--
The Fatimiya Sufi Order
The Fatimiya shahada is, La ilaha illa Allah Fatima Wajh Allah
"There is no god but the Godhead. Fatima is the Face of the Godhead"
Praised be the Godhead who by the Uncreated Light of the Morning-Dawn of Pre-Eternity upraised the firmaments of existence from the illuminative horizons of transcendental resplendence and spread them upon the watery expanses of being and Self-Disclosed the Theophany of Its Mercy to the empyrean realms of beautific magnificence and majestic scintillance clothed with the garment of Compassion with the two letters, ha & waw, which flowered forth the name Fatima, the Creatrix. Glory be upon the celestial Fatima, the Mother of the Kosmos and the Womb of Contingency: She who is both the conjunction as well as the progenitor of the Twin Divine Lights and all creation. Blessed be Fatima the Kosmocrator, the Logos-Self and Face of divinity, the Mother of Her Father, the origin and the return. And the Splendor of the Godhead be upon the Best of Its Creation, the Foremost of Its Kosmocration and the Pinnacle of Its Emanation, He Who is the One Who stands as the eternal christophany of Adam, Muhammad Mustafa; then upon the Lion of the Godhead and Gate to the City of All-Knowledge, Ali Murtada; and, then, upon the Righteous House of Their Progeny and Excellence be infinite peace, blessings and glory - constantly, absolutely! The consummation of laudation within the Luminous Divine Radiance of Eternal Peace be upon the First Unity in every moment, before every moment and after every moment! Blessings be upon all the True Messenger Apostles of the Light of lights, and upon the true saints and gnostics as well; and praised be the Godhead, the Lord of all the Worlds!
-----
The Gnostic Cult of Fatima in Shia Islam
"In the Presence of the Lord, the meaning (al-murad) of the Sabbath is Fatima the Resplendent (al-fâtima al-zahra'), because She is the Day of the Book (yawm al-kitâb). Verily the Godhead hath caused all created things (kullu-shay') to appear through Her..."
-- Essence of the Seven Letters --
-----
A QASIDA OF IBRAHIM TUSI (1350 A.D.)
[Note: A qasida is an elegiac poem with a tripartite verse structure].
I. How well do you know this mysterious Fitra? And where doth her magnificent clarity come from? Does she belong to the highest pre-eternal essence, does she manifest the attributes of the name, or is she the phenomenal form of the veil?
II. Is she the sacred flame of the torch? Or the glass lantern of the glowing light? Or the revealing clarity of the radiating star whose glittering scintillas ignite the olive tree?
III. Doth the oil ignite itself in her splendor? Or does her splendor come from a pre-existent fire? Yea! It was her will which rose before the well-guided (Wohlgeleiteten) to direct them by the clarity of her Mohammedean light—those who had come to power in her houses.
IV. Her houses are true temples which speak of the Name which is recognized beneath the essential veils. From her arises the confounding of the Name with the Bab, a secret and sacred phenomena.
V. From her arose shadows, the spiritual forms of future mankind, and the day of Mithaq where spirits nestled together to hear the divine lector proclaim to the elect the revelation of our luminous masters.
VI. Through her we have experienced the phenomenon of life, through her Adam was venerated (by the Angels): and through her there was the pact—the divine bond—along with the sublime and magnanimous witnesses who proclaimed the uniqueness of the Godhead when they saw him (Ali), those big-bellied and the bald.
VII. She is the image before which one prostrates oneself; she is the highest proof and touchstone for the unbeliever who revolts, who denies God by saying I (“I am more worthy!”)— before being cast down by his cowardice into the ranks of the damned.
VIII. This sublime appearance would not be recognized by the ignorant, who remain shut off. But those who obey her shall be redeemed and honored in the paradise of delights among the lords of all creation.
IX. She is the strong grip, the word that cuts; from her comes the brightness which separates light from darkness—for she has divided and split the world—here the redeemed, there the vanquished—and never the twain shall meet.
X. She is the tree with twelve branches whose fruits have been cultivated in secret since the beginning of time, preserved for the elect in measured share, those leaders of seekers and lovers.
XI. She is the sanctuary of paradise with the Tuba tree, she is the source of Salsal, that exquisite drink of which never satiates, which heals hearts and grants every wish to the
learned and the wise.
XII. She is their residence built since eternity, their majestically towering shelter. She is the raging sea, the light of the Name, the book which conceals within itself all wisdom, of which the text of the Koran is but an outer cover, a distant echo.
XIII. She is the Aqsa Mosque of Jerusalem where the elect and the sacred have ascended to honor the Unique and the Merciful, the situs irradiated by the streaming clarity which pours forth from the luminous stars.
XIV. She is the one who nurtures all creatures at her breast without ever weaning her children or diminishing the abundance of her bosom. She bestows her gifts upon all who seek the truth and the genuinely essential, and upon those who are radiant masters.
XV. It was through her that Cain abandoned the right path; she was Abel’s fire sacrifice, a divine symbol enshrouded in flame to testify against the wicked.
XVI. She is the rock from which the twelve springs have their source, the impeccable pearls—Imāms of pure knowledge—preserved for those inflamed with love for her, and who drink out of her chalice.
XVII. She is the (reddish) cow of the white bāqir, thanks to which the innocent were redeemed from death. Upon being reproached they said: “This is what killed me, I recognize it.” Truth appeared to Moses, who openly proclaimed it.
XVIII. She is the night of power which enjoys glorious renown, her endurance is longer than a thousand moons; here the angels and spirits climb down to earth, and, forsooth, divide the fate of men according to their angelic directive.
XIX. Her light darkens the sun’s gifts when her full moon comes to term, occulted by three veils, three silent veils; and Mohammed leads them with words and directions.
XX. She is the substance of her name—“the holy”—the “creatrix of incarnation”—her veil indicates divine ambiguity, and its borrowed light shines for the elect by night.
XXI. And on the day that the prophet vanished (i.e. as he died), he appeared afresh within her; suffused with eloquence, she became the veil which enraptures those of wisdom and reason, and by the source of the master of revelation (Ali), she became the singular and highest ontological essence.
XXII. She is the one whose mysteries became visible to us on the day of fadak; castles and fortresses trembled as she opposed the wicked, and all surrendered their heaving scourges to make peace with Ali.
XXIII. But Ali pacified them when he saw them tearing their souls. And he said: “Steady! Be calm! Your fate is as near as the breaking dawn, and like the day, the judge will appoint them to appear before him.
XXIV. And she returned, smiling, back to her house, both Hassans following her. Her enemies, unsuspecting, will soon be plummeting into the burning fires of hell.
* * *
In reference to this qasida, it should be noted that Fatir [creatrix], the mysterious name of Fatima, was probably chosen because the numerical value of the letters which form the name produce the same total as the numerical value of the name of Mary (Maryam). For these gnostic circles there is a form of reappearance (the reincarnation of one identical, unchanging archetype from one cycle to the next). Thus, Fatima is simply the reoccurrence of Maryam. The numerical value of both names is 290. From this identification it follows that certain reciprocal reactions in Islamic intellectual circles—in which a traditional Fatima-type is opposed to a traditional Maria-type—should be determined with more precision. So too the proclamation scene (which is described by Jalal-addin Rumi in his Mathnawi in such an idiosyncratic manner) and the theories surrounding the conception and birth of the Imāms.
The women around Mohammed played a role in his family life as well as in his political life. While the Shias remember the Prophet’s first wife Khadija very fondly—the “Umm Salama”—this is in no way the case with Ayisha and Hafsa, daughters of the two initial successors of Mohammed. For Shias they are the “wicked women” of the prophet, who are, moreover, pointed out in one of the verses of the Koran as the disobedient ones. On the other hand, there is a special adoration towards Ayisah and Hafsa amongst Sunnis who are hostile towards Shias.
In the north western part of Kashmir, in the area of Baltistan, where there are mainly Isma’ilis (hence Shias) living, there is an anti-Shia enclave of Kelun-shah who practice a cult devoted blatantly to Ayisha and Hafsa. This must be a surviving minority of the Buddhist cult of the two Taras.
Therefore, if we want to compare the role of this female intercessory power in Islam with that of Christianity and Judaism, we will notice that in Islam we are in no way dealing with the personification of the Torah as in Israel (which deals with a marriage of the community to the power of God); nor are we dealing with the Christian Panagia to distinguish a chosen one through the intercession of the Holy Spirit. The Shia traditions are very clear on this: Fatima, who is holding a sword in her hand and is also named El Zahrā, “the brilliant/effulgent,” has an essential eschatological role to play—she will restore justice through irreconcilable vengeance. She will appear at the final judgment with flowing hair to demand justice for the murder of her children; she will appear against those responsible for the premature delivery of her last son, Mohsin, whose blood drenched body she carries in her arms; she will appear against those who poisoned her eldest son Hassan and slew her second son Hossein in Karbala. In this image, then, she is essentially the embodiment of divine retribution, just as she was the embodiment of selectivity at the beginning of time; for those who love her and her successors, who are already thereby assured of paradise. She is the sād, the letter which symbolizes the pre-eternal purity of the elect.
-----
In the Name of the Godhead the Compassionate, the Merciful!
All praise is due to the One and Only, the Singular, the Alone without Peer or Equal, the Absolute Being and Unknowable Mystery, the Necessary Being and Truly Real, the Living Godhead, the Light of all lights, the God of all gods, as is truly worthy and rightfully due. Glorified be It Who unchanged and unchangeable brought forth the realms of contingency into being by Self-Disclosing the Theophany of Its own Substance from the Empyrean Realms of Power, billowing Its effusions as a Light Illuminating from the Morning of Praeternity shedding Its traces upon the tablets of the Temples of Unity. It is the First, without firstness qualifying It, for It is the Last, without lastness predicative of It. It is the Manifest by the transcendence of Its manifestations, for It is the Hidden by the immanence of the hiddenesses of Its unfathomable disclosures. All-things perish but Its Face, for wherever ye turn there is the Face of the Godhead!
And salutations and blessings be upon the Messenger Apostles of Light and the Vicegerent Providental Guides of Righteousness, all of them; especially, the Essence of the Seven Letters and Point of the Bayan, His Letters of the Living and the Praeternal Mirror of Splendidness; then, peace be upon the gnostic Oriental Theosophic Sages, those triumphant Cavalier Knights, those Leiges of Love of the Victory of the Orient of the Mystic Light, and praised be the Godhead, the Lord of All the Worlds!And I, prostrate at the threshold of Its Divine Throne, verily testify that there is no other god but the Godhead, Truly, Truly; that Ali before Nabil is the Manifestation of the Self of the Godhead; that the Proofs of the Living are the Pure Holy Saints of the Godhead; that Muhammad is the Beloved of the Godhead; that His Folk and Family, the Imams of Righteousness, are the Luminous Reflections of the Visage of the Godhead; that Fatima the Radiant is the Conjunction of the Twin Divine Lights and the Manifestation of the Splendor of the Face of the Godhead; that the Name of the Holy Praeternal One is the Mirror to the Essence of the Godhead, and that that which is in the Light of the Bayan is the Pure Religion of the Godhead!
No power and no strength is there save in the Godhead, the High, the Mighty and the Living, the Protector, the Peerless!
Wahid Azal [ 1 March 2007 ]
-----
[Reproduced with most kind permission from the Holy Fatimiya Order]
-----
The Fátimíya Súfí Order
The Fátimíya Súfí Order is a post-Islamicate and Neo-Bayânî universalist-perennialist and syncretic initiatic mystery school that weds the central currents of High Shi'ite Islamicate gnosis, Kabbalah, Shamanism and Hermetic High Paganism within the central experiential grounding of the divine sacrament of Haoma. In the Fátimíya Súfí Order the qutb (pole) and Imám of Imáms is the Feminine Holy Spirit, the Theophany of Fátima Zahrá. This animating Feminine Divine Consciousness is considered by us to be the celestial Imám of the Age Fátima. She is the Theophany as Angelophany of the Sophia Aeternae (i.e. Shekina/Sakina) – i.e. that Divine Being whose historical and terrestial apparition (mazhar) manifested in the form of the daughter of the Prophet of Islam Fátima Zahrá (d. 632), viz. Fátima Zahrá (the radiant) who in esoteric Shi’ite gnosis stands as the conjunction of the two lights (majma’ al-nurayn) of prophecy (nubuwwa) and providential guidance (wiláya). Being gnostic docetists and Platonic Illuminationists, it is, however, the principle celestial Fátima - the primordial divine prototype of the terrestrial – we venerate. She appears to us in the Visionary state as an Angelic Theophany and we hold Her to be the same as the Chief Archangel Metatron (malak al-nún), the First Intellect (‘aql awwal) and Primal Pen (qalam a’lá), thus Creatrix and Kosmocrator (i.e. fátimá fátir). Classical Gnosticism has referred to Her as the Sophia; the Kabbalah as the Shekinah; Zoroastrians as the Archangel Daena; Tantric Shaivism as Para-Sakti; traditional Amerindian ayahuasqueros as the Sachamama; others with other names; we refer to Her as Fátima. Therefore ours is the Way into the mysteries of the celestial Fátima beyond the empty shell and prison of mindless exoteric shari'a (the religious law divorced from its spirit), ideology or pietistic dogma (‘aqída.) We are Súfí oriented esotericists and gnostics transformed by the baraka (blessing, grace) of the Shekinah through the vehicle of the Haoma, which we believe to be none other than the Soma of the Rg Vedas and the Manna of the Children of Israel in the Sina'i. While we do not shun ritual as such, our qalandarí (antinomian) path is the Path (taríqat) of pure esotericism (‘irfán) seeking pure gnostic realization (haqíqat) and vision (ruyá) of the interior realities (bátin) and the multiple worlds through the marriage of Haoma with dhikr (mantra). Our shari'a, therefore, is the shari'a of the tariqa. Just as the Bektáshí Súfí Order of Turkey utilize wine to attain altered states of noetic realization and illumination, the Fátimíya utilize Haoma to the same end. As such we are not Muslims but rather esoteric initiates of the Ahl al-Bayt (People of the House) and hence Fátimiyyun (Fátimis). Given this, the Fátimíya Súfí Order is in no way, shape or manner an exoteric Islamic sect clinging to normative Islamic praxis. While we deeply cherish the beautifully sonorous rhapsodies contained in the Arabic of the Qur’án - indeed consider it to be a scriptural-narrative of one of the inexhaustible Revelations sent from the Godhead -; and as Islamic mystical and Súfí oriented devotional texts are central to what we do, we do not hold to the dogma of the finality of the Islamic Revelation in its exoteric sense. Rather we are an Islamicate expression of an intrinsically universal Indo-Iranian phenomenon of gnosis – with roots deep inside Mazdaeanism, the esoteric teachings of the Shi'ite Imams, Ismá’ílism, Illuminationist Platonism, Shaivite Tantrism and the Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabí (d. 1240) -, but transformed within the matrix of a universalist-perennialist esoteric based shamanic spirituality. We believe the Holy Sacrament of Fátima opens the celestial doorways to what, in his writings, Henry Corbin (d. 1978) delineated as the Imaginal World (mundus imaginalis, ‘alam al-mithál), i.e. the spiritual world of the eighth clime or hurqalyá, where bodies are spiritualized and spirits corporealized: the world where our master and Imám Fátima is theophanically situated and to which we seek to spiritually orient ourselves in order to break through the cosmic crypt of illusion, undergo the alchemical process of angelomorphosis by uniting with our own heavenly celestial prototype-twin (syzygy) and so thus return to our original nature as homo angelicus. We are in essence disciples of Khidr (the green one), who is the Hidden Imám, and whom we hold to be one of the countless epiphanic manifestations of the celestial Fátima. Flowing from such hyper-radical post-normative Islamicate esoteric formulations, the Fátimíya Súfí Order also maintains the Alamútí doctrine of the Imám-of-ones-being (i.e. the messianic secret) – albeit augmented beyond its originary Ismá’ílí considerations - and as such invites its initiates to explore the multifaceted reality of this Truth through their meditations and personal lives, but, above all, within the sacrament - that is the Celestial Wine (mey) - of Haoma, Her Holy Sacrament. We believe this doctrine is firmly grounded within the esoteric teachings of the Shi'ite Imams themselves and cite the following hadith (tradition) of HH Imam Ja'far as-Sadiq (pbuh) (from Kulayni's kitab al-kafi) as proof:
H 12, Ch. 1, h 12
"O Hisham, the Godhead (allah) has placed two kinds of authority over humans. The apparent and manifest (zahir) authority and the internal and hidden (batin) authority. The prophets and messengers are the apparent and manifest authorities and Hiero-Intelligence ('aql = nous/atman) is the hidden (batin) and internal authority."
While ultimate divine authority in our Order is vested in and flows unimpeded from the celestial Fatima, the hierophantic authority of the Fátimíya Súfí Order is presently vested in its Grand Shaykh, Imám 'Abdu'l-Haqq Wahid Azal Wahdatalishah (who is its temporal founder and sitting head) together with the Order's twenty-seven member High Executive Council known as the Letters of the Face of the One (huruf al-wajh al-ahad).
As stated, the vertical line of our initiatic transmission resides with the Imam Fatima Herself directly. The horizontal trajectory of our Order's lineage does, however, go back to several authentic lines of initiatic transmission within the Islamic world itself. Within the Islamicate context these lines include the Qadiri Order, a sub-branch of the Iranian N'imatullahi Order (not associated with Javad Nurbakhsh's line), the Turkish Mevlevi Order and the trans-institutional initiatic mantle of Ibn 'Arabi (i.e. the khirqa akbariyya). Other unconventional - and somewhat more important lines of transmission - also include the Nusayri-Alawiyya, the Illuminationists (ishraqiyyun), the Shaykhi school and the Bayani gnostic faith; and, above all, the esoteric transmission from the Shi'ite Imams themselves, which function for us as an authentic line of transmission vertically and from Above.
Verily we are from the Godhead and to It shall we return!
--
Fatimiya Flyer
States at the top in Arabic silsilah fatimiya, the Fatimiya Sufi Order in English right below it, with a pentagram and then below that in Arabic fatima al-haqq wa’l-haqq fatima (i.e. Fatima is the Truly Real and the Truly Real is Fatima ), which is a pun on a similar refrain used by the hyper-Shi’ite Sufi Orders of Iran like the Khaksar and Ahl-i-Haqq regarding ‘Ali (i.e. ali ma’l-haqq wa’l-haqq ma’ Ali / Ali is with the Truly Real and the Truly Real is with Ali). Except here we’re dropping the with altogether, i.e. ma’, and going for full-blown is. Note our phrase has precisely 19 letters with a gematria of 554 (= 14); as well silsilah fatimiya (the Fatimiya Sufi Order) has a gematria of 170 (remember Corbin’s allusions around this number in Cyclical Time & Ismaili Gnosis), which is also the abjad/gematria of Quddus = Holy.
--
No comments:
Post a Comment