This article explores the relationship between music and religion through a case study of Harmony of the Spheres by the Dutch composer Joep Franssens. Situated within the context of religious change in the Netherlands, where institutional religion has declined while spiritual and sacred repertoires remain culturally significant, this article asks how musical experience can generate, mediate, or...
Published in Paris in 1977, Mahmud Shah Qureshi’s Poèmes Mystiques Bengalis was the first substantial anthology to translate Bengali Baul and Fakir songs directly from Bengali into French. Prepared within the broader intellectual and cultural framework of UNESCO’s Collection of Representative Works, the volume introduced French readers to the mystical, philosophical, and performative traditions...
Among the Tamil mystic poets of the eighteenth century, Thayumanavar has a distinctive position, and his songs are valuable poetic compositions. They are the records of his spiritual experience. The songs embody the philosophical tenets of Saiva Siddhanta, the manifold emotions of human existence, and the soul's benevolent journey towards the realisation of the divine. Thayumanavar employs...
This article examines Möminə Xatın as a metaphysical symbol of Azerbaijani female Sufism through an interdisciplinary analysis combining historical, architectural, and mystical perspectives. Within the broader framework of Sufi philosophy, the feminine is conceptualized as a central metaphysical principle associated with divine love, illumination, and spiritual proximity. The study explores how...
Abstract Simone Weil stands squarely within the apophatic tradition, but she also occupies an original position within it, having developed many themes in the wake of a mystical experience at the age of 29. One such theme, which originated in her meditation on Christ’s kenosis (Ph. 2:7) and how we can imitate it, is that of “decreation” (décréation). Another is attention (l’attention), which...
Abstract This paper examines how contemporary Christian contemplative discourse integrates two apparently opposed construals of religious experience: relational intimacy with a divine entity and non-conceptual states of pure awareness. We argue that relational intimacy is conceptualized through warmth, connection, spatial proximity, shared will, and resonance, underpinned by a linked goal...
How did religious poets contribute to ideas about religion, tolerance, and spiritual truth in the Mughal Empire? This dissertation examines the poetry of Feyżī (1547–1595), the poet laureate of the Mughal emperor Akbar. Feyżī wrote during a period in which Emperor Akbar promoted a vision of peaceful coexistence among people of different religious backgrounds, known as ṣulḥ-i kull ("universal...
This study is grounded in the growing concern over the separation between artistic creativity and spiritual experience in contemporary scholarship. While imagination is often treated as a cognitive or aesthetic function, its deeper existential and transcendent dimensions remain underexplored. The objective of this research is to examine how artistic creation is shaped by imaginal experiences...
Dick’s psychobiographies foreground his complex identity, mystical experiences, and struggles with mental health. Psychobiographers like Gregg Rickman, Anthony Peake, Kyle Arnold, and Erik Davis apply varied lenses, from trauma and psychosis to precognition and psychoanalysis; their biotexts occupy a Phildickian asylum mundi that illustrates the hermeneutic challenges of interpreting a figure...
This chapter explores female sanctity from the medieval period through the early modern era, with a focus on the phenomenon of the “living saints” ( sante vive ). These charismatic figures, renowned for their abstinence, mystical experiences, prophetic abilities, and miracles, were venerated by the people and sought by princes as spiritual advisors, and their prophetic powers surpassed those of...