The Seba library treats Celestial Counterpart in 8 passages, across 5 authors (including Corbin, Henry, Dane Rudhyar, Hans Jonas).
the shaykh al-ghayb can become visible; which is not at all to say that Iblls becomes the “witness in Heaven.” Such a notion is untenable because of the fundamental orientation, the polar orientation
Corbin argues that liberation from the shadow-self (nafs ammara) is the precise condition enabling the soul to perceive its celestial witness, establishing the counterpart’s visibility as dependent on inner purification rather than cosmic automatism.
, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, 1971thesis
Upon the homology between the celestial and terrestrial hierarchies Ismailian Gnosis founded this idea of the Sacred Book whose meaning is potential.
Corbin traces the structural homology between celestial and terrestrial orders in Ismailian Gnosis, wherein the celestial Anthropos serves as the archetype whose terrestrial reflection is the Imam — a paradigmatic formulation of the celestial counterpart doctrine.
, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, 1969thesis
the intelligentia spiritualis brings about the union between prophetic religion and mystic religion… dealing with themes that can be subsumed under the title ‘prophetic psychology.’
Corbin frames the organ of spiritual perception — the contemplative intellect — as the faculty through which the soul apprehends its supernal counterpart, situating the celestial witness within the technical vocabulary of Shi’ite and Sufi ‘prophetic psychology.’
, Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, 1969supporting
man was able to project his conscious and universalized instincts upon the celestial sphere — the Body of God (Macrocosm and Macroprosopus in the Kabbala). But also he was able to receive the Body of God within his own earthly organism.
Rudhyar articulates a bidirectional correspondence between the individual and the celestial sphere, proposing that initiation enables both projection onto and reception from the macrocosmic body — a psychological reformulation of the celestial counterpart as a transpersonal template.
, The Astrology of Personality: A Re-formulation of Astrological Concepts and Ideals in Terms of Contemporary Psychology and Philosophy, 1936supporting
The ascent starts with the discarding of the impure garments and is g[uided upward]
Jonas documents the Gnostic soteriology of ascent and garment-exchange, in which the soul sheds terrestrial accretions to reclaim its luminous celestial form — the structural complement to the imprisoned earthly self.
, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, 1958supporting
the archaic man, acknowledges no act which has not been previously posited and lived by someone else, some other being who was not a man. What he does has been done before.
Eliade’s account of the archaic ontology of paradigmatic repetition implies a celestial prototype for every earthly act, providing the cosmological background against which the doctrine of a celestial counterpart to the earthly self becomes intelligible.
, The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History, 1954supporting
this saving principle is most closely related to the divinity, whom the Greeks and Romans knew as Hermes and Mercurius respectively… the alchemists recognized as the great facilitator of the conjunction of the opposites
Hoeller identifies the Gnostic Anthropos and Hermetic Mercurius as figures of the celestial saving principle, tangentially illuminating the celestial counterpart’s role as mediating agent between lower and higher ontological registers.
, The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, 1982aside
his technique of ecstasy enabled him to abandon his body and undertake the journey to the sky… taking with him the soul of the sacrificed animal to present it directly and concretely to Bai Ulgan.
Eliade’s account of shamanic celestial ascent presents a structurally analogous movement to the soul’s reunion with its heavenly counterpart, situating the celestial journey as the ecstatic archetype underlying more systematized doctrines.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951aside