Rain Does Alchemy

In the softly falling, at least this time of year, almost within the mirroring eyes of the camera, and more so in the further process of editing the image, the green-yellow turns to gold. Then looking through the window and rain-blurring across time, see and look into the fall of these dampened leaves as by spring slowly the soil turns rich, golden yielding new life. And this window opens into the hidden great mystery: 

“. . . the deep meaning . . . [unseen by] men who have made themselves incapable of seeing him [Christ] and have hidden him from themselves . . . and he is never there when one interprets events by historical materialism, under the guise of theology, instead of grasping the spiritual history ‘in Hurqalya’” (p. 319, note 11 for page 173, Corbin's Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth). 

 As we must surely realize by now, we are engaged in “the battle for the soul of the world” and could certainly avail the resources of “the world of Hurqalya, into the Angelic World” (p. xvii), a place described in the previous blog, where we might

“come face to face with the Earth not as a conglomeration of physical facts but in the person of its Angel . . .  essentially psychic event which can ‘take place’ neither in the world of impersonal abstract concepts nor on the plane of mere sensory data. The Earth has to be perceived not by the senses, but through a primordial Image and, inasmuch as this Image carries the features of a personal figure, it will prove to ‘symbolize with’ the very Image of itself which the soul carries in its innermost depths. The perception of the Earth Angel will come about in an intermediate universe which is neither that of the Essences of philosophy nor that of the sensory data on which the work of positive science is based, but which is a universe of archetype-Images, experienced as so many personal presences.” (p. 4)

The note cited above elaborates a selection from ‘Abd al-Razzaq Lahiji where Corbin translates and comments on our alchemical opportunity to participate in the magical mystery bridging/blending Heaven/Earth:

“Every being of the two universes, the intelligible and the sensory, has its archetypal Image in this intermediate universe a self-subsistent Image with autonomous existence. . . It may happen that a being of this autonomous world of Images makes himself visible, makes his appearance in our material world, and can be perceived in it by the outer senses. Bodies which are perfectly polished and transparent bodies, such as mirrors, still water the atmosphere, are the places of the epiphany in our material world of the beings of the world of archetypal Images. In the same way, man’s Imagination is also the place of their epiphany.” (p. 172-3)

Like this

Photos taken Sunday morning, October 20, 2019