Imaginal Love: The Meanings of Imagination in Henry Corbin and James Hillman Paperback – May 1, 2015

This is an important little book. It is Cheetham’s 5th book on Henry Corbin, as well as on his influences on and similarities and differences from James Hillman and Carl Jung. This current book provides an easy entry into Corbin’s work and why he was so influential in the fields of spirituality, psychology and poetry. The book is informative, providing summaries of Corbin, Hillman and Jung’s work, while also being a work of beauty, poetry, and I dare say, even theophany and gnosis – as it helps us understand to see and understand the role of the imagination in Creation and how we are creators and participators as well as createds.The book also achieves a good balance of a conversational tone in which Cheetham is present and works alongside Corbin and Hillman and shares of himself as well as engaging in scholarly work. Perhaps it is no coincidence as Cheetham is releasing his first book of poetry, Boundary Violations, this year.The primary focus of Imaginal Love is on the central or at least integral role of imagination in spirituality, poetry, and humanity. Corbin wrote of a tripartite model of reality, with the typical dualism of matter and spirit being linked by a third realm, which he referred to with various concepts, such as the mundus imaginalis, the Imaginal, or the ‘alam al-mithal. Those familiar with Hillman and Jung’s work will see the influence of these concepts in the methods of Active Imagination and the emphasis on the imaginal and mythopoetic. Regardless of what he called this realm, its importance was that it was here that matter was spiritualized and spirit materialized. This third realm connects and orients matter toward spirit. Corbin traced the loss of this realm to the 12th century with the beginning of philosophical systems that separated spirit from matter.Awareness of or connection to this intermediate realm creates a different state of being, it engenders a different mode of seeing, being and experiencing the world. This state, the Sufis called ta’wil, is a state of interpretation of texts, world and being with continuous reference to the Divine or the secular could say the numinous. This state of being is crucial to understand visions and dreams, whether they are from indigenous traditions (which did not develop the matter-spirit division) or of modern experiencers of visions, such as Carl Jung or Philip K. Dick. The Imaginal is thus not only crucial to understanding mysticism, poetry and visionary consciousness, but it is also a way of life or a path in which an individual can strive to be open to states of being that come from the imaginative connections between spirit and matter.Orientation toward the Imaginal, Love of it, or connection to the Love that it is a source of, re-spiritualizes and re-humanizes. Corbin writes that one is human only in relation to God, or God’s intermediary, the angel of one’s being (the ‘alam al-mithal is also the angelic realm, the intermediaries between Spirit and matter). His work is thus a therapeutic endeavour in which an individual moves from a state of disconnected matter (an object) toward a state of spirit and matter in constant back and forth creation, in which the object can move toward becoming a subject, or a Person. Thus we are fully human only when we let go of our views of ourselves as egos and material, physical objects. We become human or re-humanized through letting go of our insistence on ourselves as separate matter and egos and open our hearts to Relationship.This is a wonderful and beautiful book, important for establishing Cheetham as a Person as well as in illuminating the importance of the imaginal and the works of Corbin and Hillman.

Cheetham gives up the traditional subject/object, (mind/body, literal/metaphorical, form/matter) philosophical perspectives for an idle/icon paradoxical world view, within a cyclical time and with no space for consciousness, the unconscious, the world, me, you, to be experienced as abstract nouns. All these rather become modes that live and view life in verbs and adverbs and speaks of events rather than objects. Everything "bursts with life". Presence of concrete being, transforming our need to conquer and destroy into one of discovering, exploring, creating, loving.It is truly an impressive book that transforms into an excellent source for depth clinicians to learn about the way of Jungian psychotherapy.Cheetham awakens Corbin at his psychological best this time and does it very well to the point there were times I thought I was reading James Hillman himself, bringing up to date his ideas.I was searching for this book way back at the turn of the century. It had become obvious then that there was a need for further discussion of Corbin's literature within Archetypal Psychology. But political & religious events illuminated psychology in a very peculiar and unique way through the first decade of our present century. Of special concern for this present book review, it seemed these events may have slow down and even stop for a time the creative flow of Archetypal Psychology, a psychology characterized by the integration of psychological Jung with mystical, abrahamic (Judeo-Christo-Islamic) Henry Corbin. It becomes obvious that all along through that first decade, Cheetham continued developing and integrating important mystical/philosophical Corbin into Archetypal Psychology in a very successful way, returning Archetypal Psychology back to it's corresponding top position at keeping alive the recreation of Jung's Analytical Psychology's original theoretical notion.

Cheetham provides a beautifully written comparison between Corbin and Hillman’s perspectives of imagination and psyche as well as archetypal psychology’s influence on mankind and the individuation of our angel.

This book is a study of Henry Corbin's and James Hillman's takes on Sufi mysticism, particularly the writings of Ibn Arabi. Some background in Corbin and Hillman would be helpful in reading the book. A central feature of the book is Cheetham's distinction between Idol and Icon, and the way he works with this distinction has provided me with a shorthand for the voluminous and complex late 20th and early 21st century literature on technical scientific rationality as an hegemonic ideology in the West. On this view idols are worshipped, distant, dogmatic, averse to discourse, whereas icons are reflections of possible truths, possible gods, centered on Imagination rather than ratiocination. An example of an IDOL is the Market. It so engages our lives with its dogmatic beliefs and hegemonic practices that there is no way to argue it, yet it is no less fundamentalist than religious brands of fundamentalism. An example of an ICON is Mother Earth – the ground of all the resources upon which economies grow. The image of Mother Earth leaves discourse on the possibilities and probable consequences of a wide range of economic ideas and practices. Icons are open to possible worlds. Cheetham does not use these examples, but his book has opened them to me, and that is what a good book is supposed to do.Cheetham is a kind of mystic; and it on this point I found the book a challenge. I know almost nothing of alchemy or angels, and he talks about these as if the reader grasps and accepts these images. I did not find them useful, bur nor were they harmful. They did not keep me from reading and learning from this good book.

Imagination and Creativity are great. Good Book. Accesible insights for those unfamiliar with Henry Corbin. If you like creativity and transcendence, you will like it.

I became a fan of Corbin who is difficult to read but Tom Cheetham brings his work to light in today’s short attention spans. Loved this ‘It is in the heart that the inner and outer become one.’ So learning the imagination is learning the ways of the heart.”

A stunning book. This is one of my all time favourite books, one that I am sure I will reread numerous times. It is an astounding creative exploration and rxtension of the writings and life views of Henry Corbin and James Hillman, including brief synopsis of other poets such as Robert Duncan and Wallace Stevens and others. He explores the process by which human kind has wandered into an abstract, literal perception of the “world” and how this is misguided; not reflecting concrete reality. He explores Jungian concepts through Hillmans thinking such as the energy of the archetype and how it manifests in us and can be wrongly interpreted. He discourages attachment to abstract nouns and literal understanding, encouraging a life view and living through “being” incorpoating a more natural practice of reflecting in verbs and adverbs. He speaks of events rather than objects. He writes in a way that is inquisitive, reflecting that he has discovered something life changing and hiw he intuitively relates to in Henry Corbin and James Hillman. A genuine desire to find in humans what is authentic is obvious and in that, he has come to see the wonderful aspects of being human that we all have access to. He writes about our creative and expansive and compassionate human nature that becomes trapped in the narrowing of our human perceptions. He does not illustrate any of this as an idealistic pursuit or success or as something to be achieved but more out of an unraveling and letting go and a returning to what we inherently are.

I enjoyed reading this book as it is optimistic and hopeful. It does require some background knowledge of Corbin and Hillman. On the other hand, if you had never heard of them before, this book may well encourage you to seek them out. The key idea is the centrality of the imagination and once you've grasped that you're off on a rewarding journey.

This fourth volume in Mr Cheetham's magnificent attempt to introduce the work of Henry Corbin to a wider public is more informal, perhaps, and certainly more personal than the others, giving us fresh insights into the imaginative life without which we are wrecked on the rocks of crass materialism and dreary literalism. Cheetham is one of the major torch-bearers of an indispensable visionary way of being. I hightly recommend all his books, and this one in particular.