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The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism
The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism
Corbin’s phenomenology of the polar luminary — the figure of the guide of light, the heavenly twin, the shahid (witness) — as this figure recurs from Zoroastrian Iran through Hermetism to classical Iranian Sufism. Translated from the French by Nancy Pearson; English edition 1978, Omega Publications.
The book is organized around the symbols of the North, the cosmic pole, and the “midnight sun,” which Corbin reads as a double structure of the soul: “the first Intelligence, the archangel Logos, rising as a revelation over the Darkness of the Deus absconditus,” and on the human side, “the human soul itself as the light of consciousness rising over the Darkness of the subconscious” (Corbin 1971). The colored photisms of Najm Kubrā — “luminous black” and green light — are read as evidence of “an identical psycho-cosmic structure.”
Corbin’s sources include Suhrawardī’s “oriental theosophy” (ḥikmat al-Ishrāq), the visions of Ruzbehan of Shiraz, the trilogy of the soul, and the dhikr as technique of orientation. The book is the main site where Corbin develops the Hermetic idea of Perfect Nature alongside the Sufi shahid, and where he connects the Zoroastrian Daēnā, the Manichean Heavenly Twin, and the fravarti into a single Lineage of the man-of-light.