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Green Man, Earth Angel: The Prophetic Tradition and the Battle for the Soul of the World
Argues for a renewed vision of the cosmos based on the centrality of the human encounter with the sacred.
Green Man, Earth Angel explores the central role of imagination for understanding the place of humans in the cosmos. Tom Cheetham suggests that lives can only be completely whole if human beings come to recognize that the human and natural worlds are part of a vast living network and that the material and spiritual worlds are deeply interconnected. Central to this reimagining is an examination of the place of language in human life and art and in the worldview that the prophetic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—presuppose. If human language is experienced only as a subset of a vastly more-than-human whole, then it is not only humans who speak, but also God and the world with all its creatures. If humans' internal poetry and creative imaginations are part of a greater conversation, then language can have the vital power to transform the human soul, and the soul of the world itself.
“Cheetham’s approach, style, and manner is scholarly-poetic for he calls on the reader to imagine his work with him, to be a traveler in tandem to his developing thesis, and to imagine it for oneself.” —Spring 74: Alchemy
“…Cheetham[’s] vision is one of wholeness, of learning to speak, think, and feel again, and to bring together the ‘shattered fragments of a life into some wounded yet living whole.’” —Journal of Analytical Psychology
“…a passionate cry for the reclamation of the imaginal realm denied by the dualistic cosmologies of the Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam … Green Man, Earth Angel is a very engaging read. Cheetham … brings … much-needed attention to the ground-breaking work of Henry Corbin in the field of Sufism and provides throughout … a learned and cogent exposition of Islamic esoteric thought in the work of Ibn 'Arabi.” —Esoterica
"This book speaks trenchantly to themes that I have returned to time and again in my writings and throws new light on them. It is a very important addition to the ongoing discussion of where we are in human history." —Huston Smith
"Tom Cheetham has written a remarkable book that has the power of shifting our way of imagining the world … Cheetham is one of the most courageous thinkers I have ever read … I hope … you enter into a study of a work that certainly does not belong to the world of throwaway books. This book requires slow reading, for as you read these living words you are undergoing a transformation. At the end of reading, the world will not be the same." —from the Foreword by Robert Sardello
"Cheetham gives a very good overview of the many problems of scientific rationalism as they connect to monotheism and Christian teleological thinking. In contrast, he offers a new interpretation of ecology that is aesthetic and soulful, based on the writings of Henry Corbin." —Lee Irwin, author of Awakening to Spirit: On Life, Illumination, and Being
Tom Cheetham has taught human ecology and is the author of The World Turned Inside Out: Henry Corbin and Islamic Mysticism.
Green Man, Earth Angel explores the central role of imagination for understanding the place of humans in the cosmos. Tom Cheetham suggests that lives can only be completely whole if human beings come to recognize that the human and natural worlds are part of a vast living network and that the material and spiritual worlds are deeply interconnected. Central to this reimagining is an examination of the place of language in human life and art and in the worldview that the prophetic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—presuppose. If human language is experienced only as a subset of a vastly more-than-human whole, then it is not only humans who speak, but also God and the world with all its creatures. If humans' internal poetry and creative imaginations are part of a greater conversation, then language can have the vital power to transform the human soul, and the soul of the world itself.
“Cheetham’s approach, style, and manner is scholarly-poetic for he calls on the reader to imagine his work with him, to be a traveler in tandem to his developing thesis, and to imagine it for oneself.” —Spring 74: Alchemy
“…Cheetham[’s] vision is one of wholeness, of learning to speak, think, and feel again, and to bring together the ‘shattered fragments of a life into some wounded yet living whole.’” —Journal of Analytical Psychology
“…a passionate cry for the reclamation of the imaginal realm denied by the dualistic cosmologies of the Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam … Green Man, Earth Angel is a very engaging read. Cheetham … brings … much-needed attention to the ground-breaking work of Henry Corbin in the field of Sufism and provides throughout … a learned and cogent exposition of Islamic esoteric thought in the work of Ibn 'Arabi.” —Esoterica
"This book speaks trenchantly to themes that I have returned to time and again in my writings and throws new light on them. It is a very important addition to the ongoing discussion of where we are in human history." —Huston Smith
"Tom Cheetham has written a remarkable book that has the power of shifting our way of imagining the world … Cheetham is one of the most courageous thinkers I have ever read … I hope … you enter into a study of a work that certainly does not belong to the world of throwaway books. This book requires slow reading, for as you read these living words you are undergoing a transformation. At the end of reading, the world will not be the same." —from the Foreword by Robert Sardello
"Cheetham gives a very good overview of the many problems of scientific rationalism as they connect to monotheism and Christian teleological thinking. In contrast, he offers a new interpretation of ecology that is aesthetic and soulful, based on the writings of Henry Corbin." —Lee Irwin, author of Awakening to Spirit: On Life, Illumination, and Being
Tom Cheetham has taught human ecology and is the author of The World Turned Inside Out: Henry Corbin and Islamic Mysticism.
182 pages, Paperback
First published November 4, 2004
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169 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 28, 2020
For a book with such a promising title, I was somewhat underwhelmed.
Let's put this in the proper frame: This is a book of proper metaphysics that came out about fifteen years ago but it fully responds to and continues the work of Jung, Henry Corbin, and synthesizes a lot of the BIG IDEAS into seemingly new forms.
You know, the ideas like the "soul of the world", "imaginal worlds", archetypes, duality synthesis, and all the things that are the horribly over-complicated realm of ALCHEMY, as long as we consider alchemy the domain of the psyche.
Please bear with me. Most of the underlying ideas are pretty commonplace. While reading THIS particular book, I was sufficiently impressed by the ability of the author to obfuscate, needlessly prevaricate, and weave a tangled, tangled web.
If I was to rate this on being fully erudite in the sense of knowing his source materials, combining a very wide range of comparative metaphysics, from Sufis to Plato to Corbin, I'd give this a full 5 stars.
If I was to rate this by Umberto Eco's four types of publishable material, I'd call this Moronic. Indeed, it delights in slamming us down with minor variations on an otherwise simple idea, making us bow down to his ability to SOUND impressive as hell without letting us get to the freaking point.
How much did we go into the idea of letting one's whole being suffuse a single idea until our very soul becomes one with it? Tons. It's an old idea. Books are the death of that way of thinking, or it was beginning to die by the time we started getting illuminated texts. The soul needs to immerse itself in its meditations and having a text to go by is the death of original creative thought, etc., etc. Of course, the point is to crank up the volume to ten and exploit the idea until we get to levels of the world, etc.
Fine, fine. We live in the basest, most shadowy level. The point is to break through.
So am I just complaining about clarity concerns?
Nope. I take umbrage with a lot of the FUNDAMENTAL assumptions. So many are left completely undefined. Beyond that, there are brief encounters with statements that assume all thought is based on a neural net. He bases ALL of our experiential quanta on foundations that are shaky at best. If we are supposed to tackle any duality in order to transcend it, then first we need to understand how WE work in the first place.
Everything else is just a review of old thoughts repackaged in an overly complex attempt at the author attempting to overwhelm us. After a certain point, is there a point to exhaustively, densely, going over so many instances of dualism? Most are, at their core, the same; to understand good, you must understand evil. Consciousness, unconsciousness. Reality, imagination. He argues, in a lot of ways, that they are all the same class.
I won't argue the point. I happen to agree with most of it. I do not, however, agree with the full conclusions because we are still spinning in the wind without fundamental definitions. One does not base a whole argument on the weight of other faulty works and assume you're going to come up with something other than "Garbage In, Garbage Out".
Let's put this in the proper frame: This is a book of proper metaphysics that came out about fifteen years ago but it fully responds to and continues the work of Jung, Henry Corbin, and synthesizes a lot of the BIG IDEAS into seemingly new forms.
You know, the ideas like the "soul of the world", "imaginal worlds", archetypes, duality synthesis, and all the things that are the horribly over-complicated realm of ALCHEMY, as long as we consider alchemy the domain of the psyche.
Please bear with me. Most of the underlying ideas are pretty commonplace. While reading THIS particular book, I was sufficiently impressed by the ability of the author to obfuscate, needlessly prevaricate, and weave a tangled, tangled web.
If I was to rate this on being fully erudite in the sense of knowing his source materials, combining a very wide range of comparative metaphysics, from Sufis to Plato to Corbin, I'd give this a full 5 stars.
If I was to rate this by Umberto Eco's four types of publishable material, I'd call this Moronic. Indeed, it delights in slamming us down with minor variations on an otherwise simple idea, making us bow down to his ability to SOUND impressive as hell without letting us get to the freaking point.
How much did we go into the idea of letting one's whole being suffuse a single idea until our very soul becomes one with it? Tons. It's an old idea. Books are the death of that way of thinking, or it was beginning to die by the time we started getting illuminated texts. The soul needs to immerse itself in its meditations and having a text to go by is the death of original creative thought, etc., etc. Of course, the point is to crank up the volume to ten and exploit the idea until we get to levels of the world, etc.
Fine, fine. We live in the basest, most shadowy level. The point is to break through.
So am I just complaining about clarity concerns?
Nope. I take umbrage with a lot of the FUNDAMENTAL assumptions. So many are left completely undefined. Beyond that, there are brief encounters with statements that assume all thought is based on a neural net. He bases ALL of our experiential quanta on foundations that are shaky at best. If we are supposed to tackle any duality in order to transcend it, then first we need to understand how WE work in the first place.
Everything else is just a review of old thoughts repackaged in an overly complex attempt at the author attempting to overwhelm us. After a certain point, is there a point to exhaustively, densely, going over so many instances of dualism? Most are, at their core, the same; to understand good, you must understand evil. Consciousness, unconsciousness. Reality, imagination. He argues, in a lot of ways, that they are all the same class.
I won't argue the point. I happen to agree with most of it. I do not, however, agree with the full conclusions because we are still spinning in the wind without fundamental definitions. One does not base a whole argument on the weight of other faulty works and assume you're going to come up with something other than "Garbage In, Garbage Out".
April 5, 2022
En blandad påse, med väldigt mycket Heidegger, och en variant av islamisk mystik som jag inte kan säga att jag förstår, och därmed inte kan säga något om. Jag är inte imponerad, men kommer på sikt att kolla av de mer frekvent använda källorna.
Want to read
July 5, 2007This looks really freakin' good. Cheetham builds upon the work of Henri Corbin, who is tremendously important and tremendously overlooked.
April 5, 2013
I have seldom encountered a group of essays that I read and read and read again. Thank you Tom Cheetham.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews