Mytho-Mystic Literature
Year:2009 | Volume:5 | Issue:14|Papers Count:9

According to Qurānic teachings, Satan (Iblis) fell from divine grace by his act of disobedience in refusing to honor Adam when he was ordered to do so. Ain-al Quzat Hamedāni (1098–1131), Persian mystic, presents a different interpretation of this event. He believes that the Devil's act of disobedience is the result of his true love for God and the Divine determination. According to Ain-al Quzat, there are two lights: the black light of the Devil and the light of Muhammad. These lights, created by God, both are necessary for the world of existence. 

According to the post-structuralist approach to textual analysis, any literary text has multiple meanings, and that the author is not the prime source of the work's semantic content. It rejects the idea of a literary text having a single purpose, a single meaning, or one singular existence. Instead, every individual reader creates a new and individual purpose, meaning, and existence for a given text.  In the present article, attempt is made to show it is a viable possibility to explain Hafez's poetry in post-structuraist context.  

According to the Islamic theologians, time is an illusory concept, and the Muslim philosophers argue that time is the measure of motion. But the Islamic mystics believe that time is related to soul, the soul that is divine and blessed. If the mystic seeks nearness to God, he will be everlasting. From this point of view, there is not any past and future, and the soul is immortal. The holly traveler (sālek) is seeking nearness to God and wants to set free from the time, which is possible only with Divine love, when the Soul is filled with God.

In this article the personality of Gordāfarīd, one of the heroines in the Shāhnāmeh is analyzed in the light of interdisciplinary approach, literary psychology and psychodynamics. First, based on theory of Freud about "complex of castration" the personality of Gordāfarīd, is analyzed with respect to her sexuality. In the second part and in the light of the Jungian archetype, animus, her masculinity is considered. Finally, in the third part, based on Shinoda Bolen's interpretation of an archetype, Artemis, her femininity is looked upon.

Abū Hālmid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazāllī (1058-1111) is an Islamic theologian who has remained one of the most celebrated mystic scholars in the history of Islamic thought. Hakim Abul-Majd Majdūd ibn Ādam Sanāl'ī Ghaznavi (died around 1131), is one of the earlier Sufi poets. In the present article, attempt is made to show the influence of Ghazālī’s thoughts, based on Arba'een (the book of Forty Steps), on Sanā'ī presented in Hadiqat-ul Haqiqah  (the book of Walled Garden of Truth).

The tragedies of "Rostam and Sohrāb" and "Oedipus the King" have certain points in common. There is a "struggle for recognition" in both. According to the legend of Shāhnāmeh, after years without any real knowledge of one another, Rostam and Sohrāb (father and son) face each other in battlefield, on the opposing sides. Rostam does not recognize his own son, and Sohrāb does not know his father. Likewise, in "Oedipus the King", on the road to Thebes, Oedipus meets Laius, his true father. Unaware of each other's identities, they quarrel over whose chariot has right-of-way. Oedipus's pride leads him to murder Laius.

Hakīm Abul-Qāsim Ferdowsī Tūsī (935–1020) in his masterpiece, Shāhnāmeh (Book of Kings), presents metaphoric images of Sun based on the myth of Mehr and Mithraism. He uses decorum and imagery and portrays an anthropocentric image of the Sun.    In the present article, attempt is made to show the creativity of Ferdowsī in using the image of Mehr based on Iranian mythological elements.