The Celestial Geography and Mystical Moments

In addition to transferring a network of holy and abstract notions, the symbolic language of mystical narratives and allegories is full of tangible abstract images which describe the Heaven via earthly forms. Although the mystics have always paid attention to the principle of non-place and non-time with regard to the issue of the worlds beyond the sphere of the moon, i.e. the Angelic World and beyond, in the treatises of the illuminationist philosophers like Ibn Sina and illuminationist mystics like Suhrewardi or mysticism-oriented theologians like Imam Muhammad Qazali, the language of symbols and signs is more efficient than rigid philosophical and theological theories for visualizing the celestial geography and its details so that several parts of allegories of celestial geography are congruent with Quranic verses, Biblical indications and religious as well as national and mythical tales. Although the theory of celestial geography is the place of men of knowledge and philosopher's certainty in religious, philosophical and mystical theories of non-place and non-time, it presents another direction in mystical cosmologies; a kind of geography located exactly at the heart of non-place and its time accords with non-time. The al-Teir treatises existent in mystical literature and some other symbolic treatises have always attracted the truth-seekers intellectually and artistically for offering an image of celestial geography and have invited them to a land which can be North, East or even West in the navigational system of sacred geography.