contextual underpinning provided by the various chapters. However, if the reader
feels the need, in advance, for an explanation of these concepts they should consult
chapters 8 and 9, particularly pages 183 and 198-199, for consciousness and page
221 - 222 for place.
I n the quotation at the beginning of this introduction, Henry Corbin, the
noted I slamic scholar who studied I slamic Sufi mystics and especially their visionary
experiences, uses exactly the same notion to describe his concept of an I maginal
Realm, an alternative Earth, a world where, according to Ibn ‘Arabi, “ ...
theophanies and theophanic visions take place” (Corbin, 1969:xiii). I n the Preface
to Corbin’s Alone with the Alone: Creative I magination in the Sufism of I bn Arabi
(1969), Professor Harold Bloom establishes connections between the I maginal,
Gnosticism and the Jewish Kabbalah while others even see the I maginal as a way of
representing Anima Mundi (Harpur, 1994:126-127).
What follows is an attempt to trace the history and contemporary
manifestations of that epiphanic I maginal Realm and to reveal one way that it is
manifested in contemporary culture through a continuum of place and
consciousness in a particular form of literary consciousness.
~ ~ ~
ron
(Ron)
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