Introducing the Imaginal — Cynthia Bourgeault

Once we lose sight of the imaginal nature of certain realities, the true import of a great body of mythic and religious teachings slips from our grasp. The Imaginal World is the realm where invisible realities become visible and where corporeal things are spiritualized. It is more “subtle” and less dense than the physical world. It is more dense th... See more

So, the imaginal world is a kind of interface between unseeable spiritual reality and the dense, immutable corporeal world. Reality is multi-layered, and the Imaginal Realm is one of the important, generative layers. The West had such a place for imagination through the medieval period, but in the development of empiricism we lost it completely. No... See more

Reality is something much bigger than our ordinary senses are capable of perceiving, and learning to be in relationship with it requires us to enter the imaginal realm. Mysticism, magic, and animist frameworks are ways of doing that, so I write a lot about those topics.