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Henry Corbin - Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth - Mountains
Identifier
022330
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth – Henry Corbin [translated by Nancy Pearson] 1977
The mountain tops of the Earth of visions are the mountain tops of the soul. The two archetypal images, the Imago Terrae and the Imago Animae correspond to one another; the mountain of visions is the psycho-cosmic mountain.
Moreover this has been preserved in the Greek text relating to Zarathustra. For example, Porphyry describes the retreat of Zarathustra in a grotto in the mountains of Persis, adorned with flowers and gushing springs, which provided a perfect Imago Mundi for his meditation.
Dion Chrysostom mentions the high peak on which Zarathustra retired in order to ‘live in the way that was his own’, and where a ceremony of ecstasy, invisible to the eyes of the profane, unfolds in a setting of fire and supernatural splendour.
Retreat on the psycho-cosmic mountain actually represents an essential phase of every mysteriosophy; its final act is an ecstasy; then the heavenly figures, as they become apparent through the organ of its own archetype image, are made visible to the soul