All the World an Icon: Henry Corbin and the Angelic Function of Beings [Paperback]

All the World an Iconis the fourth book in an informal quartet of works by Tom Cheetham on the spirituality of Henry Corbin, a major twentieth-century scholar of Sufism and colleague of C. G. Jung, whose influence on contemporary religion and the humanities is beginning to become clear. Cheetham's books have helped spark a renewed interest in the work of this important, creative religious thinker.

Henry Corbin (1903-1978) was professor of Islamic religion at the Sorbonne in Paris and director of the department of Iranic studies at the Institut Franco-Iranien in Teheran. His wide-ranging work includes the first translations of Heidegger into French, studies in Swedenborg and Boehme, writings on the Grail and angelology, and definitive translations of Persian Islamic and Sufi texts. He introduced such seminal terms as the imaginal realm and theophany into Western thought, and his use of the Shi'ite idea ofta'wilor spiritual interpretation influenced psychologist James Hillman and the literary critic Harold Bloom. His books were read by a broad range of poets including Charles Olson and Robert Duncan, and his impact on American poetry, says Cheetham, has yet to be fully appreciated. His published titles in English includeCreative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, Avicenna and the Visionary Recital, andThe Man of Light in Iranian Sufism.

As the religions of the Book place the divine Word at the center of creation, the importance of hermaneutics, the theory and practice of interpretation, cannot be overstated. In the theology and spirituality of Henry Corbin, the mystical heart of this tradition is to be found in the creative, active imagination; the alchemy of spiritual development is best understood as a story of the soul's search for the Lost Speech. Cheetham eloquently demonstrates Corbin's view that the living interpretation of texts, whether divine or human—or, indeed, of the world itself seen as the Texlã5