Gabriel

The two names Gabriel and heart have the same meaning. The intelligence is the side of Michael... Water is the form of Gabriel, Earth is the form of Michael, Air is the form of Seraphiel, and Fire is the form of Azrael.

Ibn Arabi's angelology, as explicated by Corbin, establishes a strict homology between Gabriel, the heart, and the element Water, positioning Gabriel as the macrocosmic and microcosmic mediator of Knowledge.

Corbin, Henry, Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, 1969thesis

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The last of the Intelligences in our own sphere—the tenth—is the Holy Spirit of Revelation, known as Gabriel, the source of light and knowledge. The human soul... is able to live in close intimacy with Gabriel.

Armstrong's account of Ibn Sina presents Gabriel as the tenth Intelligence and Holy Spirit, the epistemological threshold through which prophetic illumination becomes available to the human contemplative intellect.

Armstrong, Karen, A History of God, 1993thesis

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When Ibn Arabi compares his own visionary experiences with that of the Prophet experiencing the familiar presence of the Angel Gabriel, this comparison suggests certain parallelisms that are of crucial importance in connection with this primordial Image.

Corbin identifies the Prophet's intimacy with Gabriel as the archetype for every mystic's relation to the Holy Spirit, making Gabriel the paradigmatic form of the primordial inner Image.

Corbin, Henry, Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, 1969thesis

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the prophet Mohammed was to receive the revelation from the Angel Gabriel (and the identification Christos-Gabriel is by no means unknown in gnosis).

Corbin traces a cross-traditional identification of Gabriel with Christos Angelos and the Heavenly Twin, positioning the figure as a universal archetype of the guiding celestial Double across Manichaean, Christian, and Islamic gnosis.

Corbin, Henry, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, 1971thesis

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sometimes he heard a knell as from a bell, and that this had the strongest effect on him; and when the angel went away, he had received the revelation.

James documents Muhammad's account of receiving revelation through Gabriel as evidence that Islamic prophetic experience arises from the subconscious sphere, framing the angelic encounter in depth-psychological terms.

James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience Amazon, 1902supporting

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quoth Lisetta, 'it must go no farther; but he I mean is the angel Gabriel, who loveth me more than himself, as the fairest lady... who is in the world or the Maremma.'

Auerbach's analysis of Boccaccio reveals the comic literalization of the Gabriel archetype: the angelic mediator of divine revelation is here reduced to a seductive imposture, exposing the distance between popular credulity and genuine visionary experience.

Auerbach, Erich, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, 1953supporting

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great Gamaliel, great Gabriel, great Samblo, great Abrasax those stationed over sunrise, Olses, Hypneus, Heurumaious those stationed over the entrance into the state of rest of life eternal.

In Sethian Gnostic baptismal cosmology, Gabriel appears as one of four great angelic attendants of the luminaries, serving a liturgical and cosmological function within the ritual passage to eternal life.

Marvin W. Meyer, The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus: The Definitive Collection of Mystical Gospels and Secret Books about Jesus of Nazareth, 2005supporting

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the figure of the Angel-Intelligence—as Holy Spirit, Angel of Knowledge and of Revelation—commands all orientations, all the approaches and withdrawals which occur in the spiritual topography here outlined.

Corbin's description of the Angel-Intelligence as Holy Spirit and Angel of Revelation provides the broader doctrinal framework within which Gabriel's specific angelological role in Ibn Arabi's system is embedded.

Corbin, Henry, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, 1969aside

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