The Faith of Henry Corbin “Earth-Angel-Woman”

Of course, we do well to appreciate the particular nature of this “guardian angel”, who is, for Henry Corbin, the “angel of the incarnated soul”, and, in the circumstance of his death, very precisely “the celestial figure that comes face to face with the soul at the dawn of its eternity”.  Elsewhere, he would also speak of the Fravartis, as “guardian angels”.  It is, he adds, necessary to conceive of the guardian angel as celestial pole, the celestial self of a being whose totality is bipolar and constitutes a bi-unity, that of an earthly form and of a celestial form which is its superior counterpart”.

We may call to mind the admirable pages which he consecrated to the figure of the Daênâ, “the tutelary Angel”, and to its post mortem encounter with the human soul: “to the amazed soul’s question, asking “who then are you?” of the young girl who advances at the entrance of the Chinvat Bridge and whose beauty is more resplendent than any other beauty ever seen in the material world, the latter answers: “I am your own Daênâ”, -which means: I am, in person, the faith that you professed and that which inspired it in you, she for whom you have answered and she who guided you, she who comforted you and she who now judges you, for I am, in person, the Image proposed to you from the birth of your being and the Image which finally you have yourself wished for (“I was beautiful, you have made me still more beautiful”).

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