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THE FATIMIYA ORDER
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 ]
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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!
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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!
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[Reproduced with most kind permission from the Holy Fatimiya Order]
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