This history of Sufi conceptions of the hereafter - often imagined as a place of corporeal reward (Paradise) or punishment (Hell) - is built upon the study of five medieval Sufi Qur'an commentaries. Pieter Coppens shows that boundary crossing from this world to the otherworld, and vice versa, revolves around the idea of meeting with and the vision of God; a vision which for some Sufis is not limited to the hereafter. The Qur'anic texts selected for study - all key verses on seeing God - are placed in their broader religious and social context and are shown to provide a useful and varied source for the reconstruction of a history of Sufi eschatology and the vision of God.

This book is a compilation of nine short books written between 2007 and 2021, in the ninth and tenth decades of the author's life. It contains his spiritual philosophy expressed in simple language accessible to all. The book tells of what the author has come to believe after a lifetime of seeking for the meaning of life, and how one should live that life at its optimum level. He explains that this cannot be proved: it is ultimately not susceptible to the usual scientific methods, for it lies in a different realm of reality which has to be experienced inwardly. However, its main tenets lie behind world religions and go back to mankind`s earliest thinkings and feelings. Believe it or not as you will, suggests the author. All he can say is that it has sustained him throughout his life and has made that life harmonious and joyous. The teachings of which he speaks are often referred to as the Ancient Wisdom. He first came across them at the age of twenty-five when he met a man who was well versed in that ancient wisdom which is to be found woven throughout major religions, philosophies and mystical teachings. This man was Eugene Halliday, who, the author says, was said to be one of the great spirits of the modern age. The phrase he used to describe the ultimate result of these teachings was 'Reflexive Self-Consciousness'. This, the author explains, was the same message taught by those of old, although expressed by his mentor Halliday in more modern terms. A wise but modest man, the author says that he is no academic or scholar or learned man - adding, with gentle humour, that it is written that an academic is an ass with a load of books on his back. He writes for the average person - of any age - who has no time left to think on these things but who may like to know more. He writes for this person - for he is such a one himself, he says. It is this which makes his story and his accumulated wisdom both inspiring and accessible.

In exploring the social background of early Jewish mysticism, Scholastic Magic tells the story of how imagination and magic were made to serve memory and scholasticism. In the visionary literature that circulated between the fifth and ninth centuries, there are strange tales of ancient rabbis conjuring the angel known as Sar-Torah, the "Prince of the Torah." This angel endowed the rabbis themselves with spectacular memory and skill in learning, and then taught them the formulas for giving others these gifts. This literature, according to Michael Swartz, gives us rare glimpses of how ancient and medieval Jews who stood outside the mainstream of rabbinic leadership viewed Torah and ritual. Through close readings of the texts, he uncovers unfamiliar dimensions of the classical Judaic idea of Torah and the rabbinic civilization that forged them. Swartz sets the stage for his analysis with a discussion of the place of memory and orality in ancient and medieval Judaism and how early educational and physiological theories were marshaled for the cultivation of memory. He then examines the unusual magical rituals for conjuring angels and ascending to heaven as well as the authors' attitudes to authority and tradition, showing them to have subverted essential rabbinic values even as they remained beholden to them. The result is a ground-breaking analysis of the social and conceptual background of rabbinic Judaism and ancient Mediterranean religions. Offering complete translations of the principal Sar-Torah texts, Scholastic Magic will become essential reading for those interested in religions in the ancient and medieval world, ritual studies, and popular religion. Originally published in 1996. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Judaism, Sufism, and the Pietists of Medieval Egypt addresses the extraordinary rise and inner life of the Egyptian pietist movement in the first half of the thirteenth century. The creative engagement with the dominant Islamic culture was always present, even when unspoken. Dr Russ-Fishbane calls attention to the Sufi subtext of Jewish pietiem, while striving not to reduce its spiritual synthesis and religious renewal to a set of political calculations. Ultimately, no single term or concept can fully address the creative expression of pietism that so animated Jewish society and that left its mark in numerous manuscripts and fragments from medieval Egypt. Russ-Fishbane offers a nuanced examination of the pietist sources on their own terms, drawing as far as possible upon their own definitions and perceptions. Jewish society in thirteenth-century Egypt reflects the dynamic reexamination by a venerable community of its foundational texts and traditions, even of its very identity and institutions, viewed and reviewed in the full light of its Islamic environment. The historical legacy of this religious synthesis belongs at once to the realm of Jewish culture, in all its diversity and dynamism, as well as to the broader spiritual orbit of Islamicate civilization.

Queen Belacane is dying. As a last act, she inscribes a book of counsels, or princes mirror, to guide her newborn son on his lifes path. The Queens counsels illuminate the way of futuwwa, a tradition of mystical chivalry traced to the Prophet Abraham. If the Prince would unite the chivalries of both Christendom and Islam and attain the Cup Mixed with Camphor, he must fulfil the pillars of his faith, and uphold the universal virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance, and generosity.

Sufism, the mystical or aesthetic doctrine in Islam, has occupied a very specific place in the Islamic tradition, with its own history, literature and devotional practices. Its development began in the seventh century, almost immediately after the early conquests, and spread throughout the Islamic world. The Cambridge Companion to Sufism traces its evolution from the formative period to the present, addressing specific themes along the way within the context of the times. In section discussing the early period, the devotional practices of the earliest Sufis are considered. The section on the medieval period, when Sufism was at its height, examines Sufi doctrines, different forms of mysticism and the antinomian expressions of Sufism. The section on the modern period explains the controversies that surrounded Sufism, the changes that took place in the colonial period and how Sufism transformed into a transnational movement in the twentieth century. This inimitable volume sheds light on a multifaceted and alternative aspect of Islamic history and religion.

Benjamin Pollock argues that Franz Rosenzweig s The Star of Redemption is devoted to a singularly ambitious philosophical task: grasping the All the whole of what is in the form of a system. In asserting Rosenzweig s abiding commitment to a systematic conception of philosophy often identified with German Idealism, this book breaks rank with the assumptions about Rosenzweig s thought that have dominated the scholarship of the last decades. Indeed, the Star s importance is often claimed to lie precisely in the way it opposes philosophy s traditional drive for systematic knowledge and upholds instead a new thinking attentive to the existential concerns, the alterity, and even the revelatory dimension of concrete human life. Pollock shows that these very innovations in Rosenzweig s thought are in fact to be understood as part and parcel of The Star s systematic program. But this is only the case, Pollock claims, because Rosenzweig approaches philosophy s traditional task of system in a radically original manner. For the Star not only seeks to guide its readers on the path toward knowing the All of which all beings are a part; it at once directs them toward realizing the redemptive unity of that very All through the actions, decisions, and relations of concrete human life."

A comprehensive treatment of visionary experience in some of the main texts of Jewish mysticism, this book reveals the overwhelmingly visual nature of religious experience in Jewish spirituality from antiquity through the late Middle Ages. Using phenomenological and critical historical tools, Wolfson examines Jewish mystical texts from late antiquity, pre-kabbalistic sources from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, and twelfth- and thirteenth-century kabbalistic literature. His work demonstrates that the sense of sight assumes an epistemic priority in these writings, reflecting and building upon those scriptural passages that affirm the visual nature of revelatory experience. Moreover, the author reveals an androcentric eroticism in the scopic mentality of Jewish mystics, which placed the externalized and representable form, the phallus, at the center of the visual encounter.

In the visionary experience, as Wolfson describes it, imagination serves a primary function, transmuting sensory data and rational concepts into symbols of those things beyond sense and reason. In this view, the experience of a vision is inseparable from the process of interpretation. Fundamentally challenging the conventional distinction between experience and exegesis, revelation and interpretation, Wolfson argues that for the mystics themselves, the study of texts occasioned a visual experience of the divine located in the imagination of the mystical interpreter. Thus he shows how Jewish mystics preserved the invisible transcendence of God without doing away with the visual dimension of belief.

Communicates the depth and power of the Christian 'wisdom tradition', and the promise of its dramatic rebirth in our time

A comprehensive survey of the Jewish mystical tradition
An indispensable guide to thousands of years of spiritual inquiry, "The Kabbalistic Tradition" features writings from a variety of literary forms-from the earliest biblical sources through twentieth-century studies-as well as practical information and practices for the modern reader. These selections concentrate on the three main areas of Kabbalistic creativity-the literature of Zohar, the Lurianic corpus, and the Chasidic mystical tradition. Alan Unterman's enlightening introduction examines the unique characteristics of the Kabbalah and places this volume in its proper historical and philosophical context.

Mirigavati or The Magic Doe is the work of Shaikh Qutban Suhravardi, an Indian Sufi master who was also an expert poet and storyteller attached to the glittering court-in-exile of Sultan Husain Shah Sharqi of Jaunpur. Composed in 1503 as an introduction to mystical practice for disciples, this powerful Hindavi or early Hindi Sufi romance is a richly layered and sophisticated text, simultaneously a spiritual enigma and an exciting love-story full of adventures. The Mirigavati is both an excellent introduction to Sufism and one of the true literary classics of pre-modern India, a story that draws freely on the large pool of Indian, Islamic, and European narrative motifs in its distinctive telling of a mystical quest and its resolution. Adventures from the Odyssey and the voyages of Sindbad the Sailor-sea voyages, encounters with monstrous serpents, damsels in distress, flying demons and cannibals in caves, among others-surface in Suhravardi's rollicking tale, marking it as first-rate entertainment for its time and, in private sessions in Sufi shrines, a narrative that shaped the interior journey for novices. Before his untimely death in 2009, Aditya Behl had completed this complete blank verse translation of the critical edition of the Mirigavati, which reveals the precise mechanism and workings of spiritual signification and use in a major tradition of world and Indian literature.

The widespread view that 'mystical' activity in the Middle Ages was a rarefied enterprise of a privileged spiritual elite has led to isolation of the medieval 'mystics' into a separate, narrowly defined category. Taking the opposite view, this book shows how individual mystical experience, such as those recorded by Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, is rooted in, nourished and framed by the richly distinctive spiritual contexts of the period. Arranged by sections corresponding to historical developments, it explores the primary vernacular texts, their authors, and the contexts that formed the expression and exploration of mystical experiences in medieval England. This is an excellent, insightful introduction to medieval English mystical texts, their authors, readers and communities. Featuring a guide to further reading and a chronology, the Companion offers an accessible overview for students of literature, history and theology.

Rabi'a, a female Sufi saint, was born in 717 CE and released from slavery to lead a life in pursuit of purity and perfect union with God. Her teachings and the numerous miracles attributed to her have made her an influential and revered figure in Sufi theology. This authoritative 1928 biography of the saint was written by Margaret Smith, who mastered numerous eastern languages, travelled extensively, and published a number of translations of important Arabic texts. Smith's linguistic skill and her immersion in the culture she studied has produced a book still considered an important account of Rabi'a's life. Smith also includes an incisive discussion of the role of women in early Islamic mysticism and an examination of Sufi doctrine, and examines the issues of celibacy and sainthood in Islam. A biography of one exceptional woman written by another.