Esoteric Literature: Update 55 - Byzantium and Beyond

>>2977801
>English translations of the writings of Mulla Sadra
Mulla Sadra's philosophy ambitiously synthesized Avicennism, Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi's Illuminationist philosophy, Ibn Arabi's Sufi metaphysics, and the theology of the Ash'ari school and Twelvers.

Mulla Sadra provides immutability only to God, while intrinsically linking essence and existence to each other, and God's power over existence. In so doing, Mulla Sadra simultaneously provided for God's authority over all things, while also solving the problem of God's knowledge of particulars, without being inherently responsible for them — even as God's authority over the existence of existences that provide the framework for evil to exist. This clever solution provides for Freedom of Will, God's Supremacy, the Infiniteness of God's Knowledge, the existence of Evil, and a definition of existence and essence which leaves two linked insofar as Man is concerned, but separate insofar as God is concerned.

Another central concept of Mulla Sadra's philosophy is the theory of "substantial motion", which is "based on the premise that everything in the order of nature, including celestial spheres, undergoes substantial change and transformation as a result of the self-flow and penetration of being which gives every concrete individual entity its share of being. In contrast to Aristotle and Avicenna, Sadra defines change as an all-pervasive reality running through the entire cosmos including the category of substance."

>>2977862
The Causal Nexus of Mulla Sadra was a form of Existential Ontology within a Cosmological Framework that Islam supported. For Mulla Sadra the Causal "End" is as pure as its corresponding "Beginning", which instructively places God at both the beginning and the end of the creative act. God's capacity to measure the intensity of Existential Reality by measuring Causal Dynamics' and their Relationship to Origin, as opposed to their effects, provided the acceptable framework for God's Judgement of Reality without being tainted by its Particulars. This was an ingenious solution to a question that had haunted Islamic philosophy for one thousand years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulla_Sadra#Philosophical_ideas

>>2977866
Suhrawardi uses pre-Islamic Iranian gnosis, synthesizing it with Greek and Islamic wisdom. The main influence from pre-Islamic Iranian thought on Suhrawardi is in the realm of angelology and cosmology. He believed that the ancient Persians' wisdom was shared by Greek philosophers such as Plato as well as by the Egyptian Hermes and considered his philosophy of illumination a rediscovery of this ancient wisdom. According to Nasr, Suhrawardi provides an important link between the thought of pre-Islamic and post-Islamic Iran and a harmonious synthesis between the two. And Henry Corbin states: "In northwestern Iran, Sohravardi (d. 1191) carried out the great project of reviving the wisdom or theosophy of ancient pre-Islamic Zoroastrian Iran."[16]

In his work Alwah Imadi, Suhrawardi offers an esoteric interpretation of Ferdowsi's Epic of Kings (Shah Nama)[17] in which figures such as Fereydun, Zahak, Kay Khusraw[17] and Jamshid are seen as manifestations of the divine light. Seyyed Hossein Nasr states: "Alwah 'Imadi is one of the most brilliant works of Suhrawardi in which the tales of ancient Persia and the wisdom of gnosis of antiquity in the context of the esoteric meaning of the Quran have been synthesized".[17]

In this Persian work Partaw Nama and his main Arabic work Hikmat al-Ishraq, Suhrawardi makes extensive use of Zoroastrian symbolism[17] and his elaborate angelology is also based on Zoroastrian models.[17] The supreme light he calls both by its Quranic and Mazdean names, al-nur al-a'zam (the Supreme Light) and Vohuman (Bahman). Suhrawardi refers to the hukamayya-fars (Persian philosophers) as major practitioners of his Ishraqi wisdom and considers Zoroaster, Jamasp, Goshtasp, Kay Khusraw, Frashostar and Bozorgmehr as possessors of this ancient wisdom.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahab_al-Din_Yahya_ibn_Habash_Suhrawardi#Suhrawardi_and_pre-Islamic_Iranian_thought

Thoughtful bump?

>>2977801
look, a /his/ post with actual bearing upon the subjects of history and humanities, that also is NOT shilling a viewpoint! Let's see how long it takes to get angrily reported for being relevant and on topic!

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>>2978128
>tfw you will probably never read Mulla Sadra's mystical treatises without learning Arabic.

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https://global.oup.com/academic/product/satanic-feminism-9780190664473?cc=us&lang=en

New from Oxford University Press:

Lucifer as the Liberator of Woman in Nineteenth-Century Culture

Author Per Faxneld

Uses material never before analyzed by a historian of religions, or, in many cases, by anyone else
Highlights a previously unknown, significant and highly colorful current in the history of feminism and alternative religion
Sheds new light on several important names in esotericism, art and literature, by demonstrating how their ideas stand in a tradition of Satanic feminism
The inter-disciplinary approach makes visible features and connections that have previously been obscured to those working only with the material and perspective of a single field

>>2978151
In the process of trying to learn those crazy Tusken's alphabet, lately. Quite a different animal from, say, Hebrew or Greek.

>>2978344
I dunno, my brain is just hardwired to understand logographic syllabaries more readily than Semetic writing.

All these years and I can barely read or speak Hebrew but can read out Mayan stele with glottal stops in all the right places.

>>2978382
Wish the local CC offered more language courses. Can always take them when it's time to head back for my next degree, but it would be much better and cheaper to take them individually at the CC. Especially considering that they have a LOT of talented and brilliant Uni. professors working there as adjuncts. Plenty from SU, for example.

>>2978151
he also wrote in persian

>>2978480
Yeah if my adventures in Avestan are at all representative of late/middle Persian that's not an improvement (for my baseline comprehension skills).

I need an index of all the contact info for Encyclopedia Iranica contributors :s

>>2978382
Is there a good resource you know of for learning ancient Hewbrew?

>>2978790
Been trying to find a good one myself, anon

>>2977801
Glad to see mystical Islam. By any chance would you have anything on alchemy on creating life by muslim alchemists of the middle ages? Specifically Takwin,

>>2977801
>>A.'.A.'.>Philosophy
>Lux in Tenebras: The Visual and Symbolic in Western Esotericism (From Brill)

Can't find it in there.

>>2979070
I wish.

Secretum Secretorum made it into Latin and English but it's easy to find online.

>>2978790
>>2979063
>I wish.

>>2979085
Are you the guy in the other thread? It's right where it should be, alphabetically, in my display.

Bump?

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>tfw Mulla Sadra literally solved Islam but nobody gives a fuck today because "muh qutb" and" muh wahab tinged salafism."

>>2977801
Got anything on Minoan rituals?

>>2979537
MINOAN, god I wish, that's a good question.

My Euro folder goes all over the place. You might get a WEE bit of archaeological speculation but that's probably the extent of it. It, like reconstructing actual gnostic initiations, isn't a popular topic, if a text exists on it at all.

Poke around in Euro tho and you'll probably find something up your alley.

Hey guys mega might be shitting the bed for a couple of the new texts, working on a fix.

>>2979551
Thanks, I'll take a look.

those interested in astrology really ought to take a look at this exceptional work: https://www.scribd.com/doc/143421634/Titus-Burckhardt-Mystical-Astrology-According-to-Ibn-Arabi

>>2980247
fug do you have this in a place that isnt scribd

>>2980332
try libgen. original french version is also up online.

Hey guys I still can't tell what's up for the public and what isn't.

I can AT LEAST link the abhinavagupta texts in the next post before I get occupied with other things.

>>2980560
https://mega.nz/#!EMpEVIKT!FYPxWZgLS6x08mpZM_Tv0TZ38DoGy7Imhq_b00oenaE

https://mega.nz/#!ZBowDR7T!NIjQyeBA476q9CMV05ipYfdGQI4ryfqNN4oWTypJt8Y

https://mega.nz/#!0JAC3DqC!mD4npkMLZb2FNW1N5gEHfsw704Cj_I_mDpisagm7YRg

https://mega.nz/#!xNInAbrA!IHe3yzudYFx08YVSiwr7tLXo-3qsqM5FOHxvg_w1PM8

https://mega.nz/#!dJoBTLRL!wmz_kKVF-R6PKb1C5_8CX9MiCnzXVhdLTF_8GiEpJeE

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>>2980565
>>2980560
Brill literally JUST posted pic related:

The first copies of Where Dreams May Come: Incubation Sanctuaries in the Greco-Roman World by Gil H. Renberg have arrived!

The book examines the ancient religious phenomenon of “incubation", the ritual of sleeping at a divinity’s sanctuary in order to obtain a prophetic or therapeutic dream.

>>2980582
That could theoretically go right in your Chumbley folder

Anything on Shinto and Korean Shamanism Th0th?

>>2981717
I know but it feels more like a "Euro" drop.

>>2981932
I've got nothing on Korea.
My "Eastern" folder is almost entirely devoted to Tantra.

>>2977801
Does anyone have problem about reading books? I can only read books when i am on bus or something.

>>2983135
Nope, it's one of my favorite pastimes. The other day there was a text on Managerial Economics in a waiting room, and picked it up to keep myself occupied. Learning is good. Reading is good. It stimulates the mind, and the head, and the brain ;-)