Imagination, the ability to see things as images, is an ability of the heart, according to the influential Islamic philosopher Ibn Arabi (d.1240). All the figures haunting our imagination, that invisible population of angels and daimones, ghosts and ancestors with whom we sleep at night, with whom we talk in reverie, become vividly real only to the awakened heart. Otherwise we assume them to be inventions, projections, and fantasies.
— James Hillman, The Force of Character