The images in the mirrors and the imaginative forms are not imprinted [in a place].
Instead they are suspended fortresses–a fortress not in a locus at all. Though they
may have loci in which they are made evident, they are not in them. The mirror is
the locus in which the form is made evident. These forms are suspended and are in
neither a place nor a locus. The imaginative faculty is the locus in which the forms
of the imagination are made evident and are suspended. Since there can be such a
thing as an incorporeal image in a mirror without depth...and self-subsistence,
there can also exist a substantial quiddity having an accidental image.^43
The revelation of the mirror through the withdrawal of the curtain presents
a conundrum, which Suhrawardi sums up in the description of the mirror
as existing“without space and without place,”yet nonetheless real enough
to support perception.^44 That which is physically manifest becomes already
incorporeal–the mirror, as it were, reveals the existence of the Platonic
form, the light essence, imprisoned in and hidden by the object as well as by
the image deceptively claiming to represent it. For Suhrawardi, vision“is
consciousness of the thing seen.”^45 The image constitutes“objective cor-
relates of certain acts of perception and the imagination rather than...
mental constructs.”^46 This emphasizes not the object so much as the
subjective experience of vision. He explains:
Since you know that vision is not by the imprinting of the form of its object in the
eye nor by something emerging from the eye, it can only be by the illuminated
object being opposite a sound eye–nothing more...Being opposite amounts to
the absence of a veil between that which sees and that which is seen.^47
The veil may be physical, as in the story of the competition, or spiritual,
hiding the truth of immateriality central to the story.
For Suhrawardi, even the physical body is not entirely located within
itself. As John Walbridge explains:
The body is the‘locus’(mahal) of the form but not necessarily its place. Such are the
forms of the World of Image. The body, in some mysterious way, is the condition for the
form’s appearance, but the form is not in the body in the way that the form of the dog is
inthebodyofthedog.Instead,thelocusmakesitpossiblefortheformtobemanifestto
us–butweseetheform,notthelocus.Ourbrainandourorgansofsensationaresuch
loci.Theymakeitpossibleforustoseeorhearorsmelltheforms,buttheformsarenot
imprinted in them in the way that they are in their bodily instances.^48
The body thus is no different from the image which is more real and
resplendent than in the reality beyond the mirror.(^43) Suhrawardi, 1999 : 138. (^44) Sinai, 2015 : 291. (^45) Walbridge, 2001 : 160.
(^46) Sinai, 2015 : 294. (^47) Walbridge, 2001 : 160. (^48) Walbridge, 2000 : 169.
148 Seeing through the Mirror