Human beings have two quite distinct ways of knowing, and always have had – except that during the last four hundred years or so, one particular way has become super-dominant, exercising an authority (especially in the West) which has come to determine our assumptions about how everything happens.
In this contribution to Daniela Boccassini’s wonderful journal, I talk about my ‘moments of awakening’ through music, and also the author Fred Gettings’ similar experiences in the Basilica of San Miniato al Monte in Florence.
In this chapter I argue that a Platonic perspective would benefit a trajectory of paranormal research which seeks to gain some hold on the ontological status of observed phenomena, through establishing a framework for modes of perception beyond the rational.
In this chapter, I explore the phenomena of visual apparitions of daimons and spirits, and how in the neoplatonic traditions they have always been seen as lights.
The profoundly alchemical implications of Corbin’s imaginal hermeneutics, in a spiritual sense, are illustrated by his interest in the hieratic art of statue animation, which he describes as:
neither a simple dramaturgy of the unconscious or psychological allegory, nor a simple manipulation of materials practiced in the manner of a mere chemist or pharmacist (droguiste). It is an operation at once material and spiritual, the juncture between the two aspects remaining the hidden secret underneath the symbols of the “Philosophers” (as the alchemists designate themselves).
Alchemy for Corbin is essentially the inner, spiritual work of attaining union between the human soul and its heavenly counterpart
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