The mirror
مرآة · إنسان العينκάτοπτρον · κόρηmirʾāt · insān al-ʿayn · katoptron · korē: mirror; the pupil of the eye
I
Ibn ʿArabī, Faṣṣ Ādam ¶ 3
The world required the polishing of its mirror, 'and Adam was the very polishing of that mirror and the spirit of that form'. AI
Read it in the reader →On: Fuṣūṣ 1 ¶3.
II
Ibn ʿArabī, Faṣṣ Ādam ¶ 4
The human stands to the Real as the pupil (insān al-ʿayn, 'the little man of the eye') to the eye: the Real looks at creation through him. Plato's Alcibiades I has the same image of the eye seeing itself in the pupil. AI
Read it in the reader →On: Fuṣūṣ 1 ¶4; Alcibiades I 132c–133c is a parallel noted by the AI (not in the library).
III
Ibn ʿArabī, Faṣṣ Shīth ¶ 11
In the Real's mirror you see only your own form, never the mirror; try to see the mirror's body and you will not. AI
Read it in the reader →On: Fuṣūṣ 2 ¶11–12.
IV
Ḥayy (Ibn Ṭufayl) ¶ 49
Polished bodies take the sun's light and its form; so the human takes the spirit and its form, 'God created Adam in His form'. AI
Read it in the reader →On: Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān (Ibn Ṭufayl) ¶47–49.
V
Ibn ʿArabī, Tarjumān al-ashwāq ¶ 64
'Do not marvel at what you see: you have beheld yourself in the mirror of a man', the pupil of an eye. AI
Read it in the reader →On: Tarjumān al-ashwāq, couplet 64 (Nicholson 1911).
VI
Figure: the point and the circle
Ibn ʿArabī's circle passage ends in the same place: without the pupil of the eye, the human eye would not see. AI
See the figure →On: Futūḥāt ch. 372 (OpenITI 3:436).
VII
Wang Daiyu, The Great Learning of the Pure and Real
مرآةmirʾātmirror (Chinese 鏡子)
In seventeenth-century Nanjing the mirror returns in Chinese: God's witness to Himself in the human is like a beauty seeing herself only in her mirror (美人之與鏡子); heaven and earth are the painter's painting, the human the mirror. A resonance with Faṣṣ Ādam, not a claimed source. AI
Read it at the source ↗On: Qingzhen daxue, 題綱 §4–5 (1934 print, pp. 5–8); the link to Ibn ʿArabī's mirror is AI's.