Just as Herod two thousand years ago was desperately looking for a newborn baby who would be that future "king" who would deprive him of his temporal power, so the Herod of our times is also looking for a prodigious child destined to put an end to "history ”, who, once his advent has come, “will fill the Earth with harmony and justice as it is now filled with tyranny and violence”. The characters of this mysterious figure, the absolute fulcrum of faith in Iranian Islam expressed as the religion of the Expected, will be discussed briefly in this article.
di Antonio Bonifacio
Certainly the Earth will never be deprived of a guarantor of God. But men will be blind, unable to see him, due to their darkness, their extravagances and their crimes against themselves (against their souls).
Henry Corbin
Introductory remarks
An article recently appeared proposed by Maurizio Blondet entitled Israel fears the Mahdi. From this writing we would like to obtain some argumentative ideas around a topic, practically unknown in our shores, which instead, as emerges from the contents of the speech just cited, is of truly epochal importance. The adjective "epochal", used with a certain ease on the most diverse occasions, is, in the circumstance, truly appropriate because everything that refers to the appearance of the Madhi can be relevant, not only for the Mediterranean world but for the entire terraqueous globe, being the character apocalyptic expression of Shi'ite eschatology universal in nature. It will therefore be the figure who will bring the last definitive Revelation and, after it, the present cycle will come to completion, as the scriptures teach.
The theme, as presented by Maurizio Blondet, a journalist of staunch Catholic faith and avowedly "conspiracy theorist", has a strictly political nature and his (and his sources') reading of the events places, competing with each other, two contenders who are of an opposite vision of the world and in which the playing field is precisely the contest for power on our globe. The conflict is so harsh that it should lead to a conflict Armaggedon. In reality, to use a neologism used by Panunzio, related to the events described in Blondet's text, as well as in our intervention, the aforementioned theme could certainly be defined as metapolitical in nature, as the topic in question is imbued with eschatologism [1].
To therefore address the topic with full knowledge of the facts, it is necessary to make some introductory premises and, to proceed in this sense, the texts of Henry Corbin, who, as is known, was one of the greatest interpreters of religious thought formed in the Iranian area, with particular reference to his very rich booklet The Hidden Imam.
Shi'ite Islam
In my opinion, religions express a single truth, however it is only the Shiite school that explains in a clear and obvious way how this Truth can remain alive. In my opinion, Shiism has well represented the character of this truth which incessantly mediates between the human and divine worlds.
Henry Corbin, dialogue with Allamah Tabataba'i, Muslim theologian and philosopher
Sh'ism, the gnosis of Islam, is a religious address born at the same time as the first preaching of the Prophet with the investiture of the imamate to Muhammad's son-in-law, Ali Ibn Abi Talib, husband of Fatima. The two are the parents of Hasan and Husain who will be one after the other their father's successors to the imamate [2]. A Hadith establishes the terms of this investiture which represents the foundation of Shi'ism:
My God, here are the members of my family, my brother (Ali) is the prince of the Imams (…); his sons are the offspring of my offspring, and my daughter, the ruler of women. The Madhi will descend from us. Having asked one of the companions again: "O sent by God: who is the Madhi?", the prophet answered him. “There will be nine Imams descended from Hosain. The ninth will be the Qa'im (he who resurrects): it will fill the Earth with harmony and justice as it is now filled with tyranny and violence. He will fight to lead back to the spiritual sense (ta'wil) as I myself fought for the revelation of the literal sense (tanzil)".
Evidently all the passages of the hadith are of capital importance, however the last of them is truly illuminating as it establishes the presuppositions of Iranian gnosis (Iran defines itself in the Constitution as "the country of gnosis" [3] since it precisely establishes the terms of the competences between the prophetic scansion and that of the imamate). All the seven prophets, in the time of their manifestation, had the task of bringing to men the divine message whose contents are proportional to the spiritual state of humanity of a certain era - hence the invalidation of the progressive claim replaced by the observation of the katabatic descent -, while the Imam is entrusted with a different task with respect to the literal understanding of the Word and the discipline of the prescriptions imparted by it.
Corbin writes: "Starting from the moment in which the cycle of Prophecy ends, the Cycle of Initiation begins, the one in which the Imams, the Friends of God and the Beloved of God must initiate their followers into the esoteric of Prophecy" (Corbin: 2008, 72) [4]. The sequence is this: The divine word descends and, thanks to a prophet-legislator, the Word of God becomes "human" and therefore becomes understandable to everyone in relation to the historical circumstances in which it manifests itself. However, this "democratic" understanding does not exhaust the meanings contained in it, as the word "shout from the rooftops" represents only the "facade" but the "true meaning" of the same is hidden in it and is covered by an indeterminate number of veils . It thus happens that hermeneutics is never closed but is constantly susceptible to offering new meanings, always adhering to the text.
In a general sense, even in legalistic (Sunni) Islam the interpretation of the Word is not left to a dogmatic magisterium, which imperishably takes care of its handing down, as happens in Catholicism, however in the exoteric order of things it can certainly be stated that in Sunnism, a legalistic precept absolutely prevails, one might say... "talmudic", so much so that Corbin was able to write: "Humans have nothing left to look forward to after the Seal of the Initiates. As a result, the majority fanatically voted to blindly safeguard the letter" (Corbin: 2008, 90).
The line of the imamate is assigned a different and complementary task, which is an expression of “science of the scale” [5], or ratherbalance between exoteric and esoteric, which is a condition always pursued in these Islamic doctrines which, in fact, take as a comparison the correspondence that reigns between the duration of the day and that of the night. It is therefore a question of tracing the expression of the letter back to its origin, when the Word was in the mind of God. The lifting of each veil corresponds to the "discovery" of a meaning and consequently spiritual hermeneutics presents itself as a cornucopia of intimate senses which are all placed in succession with each other and in which, as in a musical score, the melody can be performed over different octaves. From the moment that the "true meaning", contained in the Word, becomes accessible by virtue of the qualification proper to the imamate, providentially guaranteed by its "dynastic" scansion in the present cycle, it will happen that, once the pleroma of the twelve is exhausted, time will be sealed " solidifying” and the cycle will definitively end.
For Islam, the twelfth Imam, who appeared about 1200 years ago, miraculously hid himself as a child, at the age of five, in conjunction with a story that will be briefly told shortly. The very wise child, whose presence over the centuries is nevertheless testified by his apparitions and his latent actions, in the moment of humanity's greatest spiritual descent, will emerge from his concealment to reappear together with Christ (sixth in the Order of the Prophets according to the conception Islamic) as described in the hadith above [6]. In this case a sort of contemporaneity between the exit from concealment of the twelfth Imam and the second coming of Christ the "Prophet" and this synchrony is justified by the fact that with this event it will constitute the definitive seal of the present era. (It should be noted that in the Iranian conception each prophetic cycle is marked by the appearance of twelve Imams who form a pleromatic total of 84 characters).
The hierarchical role played by Christ who is placed before the Prophet of Islam is not too surprising; Ibn Arabi, who is the most celebrated of the Sufis as the Doctor maximus (Shaiykh al Akhar) of Islamic esotericism, had him write: “Whoever falls ill with Christ cannot be healed” and then There is no doubt about the devotion that all Muslims (therefore also Shi'ites) reserve for Christ and his Mother Maryam having anticipated the dogma of the Immaculate Conception to them compared to the Christians themselves. This is the picture, outlined in broad lines.
By quietly casting a glance at current events and sensing the creaks of a Catholicism increasingly oriented towards the "social", observing the increasingly extensive cracks present in the great wall dogmatic, erected after centuries of conciliar controversies, it is consequent to think that if a plausible background to the apocatastatic events were to be created [7] described, it is to be hypothesized a possible rapprochement between the more "traditional" Orthodox Church with Shi'ite Islam, rather than with the Church of Rome, as the latter may appear in the eyes of "conservatives" as a planet now escaped from its orbit and destined to wander in space [8] unlike the certainly more conservative and doctrinally oriented Eastern Orthodoxy theosis.
The last two Imams
The walayat is the esoteric, Gnostic idea of prophecy (nobowwat); prophecy is the exoteric and visible form of walayat. All the prophets were epiphanies (mazahir) of the Seal of the prophets, all the initiates are forms that manifest the one who is the Seal of the Initiates.
Henry Corbin
Shi'ite piety has particularly focused on the story of the last two Imams of the twelve of the current cycle, describing those historically distant events in a multiplicity of stories that must be read, as Corbin teaches, as hierostories and certainly not interpreted in the light of historicism or historical materialism [9]. However, these are truly magnificent hierostories that make these writings "moving" - in the fully etymological sense of the term and we underline that this shared, laudatory adjective is used by Corbin in order to introduce their reading - testimonies of the faith of a people. We are faced with literal stories which are certainly not only literal, since their understanding certainly awakens the dormant spiritual senses of the devoted reader [10].
In these concordant versions of the most important eschatological event of Shi'ite piety, she is narrated as a Byzantine (and therefore Christian) princess named after a flower, Narcissus (a pseudonym), is kidnapped by Muslims who are unaware of her degree of nobility and is then taken to the market to be sold as a slave. The whole operation is under the management of one occult direction who with foresight has prepared the events described so that Narcissus meets his future husband and suddenly, reciprocated, falls in love with him, frequently meeting his person in the dimension of "vision".
Narcissus descends directly from the lineage of Simon Peter who, from the perspective of the procession of events, is the first of the twelve Imams who followed Jesus in his cycle. Because of her "strong" lineage she, in some way, participates in it alternative “Christology”. which is characteristic of a Gnostic form waiting to flourish. This will happen as soon as Narcissus becomes an active part of the events that have been briefly described here. The dream encounters with the future husband, al-Hasan al-Askari, constitute the Christian princess's initiation into Islamic gnosis, to whose contents she will adhere convincingly in the course of events [11].
Corbin writes about it: “This is one of the bases on which they can be studied certain impressive correspondences between Christology and Shi'ite imamology. These correspondences find, so it seems to me, one of the most astonishing illustrations in the dream vision of Princess Narcissus, mother of the twelfth Imam” (Corbin: 2009, 87). It will therefore be her future husband, the eleventh Imam, who will direct her to Islam by showing her the prophetic character of the figure of Jesus and the consequent deviation of the Christian religion from that angelic and prophetic Christology which would have been the founding characteristic of its origin. The whole story therefore focuses on the pacification of the two religions which in the Twelver Imamate merge as if into a single stream.
Narcissus, who finally became the wife of the eleventh Imam, will be the mother of a wonderful and extraordinary child, a “perfect boy” or “perfect man”, whose childhood is hagiographically characterized by numerous prodigies and who will take the name of Muhammad al-Mahdi. Corbin illustrates what the fate of this "man" is when the moment of his Parousia comes in this extraordinary passage: "The perfect Man, being the perfect theophany, penetrates the theophanic secret of beings, through him the latent and virtual perfection of every being, its secret, its esoteric sense is actualized. Not only stones, plants and animals, but all doctrines, all religions will reveal their hidden meaning, and thus the divine Unity will appear as essence in the multitude of its theophanies" (Corbin: 2008, 93). An almost openly perennialist piece that announces in an unsurpassable way the events connected to the apokatastasis that will determine "the end of the dark age of present humanity ushering in universal government and the restoration of the primordial Tradition” (from the presentation of the text by Al Fadr ibn Shadhan an-Nischapuri, The return of the Madhi) [12].
The small and the large occultation
The profound meaning of ghaylat (concealment) consists in the fact that it was men themselves who veiled the Imam from their eyes, becoming incapable or unworthy of seeing him.
Henry Corbin
NIn Shi'ite theology two different forms of occultation: the “minor” and the “major”. This is a topic that has been ruminated on for a long time by local philosophers because everything is concentrated in it mystery of the end times and for this reason the events that concern this doctrinal specificity of Sh'ism are of extreme significance.
In a nutshell, these are the events linked to occultation. The eleventh very young Imam had just passed away when his son, chosen to be the twelfth, after a few days or a few hours after the death of his father disappeared mysteriously in the basement of the Samarra Mosque in which it was customary to pray intensely with the parent. We therefore have two practically concurrent events: the death of the father and the disappearance of the son.
In Samarra today there are two sanctuaries. One houses four tombs: that of the tenth Imam, that of his son, that of his wife, the Byzantine princess Narcissus, and finally that of his aunt; all characters who are present in the wonderful and moving stories that tell of the confluence in a single Islamic and Christian faith, an event determined by the engagement of Princess Narcissus. A second sanctuary houses the underground place through which the young Imam Mohammed al Qa'im or al-Madhi disappeared, which has since the hidden Imam (Corbin: 2020, 510).
When we talk about Samarra we must understand its specifics geosophia: in fact, following these extraordinary events, the mosque is today also a sanctuary located in Iraqi territory, and it is a sanctuary because this is the place in which the Imam hid himself from men or, as Corbin underlines, s 'is made invisible to their carnal eyes [13]. At the same time there is another sanctuary which is in direct connection with Samarra and is that of Jam Karan in Iran, and their bond takes on a symbiotic nature as it is a direct expression of the law of Libra mentioned previously. In fact, if the first is the place of the "disappearance" of the child, the second is the privileged place for his apparitions, appearances possible thanks “in the eyes of that subtle organ without which an anthropology remains incomplete“. Adds Corbin: “Therefore the real or mental fulfillment of the pilgrimage whether to Samarra or Jam Karan presupposes in all pilgrims the passage from sensitive perception to another higher mode of perception” (Corbin: 2020, 386) [14].
Talking about “minor occultation” we mean a period of time that begins from the death of Hasan the father (260/873) and which lasts from that date until 330 (942). Hasan's passing, in reality, was not a real death but rather a translation into Malakut [15]. From this "intermediate" plane and for the entire duration of time indicated, the eleventh Imam mysteriously continued to communicate in "person" with his delegates, despite being invisible to the "common" people.
La “greater occultation” it instead concerns the twelfth Imam who, in fact, disappeared as a child never to be found again, thus also avoiding the search for the enemies of the imamate of the time, the Abbassid caliphs who had held his father prisoner for several years and who wanted to address the their less than benevolent attention to the son whose "return" (and the meaning of his return) we have spent some time considering in the previous pages.
Modern misunderstanding
When our Qa'im (lit. "he who lifts up") rises up, he will place his hand on the heads of the servants of God, bringing together their intellects and perfecting them, after which the Lord will perfect their sight and hearing, so that there is no longer any obstacle between them and the Qa'im. In this way, when he wants to talk to them, they will be able to hear and see him (from anywhere) without him moving from the place where he is.
Imam Muhammad al Barqir, fifth Shiite emir
As stated in the article, which inspired this short speech, the coming of Madhi is certainly spasmodically awaited by his faithful followers but, in the same way, his reappearance, despite the paradisiacal character that would distinguish his arrival, is most feared by other religious cliques who imagine the figure as a sort of "revenant Saladin" or, worse , of a “Bin Laden with super powers”. This is a fact and not an opinion and it is singular that this apocalyptic belief, which is shared with other religions, for example Buddhism which awaits Maitreya, , the future Buddha, instead of perhaps being considered a "religious fantasy" and therefore proving to be a harmless pious fraud, intended to nourish the faith of its faithful in an abstract way, is taken very seriously indeed to the point of searching for this "Resurrector" everywhere and for several years, even using means that are not strictly... lawful. For this purpose we remove a chilling passage from Blondet's article where we read: "This became evident during the American occupation of Iraq in 2003, when it was routine to torture Iraqis in prisons… and one of the questions most puzzling questions asked during interrogations were: “Where is the man called Imam Mahdi, where is he hiding?".
As we have seen (Corbin docet) there is a profound difference from hide and by 'hide and therefore like his father al-Hasan al-Askari, the "perfect child", he is invisible to the eyes of the senses, which are not able to see him, revealing himself only to his chosen envoys to whom he has imparted and still imparts instructions regarding the late age strategies.
In conclusion it can be stated that the coming of the Madhi, like the second coming of Christ, who according to the Apocalypse of John will return "in the clouds", shows the total inadequacy of the modern mentality to conceive a spiritual level in which to frame the events of hierohistory and in the same way it is precisely this obtuse blindness that makes the interpreter aware that the "end of time" can only be near. The aforementioned Panunzio is right when he writes: "It will be the agents 'of the left hand of God', the forces that produced the modern laceration, who will do it (contemporaneity, ed.) implode".
NOTES
[1] That we are living in the end times is an opinion shared by many because the signs of the collapse appear evident and it is no longer necessary to read between the lines of contemporary phenomena. Even the most sensitive men of the Church perceive, in the rampant apostasy, the sign of the turning of the era as foretold by Christ himself with "But the Son of man, when he comes, will find faith on earth?” (Luke 18,8:XNUMX). […] This is the premise to justify the presentation of this passage, taken from a review of the book Metapolitics of Panunzio: “At this point it is good to ask ourselves what the real function of Metapolitics is for Panunzio. He attributes two essential tasks to Metapolitics. 1) Develop the critique of modernity in organic and analytical terms; 2) Rebuild the divine plan on earth. Men should preliminarily recognize the need to make a clean sweep of the present, in view of a rebirth. Indeed, Panunzio is firmly convinced that it will be the agents "of the left hand of God", the forces that produced the modern laceration, that will make it implode. […] The Panuntian vision of history aims at an end, it is centered on «final but transcendent optimism»”. Perhaps it is a little blasphemous but the concept is similar to Luther's "confident desperation".
[2] This original pentad takes on truly dizzying contents for the Shi'ite religious conscience which are impossible to dwell on. The "five of the mantle", as they are called to show the indissoluble character, not only familial but pleromatic that links the Prophet to Ali Ibn Abi Talib, the spiritual hermeneutic of the Koranic revelation. The carnal descent of the first Imam, inaugurated by Fatima (the shining one) will end with Princess Narcissus belonging to the "family" of Christ, wife of the eleventh Imam and mother of the twelfth, thus sealing the present era.
[3] Unlike "Christian gnosis" which does not enjoy any appreciation (in fact the opposite) Shi'ism, although numerically a minority compared to Sunni Islam with its various facets often competing, responds to a fundamental requirement of the Iranian perhaps derived from the previous Zoroastrian humus. It is this: every visible element has an invisible counterpart and together the apparent and the occult form a biunity. As will be explained later, Prophecy, as the descent of the verb of the flesh (incarnation grammar writes Panunzio) represents the physicalization of the divine word, whose ultimate exegesis however falls to the spiritual imamate of an initiatory nature which represents its gnosis. Only at the appearance of the twelfth Imam, seal of Initiation, once the cycle of the Great Occultation has been completed, will the ultimate meaning of the Holy Scriptures be revealed without any veil.
[4] In Shi'ite Islam the description of the end times, in harmony with the scansion of kali yuga Hinduism and the appearance of the Resurrector, is also entrusted to this Hadith which is the twenty-second of the text compiled by Al-Fadl Ibn Shadan an-Nishapuri present in his prophetic writing dedicated to the twelfth Imam and his Occultation: “…A man asked Abu Abdilah [Ja' far as Sadiq] 'When will your Qa'im appear?'. He said 'When deviant guidance increases, and right guidance decreases, oppression and disbelief will increase, and justice and goodness will decrease; men will satisfy their lust with men and women with women, the ulama will be inclined to the world and the majority of people to [idle] poetry and storytellers a group of heretics will be transformed into monkeys and pigs. Sufyani (the Sufyani is an evil figure in Islamic eschatology, usually described in hadiths as a tyrant who will spread corruption and malice) will be killed and the Dajjal (an evil being destined to reign in the world for a period of 40 days before the Day) will appear of the Judgment; as an anti-messianic figure, he is comparable to the Antichrist of Christian eschatology and to the Amilus of medieval Jewish eschatology) doing his utmost in misleading and diverting [peoples]; at that time the name of the Qa'im will be announced at dawn on the twenty-third day of Ramadan” (Al-Fadl Ibn Shadan an-Nishapuri: 2015, 44).
[5] This excerpt from H. Corbin will serve to better understand the importance of this peculiar science for Islam but of universal value, as it corresponds to an ontological necessity: "The idea of the balance of things and therefore of divine equity [...] go hand in hand, to establish themselves in the symbol of Libra as an eschatological symbol (see Koran 21.48). In Islamic gnosis, Libra marks the balance between light and darkness. In the Ismaili gnosis [...] the Libra of religious things allows us to specify the correspondence between the earthly esoteric hierarchy and the celestial angelic hierarchy, and in general the correspondences between the spiritual world and the corporeal world. The visible part of a being in fact presupposes that it is balanced by its invisible, celestial counterpart. What appears, the exoteric (zahir) is balanced by the hidden (Batin). Modern agnostic denial ignores this law of integral being and therefore does nothing but mutilate the integrity of every being." (Corbin: 2009, 14).
[6] According to Elia Benamozegh, the Torah, to make itself still suitable for the fallen understanding of men, "descends" and, in fact, solidifies becoming, at the end of this catabasis, a mere, albeit indispensable, precept. However, once the time of Revelation has arrived, when men will finally shed their "snake skins", it will once again be fully understandable as its spiritual content will be completely revealed. This is the same perspective indicated by Gioacchino da Fiore in his tripartite division of the ages, of which the last will be entirely pneumatic and in which the pneumatic sense of the writings will consequently be revealed.
[7] Which is explicitly cited in this passage by H. Corbin: “Zoroastrian soteriology and eschatology were dominated by the idea of frashkart, the transfiguration or regeneration of the world, brought about by the Saoshyant and his companions who would prepare the final restoration of all things. Shi'ite eschatology is dominated by the figure of the one who resurrects (the Qa'im) and his companions; it tends towards a new beginning to an Aion which is an apokatastasis, and does not separate the idea of "minor resurrection" which is the individual exodus from the body subject to perishing, from the idea of major resurrection which is the advent of a new Aion” (Corbin: 74).
[8] The character of the coming of the Madhi together with the Christ does not foresee an Armageddon and this is in perfect compliance with the hadith cited above. In an NBC interview with President Ahmadinejad in 2009, the interviewer tried to provoke him into talking about the hidden Imam who will bring "an apocalypse to the West." Ahmadinejad instead stated: “What they say about an apocalyptic war and a global war… This is what the Zionists claim. The Imam instead will come with logic, with culture, with science. He will come so that there will be no more war. No more enmity, hatred. No more conflicts…. he will return with Jesus Christ. The two will get back together. And by working together, they would fill this world with love”. Interestingly, another leader, the late Hugo Chavez, also stated that it was no wonder that the need for a mystical savior is growing, since: “For us true Christians, Jerusalem is a very holy place where Prophet Jesus will come, hand in hand with Hazrat Mahdi; then peace will prevail throughout the world".
[9] It is important to point out to the "skeptics" that the theme of occultation and its methods has not been reconstructed ex post but it is present in the prophecy of events that the wise Al Fadr ibn Shadhan an-Nischapuri, author The return of the Madhi, he had described in his precious booklet. In fact, the author will die before what he described happened (Sayyes Seed Aktar Rizvi in the preface of Al Fadr ibn Shadhan an-Nischapuri, The return of the Madhi, P. 11).
[10] A brief clarification regarding the theme of literature and music in the Islamic and Shi'ite context in particular in comparison with the West. The widespread diffusion of entertainment literature and music in the West, completely absent from any reference to the sacred and not aimed at a higher purpose, would respond to the desire to propose/impose a numbing of consciences. In particular, the current importance of certain musical genres capable of even dissolving the abilities of waking consciousness and the corresponding mythology of their performers are the result of a well-defined indoctrination plan implemented by "well-known superiors" behind whom they act forces that do not belong to this plane of existence.
[11] Note this passage focused on the theme of the relationship between Christian and Islamic gnosis: “The question of imamology is linked in certain aspects to what has been experienced in the Christian context, with a big difference based on the fact that the Sh'ia is probably closer to some Gnostic sectors of the Church than to the official church" (Corbin in Allamah Tabatataba'i: 2014, 125).
[12] The theme of the Guardians and/or guardians of the world is much studied in the Islamic universe and H. Corbin in his writings refers extensively to the function of these who, as a supernal hierarchy, are destined to govern humanity until its point of collapse that occurs on a cyclical basis. A reference text on the topic is that of Ibn Arabi The Mystery of the Guardians of the World, a text that cannot only be defined as important but rather fundamental for understanding the topic. This is one of the three books that, unlike the others of his immense production, the Andalusian theosophist claims to have received by Revelation. Consequently, although this writing consists of a few pages, it is by no means a "minor work" of the same, but an authoritative and fundamental contribution in which the esoteric character of the Science of the Pole which lies behind the complex symbolism of the Keepers of the world. Michel Valsan's underlining on the subject in relation to the Primordial Tradition is pregnant: “These beings (the guardians of the pole, ed.) or rather these functions are the pillars of pure Tradition, which is evidently the primordial and universal Tradition with which Islam in its essence identifies itself. It must be added that, if these primordial functions are thus designated by Prophets who appeared only during the human cycle, for the Shaiykh al Akhar this is only a way to support, through realities known by Islamic tradition in general, the affirmation of the existence of a supreme Center outside the particular form of Islam and above the Islamic spiritual center” (in Ibn Arabi: 2001, 9). We can affirm, reading things from this angle, that the figure of the Madhi is identified eschatologically, and in parallel to what is stated in the quote, with the Guardians. In fact, he is described as the Restorer of the primordial Tradition and not as the installer of the cycle of a particular tradition, such as the Islamic one, as Henry Corbin has well underlined on several occasions.
[13] The profound meaning of ghaybaqt (occultation) rests on the fact that it is men who have veiled themselves from the Imam, who have made themselves incapable or unworthy of seeing him. Transposing we could also say: “the sacred historian says that God exiled Adam from paradise, but the mystic discovers that it is Adam (man) who expelled God from paradise. This is the reality of hell" (from Corbin: 4, 485).
[14] Unfortunately we cannot dwell on the topic but H. Corbin with his usual captivating prose in his text details the epiphanic manifestation of the twelfth Imam which gave rise to the erection of a sanctuary in a peculiar "geophysically" identifying place, almost intermediate between the sensitive and the spiritual and therefore speculum of the celestial world.
[15] In Arab cosmology the conception of malakut, as a world or intermediate space, is very complex and not unambiguous in the authors' comments. We give a general mention of it in this note, noting that The kingdom of Malakut (ʿālam al-malakūt, lit. “world of [God's] kingdom”), also known as Hurqalya or Huralya, is a proposed invisible realm of medieval Islamic cosmology. Malakut it is sometimes used interchangeably with 'ālam al-mithāl or imaginal realm, but otherwise distinguished from it as a realm between 'ālam al-mithāl and 'ālam al-jabarūt. In this context, Malakut is a plane below the higher angels, but higher than the plane where the jinn or demons live. The higher realms are not spatially separate worlds but impact the lower realms. However, to delve deeper into the topic it can be extremely useful to read the four volumes of In Iranian Islam by H. Corbin where the topic is examined from multiple points of view and in multiple contexts. Corbin himself is equally indispensable on the topic Spiritual body and celestial earth.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Iba Arabs: The Mystery of the Custodians of the World, Il Leone Verde, Turin, 2001
Al Fadr ibn Shadhan an-Nischapuri: The return of Madhi Irfan, San Demetrio Corone (CS) 2015
Daniele Bianchi: The origin of Christianity in the thought of Elia Benamozegh. University of Udine degree thesis, academic year 2008/2009, available online
Henry Corbin: The science of Libra and the correspondences between the worlds of Islamic gnosis, SE, Milan, 2009
Henry Corbin: The hidden Imam, SE, Milan, 2008
Henry Corbin: In Iranian Islam vol.1, Mimesis, Milan Udine, 2012
Henry Corbin: In Iranian Islam vol.2, Mimesis, Milan Udine, 2015
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Henry Corbin: In Iranian Islam vol.4, Mimesis, Milan Udine, 2020
Henry Corbin: Cyclic time and Ismaili gnosis, Mimesis, Milan-Udine, 2013
Allanah Tabataba'i: Shia Islam, Dialogues with Henry Corbin, Irfan Edizioni, San Demetrio Corone 2014
The notebooks of wisdom, edited by the International Study Center “Dimore della Sapienza”: VOLUME II – “End Times and Final Restoration”, San Demetrio Corone (CS)
