Tom Cheetham Knihy

The first book in English to synthesize the remarkable work of Henry Corbin, the great French philosopher, Christian theologian, and scholar of Islamic mysticism. Corbin, a colleague of C. G. Jung's at Eranos, and one themost important visionaries of the twentieth century, had a seminal influence on the development of archetypal psychology, especially through the idea of the "imaginal world." Corbin's work bridges the gap between the philosophy and theology ofthe West and the mysticism of Islam and provides a radical and unified vision of the three great monotheistic religions basedupon the Creative Imagination. One obstacle for the reader of Corbin's writings is the fact that the "Oriental" philosophy in which he came to find his home is little known. Corbin's heart lay in Iranian Shi'ism-for many people an obscure branch of a poorly understood religion. The mention of Iran or of Shi'ite Islam conjures up for too many only visions of violence and intolerance. Yet the message that Corbin brings from Iran and from Islam is potentially of such psychological and cultural importance as to make the effort of familiarizing ourselves with his work and the traditions from which it springs more than worthwhile. Second, revised edition.

Corbin's work on the role of imagination in the religions and its fundamental place in human life has had a lasting and wide-ranging influence on contemporary poetry and the humanities. Among his most influential readers were the poets Charles Olson and Robert Duncan and the archetypal psychologist James Hillman. Central to their common vision is the creative power of language, understood not as a human invention but as a fundamental feature of reality. This new book by philosopher, biologist, poet, and teacher Tom Cheetham provides an overview of Corbin's "psychocosmology" and its significance for Hillman's archetypal psychology, contemporary poetics, and spiritual practice. It will be of interest to psychotherapists, artists, poets, and anyone who has ever wondered at the mysterious power of language and the imagination to transform the human soul.

This book explores the status of religion in the Post-Prophetic Age, especially as seen through the eyes of the French Islamic scholar Henry Corbin. In lucid and simple prose, Cheetham explores the creative role of the imagination in the formative ground of the three great Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. For Corbin, engaging the soul of the world through the mediating power of the Imaginal is an act of love, a theme Cheetham expands through his analysis of such concepts as mystical poverty, contemplative knowledge, the luminosity of the earth, the theophanic vision, the Christ Angel, Incarnation, the divine sensorium, alchemical transformation, the spiritual humanism of Ivan Illich, Western iconoclasm, and the centrality of gnosis.Second, revised edition.