the imaginal

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.

I say “boundary,” but the imaginal world is actually more of a confluence , for the word “boundary” suggests a separation while what is really at stake in this realm is an active flowing together. “Where the two seas meet” is a beautiful Sufi metaphor to convey the essence of what actually happens here. The imaginal realm is a meeting ground, a... 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.... See more

The imaginal is that quality of aliveness moving through this realm, interpenetrating, cohering, filling things with the fragrance of implicit meaning whose lines do not converge in this world alone, but at a point beyond.