Search Results (12)

While Rosemary Radford Ruether is widely, and rightly, acknowledged as a prophetic Catholic scholar–activist, her interest in and experience of mysticism is rarely emphasized. However, Ruether had an impactful mystical experience as a young woman, and the themes of this experience echo throughout her body of work. This paper paints a portrait of Ruether as both a profoundly prophetic scholar–activist and a spiritually attuned seeker of the very divinity that she encountered in her twenties. In the process, this paper first offers a democratized and demystified vision of mysticism by drawing on the work of Bernard McGinn, Dorothee Söelle, and Jess Byron Hollenback. Next, it offers a biographical sketch of Ruether, contextualizing her early mystical experience within the broader pattern of her spiritual and intellectual path. It interprets Ruether’s mystical experience, through which she encountered the divine as a feminine presence suffusing creation, as a meaningful source of inspiration for her decades-long commitment to an anti-patriarchal, ecofeminist theology. Full article

The present article traces the symbols of the eye (Greek: κόρη [maiden, concubine, pupil of the eye]; Latin: pūpilla; Hebrew: īshōn bath ʿāyin (‘apple of the eye’ or the ‘pupil of the eye’ [lit. ‘daughter of an eye’], i.e., the feminine divine Presence [Shĕkhīnāh]); Arabic: ʿayn; Persian: chashm) and the black pupil of the eye (Arabic: insān al-ʿayn; Persian: mardum-i chashm) in Sufism, both—in the context of Andalusian Sufism, specifically in Ibn al-ʿArabī’s poem entitled ‘I saw a Girl…’, in whose dark pupil or abyssal blackness (Arabic: ḥawar; Hebrew: īshōn), pleasure of the gaze (naẓar) and repository of the secret (sirr), resides the Beloved—as in the medieval Persian gnosis of the followers of al-Sahykh al-Akbar—Fakhr al-Dīn ʿIrāqī and Maḥmūd Shabistarī—, and the mystical poet Ḥāfiẓ Shīrāzī. Ibn al-ʿArabī and Shabistarī have had an explicit influence on the work of the reputed American video artist Bill Viola (Queens, New York, 1951), specifically in his two video/sound installations—He Weeps for You (1976) and I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like (1986), in which the common image of the mirror pupil of the eye summarizes the entire ancient Neoplatonic conception of the θεωρία (contemplatio, speculatio). Full article

The spirituality of Jesus, embedded within the literary contours of the Johannine narrative, is primarily grounded in a relationship of affiliation and friendship. It is a spirituality of abiding whose origins and goal lie in the unity of heart and mind that the Johannine Jesus as Son shares with the Father. This core relationship connotes not only the love that binds Jesus to God but is also the basis of the motif of sending and the divine authority over life and death which Jesus possesses in this Gospel. Jesus’ spirituality is grounded in the abiding presence of the Spirit-Paraclete whom he bequeaths to the disciples. In handing over the Spirit to the gathered community through his death and resurrection, Jesus donates his own spirituality, ultimately drawing all creation into the divine circle of love. This spirituality is the result of the Spirit’s presence, restoring human beings to their original, created identity as children and friends of God and empowering them for mission. While the dominant imagery is masculine there are also feminine images, particularly that of divine Wisdom, which provide a counterbalance and create an inclusive sense of appropriation and welcome. Full article

This paper explores the possible connections between the Persian Goddess Aredvi Sura Anahita and Sufi cosmology. How can we trace images, symbols and functions of the goddess in the symbolic journey to Mount Qaf in Sufism? The research question was posed by the author after a collision of mystical experiences and dreams with the figure of Anahita while being on the Sufi path. The paper offers a linguistic, scriptural and hermeneutic analysis of Anahita in the Avesta and her role in Zoroastrian cosmology, while looking at the symbolic importance of Mount Qaf and the figure of Khezr in Sufism. The comparative study draws on the work of Henry Corbin and Shahab al-Din Sohrawardi to explore the threads between these two ancient Persian traditions. Full article

This article is an inquiry into the nature of the female mystic and the divine feminine in Sufi experience. It considers this experience in the general sense with regard to the Sufi tradition, but in its analysis, the article primarily draws on examples from the classical period of Sufi history. Based on an analysis of the thought of key Sufi figures from that period, the assertion is made that the ground of the sacred is female and, as such, the basis of mystical experience is feminine. Full article

This article is a feminist ethnographic exploration of how ‘indigenous’ notions of a ‘sacred feminine’ shape Sufi praxis on the island of Lombok in the eastern part of Indonesia in Southeast Asia. I demonstrate through long-term immersive anthropological fieldwork how in her indigenous form as Dewi Anjani ‘Spirit Queen of Jinn’ and as ‘Holy Saint of Allah’ who rules Lombok from Mount Rinjani, together with a living female saint and Murshida with whom she shares sacred kinship, these feminine beings shape the kind of Sufi praxis that has formed in the largest local Islamic organization in Lombok, Nahdlatul Wathan, and its Sufi order, Hizib Nahdlatul Wathan. Arguments are situated in a Sufi feminist standpoint, revealing how an active integration of indigeneity into understandings of mystical experience gives meaning to the sacred feminine in aspects of Sufi praxis in both complementary and hierarchical ways without challenging Islamic gender constructs that reproduce patriarchal expressions of Sufism and Islam. Full article

This paper is an investigation of the divine feminine power as depicted in the texts of Hispanic mystics from Sufi, Hebrew, and Christian traditions. This work is intended to investigate the origin and subsequent development of a transcendent reconciliation of polarity, its diverse manifestations, and the attainment of a common goal, the quintessential of the Perfect Human Being. The architect of the encounter that leads to Union is “Sophia”. She is the Secret. Only those who are able to discern Her own immeasurable dimension may contemplate the Lady who dwells in the sacred geometry of the abyss. Sophia is linked to the hermetic Word, She is allusive, clandestine, poetic, and pregnant with symbols, gnostic resonances, and musical murmurs that conduct the “traveler” through dwellings and stations towards an ancient Sophianic knowledge that leads to the “germinal vesicle”, the “inner wine cellar”, to the Initium, to the Motherland. She is the Mater filius sapientae, who through an alchemical transmutation becomes a song to the absent Sophia whose Presence can only be intuited. Present throughout the Creation, Sophia is the axis around which the poetics of the Taryuman al-ashwaq rotates and the kabbalistic Tree of Life is structured. Full article

This paper explores the religious projection and ethical appeal in the art and literature of Leda and the Swan created from ancient times to the contemporary era, so as to make a comparative review and reading on it, providing religious reflection and ethical enlightenment to today’s society. From ancient Greek vase paintings to contemporary English poems, the investigation shows that the story of Leda and the Swan has been continuously rewritten and revalued by history, religion and social ethics. The interaction between Leda and the swan goes from divinity to humanity, increasingly out of the cage of eroticism, symbolizing the process of transforming into a secularized life. Besides, Leda, as a representative victim of traditional patriarchy and religious persecution, goes from bondage to liberation, signaling the awakening of feminine consciousness and the gradual collapse of patriarchy; while the swan, an incarnation of power and desire under patriarchy, becomes an object of condemnation. However, as for who is the victim and who should be condemned, there are different religious and ethical standards in different historical periods, which reflects the development and evolution of religious rules and ethical orders in the historical process. By highlighting the Trojan War or woman’s sufferings, Leda and the Swan, in fact, reveals that the tragedy results from the uncontrollable animal factor and free will, and that women should face their ethical or religious identities to make correct choices. Full article

Our essay is a thematic exploration of the malleability of idioms, imageries, and affectivities of Hindu bhakti across the borderlines of certain Indic worldviews. We highlight the theological motif of the feminine-feminised quest of the seeker (virahiṇī) for her divine beloved in some Hindu expressions shaped by the paradigmatic scriptural text Bhāgavata-purāṇa and in some Punjabi Sufi articulations of the transcendent God’s innermost presence to the pilgrim self. The leitmotif that the divine reality is the “intimate stranger” who cannot be humanly grasped and who is yet already present in the recesses of the virahiṇī’s self is expressed with distinctive inflections both in bhakti-based Vedānta and in some Indo-Muslim spiritual universes. This study is also an exploration of some of the common conceptual currencies of devotional subjectivities that cannot be straightforwardly cast into the monolithic moulds of “Hindu” or “Muslim” in pre-modern South Asia. Thus, we highlight the essentially contested nature of the categories of “Hinduism” and “Indian Islam” by indicating that they should be regarded as dynamic clusters of constellated concepts whose contours have been often reshaped through concrete socio-historical contestations, borrowings, and adaptations on the fissured lands of al-Hind. Full article

Controversy has swirled round the writings attributed to Guru Gobind Singh in the Dasam Granth, for not all Sikhs agree that he composed the entire text. Disputes about the Dasam Granth and its status have addressed the fact that many of the text’s compositions are concerned with gender with respect to the nature of both divinity and humans, thus playing a key role in the ongoing construction of notions of gender in Sikhism. Female voices, however, have been largely absent from this discourse despite the presence of two key gender-related themes—the figure of the goddess/sword [bhagautī], a topic throughout the text, and the nature of women [triyā caritra], the subject of the longest composition in the Dasam Granth. Through analysis of the intersection of the presence of goddesses and women but the relative absence of female voices in Dasam Granth exegesis, this paper demonstrates that the ongoing reception of the Dasam Granth has been a site for both proclaiming idealized constructions of gender equality, but also instantiating constructions of femininity that run counter to this ideal. Full article

The Hindu Goddess makes her Brahmanical debut circa 5th century CE in the Sanskrit narrative work Devī Māhātmya, the “Greatness of the Goddess” (henceforth DM). This monumental mythic moment enshrines the first Indic articulation of ultimate divinity as feminine. That she is perennially feminine and ever omnipotent, there can be no doubt. But how do we further characterize this feminine face? This study performs a close synchronic examination of the DM to demonstrate the extent to which it encodes an ambivalence on behalf of the Devī (Goddess) between violent wrath and compassionate care. Preserving paradox as only narrative can, the DM dispenses with neither face of the supreme Goddess—yet it posits her benign visage as ultimately supreme. This paper firstly examines the use of sound throughout the DM as expressive of the Devī’s sacrality and virulence alike. While violent sound is something the Devī deploys, sacred sound is something the Devī is. It then proceeds to analyze the second of the four hymns within the DM—the Śakrādi Stuti, occupying Chapter 4—to demonstrate the artful manner in which the hymn encodes the Devi’s ambivalence through its sophisticated design. This paper ultimately suggests that this ambivalence of the Devī finds an earthly analogue in the Indian king. Full article

The Dutch artist, Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675), created a series of singular paintings that might be identified as feminine soliloquies of solitude, silence, and space. Like seeing, reading is a mediated practice that occurs within the cultural matrix that promotes the appropriate social mores of how to read, what to read, and who is able to read. Over the millennia of Western cultural history, books have been ambiguous symbols of power that have signified authorship, divine inspiration, wisdom, social position, and literacy. This led to the initiation of a singular Christian form of literature—the advice manual—specifically prepared for Christian women by Jerome (347–420), perhaps best known as one of the church fathers, translator of the Vulgate, and penitential saint. Simultaneously, an iconography of women reading evolved from these theological advisories, and paralleled the history of women’s literacy, particularly within Western Christian culture. The dramatic division that has always existed between male readers and female readers was highlighted during the Reformation when Protestant artists recorded the historical reality that readers were predominantly men of all ages but only old women, that is, those women who were relieved form the duties of childbearing and housekeeping, and who, as a form of spiritual preparation for death, meditated upon the scriptures. The magisterial art historian Leo Steinberg documented the tradition of what he termed “engaged” readers in Western art. Engaged male readers dominated numerically over female readers as reading, Steinberg determined, was not a primary, or perhaps better said appropriate, activity for women. Yet Vermeer’s portrayal of a young woman absorbed in textual engagement with a letter was an exquisitely nuanced visual immediacy of intimacy merging with reality that was highlighted by a refined light that illumined the soft, diffuse ambiance of this woman’s world. How Vermeer was able to focus the viewer’s attention on his female subject and her innermost thoughts as she is “lost in space” reading provides a starting point of this discussion of the images, reading, space, and female agency in Christian and in secular art. Full article