Traces of Ibn Arabi’s Mystical Doctrine in Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist

Abstract

This paper aims at analyzing Paulo Coelho’s novel The Alchemist by viewing it against the backdrop of Ibn Arabi’s mystical philosophy. It argues that Coelho presumably wrote The Alchemist after he had familiarized himself with the philosophical Sufi tradition, of which Ibn Arabi was one of its best exponents. Drawing upon a few of Ibn Arabi’s translated works and the available empirical related literature, which hardly includes any comparative study on the relationship between Ibn Arabi’s Sufism and Coelho’s mysticism, the paper investigates some of the main thematic and stylistic parallels between Ibn Arabi’s Islamic Sufism and the mysticism in Coelho’s spiritual novel. It posits that the mystical ideas and views underlining Coelho’s novel bear obvious resemblance to a wide array of themes occurring in Ibn Arabi’s selected works. These include the unity of existence, God’s self-disclosure, divine love, fate and destiny, the perfect man, and others. Coelho’s mystical concepts such as “alchemy”, “the journey”, “the Soul of the World”, “maktub”, “dreams”, and “signs” have their apparent running parallels in Ibn Arabi’s texts. Nonetheless, Coelho has not merely utilized his predecessor’s Sufi thoughts, but also details his own original spiritual thought against the backdrop of a Sufism derived from multiple philosophical traditions.

Highlights:

• Examines Paulo Coelho’s novel The Alchemist in light of Ibn Arabi’s mystical philosophy.
• Draws parallels between Ibn Arabi’s Sufism and Coelho’s mysticism.
• Considers both writers’ spiritual life and its impact on their writings.
• Argues that Coelho’s mystical concepts such as “the alchemy” and the “journey” have their parallels in Arabi’s texts.
• Contends that Coelho has established his own spiritual thoughts beyond the spiritual traditions of his predecessors.