Temple and Contemplation brings together for the first ... - ImagoMundi

THE IMAGO TEMPLI IN CONFRONTATION
nothing less than this, certainly, but also nothing more. But this destruction
of the Imago caeli—of the Temple crypt—was made possible only by
the shattering of the symmetry exhibited, first, by the triadic structure of
the celestial temples (Intelligence, Soul, and subtle body of the Sphere),
and, second, by the triadic structure of gnostic anthropology: spirit, soul
and body. This anthropological triad was gradually eclipsed in Western
Christian thought. What remained was the dualism of soul and body, or of
spirit and body, of thought and extension—a dualism for which Descartes
could not then be held responsible. This anthropological destruction has a
striking parallel in the destruction wrought in the sphere of celestial
physics by Averroes in his desire to be a strict Aristotelian. The consequence
of this was in effect the disappearance of the second angelic
hierarchy, the hierarchy of the Angeli caelesles or Animae caelestes as affirmed
by Avicenna and Suhravardi. Since the world of the Animae caelestes marked
the threshold of the Imaginal world, the sovereignty of the active
Imagination or Imaginatio vera was as a result entirely overthrown, and
with it that whole world of the Soul, the world in-between, medial between
the Jabarut and the Mulk.
From that moment on, the way lay open to a vision of the world which,
being no longer a vision governed by the Imago Templi, was to end by no
longer perceiving in the cosmos anything apart from immanent and purely
mechanical laws. Without the world of the Soul there is no Imago. Thus
man had lost his own soul as the heavens had lost theirs: there was no
longer an active Imagination to secrete and reflect in the sensorium the
metaphysical Images of intelligible realities, revealed to it on its own level.
What remains is an imagination whose products are now declared to be
merely imaginary, the fantastic productions of the phantasia —in short,
unreal. Never again will it raise man to "the meeting-place of the two
seas". The ordeal of exile no longer exists; instead, there is a deliberate
refusal to feel exiled, a rejection of the idea of the world as the crypt of the
Temple—a rejection that heralds the devastation of the Imago Templi.
Such a devastation is a sine qua non for the ascendancy of the norm that
induces the desacralization of the world, its "disenchantment" in the
etymological sense of the word. {Die Entzauberung der Welt was the title of a
book which appeared between the two world wars.) What will be tinfuture
of this norm?
We can envisage a reply to this question only if, by means of the double
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THE IMAGO TEMPLI IN CONFRONTATION
negation of refusing the refusal which desacralizes the world, we return to
the moment in which the Imago Templi affirms itself not as an image to be
destroyed, but as the instrument of salvation enabling us to leave the
crypt. We must rediscover the meaning of the crypt. When the Imago Templi
is destroyed, one is no longer even aware of being in the depths of a crypt.
The world is "disorientated": there is no longer an "Orient". One thinks
one is out in the open, that there is neither an above nor a below. By
contrast, for all our mystical theosophers the world has an "Orient" and is
"orientated"; there is an above and a below, not necessarily in the sense of
geometrical distance, but ineluctably in the sense of a metaphysical distance.
This is so because entry into this world is perceived essentially as
an entry into the world of exile, as a "descent" from the Orient of the
Temple to the Occident of the world as the crypt of the Temple. 27 The
Imago Templi is then there so that the visionary, withdrawing into his
khangah—the sanctuary of his microcosm—may recollect his origin. Unlike
the sage of antiquity, he experiences his entry into this world as a
rupture. It is exile far from the Temple. The Angel's whole message is to
remind him that an exile does not delay when his family calls him back,
that he must return in haste. This is the whole theme of Suhravardi's
recital of the "occidental exile", as well as of several other recitals.
3. Entry into the world of exile. There is fundamental agreement between
Suhravardi's hermeneutic of exile and that emphasized by a contemporary
Cabbalistic master, Friedrich Weinreb, in his many books. I do not
say that this agreement is surprising—far from it: it is to be expected and
is therefore all the more significant. Destruction of the Temple means
entry into the world of exile. In short, both for the master of Ishraq and for
the Cabbalistic master, the destruction of the Temple is the actual occasion
of our birth into this world which is the world of exile, but also the world
through which we have to pass if we are to reach the new Temple. The
27 This is the whole theme of pre-existence that we find in Suhravardi. In his exoteric
treatises, the skaykh al-ishraq adopts a position opposed to this idea. In all his
esoteric treatises, on the other hand, which take the form of symbols and parables,
the idea of pre-existence is implied. See for example 'L'Epitre des hautes tours',
where it is said towards the beginning that "return implies the anteriority of
presence. We do not say to someone who has never been to Egypt: 'Return to
Egypt'" (L'Archange empourpre, op. cit.). We believe that by distinguishing between
the natures of the different treatises of Suhravardi, we resolve an ambiguity that was
already troubling Mulla Sadra Shirazi.
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