"Between the universe that can be apprehended by pure intellectual perception and the universe perceptible to the senses, there is an intermediate world — the world of Idea-Images, of archetypal figures, of subtle substances… This world is as real and objective, as consistent and subsistent, as the intelligible and sensible worlds." - Henry Corbin, Mundus Imaginalis
There exists a world that is neither the world of the senses nor the world of pure intellect — a third realm, as real as either, yet accessible only through a faculty that modern thought has almost entirely forgotten. This is the mundus imaginalis, the imaginal world: the place where angels appear, where visions are received, where myths are encountered, where the symbols of the sacred traditions have their objective, living existence.
This is not "imagination" in the modern, diminished sense — not fantasy, not daydream, not psychological projection. It is the organ of perception by which the soul apprehends realities that are supra-sensible but not merely abstract.
Henry Corbin and the Recovery of the Imaginal
The French philosopher and scholar of Islamic mysticism Henry Corbin (1903–1978) introduced the term mundus imaginalis to the modern world, drawing on the Sufi and Ishrāqī (Illuminationist) traditions of Persia. Corbin distinguished sharply between the imaginal (imaginalis) and the imaginary (imaginarius). The imaginary is unreal — a subjective fancy. The imaginal is objectively real — a distinct ontological plane with its own geography, inhabitants, and laws.
Corbin drew primarily from two sources:
Suhrawardi (1154–1191), the founder of the Illuminationist school, who described Nā-kojā-ābād — the "land of nowhere" — a realm that is not in physical space but is not nowhere either. It is the place where the visionary journeys of the prophets and mystics actually occur.
Ibn Arabi (1165–1240), who spoke of the 'ālam al-mithāl — the world of similitudes — an intermediate realm where spiritual realities take on form without becoming material, and material things reveal their spiritual essence.
"The mundus imaginalis is a world that is ontologically as real as the world of the senses and the world of the intellect. It is a world that requires its own faculty of perception — the active Imagination." — Henry Corbin, Alone with the Alone
The Imaginal in Western Esotericism
The Astral Light
The Western esoteric tradition has its own names for this intermediate realm. Éliphas Lévi called it the Astral Light — the great magical agent, the universal medium in which images, thoughts, and spiritual forces are preserved and transmitted. The astral plane of the Golden Dawn tradition, the "inner planes" of Dion Fortune, the anima mundi of the Renaissance Neoplatonists — all point to the same ontological stratum.
The Active Imagination
The Hermetic and alchemical traditions speak of the imaginatio vera — the true imagination — as a creative, cognitive power that participates in reality rather than merely reflecting it. Paracelsus insisted that the true imagination is not fancy but a "star in man" — a power of the soul that can perceive and interact with the subtle dimensions of creation.
"Imagination is the star in man, the celestial or supercelestial body." — Paracelsus
C.G. Jung, drawing on alchemical sources, developed his method of active imagination — a disciplined engagement with the image-world of the psyche that produces genuine transformation. Jung was careful to distinguish this from passive fantasy: active imagination is an encounter with something Other, something that has its own reality and its own will.
Faërie and the Perilous Realm
J.R.R. Tolkien's conception of Faërie — the Perilous Realm — is, in essence, a literary rendering of the mundus imaginalis. Faërie is not a place one invents. It is a place one enters. It has its own laws, its own dangers, its own inhabitants. The sub-creator does not fabricate Faërie but participates in it, giving form to realities that exist prior to any human act of composition.
Within the Royal Art Opus
The mundus imaginalis is the native environment of the Royal Art. The Astral Library of Light itself — as an inner-plane reality, not merely a digital archive — exists in the imaginal world. The mythic figures of the opus — the Prince, the Dark Lord, the Lady, the Hermit, the Round Table — are not "symbols" in the reductive modern sense. They are presences in the imaginal realm, encountered by the soul that has the eyes to see.
The entire method of the Royal Art — mythopoeia, ritual, pathworking, contemplation, alchemical meditation — is a disciplined engagement with the mundus imaginalis. The Work takes place there, in the space between sense and intellect, where transformation is real because the imaginal is real.
Without the mundus imaginalis, the Royal Art collapses into either empty abstraction (mere philosophy) or superstitious literalism (mere magic). The imaginal is the living middle ground where symbol, vision, and transformation converge.