The Imaginal Cosmos

Course Code: WE 140 NE (online-English)

Course Dates: Starts April 4 2011

Instructor: Angela Voss

Imagination is the star in man, the celestial or supercelestial body (Martin Ruland)

“In our world”, said Eustace, “a star is a huge ball of flaming gas”. “Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of”.
(C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader)

Objectives and course description:

To introduce the imagination as the faculty of perception and knowledge of the soul, through studying key texts and images of the Western esoteric traditions; to learn about specific historical and cultural contexts, but also to consider the relevance of an imaginal perspective for our own life, work and creativity, and to gain an understanding of transpersonal and participatory approaches to research.  In neoplatonic understanding, soul or psyche is envisioned as the mediator between two modes of being called ‘divine’ and ‘human’. Taking this as our central image, we will begin with Plato, whose creation myth in the Timaeus establishes the soul as the intelligent, primary substance of the cosmos, and the human being as partaking of this intelligence. We will then discover how the image of the anima mundi and revelation of the divine order develops through neoplatonic cosmology and ritual, the early Christian hermeneutic of the four senses of interpretation, the Sufi tradition as interpreted by Henry Corbin, the revival of Platonic and Hermetic mysteries in the Renaissance, and finally through the 20^th century rebirth of soul-based knowledge in archetypal and depth psychology. Each theme will give rise to the question of the relationship of cosmos and consciousness, the nature of revelatory knowledge as opposed to human reason, and the role played by ritual, visual image and active imagining in accessing modes of understanding beyond the rational. Of central concern will be the question of academic and scholarly approaches to this material, for example, how can one study the ‘experiential’ moment of revelation or realisation, and bring such experience to bear on rational discourse ‘about’ it? Is creative engagement with poetic or art forms a bone fide research method? Is it possible to combine contemplative and critical modes in research?  How can the integrity of individual participation and practice be incorporated into historical or cultural models?

Texts:

• Patrick Harpur, A Complete Guide to the Soul (London: Ebury Publishing, 2010)
• Patrick Harpur, The Philosophers’ Secret Fire: a Historyof the Imagination (repr. Victoria, Aus: Blue Angel Gallery, 2007)
  
• William Chittick, Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul: The Pertinence of Islamic Cosmology in the Modern World (Oxford: One World Publications, 2007)
  
• Joseph Milne, Metaphysics and the Cosmic Order (London: Temenos Academy, 2008)
  
• Angela Voss, ‘A Methodology of the Imagination’, Eye of the Heart Journal, vol.3, (LaTrobe University, 2009) at http://www.latrobe.edu.au/eyeoftheheart/assets/issue3/imagination.pdfav

Prerequisites: None . This course is a prerequisite for several of our other courses. Exceptions will be made only in those cases where students can demonstrate a firm background knowledge of these concepts. If you believe this applies to you, please contact us prior to enrolment.

Languages: English only. Our English language requirements do apply to this course.

Delivery: Online only. A substantial amount of reading material will be made available to students through our online learning centre.

The Imaginal Cosmos

Week 1	Cosmic imagination: Plato’s Timaeus and the birth of the soul
Week 2	Intellectual imagination: the myth of the cave
Week 3	Archetypal imagination: Plotinus and the cosmic ballet
Week 4	Embodied imagination: statue animation and theurgic ritual
Week 5 Response Paper due	Symbolic imagination: The four senses of interpretation
Week 6	Divine imagination: Ibn’ Arabi, Henry Corbin and the imaginal world
Week 7	Erotic imagination: Botticelli’s Primavera and Birth of Venus
Week 8	Astrological imagination: Marsilio Ficino’s astral magic
Week 9	Hermetic imagination: Robert Fludd and the end of the Renaissance
Week 10	Active imagination: Jung, Hillman and the return of the soul to the world
Week 11	Research Paper Due Learning Journal Due Final Examination

Background reading:

• A.H. Armstrong, ‘Platonic Mirrors’ and ‘The Divine Enhancement of Earthly Beauty’ in Christian and Hellenic Studies (Aldershot: Variorum, 1990)
• J.Robert Barth, ‘Symbol as Sacrament’ in The Symbolic Imagination: Coleridge and the Romantic Tradition (Princeton University Press, 1977)
• Nicholas Campion and Patrick Curry (eds.), Sky and Psyche: The Relationship between Cosmos and Consciousness (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 2006)
• Tom Cheetham, The World Turned Inside Out: Henry Corbin and Islamic Mysticism (New Orleans: Spring Pubs. 2003)
• William Chittick, Imaginal Worlds; Ibn Arabi and the Problem of Religious Diversity (New York: SUNY, 1994)
• Noel Cobb, Archetypal Imagination: Glimpses of the Gods in Life and Art (Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Press, 1992)
• Henri Corbin Mundus imaginalis or the Imaginal and the Imaginary (Ipswich: Golgonooza Press 1976)
• Patrick Curry and Angela Voss (eds.) Seeing with Different Eyes: Essays in Astrology and Divination (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008)
• Peter Dronke, Imagination in the late Pagan and early Christian World (Tavamuzze: Firenze, 2003)
• David Freedberg The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago UP, repr 1991)
• Patrick Harpur, A Complete Guide to the Soul (London: Ebury Publishing, 2010)
• James Hillman,  ‘A  Cosmology for Soul’ in Sphinx: Journal for Archetypal Psychology and the Arts vol.2, 1989
• James Hillman, ‘The return of the soul to the world’, Spring Journal (1982), 71-93
• James Hollis & David H. Rosen The Archetypal Imagination (Texas A&M University Press, 2002)
• Robert Huffman Robert Fludd (Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books, 2001)
• C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image (1964 repr. Cambridge, 1994)
• Joseph Milne, Metaphysics and the Cosmic Order (London: Temenos Academy, 2008)
• Gregory Shaw Theurgy and the Soul (Penn State Press, 1995)
• Joanne Snow-Smith, The Primavera of Sandro Botticelli: a Neoplatonic Interpretation (New York: Peter Lang, 1993)
  
• Peter Struck, Birth of the Symbol: Ancient Writers at the Limits of their Texts (Princeton University Press, 2004)
• Deborah Tarn Steiner, Images in Mind: Statues in Archaic and Classical Greek Literature and Thought (Princeton UP, 2001)
• Arthur Versluis, ‘What is Esoteric? Methods in the Study of Western Esotericism’ at http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeIV/Methods.htm and ‘Part II: Mysticism and the Study of Esotericism’ at http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeV/Mysticism.htm
• Angela Voss and Jean Hinson Lall (eds.) The Imaginal Cosmos: Astrology, Divination and the  Sacred (Canterbury: University of Kent, 2007)
• Angela Voss, ‘From Allegory to Anagoge: the question of symbolic perception in a literal world’, in Astrology and the Academy
• Angela Voss Marsilio Ficino (Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books, 2006)
• Michael Ward, Planet Narnia : the seven heavens in the imagination of C.S. Lewis (Oxford UP, 2008)