|
It was William St. Clair, serving on a delegation for his father’s
cousin, King Edward the Confessor, who escorted his successor, Edward “the
Exile”, from Hungary back to England, after which his daughter Margaret
later married Malcolm III of Scotland. The Sinclairs, who were also a
Norman family descended from Rollo the Viking, eventually became the
leading family of Scottish Rite Freemasonry, regarded as representing a
very “sacred” bloodline.
Their brand of Scottish Rite Freemasonry was believed to have
developed out of contact between the knights of the Crusades and the
mystics of the Islamic world. With the collapse of the Roman Empire, the
last of the Neoplatonic philosophers moved east, seeking temporary refuge
at the court of the Persian king, though, finding their situation
inhospitable, they departed from Persia to an unknown destination, some say
to Harran. Harran was the seat of one of the most important esoteric
communities, the Sabians, believed to have inherited the occult traditions
of Alexandria in Egypt, preserving the knowledge of Neoplatonism, and
Hermeticism.
According to al-Biruni, a Muslim scholar of the eleventh century,
these were confused with the real Sabeans. The real Sabeans, he wrote, were
originally remnants of Jews exiled at Babylon, where they had adopted the
teachings of the Magi, or Zoroastrians. However, he indicates, the same
name was applied to an occult community, the so-called Sabians of Harran:
They derive their system
from Agathodaemon, Hermes, Walis, Maba, Sawar. They believe that these men
and other sages like them were prophets. This sect is much more known by
the name of Sabians than the others, although they themselves did not adopt
this name before 228 A. H. under Abbasid rule, solely for the purpose of
being reckoned among those from whom the duties of Dhimmies (protected
non-Muslim community) are accepted, and towards whom the laws of Dhimmy are
observed. Before that time they were called heathens, idolaters, and
Harranians... 48
And when the Muslims embarked on their great project of translating
the works of the Greek philosophers and other ancient authors, it was to
the Sabians that they turned as a resource and as translators. Thus the
age-old occult doctrines infiltrated the world of Islam. The first result
of their influence was the emergence of Sufism, a so-called “mystical”
approach to Islam. Several European historians, including noted French
scholar of Islamic mysticism, Henry Corbin, has identified that the primary
symbolism of Sufi teachings was derived from Sabian symbolism.
But by “mysticism” is meant the common practice known to the
mysteries and the occult philosophies, meaning, the belief that knowlege or
“Gnosis”, cannot be achieved by ordinary means, but must be achieved by
direct “union” with the divine. To the worshippers of Dionysus, the state was
known as “enthusiasmos” or “having a god within”. It was a type of
possession, wherein the “god” was believed to seize hold of the initiate,
and communicate information to him, or through him or her, and to other
devotees. This is a practice also known as channelling. Communicated was
knowledge of the future, or of occult knowledge like magic.
There are many who believe that Sufism merely started as a form of
asceticism, but was later corrupted by the influence of Neoplatonism. The
word “Sufism” is generally agreed to come from the word “Suf”, referring to
the rough woolen garment that the early Sufis wore to expemplify their
renunciation of the world. A well-known saying of the Prophet Mohammed
(SAW) is “there is no monasticism [asceticism] in Islam”. Asceticism is a
practice that is common throughout the world. It is found in the Merkabah,
the monks of Christianity, the lamas of Buddhism, and the fakirs of
Hinduism. Of the Christians, the Qur’an says, in Surat 57:27:
But the asceticism which
they invented for themselves, We did not prescribe for them: (We commanded)
only the seeking for the Good Pleasure of Allah; but that they did not
foster as they should have done. Yet We bestowed, on those among them who
believed, their (due) reward, but many of them are rebellious
transgressors.
The asceticism of the Sufis is merely another kind of vanity. Instead
of worldly power, fame or riches, it is the vanity of purported spiritual
power that has attracted them. It is the deceptive seduction of the supposed
“ecstasy” of the experiences they describe, which are more psycho-physical,
and therefore more immediate and perceptible, than that of pure
understanding.
Similar to pagan mysticism, the experiences of the Sufis usually
involve trance states, visions, and other such quasi-spiritual experiences.
In this way, Sufism has disguised ancient mystical practices as pursuit for
higher levels of piety and devotion, and thereby acted as conduit to
transmit foreign ideas to Islam, distancing some to the point where they
wholly appropriated occult ideas that were overtly heretical.
It is generally accepted that the first exponent of Sufi doctrine was
the Egyptian, or Nubian, Dhun Nun of the ninth century, whose teaching was
recorded and systematised by al Junayd, and in it appears the essential
doctrine of all mysticism, but known in Sufism as “tawhid”, meaning “unity”
of the soul with God.
The doctrines expressed by al Junayd were boldly preached by his
pupil, ash-Shibli of Khurasan in the tenth century. Al-Husayn ibn Mansur
al-Hallaj was a fellow-student of ash-Shibli, and demonstrates some clearly
heretical elements, such as reincarnation, incarnation, and so on. He was
put to death by the son of Salahudin for declaring "I am the
truth", identifying himself with God, but later Sufi writers regard
him as a saint and martyr who suffered because he disclosed the great
secret of the union between the soul and God.
This doctrine was known as hulul, or the incarnation of God in the
human body, is treated as tawheed taking place in this present life.
According to al-Hallaj, man is essentially divine because he was created by
God in his own image, and that is why, he claimed, in Qur’an God commands
the angels worship Adam. In hulul God enters the human soul in the same way
that the soul at birth enters the body. As De Lacy O’Leary described, in
Arabic Thought and its Place in History:
This is an extremely
interesting illustration of the fusion of oriental and Hellenistic elements
in Sufism, and shows that the theoretical doctrines of Sufism, whatever
they may have borrowed from Persia and India, receive their interpretative
hypotheses from neo-Platonism. It is interesting also as showing in the
person of al-Hallaj a meeting-point between the Sufi and the philosopher of
the Isma‘ilian school.49
Sufism was generally looked upon as heretical, for several reasons.
First of these was that they believed the daily prayers to be only for the
masses, who had not achieved deeper spiritual knowledge, and could be
disregarded by those more advanced spiritually. They introduced dhikr, or
religious exercises, consisting in a continuous repetition of the name of
God, practices unknown to early Islam, and consequently regarded as
“bid’ah”, or innovation. Also, many of the Sufis adopted the practice of
tawakkul, or complete “dependence” on God, by neglecting all kinds of
labour or commerce, refusing medical care when they were ill, and living by
begging.
It was not until the time of al Ghazali that Sufism began to become
more accepted in orthodox Islam. Consider the description provided by al
Ghazali, in his Deliverance from Error, which, without the Arabic terms,
could easily be attributed to any of the famous mystics of history. About
his conversion to Sufism he said:
"I saw that Sufism
consists in experiences rather than in definitions and that what I was
lacking belonged to the domain, not of instruction, but of ecstasy and
initiation...
"From the time that
they [the Sufis] set out on this path, revelations commence for them. They
come to see in the waking state angels and souls of prophets; they hear
their voices and wise counsels. By means of this contemplation of heavenly
forms and images they rise by degrees to heights which human language can
not reach, which one can not even indicate without falling into great and
inevitable errors. The degree of proximity to Deity which they attain is
regarded by some as intermixture of being (hulul), by others as
identification (ittihad), by others as intimate union (wasl)."
Sufism was also influenced by Orpheus and related beliefs, and
consequently by Pythagoras and his teachings. The attempts to construct a
religious philosophy on the basis of Greek thought and especially the
theories of Pythagoras culminated in Neoplatonism.
The Arabic philosopher most responsible for the interpretation of
Islam according to Neoplatonic thought, was Ibn Arabi, born in Spain in
1164. One of his most famous works is the Bezels of Wisdom, conceived in
the course of a “vision” which he had near the Kabbah. Ibn Arabi claimed
that he received the work directly from Mohammad, who appeared to him in
Damascus in 1229.
Ibn Arabi borrowed from Neoplatonism the concept of emanation.
According to Neoplatonism, there is just one exalted God, who is
transcendent and unknowable. However, although the world proceeds from God,
he did not create it. The universe is an emanation from God, an outfow of
his infinite power. Similarly, Ibn Arabi also held that, while the divine
essence is absolutely unknowable, the cosmos as a whole is the
manifestation of all God’s attributes. Since these attributes must have a
creation to be known, “the One” is continually transforms itself into
“Many”. This lead him to a doctrine often characterised as pantheism, where
he saw that the goal of spiritual realisation is therefore to penetrate
beyond the exterior world to “tawhid”, or “unity of existence”. That is, in
which one sees the world as at once “One” and “Many”, or, ultimately, where
one is able to see God in oneself.
Ibn Arabi also expounded on what became a central doctrine of Sufism,
the notion of the “Qubt” or Pole. This “Pole of the World” headed
hierarchies of saints the Sufis developed, headed by this “Qutb” or Pole of
the World. This idea of a pole of the world is one of central significance
to the Kabbalah, where it was likened, as in Ibn Arabi, with the Primordial
Adam. Communication with these saints, most important of which is al Khidr,
“the Green One”, replaced the gods and demons of ancient mysticism.
Footnote:
48 The Chronology of Ancient Nations, translated and edited by Dr. C.
Edward Sachau. (London: William H. Allen and Co., 1879.)
49 p. 194
|
