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1882
Volume 59, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 0068-4023
  • E-ISSN: 2034-6476

Abstract

Abstract

In (‘The Hidden Secret’), a magisterial work on astral magic, the twelfth century Persian philosopher-theologian Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī formulated one of the most sophisticated theories of talismanic action at a distance ever produced in the Islamic world. Al-Rāzī deployed Avicennan psychology to explain how a practitioner’s soul might connect with the celestial spheres, the principles of sublunary change, and ‘blend’ their forces into a talismanic metal idol; then, performing a ritual mimetic of his intended effect, could direct these forces to bring about his objective, from a distance, altering sublunary phenomena in accordance with his will. In constructing this theory, Rāzī drew on the psychologizing Avicennan accounts of thaumaturgy and veridical dreams, foregrounding what was common to both: the internal sense known as the .

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/content/journals/10.1484/J.BPM.5.115830
2017-01-01
2025-12-06

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References

  1. Manuscripts
    Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin-Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Ms. 5886 (Pet. I 207) (=B).
  2. Editions
    Avicenna, Risālat al-Fiʿl wa’l infiʿāl, ed. Z.A. al-Musāwī, Hyderabad 1934, 7
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