"'Gabriel has two wings...the right wing is pure light, the totality of which is an abstraction of the relation between his being and God. The left wing has traces of darkness, like the dark spots on the surface of the moon that resemble peacock's feet. That is a sign that his being has one side toward not being. If you look at the relation of his being to God's being, it has the attribute of His being. When you look at the realization of his essence, it is the realization of nonexistence and a concomitant to possible existence. These two intrinsic meanings stand on the level of two wings: the relation to God on the right and the mental positing of the realization in the soul on the left. - The Chant of Gabriel's Wing, Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi
Is there anything the Ishraqis can teach the Criamon about Empedocles?
That's the question I'd like to look at briefly here - I think it's a valid one to ask. House Criamon as described in HoH: MC adheres to a cosmology that we as modern observers would consider more or less "accurately" Empedoclean, according to what we've managed to reconstruct of Empedocles' cosmology. Not only is it a lot closer to the fragments of Empedoclean texts we have than most of what was ascribed to the man in 1220 Europe historically, it's also closer than a lot of modern Presocratic Studies work done before 90s - unlike that, which relied almost entirely on post-Socratics to create an image of Empedoclean philosophy as simply a stumbling attempt towards the glorious heights of later Greek philosophy, the Criamon seem to have kept alive the more authentic concept of Empedocles as mystery cultist, magician, and theurgist as well as philosopher, which now has become the dominant understanding of him in academia. If we're starting from a foundation this impressive, what could a bunch of Muslim upstarts raised on a steady diet of Neoplatonism, logic textbooks, and Sufism possibly have to offer the Criamon in interpreting their own master?
In a word, context. The Criamon orthodox cosmology is an admirable and (as far as we know today) authentic representation of the systems implicit in the surviving texts of Empedocles, but it is strikingly bare of any other influences. Iamblichus and Porphyry, Hierocles and Syrianus, Proclus and Damascinus - all massively important to our understanding of the Presocratics and all nowhere to be seen in HoH: MC's Criamon either explicitly or implicitly.
You might ask "Hey, TYO, isn't that a good thing? Adding that would just amount to corrupting their existing corpus of well-preserved Empedoclean lore." It's more complicated than that, though. Empedocles is known from fragments at the end of the day, and as important returning to the text and reading it faithfully was in the radical reshaping of our modern understanding of his work, much can only be discerned by looking at later Empedoclean scholarship. This is true for Presocratics in general, particularly those that wrote in verse like Empedocles did - Parmenides is a great example. See, Suhrawardi wasn't exactly wrong when he wrote excitedly about the leaven of the ancients, the so called Golden Chain of philosophy-as-theurgy was understood as a real element of the enterprise of knowledge by Neoplatonists and others who preserved non-fragmentary Empedoclean information. This in particular is what Suhrawardi's students can bring to light for the Criamon.
Now let's provide an example!
In his book The Philosophy of Illumination, Suhrawardi discusses three fundamental realms - the higher level is the World of Lights (‘alam al-anwar.), the lower level is the Shadowed or Corporeal World (‘alam al-ajsam), and the middle level is the World of Images (‘alam al-suwar). The world of lights is also known as the realm of Light Refined, flowing from the Light of Lights (God) and containing those subsidiary lights which emanate from the Light of Lights such as the Platonic Forms and the planetary + stellar intelligences (keep this in mind). He maintained that those who refined themselves within their own lives, combining mastery of rational discursive knowledge and attainment of mystic spiritual purification, would pass into this realm after death into mystic union with the Light of Lights.
...those who are intellectually and morally perfect (i.e., the mystics) will abide in the intellectual world as pure intellect; thus, their being in the hereafter and all its functions are spiritual, and speaking about the role of material or celestial bodies is meaningless.
Suhrawardi was the first Muslim philosopher to discuss the intermediate world - the world of images, even before Ibn Arabi. To quote the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
This independent ‘world of immaterial shapes’ (ashbah murajjada) or images (suwar) operates like an ‘isthmus’ or an ‘intermediary realm’ of “dark and illuminated suspended images (suwar mu‘allaqa)”. It lies somewhere between the physical world of darkness and the world of the ‘Lords of the species’ (arbab al-anwa‘), i.e. the world of the Platonic Forms of ‘pure Lights’ (horizontal lights). This ‘world of images’ is where new entities – the ‘suspended forms’ (muthul mu‘allaqa) – exist and which post-mortem souls grasp with their imagination.
For those who attain a lesser level of perfection in their intellectual and spiritual characters, the world of images would be their abode after death. This class includes both pious individuals and sinners. Therefore, it is necessary for them all to have bodies so that they realize the nature of their future life. These bodies, however, are not their physical bodies that they have left after death. This is because Suhrawardi, following Avicenna, believed that it is impossible for a material body to resume its existence after it ceases to be. Since those individuals who attained only an intermediate level of their intellectual and practical potentials are not completely free from their attachments with matter, and their physical bodies cannot be returned, their lives in the hereafter must be in virtue of other bodies. As an answer to this question - Suhrawardi developed the concept of an astral body which is created for the person to receive judgement and move further towards purification in the World of Images - also fulfilling the concept of resurrection. Although punishment occurs in the World of Images for those who merit it, eventually all pass the stage of purification through punishment and enter a stage of purification through enlightenment until they achieve universal states of happiness - the immortal afterlife in the World of Images, although below the grand union available to the mystic-philosopher, is seen unequivocally in blissful positive terms. The quoted passage from The Philosophy of Illumination below is a good example:
Those who have attained an intermediate bliss … may escape to the world of suspending images whose locus is some of the celestial barriers. There they can and do bring images [from their minds] into being. They can call forth such tastes, forms, pleasant sound, and the like as they desire. Those forms are more perfect than those that we have; for the loci of ours and their bearers are deficient while those of the former are perfected. There they abide forever...
Suhrawardi’s core argument in Hikmat al-Ishraq supporting the existence of a “World of Suspended Images” is a combination of logical deduction, Qur’anic exegesis, and his own mystical experiences, but he also invoked the experiences of ancient philosophers and prophets, viewing them as authentic testimonies for the presence of the World of Images. He thus urged the reader not to hasten to denounce this world, writing in its defense in his book The Intimations:
“When you learn from the writing of ancient sages that there exists a world with dimensions and extension, other than the world of intellect, and other than the world governed by the souls of the spheres … do not hasten to proclaim it a lie, for there are pilgrims of the spirit who come to see with their own eyes and in it find their hearts’ desires.”
Importantly for us, Suhrawardi explained that Empedocles was among the ancients that developed this three realm concept which he now revived and refined. This seems surprising at first - the initial thought of the Criamon who hear this might be that Suhrawardi had learned from Pseudo-Empedoclean texts. Until very recently, modern scholars of Presocratic studies would have almost certainly agreed or - more uncharitably - argued that Suhrawardi was intentionally lying to grant his own theories an ancient air. However, several leading scholars of Empedocles today would likely agree with Suhrawardi today! In his watershed study From Hades to the Stars: Empedocles on the Cosmic Habitats of Soul, Dr. Simon Trépanier argues
The positive case for a three-level cosmic-eschatological scheme in Empedocles: life in earthly Hades, a happier “daimonic” life in the atmosphere, and, for a select elite, final passage to astral divinity.
Shockingly close to Suhrawardi's system - including a representation of the mortal world as deeply associated with the concept of darkness, a superior life of spirit intermediate between the mortal and supernal realms, and a highest life associated with light, the stars (remember the planetary and stellar ıntelligences?), and a divine transformation accessible only to a rare elite of philosopher-theurgists. Just so you know I'm not punking you, here's the whole abstract of the paper:
This study reconstructs Empedocles’ eschatology and cosmology, arguing that they presuppose one another. Part one surveys body and soul in Empedocles and argues that the transmigrating daimon is a long-lived compound made of the elements air and fire. Part two shows that Empedocles situates our current life in Hades, then considers the testimonies concerning different cosmic levels in Empedocles and compares them with the afterlife schemes in Pindar’s Second Olympian Ode and Plato’s Phaedo myth. Part three offers a new edition of section d, lines 5–10 of the Strasbourg papyrus of Empedocles that reinforces the connection between transmigration and different cosmic locations for souls. Part four reconstructs Empedocles’ cosmology, identifies three different levels or habitats of soul, and, more tentatively, suggests that Empedoclean “long-lived gods” are best understood as stars.
This isn't limited to one (albeit esteemed) Empedoclean studies scholar either, other figures including Dr. Xavier Gheerbrant and pillar of the field Dr. André Laks have made use of and expanded on the work presented in Trépanier's 2014 paper.
There we have it: a major insight into the cosmo-eschatology of Empedocles - one foreign to Criamonic Empedoclean orthodoxy as presented in HoH: MC (reasonable, as it is exceedingly hard to tease out this understanding from the texts as Dr Trépanier did without a broader context to work off) - that was correctly understood and accurately attributed to Empedocles by Suhrawardi. Even this alone presents all sorts of new directions for House Criamon thought - the Ishraqis do indeed have things to teach the Criamon about Empedocles.
