Daena II
Who is this Daena?
We can inspect the soteriology of souls according
to the Mazdeans, to receive a hint
(Note:I paraphrase Corbin.. he admittedly looks at the ancients
through eyes tinted with Sufism,Ismailism,Neo-Platonism and
Gnosticism..among other things):

At the Dawn of the third day, the Soul on its Journey arrives to The Bridge of Chinvat. Here it either meets with Daena, who is its celestial “I”; or on the contrary – it
confronts a terrible apparation, a monster, reflecting nothing but an “I”; it is mutilated and disfigured by every kind of ugliness, since it is cut off from its celestial Archetype.
This monster drags its victim down with itself to the
depths from which it never escapes, where it has ever dwelt, where it has forced the Soul in its life of degradation to live and dwell in thought and deed. The Perfected Soul however, crosses the Bridge of
Chinvat (over our “River Styx”) by the impetus of Spiritual flight and the power of its purity in thought and action:
It moves on towards the stars, then to the Moon, then
to the Sun, and then to the infinite Lights.

Remember the story of the Advocate? It is a variant of
this account.
The “mutilated face” confronting the “erring” Soul on this “third day” – puts me in mind of the “miscarriage” of Sophia which resulted in the Demiurge. If we read that particular component of myth as a
parable of the soul, it is suggestive. If I have eyes to see, when I surrender the life of this body – what shape will my image, my person be in? What in life, have I “produced”?

Daena:
Spenta Armaiti, Spendarmat – the feminine
Archangel of Earth, is the Mother of Daena.
Corbin, Spiritual Body.. pp.15 paraphrased

“Daena is, in fact, the feminine Angel who in herself
typifies the transcendent or celestial “I”; she appears as the soul at the dawn following the third night after its departure from this world: She is its Glory and its Destiny, Its Aeon.”

The capacity of Daena as Archetype of the Soul on its Journey, rather than souls per se, or souls in any static
condition – presents her as a Heroine in all Narratives. Yet she is also a guardian of a most glorious secret, the secret which leads to the manifestation of the fullest and most hidden Pleromic Grace of her
Mother, Spendarmat, our Sophia. To those who are acquianted with the Eleusinian mysteries, these figures correlate directly to Demeter and Korè Persephonè. And
those who have read the Pistis Sophia will also find a correlation between the Virgin of Light (Barbelo) and her daughter Sophia Achamoth. In relation to Daena as the Soul´s Glory, the term Aeon is used by Corbin.
Aeon typifies alternatively age, persona and world (or “universe”) – to me this is very suggestive. Especially in
light of what we have been told so far about the Mystery of the Fravarti and the Xvarnah destiny of the human being who “Choose” the Path of Recollection, who choose to submit to the Quest belonging to the Knighthood of Sophia. Whose Motto is recited in the Yasna
Liturgy as
:” May we be among those who will bring about
the Transfiguration of the Earth”.
,and whose profession is:
“My Mother is Spendarmat (Sophia), Archangel of the Earth, and my Father is Ohrmazd(Christ), the Lord of Wisdom.”

Henri Corbin continues:

“For man to
undertake such a work,is primarely for his own being what
the Pahlavi texts call Spendarmatikih (an abstract
noun derived from Spendarmat, the Pahlavi form of the
name Spenta Armaiti), and which we can translate as
Sophianity, the Sophianic nature of Spenta Armaiti considered as Sophia (Plutarch translated the Pahlavi concept
thus)..By assuming this nature, the human being is then, in
the true sense, the son of the Angel of the Earth, and so able to have a mental vision of her. The soul then awakens also to consciousness of its celestial kinship.”

pp.37 Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth.
The Soul awakens to its function as co-redeemer – on each
of its side it has the host of Sophian and Christic angels (to translate it into western terms) – who ocillate between their functions; from unions into individual quests.Corbin here suggests the specific Xvarnah/Spendarmat relationship as one of Sophianity, which is interesting, since quite a lot of our “gnostisizing” and
mystical orienations actually encompass a recognition of the ensouled life as a specific compartment of human identity; this Sophianity presents Man with a duty ; first to become re-acquianted with his initial kinship, secondly to participate in the mystery of restoriation, which he already endeavoured, although at first
semi-consciously.
In other lore the Archangel Gabriel is consigned as both “Angel of the Earth” and “Angel of Mankind”; this dual image is what this concept of Sophianity contains. The sharing of predicament, on a deeper level – is also part of the plight of this “Knighthood of
Sophia” (especially described in Arthur Versluis: Theosophia:
The Hidden Dimensions of Christianity“).

———————-
I read an interview with Jose Saramago, the
Portuguese Nobel´s Literary Award winner of 98- where he
basically denied the existence of acollectively
verifyable and humanly normative”reality”; I do not
remember precisely what his argument where, but he would
need some kind of distance from so-called
“objectivity” even to be narrator/story-teller with good
conscience. He´s a contemporary disciple of Plato and quoted
the Republic quite a lot.A true poet needs to
believe that the soul needs liberation, he must truelly
be interested in how the cage feels and looks like
for the nightingale.. if he says “Oh, what a nice
song that bird produces”.. he belongs among the
spectators, not in blindfolded at the firing range, which is
the place of every true adventurer in life… In
this nightmare of counterfeits, produced of
convenience and the attempt to calm the mind, still the
senses and numb the feelings..it is important to
remember why we ask questions about the veracity of any
thing or being or concept: it is because we need to
know the direct relevance of these things presented to
us. If we awake in the middle of that night which is
the world in its sleep, we must move beyond the
safehouse of the collective dream – and commune with
another reality. And why is that? We awoke because we
were touched..we were embraced..we were aroused by its
perfumes, moved by the beauty of its song.But then,
alas, we become lost to the world.. no more can we
become devalued,degraded and prostitute to its false
glories…

Henry Corbin:

“The victory of the soul incarnated in terrestrial existence is measured by the degree of this restoration /transfiguration of the world and the expulsion of the powers of darkness from the existencial
sphere human,natural and angelic- restoring the
“paradisical purity”,that is, by the degree of the soul´s
Xvarnah (Light-of-glory, “substance of superessential
luminousity”), of its growth toward its celestial existence to
come, of it´s resurrection body, the substance of which, reciprocally, is made of that celestial Earth
which is its action and its work.”
pp.37 Spiritual
Body and Celestial Earth.

This course is what Corbin´s book Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth – map through his writing as well as a compilation of several representative voices of the “tradition” – not the least among them being the “Oriental” Yahya Suhrawardi.
Here Man cannot help but be
implicated and responsible in the reintegration of being,
and a progressive “redemption” – his past obligates
him, his future beckons and begs him..

Henri Corbin:

“The filial relationship with

the Archangel Spenta Armaiti extends from the pre-existencial celestial “I” to that celestial “I” by and for whom She will engender the man. It is the consummation of a form of existence preluded in Heaven at the dramatic moment when the Fravartis accept to descend to the material Earth and there wage battle on the side

of the Powers of Light against all the human-faced demons. For the human soul, it is the moment of choosing to come to Earth and answer there for the Powers of Light, as the latter will answer for it post mortem..”

(TdB:reminding me of the persian legend of the Advocate.);
“Therefore the choice of the soul will also be its judge.Participating at each moment of the Aeon in the final work of the Saoshyants, each soul of light must fight for the Transfiguration of the Earth, for the expulsion of the demonic Powers from the Ohrmazdian creation..”
pp.37 of Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth.

Participatory eschatology is evident in near all the Gnoses east and west, this is what makes them controversial to certain Orthodoxies, who nevertheless cannot endorse their system of order by way of filiation and fealty, since the adherents of the former actually have fealty only to a pre-incarnation and manifestly interior Lordship.

However, the man of light and the Fravarti (in Pistis Sophia a

similar interior syzygy is referred to, as interchangeably – “power of Barbelo“(fem.) and “man of light/christ“(masc.))are each defenders of a world of light, obscured, yet through vision delineated, within the material realm of

existence.They represents a celestial and mortal Knighthood

against the “world of darkness”. As such, we find a definite “dualism” represented in this philosophy, and

also in the consideration of the role of the Fravarti.

But only so in reference to the intermediate condition of Man and Earth; neither of them are dark, or source of evil, rather – they can be thought of as besieged at all sides by the powers of darkness..A similar “militarism of the spirit” can be found in the apocryphal and apocalyptic material found at Qumran, the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls.

Henri Corbin:speaking of “Geosophy“(he begins by a description of the “transfigured earth”

experienced by the `Urafa (Gnostics in terms of devotees of

the Spenta Armaiti/Sophia) as a bounty won by their “choosing” in emulation of the Fravarti (“choosers”))

“The very term geosophy suggested is merely a

translation of the name Spenta Armaiti, the Sophia and the Feminine Angel of the Earth. What this term makes apparent from the start is the striking difference between a

vague feeling (and the commonplace notion) of being a “son of the earth” on the one hand and on the other the feeling and knowledge characteristically expressed in the Mazdean profession of faith, and impressed on the adept in that context, of being a human

individual who is the son of Spenta Armaiti, the feminine Archangel of the Earth.The second term in the filial relationship is now no longer a man imprisoned between the boundaries of terrestrial birth and death, but a human being in his totality, including the past of his pre-existence and the future of his superexistence.”

The Gnostic notion of direct filiation with Sophia and the Pleroma is here expressed in a different context; in the Barbeloite system Spenta Armaiti would correspond to Eleleth, one of the Four Lights/Luminaries..they are also

specified as female – and in conjunction with five “Male offspring” of Monogenes..