History Of Mysticism Research Articles

ABDUL QADIR GILANI AND HIS WORK “FUTUH AL-GHAIB”

Today all over the world more and more people accept Muslim religion. According to Islam, religion is innate. This naturalness is based on the Qur'an and the hadith. Man has been in Islam since creation. He is born in this religion. It is very important to talk about founders of Islamic Sufism. There are many founders, for example Yassaviya's ideas have been edited several times summarized in the published Devoni Hikmat. From the sects that emerged in a century with Yassavi one is this Kubraviya. The founder of this sect is the Sheikh Najmiddin Kubro al-Khivaqi is in the history of mysticism is one of the brightest images. Another major that emerged in Central Asia in the fourteenth century the mystical sect is Naqshbandi. But now I want to introduce another Islamic sect Qadiriyya. We talk about the founder of the Qadiriyya Sufi order Abdul Qadir Gilani.

Perennial Philosophy and the History of Mysticism

Perennial Philosophy and the History of Mysticism

The Long History of Mysticism: A Review of Bernard Mcginn's Mysticism in the Reformation 1500–1650 Part 1, Volume VI of the Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism

The Long History of Mysticism: A Review of Bernard Mcginn's Mysticism in the Reformation 1500–1650 Part 1, Volume VI of the Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism

Spirituality in Contemporary Ireland: Manifesting Indigeneity

Spirituality in Contemporary Ireland:Manifesting Indigeneity1 Bernadette Flanagan (bio) and Michael O’Sullivan (bio) The focus of this essay is an examination of a few of the contours of the spiritual search in contemporary Ireland, a society where the form and structures of a long dominant Roman Catholic tradition are becoming less influential and are being resisted, opposed, or rejected by some people. This search—to a greater or lesser extent—seeks to unite a perennial inner yearning with external practices in a new social context. Uniquely, Ireland has an indigenous, spiritual tradition that has a strong ecological core, which is in tune with the spirit of the age. A return to some of the practices of this tradition is proving attractive to many contemporary Irish spiritual seekers. The current intersection then of two spiritual streams, one hidden but enduring, the other dominant but shamed publicly through the abuse crisis in the Catholic Church in Ireland, is not dissimilar to the process described by the French cultural theorist of mysticism Michel de Certeau. When reflecting on the sociocultural context in which mysticism blossomed in sixteenth and seventeenth century Spain, de Certeau notes that the hidden mysticism present in Judaism’s historical heritage such as that which came from the Essene community, the Kabbalah and the Book of Splendor (Sefer ha-Zohar) broke through in the mystical writings of Teresa of Avila, whose paternal family line was of Jewish stock.2 Similarly, Julia Kristeva has identified an allusion to the seven palaces of Jewish mysticism’s Sheva Hekalot in the imagery of the Interior Castle.3 The blossoming forth of Spanish mysticism occurred in the context of the fragmented and contested religious landscape of a post-Reformation social reality. Philip Sheldrake has pointed out Certeau’s insight that mystics often tend to be socially, culturally or religiously sequestered in a liminal space.4 This insight is relevant for an understanding of the process of change underway in Ireland, where shared certainties of a common religious affiliation are unravelling. For example, it is not uncommon in media interviews with those visiting indigenous holy sites such as Croagh Patrick or Lough Derg to speak of being distant from formal religious structures and yet being willing to undertake demanding spiritual practices and journeys. Sheldrake notes as well de Certeau’s analysis of themes in the history of mysticism that include an abiding [End Page 55] Click for larger view View full resolution The Pilgrim. Courtesy Richard Levine [End Page 56] call to wander, to journey seeking a kind of mysticism of historical place. The current religious landscape in Ireland reflects this tendancy, which de Certeau describes in which the wanderer, seeker or pilgrim yearns, like Mary Magdalene, to discover the site of the presence beyond the empty tomb.5 The emergent contemporary expression of indigenous Irish spirituality embraces this pilgrim spirit through a resurgence of practices grouped broadly as “pilgrim path” practices. It is also notable that de Certeau has challenged the view that references to dark night experiences in various mystical texts refer primarily to inner, personal states of disillusionment. Instead, he emphasizes the environmental conditions which precipitate such states.6 The fruitfulness of his perspective is evident in Flanagan’s recent discussion of the close relationship between the current cultural shift in Ireland and the emergence of a renewed mystical consciousness.7 Keeping in mind de Certeau’s attentiveness to mystical awakening on the margins, we can turn to the insights of another notable group of scholars who have been to the fore in providing critical frameworks for reading everyday spiritual practice and popular piety as a window into the soul of society. These theorists include the North American triad of Nancy Annerman, Meredith McGuire and Robert Orsi.8 These three scholars have collectively developed a new way of understanding spirituality within a society. Rather than studying the practices of spirituality as it is defined by a religious organization (for example, Catholic spirituality as it is defined by the Catholic Church), they draw attention to the lived expression of a spirituality in people’s everyday lives. In this group of three, the Harvard scholar Robert Orsi has won many awards for...

The Question of Believing

For Michel de Certeau, believing was rooted in a foundational experience, situated in a Christian tradition where the relationship to scriptures is central. Now, in this immense inheritance, he chose as object of election and familiarity mystical texts, not ‘mystical experience’ but the writings of mystics, that is, a particular type of writings implying a mode of believing. He loved the mystics not because they would be ‘elect’ but because he saw in them the wounded and often the relegated to the margins of the social group, disgraced people, the monastery idiot in the patristic tradition (see chapter 1 of la Fable mystique), Surin long regarded as mad by his Jesuit brethren and whose writings were dispersed, corrected, partly lost. There, in shame and suffering, madness or defection, the ‘corruption’ that haunts President Schreber in Freud,’ something essential is tied between believing and its defection. It seems to me, to take up an expression he employed about Foucault, that that is the ‘black sun’ of his thought and that it explains the turn to ‘history of mysticism’ as well as the turn to ‘cultural anthropology of the present’ in his work.The platform that provided the force and originality of I'Invention du quotidien was the reflection on believing, beyond ecclesial institutions on every side. The disclosure of ordinary life as ‘mystical', in the proper as well as figurative sense, inspired the analysis of practices. He hoped to complete volume 2 of la Fable mystique in 1986 and counted then on writing an Anthropology of believing , which he had already announced as the theme of his seminar at the Ecole des hautes etudes in 1985-86.

CORPUS EPOCHALIS. MYSTICISM, BODY, HISTORY

The discourse of the body and history in the mystical tradition, especially Pascal. De Certeau on the history of Mysticism, Deleuze and Guattari on the body.

Book Review: Introduction to the History of Mysticism

Book Review: Introduction to the History of Mysticism