Rob Doyle

How Tarot re-enchanted my life, by Rob Doyle (@RobDoyle1) Much has been made lately of a renewed interest in religion — itself surely symptomatic of a widespread ontological disaffection. Many people sense, often as a result of personal experiences unaccountable within the current philosophy, that the reigning scientific-materialist paradigm simply no longer holds. The reductive, ultra-rationalist outlook that emerged from the Enlightenment and reached its apogee with the 19th century’s mechanistic vision of the cosmos has grown as antiquated as monocles and top-hats. As the planet burns up in consequence of nihilistic science and myopic greed run amok, the world suffers too from spiritual asphyxiation. Traditions, techniques, and bodies of knowledge that once seemed unworthy of serious attention to modern minds exert a renewed pull. At the end point of a philosophical crisis, the horizons of the possible expand afresh. Read more ⬇️ buff.ly/6DMkrs2

How Tarot re-enchanted my life, by Rob Doyle (@RobDoyle1) Until recently, I had no interest in the Tarot. My partner, however, is a dabbler. For some time now she’s been drawing cards from her Rider-Waite deck — sometimes one, sometimes three — as a way to gain perspective on her dilemmas and life-challenges. I observed this with cautious curiosity until eventually I allowed her to draw a card for me. She did so on several occasions, always at moments of acute psychic tension on my part. Each time, the card drawn was clearly linked to interpretations that spoke to my predicament in an uncannily precise way. Suffice it to say I was startled. To the committed rationalist: all pure coincidence. To anyone with a touch more ideational flexibility — anyone not automatically loyal to strict, post-Enlightenment materialism — this demanded a sitting-up-straight. For the first time, I started really looking at the cards. Read more ⬇️ buff.ly/6DMkrs2

WHY I LEARNED TO LOVE ISLAMIC MYSTICISM, by Rob Doyle (@RobDoyle1) The country with which the French Heideggerian philosopher Henry Corbin is most closely associated is the one that screams from today’s headlines of war, massacres, and oppression: Iran. But, instead, Corbin shows us a land of the most exquisite spirituality and philosophical refinement, all in a vocabulary that includes words and phrases like “the eighth climate, the Cosmic North, Sophiology, the Night Ineffable, the mountain of Qaf, the earth of Huqalya, and so on. Such language might suggest the kind of florid effusions to be found inside dubious books shelved in the ‘Mind, Body, and Spirit’ section of your local bookshop, but Corbin’s works are written to the highest standards of French scholarship. It’s as if Roland Barthes or Jean-Paul Sartre were philosophising from inside the universe of Frank Herbert’s Dune. Or, better yet, a sort-of singular form of avant-garde, scholarly, theological fiction, which abounds with almost Borgesian characters. For example, consider Khdir, the ‘immortal wanderer’ of Sufi lore who visits solitary mystics in dreams and visions; or the ‘Hidden Imam’ of Shi-ite apocalyptic theology who went into occultation many centuries ago and will reveal himself again at the end of time. Beyond that, Corbin says something profound to inhabitants of the West in the 2020s — a place where something has gone catastrophically wrong. He insists that our malaise is not to be located in this or that symptom, be it societal, political or cultural, but must be traced into the philosophical foundations of secular modernity itself. Read more below ⬇️ buff.ly/CcZS8Xt