Third live radio interview to air June 19
In the Spirit host Gary Goldberg has invited Tom back to continue their conversation on the spiritual vision of Henry Corbin. Tune in June 19 at 3:10pm Eastern Time (19:10 UTC). Streaming audio is available worldwide from WRPI, 91.5 MHz, in Troy, NY, the voice of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

After Prophecy: Imagination, Incarnation and the Unity of the Prophetic Tradition - Lectures for the Temenos Academy

From Spring Journal Books - The final volume in a trilogy on the implications of Henry Corbin's spiritual project.




Cover Photo by Jim Yasuda

The final volume in a trilogy of works which explore the implications of the spiritual vision of Henry Corbin (1903-1978). Corbin was one of the 20th century’s premier scholars of Islamic mysticism. He was a colleague of C. G. Jung and a major figure at the Eranos Conferences. He introduced the concept of the mundus imaginalis into contemporary thought and his work has provided much of the intellectual foundation for archetypal psychology as developed by James Hillman. But Corbin’s underlying theological and philosophical project was to provide a framework for understanding the unity of the religions of the monotheistic tradition: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. His profound grasp of the phenomenology of the religious imagination and his uniquely ecumenical approach make his work essential reading in a complex and pluralistic age.

Advance Reviews:

Henry Corbin was one of the most profound and original thinkers of the 20th century and without any doubt at all one of the most undersung — if not utterly misunderstood and spurned —scholars of our age. There are reasons for this: He chose to express his compelling and sometimes daunting meditations and ideas through the medium of the history and contents of esoteric Islamic thought. This book by Tom Cheetham will be celebrated by all who have known this but somehow felt powerless to change the situation. His clear, lucid, profound reading of Corbin, his patient, knowing and sincerely humble voice, will serve to commend and demystify the timeless and urgent message found in his subject. We must all be grateful to him for his labor for it has produced marvelously accessible and true statements touching the essence of Corbin's work such as: "Secretly the world is already a burning bush, but the quest is to see it that way, and to act as if you saw it that way." In the context of this beautifully written and deeply illumined study, such language never sounds facile, glib or clever. Rather it helps us see and act. One is tempted to say that anyone interested in anything must read this book. And I think I will. - Todd Lawson, University of Toronto, Author of Reason and Inspiration in Islam

Cheetham’s passion for the material carries the reader into an ever-deepening appreciation of the huge importance of Henry Corbin for the re-valuation of vision and imagination. Arabic and Persian parallels and arguments with Western thinkers including Levinas, Illich and Jung are set forth clearly and fairly. It seems to me a faultless book. – James Hillman

This book is a clear and profound contribution to any deep reflection on the sacred nature of creation. I have been humbled by Cheetham’s passion and deep commitment to his subject, a subject that is for him not one of mere intellectual curiosity, but a way, a path to be lived, suffered and fully encountered. For anyone practicing in the therapeutic professions it is an essential meditation on the whole purpose and direction of the cure of souls. - Sir Nicholas Pearson, Chairman, The Temenos Academy

Tom Cheetham has written a powerful book. With great talent, he shows how Henry Corbin's deep spirituality has the power to eliminate our "spiritual neediness," because it gives us what we are truly looking for: a non-literal god, a god that does not even ask to be called "God" (or "Goddess"), one that is the World, not beyond it. Cheetham's book should be required reading for all believers. He provides an alternative to the neurotic God complex that is tearing humanity apart. This book is much needed, offering a balm to wounds of the collective psyche. As an atheist who feels the divine beauty of this world, I can only applaud this reading of Corbin, who replaces belief in God with a profound capacity to perceive the harmony of the sensate world. - Ginette Paris, Pacifica Graduate Institute, Author of Wisdom of the Psyche

These are times which hunger for the wisdom of the prophets; but we have forgotten how to listen to their voices. It is Tom Cheetham's gift to make the worlds of vision accessible to us again. He does this with learning, with eloquence, with wonder, and with a sincere and compassionate humility which reaches out to each of us in the name of the Angel. – John Carey, Editor, Temenos Academy Review, Author of A Single Ray of the Sun and Ireland and the Grail

This is a work that deepens our appreciation of Corbin and his passion for the natural world. The author enhances Corbin's poetic analysis with his own aesthetic narrative, creating a synthesis that embodies the very ideals he seeks to interpret. With a deepening gaze, the author explores the creative role of the imagination in the formative ground of western religious traditions. According to Corbin, engaging the soul of the world through the mediating power of the the Imaginal, is an act of love. The author explores this theme fully through his analysis of mystical poverty, contemplative knowledge, the luminosity of the earth, the theophanic vision, the Christ angel, the divine sensorium, alchemical transformation, the spiritual humanism of Ivan Illich, western iconoclasm, and the centrality of gnosis, all in the service of individual awakening to spiritual responsibility. The author offers a visionary alternative to the confusions of contemporary life while also celebrating the creative capacity of soul to engage the world with hope. Highly recommended. – Lee Irwin, Chair, Department of Religious Studies, College of Charleston, Author of Awakening to Spirit


Contents

1 - Mystical Poverty and the Theory of the World
2 - The Un-Refused Feast
3 - The Flame of Things
4 - The Cross of Light
5 - Touching Grace
6 - Words of the Heart
7 - A Personal Story

Buy this book from:

Spring Journal Books
Barnes & Noble
amazon.com
amazon.fr
amazon.co.uk

Green Man, Earth Angel: The Prophetic Tradition and the Battle for the Soul of the World. (SUNY Series in Western Esoteric Traditions) (2005)


Tom Cheetham has written a remarkable book that has the power of shifting our way of imagining the world ... He is one of the most courageous thinkers I have ever read ... I hope you enter into a study of a work that certainly does not belong to the world of throwaway books. This book requires slow reading, for as you read these living words you are undergoing a transformation. At the end of reading, the world will not be the same. - from the Foreword by Robert Sardello

Nowhere does this far ranging and sophisticated survey of the loss of the world soul allow for easy summary; it is far too baroque in architecture and in thematic interests... - enough to rattle anyone's caged thoughts into new territory. One of [Cheetham's] clarion calls is to return to thinking as an imaginal act... [his] style and manner is scholarly-poetic for he calls on the reader to imagine his work with him... [He] argues that the world's languages need to be heard once more by ears grown deaf by dogma, closed by arthritic credos and waxed over by wandering abstractions that bypass the world soul's desire to be recognized on its own terms. – Dennis Patrick Slattery, Pacifica Graduate Institute, Author of The Wounded Body

A passionate cry for the reclamation of the imaginal realm denied by the dualistic cosmologies of the Abrahamic religions--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam ... Green Man, Earth Angel is a very engaging read. Cheetham ... brings ... much-needed attention to the ground-breaking work of Henri Corbin in the field of Sufism and provides throughout ... a learned and cogent exposition of Islamic esoteric thought in the work of Ibn 'Arabi. - Melinda Weinstein in Esoterica

This book speaks trenchantly to themes that I have returned to time and again in my writings and throws new light on them. It is a very important addition to the ongoing discussion of where we are in human history." - Huston Smith, Author of The World's Religions

Dennis Patrick Slattery's Full Review is in Spring Journal 76

Buy the book from:

SUNY Press
amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
amazon.fr

The World Turned Inside Out: Henry Corbin and Islamic Mysticism (2003)

A deep reading of Tom Cheetham's The World Turned Inside Out could have the effect of turning the reader inside out! Not only will a person discover in this book a thorough understanding of the remarkable and important vision of Henry Corbin, the great French scholar of Iranian Islam. The reader will also be engaged by a politically useful understanding of the religion of Islam generally, of mystical and negative theology, of monotheism, of the philosophy of imagination, of language and the textures of textuality, and of the nature of reading and thinking. Among other things, a careful reading of this book can inform current interpretations of the politics of terrorism, its wars and the wars against it. In short, there exists here a shaking of the foundations of human perspectives that comes to nothing short of a radical revisioning of all attempts to make sense of the life and meaning of being in the world. - David L. Miller, Watson-Ledden Professor of Religion, Emeritus, Syracuse University, Core Faculty Member, Pacifica Graduate Institute, Author of Christs, Three Faces of God & Hells and Holy Ghosts.

A remarkable creative synthesis of the genius of Henry Corbin, the silent precursor of archetypal psychology. Tom Cheetham gives the gift of a metaphysics of interiority balancing pervasive, destructive, suffocating, spectator consciousness. And it is a convivial interiority, filled with spiritual presences. The soul can breathe again because it has found its homeland, the Soul of the World. - Robert Sardello, author of Freeing the Soul from Fear

The first book in English devoted to the great French author Henry Corbin, The World Turned Inside Out is an excellent introduction to and survey of Corbin's work and thought. Corbin is unique among twentieth-century scholars of Islam in his ability to imaginatively enter the world of the Sufi gnostics, and to apply their insights to the modern world. The World Turned Inside Out provides us with a bracing and stimulating overview of this seminal author's work and its implications: this is a book for all who suspect that, to paraphrase Plato, there is more to life than that which can be grasped in one's hands. - Arthur Versluis, Editor of Esoterica and author of Wisdom's Children: A Christian Esoteric Tradition.

This book does an absolutely splendid job of opening up Corbin's thought to the general reader. Corbin's work addresses our contemporary situation in a most direct way as this book shows, and the author has made an important contribution to both the philosophy of religion and the history of religions. This is an interesting, careful and important piece of work that I hope will gain the recognition that it deserves. - Charles J. Adams, Emeritus Professor of Islamic Studies, McGill University

Read a review by Pierre Lory in English or in French

Buy the book from:

Spring Journal Books
amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
amazon.fr

Dogmas, Idols and the Edge of Chaos

This essay, published in Human Ecology Review in 2000, received a John Templeton Foundation Exemplary Award in the "Expanding Humanity's Vision of God" essay competition. It was written in part as a response to studies in theoretical biology under the direction of Stuart Kauffman at the Santa Fe Institute and experiences at the Institute's first Complex Systems Summer School in 1990. An earlier version was presented at the Xth International Conference of the Society for Human Ecology in Montreal in 1999. The essay can be accessed here.

The 2001 Eranos Conference, Ascona

Top Row: Rainer van Neerboos, Anne-Marie Gabella, Dieter Beschorner, Robert Bosnak; Middle Row: Wanda Luban, Mrs. Dosenbach, Robert Hinshaw, Peter Mueri, Pierre de LaBarre, ?, Monique Salzman, ?, Rudolf Ritsema, Shantena Sabbadini, Jay Livernois; Seated: Gisela Binda, Eugene Taylor, Hermann Pfaender, Masayuki Sato, Jane Reid, Noboru Maruyama, Nobuhiro Kubota, Paola Maria Gabutti, Tom Cheetham, Ben Sells

Eranos Conference: Unknown Gods, Called or Not Called
Ascona, Switzerland, October 3-7.

Noboru Maruyama - Tenjinsama and I
Ben Sells - Smoke and Mirrors: How Psychotherapy Hides from Images
Eugene Taylor - William James: Yet To Be Revealed
Robert Bosnak - Alchemy and the Unknown
Masayuki Sato - Is There Civilization Without God?
Nobuhiro Kubota - When Life Meets Life
Alan Guggenbühl - Sexual Abuse and Violence: Hidden Gods?
Tom Cheetham - Before I Was a Planet:
Poverty, Poetry and the Theory of Things
(Cheetham's lecture on Henry Corbin has been published in a revised
version as Chapter One of After Prophecy).

Visionary Clairvoyance

At the close of his essay "The Paradox of Monotheism", Henry Corbin writes as follows:

[The] pre-eminence of visionary clairvoyance may render us clairvoyant with regard to a prophetic symbol that André Neher, in his book The Exile of the Word, invites us to understand in a completely different manner: “Before the two statues at the south portal of the cathedral at Strasbourg, he writes, more than one Christian has been struck by the captivating beauty of the Synagoga, of this woman so astonishingly young, prevented from seeing by the blindfold on her eyes, and who surely has heard nothing, and hears nothing, as she pursues some interior dream whose silence speaks volumes more than the eloquent expression of the Ecclesia.” The blindfold on the eyes of the young woman alerts us that her vision is beyond the visible. The certitude of this visionary clairvoyance is essential as well to a German poet, a Christian and theologian of our time, of whom André Neher brings witness. The poet Albrecht Goes came to sense that the Synagoga is not only more beautiful but more true, in a metaphysical dimension, than the exoteric Ecclesia. Thus he says: Sie ist’s, die sieht, “It is She who sees.”


















References:
Henry Corbin, “Le paradoxe du monothèisme,” in Le Paradoxe du Monothèisme. Paris: Ed. de l'Herne (Le Livre de Poche), 1981, 69-70. (English translation available here).
André Neher, L’Exile de la Parole, Paris, Le Seuil, 1970, 50.

Synagoga & Ecclesia, column figures, South Transept Portal, Strasbourg Cathedral
(Images courtesy of Mary Ann Sullivan, Digital Imaging Project)

Corbin and Portmann at Eranos

This undated photo is from the Eranos Archive. Adolf Portmann (1897-1982) was a Swiss biologist and a major figure at the Eranos Conferences where he lectured for many years. Selected writings have been collected as The Living Form and the Seeing Eye: Essays in Philosophical Biology (1991). His phenomenological approach to the study of animal form and behavior provides an important complement to the dominant contemporary paradigms. Noted philosopher of science Marjorie Grene devotes a chapter to Portmann in her book The Understanding of Nature: Essays in Philosophical Biology (1974).

Henry Corbin (1903-1978)

Director of Studies in Islam and the Religions of Arabia, École practique des Hautes Études, Paris

Professor of Islamic Philosophy at the University of Teheran

Lecturer at the Eranos Conferences in Ascona, Switzerland

Co-founder, University of St. John of Jerusalem

Photo Courtesy of the Eranos Foundation, Ascona, Switzerland

Complete Bibliography (from the Friends of Stella & Henry Corbin)