Posts in: imaginal

A sower went forth to sow

Vaclav Havel, via Donny: Being spellbound within me and Being spellbound within the world can join hands anytime, anywhere and in any way: when I look into the crown of a tree or into someone’s eyes, when I succeed in writing you a good letter, when I am moved by an opera on television, when a passage from Levinas sets my thoughts swirling, when our visits work out, when I understand the meaning of my compassion for the weather-woman, when I help someone or when someone helps me, when something important happens, or when nothing in particular happens at all.

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I’m in the final twenty pages of Corbin’s Alone with the Alone. I estimate I’ve understood a third, kinda understood a third, and not at all understood a third; it has, nevertheless, been worth it. There’s so much here to think about. Reading it took me back to those first few years after leaving the Holiness churches when I was reading academic theology that was way over my head. It pushed me in important ways, and sent me on so many side quests.

What led me to this book was a desire to have a fuller understanding of imagination/“the imaginal” as something more than “fantasy.” That led me first to Corbin’s lecture on Mundus Imaginalis (pdf) and then to this book. I think I have the beginnings of that fuller understanding now, for which I am very grateful to Corbin. Just don’t ask me to put it in my own words yet. :) That’ll take more time.