Lux Esoterica (Nifiluz)

Arte islámico de manuscritos de la colección del Museo Británico — de la civilización que produjo la filosofía esotérica más sofisticada dentro del mundo islámico, incluida la tradición ismaili. Dentro del vasto océano del pensamiento espiritual islámico — el sufismo con su aniquilación mística, la tradición Doce-Imanes shía con su teología del Imán Oculto que espera su retorno, la tradición filosófica sunní que se extiende desde al-Kindi hasta Averroes — existe una corriente que es menos conocida en el mundo occidental pero que es argumentablemente más sistemática, más audaz y más filosóficamente ambiciosa que cualquiera de sus vecinas. Es una tradición que tomó la convicción shía central de que el Imán es el locus viviente de la guía divina, y extendió esa convicción hacia una cosmología completa, una epistemología, una hermenéutica esotérica y una teología política de extraordinaria sofisticación. Es el ismailismo — específicamente la tradición intelectual del pensamiento ism...

Islamic manuscript art from the British Museum collection — from the civilization that produced the most sophisticated esoteric philosophy within the Islamic world, including the Ismaili tradition. Within the vast ocean of Islamic spiritual thought — Sufism with its mystic annihilation, the Twelve-Imam Shi'a tradition with its theology of the Hidden Imam awaiting return, the Sunni philosophical tradition stretching from al-Kindi to Averroes — there exists a current that is less widely known in the Western world but arguably more systematic, more daring, and more philosophically ambitious than any of its neighbors. It is a tradition that took the core Shi'a conviction that the Imam is the living locus of divine guidance, and extended that conviction into a complete cosmology, an epistemology, an esoteric hermeneutics, and a political theology of extraordinary sophistication. It is Ismailism — specifically the intellectual tradition of Fatimid Ismaili thought — and it dese...

Jinn of the Air — Seljuk arts, 12th–13th century CE. The medieval Islamic visual tradition gave jinn the form of winged humanoid beings with fierce faces and complex, swirling bodies: creatures of movement, of air and fire, of a nature halfway between the human and the angelic. In the Islamic conception of creation, the universe contains three distinct orders of rational beings: angels ( malā'ika ), made of light, wholly obedient to God, without free will; humans ( ins ), made of clay, with free will, born into a physical world they must navigate toward or away from the divine; and jinn — made of smokeless fire ( nār al-samūm ), possessing free will, invisible to ordinary human perception, inhabiting the world alongside humans but not quite of the human world. The jinn (singular: jinnī , often transliterated as djinn or genie in English) are neither angels nor demons, though they can be aligned with either divine service or with opposition to it. They are the third ord...