1 The transliteration of Persian and Arabic terms standard in the Bahá'í community will only be used in the footnotes, where the footnote font doesn't support full transliteration. In the body of the text I use the current transliteration standard of the academic community.
[2] The American Heritage Electronic Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition. 1994, Houghton Mifflin Company. SoftKey International Inc., s.v. "erotic."
[3] Webster's New International Dictionary, 1909 ed., s.v. "erotic."
[4] Edith Hamilton, Mythology (New York: New American Library, 1969), 36.
[5] I don't mean to give the impression that these mythologies were monolithic; Venus could be quite wicked, and Cupid the protagonist. But in connotative use, Aphrodite/Venus never became negative. The term "venereal (disease)" aside, all of her words are quite positive, e.g. "venerate" and even "winsome." Cf. Webster's, s.v. "venerate."
[6] American Heritage Electronic Dictionary , s.v. "sensual."
[7] Paul deParrie, Romanced to Death (Brentwood, Tennessee: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, Publishers, Inc., 1989), back jacket blurb.
[8] Quoted in Webster's New International Dictionary, s.v. "sensuous." Italics in original. Cf. also Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), xviii.
[9] Cf. Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (New York: Perennial Library, 1956), 44-53, and James A. Mohler, S. J., Dimensions of Love: East and West (New York: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1975), 324-340.
[10] James B. Nelson et al., eds., Sexuality and the Sacred: Sources for Theological Reflection (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994), 72.
11 Calculated from James Strong, Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, and Lee Nelson, A Concordance to the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh, respectively.
[12] These distinctions have been well examined and clarified in Robert C. Solomon, "The Virtue of (Erotic) Love," in Robert C. Solomon et al., eds., The Philosophy of (Erotic) Love (Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1991), pp. 492-518.
[13] Geoffrey Parrinder, ed., World Religions: From Ancient History to the Present (New York: Facts on File Publications, 1971), 33 (italics added).
[14] Parrinder, World Religions, 31.
[15] Quoted in Reay Tannahill, Sex In History (New York: Stein and Day Publishers, 1982), 35.
[16] Cf. Tannahill, Sex In History, 35.
17 Hamilton, Mythology, 36.
[18] Quoted in Robert C. Solomon et al., eds., The Philosophy of (Erotic) Love (Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1991), 14-15.
[19] Mohler, Dimensions of Love, 72.
[20] Quoted in Solomon, Philosophy of (Erotic) Love, 16.
[21] Solomon, Philosophy of (Erotic) Love, 16.
[22] Solomon, Philosophy of (Erotic) Love, 16.
[23] Keuls, Eva C. The reign of the phallus: sexual politics in ancient Athens. New York: Harper & Row. 1985.
[24] Tannahill, Sex In History, 100.
[25] Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of Love (New York: Random House, 1994), 48.
[26] Ackerman, A Natural History of Love, 48.
[27] E.g. Psalms 19:5,; Isaiah 61:10 and 62:5.
[28] Mohler, Dimensions of Love, 91.
[29] Ackerman, A Natural History of Love, 9.
[30] One element of the Judaic tradition did develop a school of thought connecting the erotic and the mystical. Paracelsus, 1493-1541, combined the Jewish Qabbalah with mediaeval alchemy in his theories of mystical union. Sexual intercourse, for him, is a reflection of the archetype of mystical union. However, this is so far on the fringes of Judaism that a discussion of it here would be out of place. Cf. Dan Merkur, Gnosis: An Esoteric Tradition of Mystical Visions and Unions (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993), 263f., where sexual Qabbalism is presented along with and compared with al-`Arabí's thought.
31 Jaroslav Pelikan, The Melody of Theology: A Philosophical Dictionary (London: Harvard University Press, 1988) 114.
[32] St. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, Trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1992), Book eight, chapter vii, paragraph 17.
[33] Cf. Jonah (Siegel) Winters. "SIN: Or, Why St. Augustine Thought Bad Things Happen to Good People." (Unpublished paper, Reed College, 1994), and Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (New York: Random House, 1988).
34 Cf. Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, et al.
[35] Quoted in Ackerman, A Natural History of Love, 317.
36 John McManners, ed. The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 69.
37 Ackerman, A Natural History of Love, 46.
[38] Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros (London: S.P.C.K., 1932). Quoted in Mohler, Dimensions of Love, 101.
[39] Douglas John Hall, Thinking the Faith: Christian Theology in a North American Context (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 152.
[40] Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, trans. John Harvey (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), 31.
[41] Paul Tillich, quoted in Alexander Irwin, Eros Toward the World: Paul Tillich and the Theology of the Erotic (Mineapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 1. Italics added.
[42] Irwin, Eros Toward the World, 3.
[43] Quoted in Irwin, Eros Toward the World, 8.
[44] Ackerman, A Natural History of Love, 126.
[45] William Graham Cole, Sex in Christianity and Psychoanalysis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955), 227.
[46] Miriam Cooke, "Death and Desire in Iraqi War Literature," pp. 184-199, in Allen, Love and Sexuality, 184.
47 Cole, Sex in Christianity, 226.
[48] Irwin, Eros Toward the World, 158.
[49] Irwin, Eros Toward the World, 33-34.
[50] Reynold A. Nicholson, "Pre-Islamic Poetry, Manners, and Religion." A Literary History of the Arabs (London: Cambridge U.P), 1969. pp. 71-140, 76.
[51] Sir Charles Lyall describes the qasída as usually beginning "with the mention of women and the constantly shifted habitations of the wandering tribesmen seeking pasture throughout the Winter and the Spring; the poet must tell of his love and its troubles, and, if he likes, may describe the beauty of his mistress." Quoted in Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Mysticism (Cambridge: University Press, 1967), 163.
[52] Quoted in Nicholson, A Literary History, 78.
[53] Hilary Kilpatrick, "Introduction: On Love and Sexuality in Modern Arabic Literature," pp. 9-15, in Allen, Love and Sexuality, 9 (italics added).
[54] Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Mysticism, 89.
[55] An excellent study of the mysticism of Muhammad himself (though unrelated to the topic at hand) is chapter 8, "Muhammad and his Mi`raj," pp. 181-198, in Merkur, Gnosis.
[56] Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 27.
[57] H. A. R. Gibb, Mohammedanism: A Historical Survey (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), 90.
[58] Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, 39.
[59] Farid al-Din Attar, Muslim Saints and Mystics, trans. A. J. Arberry (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966), 40.
[60] Campbell, 445.
[61] Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, 435.
[62] Quoted in Attar, Muslim Saints, 46. This is likely apocryphal; many scholars believe that they were not contemporaries.
[63] Quoted in Karen Armstrong, A History of God (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), 226.
[64] Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, 60.
[65] Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, 137.
[66] Quoted in Louis Massignon, The Passion of al-Halláj, vol. 3: The Teaching of al-Halláj (Princeton University Press, 1982), 43.
[67] Louis Massignon, The Passion of al-Halláj: Mystic and Martyr of Islam (abridged version) (Princeton University Press, 1994),135.
[68] Massignon, The Passion of al-Halláj: Mystic and Martyr of Islam, 139. Massignon says that the focus of the profane love was often another male, but he seems to want not to call attention to this: he uses the word "uranism," which is itself a highly archaic form of another term already obsolete in his time, "Urningism," = homosexuality. I will address the issue of homosexuality in part two.
[69] Massignon, The Passion of al-Halláj, vol. 3, 49.
[70] Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, 65. Cf. also Massignon, The Passion of al-Halláj: Mystic and Martyr of Islam, 220.
[71] Massignon, The Passion of al-Halláj: Mystic and Martyr of Islam, 148.
[72] Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, 91.
[73] Quoted in Sachiko Murata, The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992), 172f.
[74] al-Ghazzálí, Alchemy of Happiness, trans. Claud Field (London: M. E. Sharpe. Inc., 1991), 79.
[75] al-Ghazzálí, Alchemy of Happiness, 61.
[7676] Armstrong, A History of God , 229.
[77] al-Ghazzálí, The Faith and Practice of al-Ghazzálí, trans. William Montgomery Watt (Oxford: OneWorld), 64.
[78] al-Ghazzálí, Alchemy of Happiness, 57f.
[79] al-Ghazzálí, Alchemy of Happiness, 63.
[80] Quoted in Murata, The Tao of Islam, 243 and 259, respectively.
[81] Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Mysticism, 162-266.
[82] Annemarie Schimmel, As Through a Veil: Mystical Poetry in Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 5.
[83] Annemarie Schimmel, "Sufi Literature" (special paperbased on a lecture given in New York City in 1975. Published by the Afghanistan Council of the Asia Society, 1975.), 3.
[84] Quoted in Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Mysticism, 169.
[85] Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Mysticism, 193.
[86] Ibn al-`Arabí, The Bezels of Wisdom, trans. R. W. J. Austin (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), 277.
[87] al-`Arabí, The Bezels of Wisdom, 277.
[88] Quoted in Murata, The Tao of Islam,186.
[89] Quoted in Merkur, Gnosis, 233.
[90] al-`Arabí, The Bezels of Wisdom, 274.
[91] Murata, The Tao of Islam,185.
[92] Quoted in Merkur, Gnosis, 232.
[93] Since I don't have access to the original Arabic of this text, I must assume that "aromas of generation in women," the "most delightful of perfumes," means exactly what it sounds like it means.
[94] Cf. Hans Wehr, Arabic-English Dictionary, 578.
[95] al-`Arabí, The Bezels of Wisdom, 278.
[96] al-`Arabí, The Bezels of Wisdom, 93. This may be clarified by reference to the distinction between Plato and Aristotle on the metaphysics of universalisms. Plato posited that the ultimate reality consists of absolutely attenuated Forms, whose existence is not contingent on their particular manifestation. E.g., the Form of Beauty will exist whether or not there is anything in the reified spheres which is Beautiful. Aristotle, by contrast, held that the universal, e.g. the category "Beauty," could only be said to exist if it were manifested in the particular, e.g. "a beautiful thing."
[97] Quoted in Murata, The Tao of Islam, 196.
[98] William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-`Arabí's Metaphysics of Imagination (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989), 140.
[99] One is reminded of the origin of "matter" in L. máter, "mother."
[100] Quoted in Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge, 141.
[101] Quoted in Murata, The Tao of Islam,195 and 188, respectively.
[102] al-`Arabí, The Bezels of Wisdom, 276.
[103] Quoted in Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge, 181.
[104] Murata, The Tao of Islam,186f.
[105] al-`Arabí, The Bezels of Wisdom, 275.
[106] Quoted in Friedlander 55.
[107] Quoted in Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, 313.
[108] Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, 314.
[109] From Kulliyat-i-Shams 2667. Quoted from the Internet: Linkname: Poetry Page; Filename URL: http://www.armory.com/%7Ethrace/ev/siir/. Source anonymous.
[110] Schimmel, As Through a Veil, 121.
[111] Quoted in William Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi (Albany: SUNY Press, 1983), 88.
[112] Quoted in Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love, 188.
[113] Quoted in Murata, The Tao of Islam, 317.
[114] Quoted in Murata, The Tao of Islam, 317.
[115] Quoted in Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, 293.