Author(s): CHEETHAM, TOM

Comparative & Miscellaneous Religion | Occulture

Argues for a renewed vision of the cosmos based on the centrality of the human encounter with the sacred.Green Man, Earth Angel explores the central role of imagination for understanding the place of humans in the cosmos. Tom Cheetham suggests that lives can only be completely whole if human beings come to recognize that the human and natural worlds are part of a vast living network and that the material and spiritual worlds are deeply interconnected. Central to this reimagining is an examination of the place of language in human life and art and in the worldview that the prophetic religions--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam--presuppose. If human language is experienced only as a subset of a vastly more-than-human whole, then it is not only humans who speak, but also God and the world with all its creatures. If humans' internal poetry and creative imaginations are part of a greater conversation, then language can have the vital power to transform the human soul, and the soul of the world itself.Tom Cheetham has taught human ecology and is the author of The World Turned Inside Out: Henry Corbin and Islamic Mysticism.