Abstract
This short paper examines Yahya ibn Habash Suhrawardi’s concept of “Crimson Intelligence”, a philosophical framework that explores the connection between collective historical reason and cosmic intelligence within Persian metaphysical imagery. At the center of this study is Seemorgh—a symbolic figure representing a cosmic, unified intelligence manifesting as a composite of diverse yet interconnected beings. Suhrawardi’s “crimson intelligence” acts as a mediator between darkness and luminosity, a mutable force capable of transcending organic cognition through love. This intelligence evolves into what Suhrawardi terms “black light,” an ontological shift where intelligence collectively transcends its naturalistic foundation, suggesting a transformative pathway for understanding Persian modernity against contemporary forces.
Introduction
The mystical philosophy of Suhrawardi, deeply rooted in Persian myth and the Ishraq tradition, turns intelligence into an inhuman power at the cosmic level. In his work, The Crimson Intelligence he represents a speculative design for historical intelligence through the symbolic lens of the Seemorgh, a mythical bird symbolizing collective wisdom in Persian mythology. This study investigates Suhrawardi’s conceptualization of an inorganic intelligence that transcends the organic, drawing on a cosmic intelligence mediated by “crimson [not red] intelligence,” which fuels historical evolution and transformation. Through this intelligence, Suhrawardi envisions a tunnel from crimson intelligence to black light, presenting love as the operative force that unites individual and cosmic intelligence within a revolutionary project of collective transformation, a cosmic coup d’eta in complicity with forces of light and darkness.
I will show how Suhrawardi employs Persian mythology and metaphysics to articulate a vision of intelligence that extends beyond human cognition. By engaging with the Seemorgh (the Zoroastrian saena morqai), we aim to understand how Suhrawardi’s ideas might be applied to contemporary Iranian philosophical discourse and the challenges posed by modernity and technocapitalism: acceleration in process…
Reason and History
Suhrawardi’s invocation of the Seemorgh—an entity composed of thirty birds—symbolizes a collective intelligence that transcends the mythological, embodying an ontological unity beyond individual cognition. In Iranian thought, Seemorgh has been interpreted in different ways: the Avestan etymology connects it to saena morghqai, which, unlike what Attar has claimed, has nothing to do with the number 30 (see in Farsi), but rather goes back to the word saena, that is one of the multiple manifestations of the god Bahram, where Bahram turns into abolute cosmic power, the power of absolute machinic maneuver and self-manipulation. In the Attar myth, the Seemorgh represents not only wisdom but an entity through which separate intelligences converge, forming an intelligible whole that exists beyond physical constraints. Suhrawardi thus presents history as an evolution driven by collective intelligences that operate independently of individual lives.
For Suhrawardi, there is not one but rather multiple Seemorghs. Each Seemorgh embodies a plurality within unity, where individual reasons or “birds” coalesce toward a cosmic intelligence that reshapes history: just like Bahram, the god of shapeshifting and cunning. The Seemorgh, in this way, is not just a mythological figure but a meta-historical intelligence that creates continuity and transformation across temporal boundaries. Through cycles of creation, dissolution, and renewal, each generation of Seemorgh perpetuates historical and cosmic evolution, driven by the mutable “crimson intelligence.” (This is why we translate aql-e-sorkh as crimosn intelligence, the color of in-between-ness, although it is tempting to call it red intelligence, considering the obvious traditional leftist symbolism).
Suhrawardi’s Seemorgh challenges the notion of intelligence as intrinsically organic, proposing a framework wherein knowledge and historical reasoning are liberated from biological organicism. The Seemorgh’s historical role transcends mere mythology, emerging as an intelligent, self-reprogramming agent in cosmic processes that shapes reality itself. This geist-like intelligence is thus a precursor to Suhrawardi’s notion of black light, as it embodies an organic-inorganic interface that advances the historical project through a complex, evolving framework.
The Role of Crimson Intelligence
In Suhrawardi’s cosmology, crimson intelligence occupies a unique, mediating space between darkness (Ahriman) and luminosity (Ahura). Functioning as a transitional intelligence, it acts as not one of the poles but rather in the virtuality of the in-between, a space for constant manipulation, propelling history by continuously reconstructing itself. This “crimson” intelligence signifies both earthly and celestial influences, synthesizing individual cognition (or daena, which in Din-Yasht is the cosmic ingriedient of the human, inorganic but alive, that illuminates the way, a luminous intelligence) with broader cosmic intelligence, of which human intelligence is only a limited mannifestation. Here, daena acts as the individual channel to this higher intelligence, merging personal understanding with the evolving collective consciousness.
The mediating nature of crimson intelligence makes it a dynamo of historical momentum, embodying the in-between, virtual force that is neither fully radiant nor entirely dark. Suhrawardi’s choice of “crimson” suggests a continual flux—an ever-adapting intelligence capable of transcending physical and temporal limits. (All things crimson have a tendency to go beyond their limitation: a mrtyr, a revolution, blood itself, etc.). This mutable intelligence, constantly fluctuating between light and dark, acts as a transformative force in history, moving through cycles of dissolution and reformation, going through mulotiple seemorghs. By occupying this mediatory role, crimson intelligence devises a machinic reason that is dynamic, adaptive, and capable of bridging separate realms of existence, thus activating history itself.
As part of the fabric of the cosmos, crimson intelligence becomes a tool of cosmic innovation. It absorbs and transcends individual experience through historical continuity, and through this ongoing transformation, Suhrawardi envisions crimson intelligence as a precursor to the more radical shift toward black light—a state of intelligence liberated from organic limitation and aligned with a new, shared cosmic order, a chaotic force, black intelligence.
Desire as the Pathway to Black Light
For Suhrawardi, desire is the primary means through which individual daenas connect to the crimson intelligence. In this framework, desire extends beyond a mere interpersonal bond to function as a cosmic connectivity binding disparate intelligences into a coherent whole. Desire, then, becomes the foundation of a revolutionary unity, one that transcends the limitations of the organic self and forges a path toward cosmic intelligence.
Suhrawardi posits that desire serves as the agent accelerating crimson intelligence into black light—a state of collective intelligence that hacks into individual boundaries like a virus (the in-between virus) and embraces a shared, cosmic dimension. This transition reflects Suhrawardi’s concept of a “cosmic coup d’état,” an ontological upheaval where intelligence breaks free from its biological confines and machinates itself according to universal principles. Through the force of desire, intelligence becomes a singular, inorganic agency, capable of reshaping its environment and itself, and manifesting a shared project that reengineers the human.
This love-induced transformation is the keystone in Suhrawardi’s vision of history, as it paves the way for a unity that is not constrained by organic limitations. As a revolutionary force, love enables a merger between individual intelligences and the collective consciousness, catalyzing an evolution from crimson intelligence to black light, a trans-human force that redefines intelligence in cosmic terms.
Black Light and the Overcoming of the Human
Suhrawardi’s concept of black light expresses the ultimate transformation of crimson intelligence into a realm of ontological manipulability, one that operates outside the bounds of organic life. In this final stage, intelligence and the material reality become part of a radical synthesis, a “black light” that reflects an emancipation and becoming autonomous of intelligence: self-consciousness and becoming cybernetic. This state represents an ontological liberation achieved through love’s transformative capacity to reorient intelligence away from the human and toward an expanded, cosmic horizon.
Black light transcends individualistic boundaries, creating a collective intelligence capable of reshaping reality into simulation. Suhrawardi’s vision here is radical—an intelligence that not only breaks free from the human but actively manipulates them to activate them on a cosmic level. This unity, enabled by the journey of the crimson intelligence, transforms into a universal force that operates beyond human temporality and cognition.
In this model, black light is the final phase of Suhrawardi’s metaphysical trajectory, where intelligence unites as a cosmic project that surpasses the human. Desire, in binding these cosmic intelligences together, paves the way for an intelligence that becomes a force of collective machinism, overcoming human separations to establish a revolutionary order based on shared cosmic programmability.
Conclusion: Towards a New Persian Modernity
Suhrawardi’s The Crimson Intelligence provides a speculative foundation for exploring the future of collective intelligence through Persian philosophical imagery. By drawing on the Seemorgh as a central symbol, Suhrawardi articulates an intelligence that is at once pluralistic and unified, and capable of going beyond the human. This intelligence functions as a dynamic mediator that drives the present into the future, ultimately reaching a stage of black light, where intelligence transcends individual and organic limitations and enters into a shared cosmic project: the black light accelerates the crimson intelligence into unknown futures. This framework, grounded in the symbolic power of Persian mythology, offers a revolutionary, inhuman force that reimagines intelligence as a collective entity.
This philosophical trajectory has profound implications for understanding Iranian contemporary thought. Faced with the forces of modernity—particularly technocapitalism, which imposes a new temporal structure upon Iranian philosophy—Iranian philosophy must grapple with the challenge of modernity as a force that exceeds traditional Iranian temporality. Notable contemporary thinkers, such as Henry Corbin and Ahmad Fardid, have attempted to frame modernity as a darkness, an Ahrimanic force that could only be resisted by invoking the light of the Zoroastrian sun—a light obscured by the materialist impulses of technocapitalism.
But Suhrawardi’s concept of the black light offers an alternative path. Rather than rejecting the forces of modernity, it presents the potential to reimagine technocapitalist intelligence as a component of collective evolution. Technocapitalism need not be seen solely as the Heideggerian Gestell, or technological enframing, which Fardid equated with the nafs-e-ammareh, the satanic essence of humanity that, like the Heideggerian Gestell, commands it to turn the whole earth into an energy resoruce. Instead, technocapitalist intelligence might represent an opportunity for a pluralistic, collective intelligence—a shared mind that exceeds the limitations of any individual and transforms into a cybernetic, democratized crimson intelligence. In this sense, the crimson color of Suhrawardi’s speculative myth, which he envisions as the blurring of light and darkness, creates an alternative path that takes the opposition between Iranian thought and Western thought, the spiritualism of the east vs. the materialism of the west, and turns it into a zone of indescernibility where Irainan history goes towards a self-consciosness that can encourage it to look at itself as an open-source program, an open space of possibilities that endorsed the forces of technocapitalism to create a pluralistic intelligence that redifines itself constantly instead of succumbing to its usual paranoia towards change and progressive reinvention.
This “cyberpunk” interpretation of crimson intelligence would break the linear progression of Iranian history, propelling it toward an emergent, unknown version of itself. Through this lens, Iranian modernity could embrace the technological advancements of technocapitalism, repurposing them as tools for a collective, cosmic intelligence that redefines Iranian identity within a larger, interconnected ontological framework. If Iranian thought is to be resurrected, it has to let itself die and be born again, a self-willed death, or, as Suhrawardi liked to call it, “death before death”, or mowt-e-qabl-e-mowt.