corbin on jabel

The fox squirrel's hymn

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 15:35:05 -0400

Proclus, as quoted in Corbin Alone with the Alone:

For, in truth, each thing prays according to the rank it occupies in nature, and sings the praise of the leader of the divine series to which it belongs, a spiritual or rational or physical or sensuous praise; for the heliotrope moves to the extent that it is free to move, and in its rotation, if we could hear the sound of the air buffeted by its movement, we should be aware that it is a hymn to its king, such as it is within the power of the plant to sing.

Nothing is so unnatural as a quiescent squirrel, such as I saw on the road today. Fox squirrels are beings of elemental fire, leaping like flames from branch to branch. They move quickly and unpredictably. They are tricksters: clever, destructive, and heedless of human rules.

Like Proclus' heliotrope, if we could hear the sound of the air buffeted by a squirrel’s movement, we should be aware that it is a hymn to its king.

“I saw him as I was able to comprehend him.”

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 07:03:01 -0400

Henry Corbin:

It goes without saying that the form in which each of us receives the master’s thought conforms to his “inner heaven”; that is the very principle of the theophanism of Ibn ‘Arabi, who for that reason can only guide each man individually to what he alone is capable of seeing, and not bring him to any collective pre-established dogma: Talem eum vidi qualem capere potui. The truth of the individual’s vision is proportional to his fidelity to himself, his fidelity to the one man who is able to bear witness to his individual vision and do homage to the guide who leads him to it. This is no nominalism or realism, but a decisive contemplation, far anterior to any such philosophical choice, a distant point to which we must also return if we wish to account for the deformations and rejections which the spirituality of Ibn ‘Arabi has so often incurred, sometimes for diametrically opposed reasons, but always because men have sidestepped the self-knowledge and self-judgment that this spirituality implies.

Sat, 29 Aug 2026 22:04:04 -0400

A wonderful story from Alone with the Alone.

It was actually in Tunis that one evening, withdrawn in a prayer niche of the Great Mosque, [Ibn ‘Arabī] composed a poem which he communicated to no one. He did not even commit it to writing, but registered the day and the hour of his inspiration in his memory. A few months later, in Seville, a young man unknown to him, approached him and recited the verses. Overwhelmed, Ibn ‘Arabī asked him: “Who is their author?” And the other replied: “Muhammad Ibn ‘Arabī” The young man had never seen Ibn ‘Arabī and did not know who was standing before him. Then how did he know the verses? A few months before (the very day and hour when the inspiration had come to Ibn ‘Arabi in Tunis) a stranger, an unknown pilgrim, had mingled, here in Seville, with a group of young men, and had recited a poem which they, delighted, had begged him to repeat in order that they might learn it by heart. Having done so the stranger had disappeared without making himself known or leaving any trace.

Allegory and symbol

Tue, 25 Aug 2026 07:03:10 -0400

Henry Corbin, Alone with the Alone:

At this point we must recapitulate the distinction, fundamental for us, between allegory and symbol; allegory is a rational operation, implying no transition either to a new plane of being or to a new depth of consciousness; it is a figuration, at an identical level of consciousness, of what might very well be known in a different way. The symbol announces a plane of consciousness distinct from that of rational evidence; it is the “cipher” of a mystery, the only means of saying something that cannot be apprehended in any other way; a symbol is never “explained” once and for all, but must be deciphered over and over again, just as a musical score is never deciphered once and for all, but calls for ever new execution.