Mysticism is the experience of direct communion with the Ultimate Reality, which can be attained through subjective experiences. However, the social discrimination and specific challenges experienced by women mystics, as compared to their male counterparts, have played pivotal roles in shaping their spiritual journeys and mystical experiences in the medieval era. The mystical experiences of...
ISLAMIKAJuly 1, 2026Dimyati Sajari, Abdul Haris, Rasi’in Rasi’in et al.
The accelerating dominance of artificial intelligence (AI) and digital technologies has profoundly reshaped human cognition, emotion, and moral sensibility, while also generating new forms of psychological fragmentation and spiritual detachment. This study introduces Digital Sufism as a spiritually grounded and philosophically integrative framework for restoring inner equilibrium and sacred...
Abstract This article reviews Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas’s The Mysticism of Ḥamzah Fanṣūrī as a tribute to his scholarly legacy following his recent passing. It situates the work within al-Attas’s broader intellectual project of recovering the depth and coherence of the Malay-Islamic intellectual tradition. The review examines the book’s central argument that Ḥamzah Fanṣūrī should be...
This paper examines Elif Shafak’s The Forty Rules of Love through a Bakhtinian framework to highlight the novel's polyphonic construction of mysticism. While the existing literature largely focuses on the Sufi sentiment and intertextual layering of the text, it often overlooks the dialogic structure which shapes the spiritual meaning. By employing Bakhtin’s concepts of heteroglossia, chronotope...
In this article, we will discuss the role and metaphysical position of women in the Sufi tradition, a tradition that has been rarely heard. The main focus of this article is how women shifted from being followers to leaders in spiritual activities, especially in institutionalized Sufi activities. Not only that, women can also be a source of inspiration for great Sufi figures such as Ibn Arabi...
If you think that religion and mathematics have nothing to do with each other... think again! “From the dawn of history, sages have intertwined numbers with magic to create the Gods, demons, and the world views needed by the rest of us to make existence seem comprehensible” (Cole, 1987). The Kabbalistic numerology of Jewish mysticism is said to reveal the deep, hidden meaning of Scripture,...
This article is not explaining how scientifically shamans are able to smooth the way for candidates in winning electoral politics, but rather this article aims to explain how the formation of discourse is built to support the rationality of political shamans so that there are still many who trust and use their services. Using the object of study at the moment of the election of the village head...
The idea of a psychology of mysticism is thought provoking, but it is often carried out by reducing spiritual realities to the level of the psyche and the psychological order, which radically compromises the scope of this endeavor. It needs to be clearly stated that the bringing together of mysticism with psychology is not a novel initiative; this integration is, in fact, embodied in the...
TopoiJune 30, 2026Benjamin Birkenstock, Gregory S. Moss
Abstract By introducing the concept of atheistic theism, we mean to reconcile monotheism with Brook Ziporn’s concept of mystical atheism. We demonstrate that Ziporyn’s own principle of intersubsumption, the principle according to which any determinate content is indistinct from any and all other contents, engenders this very result. In atheistic theism, both atheism and monotheism take on a...
This study analyzes the folk tale Magical Ruler for Healing and Saving Lives from a shamanic perspective to identify the factors behind its enduring transmission and its structural characteristics. The core elements of the tale are deeply intertwined with the shamanic worldview. The ruler or stick is not merely a measurement tool but serves as a spiritual bridge—an axis mundi—that connects...
Shah& Sultan by Iskender Pala approaches Ottoman-Safavid relations not only as a political and military conflict, but also as a multilayered encounter shaped by Sufi institutions, sectarian identities, and processes of social transformation. In this respect, the novel transcends the conventional boundaries of the historical novel and emerges as a significant text for the study of Sufism and the...
This paper explores the interpretation of the Rosary through the philosophical thoughts of Simone Weil, highlighting its potential as a means of cultivating Weil’s living philosophy of “attention,” and by so presenting a spirituality of liberation that attempts to present in whole the twofold image of Weil as both a mystic and a radical. Through Weil’s theory of attention and her two-step...
Non-ordinary states of consciousness (NOSC) have long been described across cultures and spiritual traditions, while contemporary research increasingly examines them through neural, physiological, and phenomenological dimensions.This narrative literature review explores nonpathological NOSC across meditation, yoga, breathwork, psychedelic experiences, near-death experiences, and mystical...
Academic stress remains a pervasive challenge among university students, primarily driven by intense study demands, accumulating assignments, and stringent time constraints. If left unmanaged, this condition can escalate into academic burnout, severely compromising students' psychological well-being and overall mental health. While contemporary psychology provides various intervention...
This study aims to describe the experiences of a Polish mystic who lived in the 19th and late 20th centuries, based on her writings. Through research involving comparisons, analyses, and a synthesis of her revelations, it has been possible to identify and highlight the diversity of Blessed Marcelina Darowska’s (1827–1911) inner life and achievements, which place her among contemplative and...
Abstract In The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), Albert Camus critiques mysticism for its attempt to escape the absurdity or meaninglessness of reality through a leap of faith (which Camus calls “philosophical suicide”). This critique does not so obviously apply to the atheistic mysticism endorsed by Brook Ziporyn in his Experiments in Mystical Atheism (2024). According to Ziporyn, the mystic atheist...
The crisis of religious authority, identity polarization, and informational disruption in the contemporary public sphere indicate a tension between religious truth claims and the demands of deliberate rationality within plural societies. Abdolkarim Soroush’s thought offers a conceptual distinction between religion as a transcendent reality and religious knowledge as a historical construction,...
Digital qur’anic exegesis emerges at the intersection of classical interpretive traditions and the fast-paced, fragmented, and algorithm-driven logic of online media. This transformation not only reshapes how tafsir is delivered but also shifts the reader’s epistemological experience from the presence of meaning (ḥuḍūr) toward the dominance of representation (ḥuṣūlī). This study aims to...
This article liberates discussion of the politics of psychedelics from its present impasse. Across ten theses, it asserts that psychedelics are interruptive deautomating political technologies, which makes them conducive to democratic politics, in the radical sense: rather than consolidating liberal-democratic systems of representative or managed democracy, psychedelic experience tends to open...
Prophetic or messianic states of consciousness are charged with moral urgency and are active, historical, political, and sometimes infused with ego. In this paper, I inquire into psychedelic micro-messianic phenomenology and revolutionary dynamics through the historical case studies of Allen Ginsberg, Master Irineu, and John Wilson (Moonhead)—figures associated with the diffusion of LSD, Daime...