Saturday, March 24, 2012

God and the Senses (General Suggestions)

As noted in my previous post, I think it would be helpful to think about the many different ways in which the sense are activated or engaged, whether physically or metaphorically, for Jewish and Christian (and Islamic) mysticism.  In that post, I discussed one of the hymns in the Acts of Thomas.  In the forthcoming posts, I have collated a few different Jewish, but primarily Christian works that engage multiple senses at once:  some of the hymns of Hekhalot Rabbati, Origen's Commentary and Homilies on the Song of Songs, and the Gospel of Philip.  A little further afield, I have also noticed this recurrence among Sufi poets, particularly in Rumi's poetry.  I will be hitting upon the ancient Jewish and Christian works in the next few weeks when I have some time after doing my research and teaching work for the day (so rather occasionally).  I wondered, however, if anyone had any other ideas for texts to investigate that engage multiple senses (if not all five) at once.

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