THE fact that Henry Corbin was inspired by the Islamic mysticism of Avicenna (980-1037), Shahab al-Din Yahya ibn Habash Suhrawardi (1154-1191) and Mulla Sadra (1572-1640), led him to develop an esoteric system in which a complex hierarchy of angels came to be seen as a unique link between humans and the divine. There is a strong Traditionalist dimension to this interpretation in the sense that Corbin appreciates the comparative nature of the angelic component located within forms of belief which, ordinarily, are considered antithetical to one another. One thinks of the roles performed by Metatron within Judaism, the Holy Spirit within Christianity, the Archangel Gabriel within Islam, and Perfect Nature within the field of Western Hermeticism.
It was Suhrawardi who insisted that we are each connected to the ‘Fravarti’ spirits that appear in Mazdean angelology, but Corbin takes this one step further by suggesting that Metatron, the Holy Spirit, the Archangel Gabriel and Perfect Nature “can come together in the same city-temple”. These figures are not anthropomorphic, like the winged angels we see fluttering around in most visual accounts of Abrahamic spirituality, not to mention those of the modern New Age movement, but represent a kind of cosmic intellect in which we ourselves are able to participate. In fact Corbin believes that we even struggle alongside our personal angel to secure both presence and individuation.
He also learnt from Mulla Sadra that when it comes to fulfilling one’s true worth as a human being, it is necessary for the body to pass through a multitude of states and that one’s mode of existence determines one’s actual essence. This happens in the active imagination, something I alluded to several days ago. However, Corbin also believed that the means of uncovering a revelation of this kind is achieved through hermeneutics and that the active imagination is the space that lies between the soul and a religious text. In other words, unlike the manner in which a modern-day critic might simply dissect something as part of a linguistic exercise, hermeneutics can unveil spiritual truth by way of metaphysical individuation.
Apart from the more obvious influence of C.G. Jung (1875-1961), Corbin developed this idea after studying the way in which Martin Luther (1483-1546) had employed speculative grammar. Having wrestled with the Psalm verse In justitia tua libera me (‘Deliver me from confusion by Thy justice’), the Protestant Reformer suddenly realised that the connection between justice and deliverance was to be found in ‘significatio passiva’. As Corbin explains, “that is to say, thy justice whereby we are made into men, thy holiness whereby we are hallowed, etc.”
Having already familiarised himself with the thought of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), the Frenchman understood how Luther was using an early form of phenomenology to interpret ‘being’ as an imperative. The active ‘Be!’ operates through we humans as a ‘significatio passiva’ on account of religious passion being transformed into action by the divine. Corbin suggests that “the act of thinking is simultaneously a being-thought by the Angel”.
Knowledge and experience are unified, with each person becoming the thought that is thought through him and, thus, personified in him. When the Angel is promoted to the status of a Person, the true role of hermeneutics is achieved through the reality that it brings to the individual. The divine spark becomes the Paraclete that awakens the imaginal possibilities of the primordial. Or, to put it another way: it is not me, but the wind that blows through me.
