All the World an Icon Quotes

“The symbol is not an artificially constructed sign: it flowers in the soul spontaneously to announce something that cannot be expressed otherwise. It is the unique expression of the thing symbolized as of a reality that thus becomes transparent to the soul, but which itself transcends all expression.”
― Tom Cheetham, All the World an Icon: Henry Corbin and the Angelic Function of Beings

“Events, or acts of understanding, are the actions of a subject expressed as a verb, the reality of which derives from the person who conjugates it.3 For”
― Tom Cheetham, All the World an Icon: Henry Corbin and the Angelic Function of Beings

“He refers to the Imagination as an organ of perception. Without it, all the phenomena of religious experience are impossible. It is the means by which we perceive symbols. The Active Imagination guides, anticipates, molds sensory perception; that is why it transmutes sensory data into symbols. The Burning Bush is only a brushwood fire if it is merely perceived by the sensory organs. In order that Moses may perceive the Burning Bush and hear the Voice calling him “from the right side of the valley”—in short, in order that there may be a theophany—an organ of trans-sensory perception is needed.22”
― Tom Cheetham, All the World an Icon: Henry Corbin and the Angelic Function of Beings

“Having Khidr as a master gives the disciple a transcendent dimension. It confers a 'personal, direct, and immediate bond with the Godhead' . . . Each disciple becomes what Khidr is, the center of the world.”
― Tom Cheetham, All the World an Icon: Henry Corbin and the Angelic Function of Beings

“Many people, especially non-Muslims, who read the Qur’an for the first time, are struck by what appears as a kind of incoherence from the human point of view. It is neither like a highly mystical text nor a manual of Aristotelian logic, though it contains both mysticism and logic. It is not just poetry, though it contains the most powerful poetry. The text of the Qur’an reveals human language crushed by the power of the Divine Word. It is as if human language were scattered into a thousand fragments like a wave scattered into drops against the rocks at sea. One feels through the shattering effect left upon the language of the Qur’an, the power of the Divine whence it originated. The Qur’an displays human language with all the weakness inherent in it becoming suddenly the recipient of the Divine Word and displaying its frailty before a power which is infinitely greater than man can imagine.5”
― Tom Cheetham, All the World an Icon: Henry Corbin and the Angelic Function of Beings

“Corbin is making the case for the indissoluble link between philosophy and spirituality. He writes, “henceforth we must cease to separate the history of philosophy from the history of spirituality. Philosophy itself is only a partial symptom of the secret that transcends all rational statement and that tends to express itself in what we may comprehensively term a spirituality.”6 If philosophical reflection does not reach a state of spiritual consciousness, then “philosophical discussions have scarcely more significance than an administrative conversation. This is why the history of philosophy should never be treated apart from the history of spirituality, and indeed of daily devotional experiences.”7”
― Tom Cheetham, All the World an Icon: Henry Corbin and the Angelic Function of Beings