[...]ior 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 and the sociocultural worlds we construct?
-“mosol” مثل : the realm of objective “stuff” that exists out there beyond us, on the other.


*Barzakh برزخ =/= anvare pak انوار پاک (pure lights)
Barzakh = seperation, obstacle, pardeh پرده, veil, (shadow? mediation?)
-everything material that can be addressed sensually, an evil negation.
-Barzakh is dark (that is a different kind of Barzakh than what i talked about with Mi? not really, there it is theorized as *shadow* and inter-mediation)
-projections happen in Barzakh




[from MOP with Mi]
We both take interests in morphology of historical forces and intensive thinking under the influence of materiality. To traffic in the tropics of an isthmus between the sensible world and the divine that was brought into our discussion, was proposed in my last letter those marvelous creatures living in the logic of precariousness, those who live in another temporality that is eyewitnessed in distanced pasts.
...
We are here on this site in a landscape of memory, in a progressive user-friendliness and a technology that signals our arrival in an Alam-e Barzakh (عالم برزخ), an ontological intermediate realm of images and forms, the creatures that populate this world have the incorporeality of “images,” much like the cyberspace we are born into and populate.
...
Not to remediate Barzakh (برزخ) but to propose a media theory, sketch it, and archive it for later. And there will be things that have to remain impossible to verify by us and in those records, the general-purpose language of the technologies that we choose to archive ourselves with, on the side of forgetting, the site of externalized memories, will not verify histories of presence tattooed under the ear of the elephant of our story, as you whispered somewhere in the dark.
[...]
Yes, vocal works that informed and influenced Qahveh-Khanehe (قهوه خانه) still can be found in some places of tea or cafe houses in Iran. They are called pardeh-Khani (پرده خوانی), here someone who is a pardeh-Dar پرده‌در (“-Dar” meaning that who tears apart the pardeh پرده, and pardeh meaning screen or veil--the concept of pardeh always contains “a perpetually hidden message”), ‘Khandan’ (خواندن) meaning in Farsi ‘to read’ or to sing-off a plain of signifiers, is also the verb ‘Darridan,’ (دریدن) [#Derridean acting] meaning to rip apart.
...
I am sorry; I am just entangled in the topologically impossible pardeh, as an interfacial space where the body and instrument of music meet. I am touching with my fingers the ‘first three’ pardehs of Setar ستار, and thinking about to jack into the vague differences between another two magical canvases / magnetic disks: Plane of Destiny (lohe mahfuz لوح محفوظ) and Plane of Memory (lohe hafez لوح حافظ), while listening to the virtual narratives of Ghahveh-Khane theater. Which creatures have you encountered, in your travels, that bypass human installations (of memory)?

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

a Zoroastrian data: pre-existential ~ azali ازلی, sabegh-ol-vojud سابق الوجود

atefiate mahsus [عاطفیت محسوس] (queer? a queerness not familiar with mysticism?)
queer is about ‘marahele johare atefi’ (مراحل جوهر عاطفی), mohabat محبت (kindness or love,) without leading to ‘faghre erfani’ (فقر عرفانی)

[i have problem with] (escaping) the ‘pit of nature’ (chahe tabiat چاه طبیعت) in Sohrevardi's thought
-(he inverses the earth from positive to negative geology, sphere becomes pit)
-the project of post-Babylonian autopoietic-self, a self that is defined by the ‘meta-fall’ into the “pit of nature.”

‘andam-shenasi peikare latif’ (اندام‌شناسی‌ پیکر لطیف)

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

[Avital]

what are the ways in which ajayebnameh relates to itself as its own future, its own labor and announced commitments?
(our reading of ajayeb is not a time quiz involving applicability and whether or not one “buys it.”)


i am “drifting” without anxiety into a new territory (in the philosophical work of ajayebnameh,) drifting involves randomization, fuzziness, and interference. there is no coherent programming nor concerted demand for rigor
(Avital: The origin of the demand for rigor, which has conditioned 20th century Anglo philosophy, “is the positivist's requirement that theories be testable. At the very least, a respectable philosophical theory should be stated with sufficient precision that one can tell what it says about something and whether its predictions about that subject matter are borne out” ---- to be capable of being articulated in the formalism of logic)

Testability furnishes the uninterrogated core of rigor. --> linked to a notion of computational realizability?

how “rigor” enables the displacement of truth by testability----as if the test could provide an unquestionably solid ground for overtaking reflection and other philosophically triggered interferences.

What kind of rigor is “a certain kind of rigor”?

what is being guaranteed if not the ability itself to guarantee

Everything rests on the *promise* of a certain kind of rigor.

the metaphysical fantasy of completion.

colonization of discourse with rigor

The discipline of programming leads to a shift in perspective on traditional issues. It invites--or rather requires--one to adopt what [Daniel] Dennett (1968) calls the design stance toward the mind

{ instrumental epistemology of how something works =/=? discovery }--> how can we suspend this “=/=”

trials and tryouts

[Avital's] phantasm of testing(‘s groundedness and unquestioned solidity)

...time-zone paradox of freezing the future in order to plan, in another register[...]