]
[(jaleb budan-e) heja-e bimani هجای بیمعنی, interest for meaningless morpheme]

(human's function:) the transfigurative function of the transcendental machine (karkhaneye mojarad-sazi کارخانه مجرد‌سازی, by Sheikh Muhammad Tabatabayi)



*ta'vil bayad dar jahate axe harkate jami va moshtarek bashad تأویل باید در جهت عکس حرکت جمعی و مشترک باشد
(interpretation/hermeneutics =/= commons/collectivism)
(according to Sohrevardi:) haghighate lafzi حقیقت لفظی (verbal/literal truth) --> the metaphorical entity
face/surate/صورت/apparition/majaz/مجاز/trope --> truth/reality



(سهروردی Sohrevardi's accord:) up in the highest point in the hierarchy of existence there is nur-al-anvar نور‌الانوار (light of lights) which its material-removing (dematerialising?) abstraction (tajarode made-zoda تجرد ماده‌زدا) constantly transcends, beyond any other abstraction. ==> first light is originated from it: anvare ghahere انوار قاهره (~= anvare fereshtegani انوار فرشتگانی) ~= first maleke mogharab ملک مقرب (or Bahman بهمن, Vahumane وهومنه, first of Zoroastrian Amshaspandan امشاسپندان) ==> (due to their interactions:) second light, second maleke mogharab is created ==> eshragh اشراق ==> eshragh ==> eshragh ==> ...

جسمیت‌شناسی‌ jesmiat-shenasi?

رب النوع rab-ol-no ~=? God of type, of abstract examples, (Plato's universals? type, general concept --> is always beyond the horizon, the reality of the type lies beyond a related one that it sustains (‘token’) ["Beyond the horizon there lies a Lion, a Lion more Lion than any more lion. And beyond saying ‘lion,’ which calls forth that Lion, lies yet another, who might just look back. And beyond this eyeing one, lies an undying one, one we call ‘Lion’ because she is a kind.” (Kohn, 2009)] --> apply this idea to the fire)
ارباب الانواع arbab-ol-anva ~=? angelology (iranians loved angels and were good at angelologic thinking, it was a technical term in knowledge production regarding *categories and types*) --> Platonic + Zoroastrian + (shiite) Islamicate [via Sohrevardi] cosmologies
-the angel/type that both emerges from and sustains the many lives of its many tokens (~= tashasho تشعشع).
according to ancient iranians, rab-ol-no or the type-God decided its own destination (calculation of its own destiny), but there was no correlation between the ‘type’ and its ‘token,’ there is no whole being created, there is no individuality being created. this general type has its own intellect/sense/reason (sho'ur شعور.) their relationship is of rage and love (ghahr قهر and mohebat محبت,) according to Sohrevardi.
-what question is posed from somewhere (slightly) beyond? a question includes the likeness of its answer (Kohn, 2009)
-the angel of type is all about ‘being in futuro,’ which captures the logic of life's continuity --> “over the horizon” houses this “living future”
-What is the relationship between this angelic world beyond us [...]