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The
Sun At Midnight: The Revealed
Mysteries of the Ahlul Bayt Sufis “Woman
is a beam of the divine Light. “There
is no God beside me, neither in divinity nor humanity, neither in the
Heavens nor on earth, outside of me, who am Fatima - Creator.” - Fatima
- Fatir (the Initiator) “The
mosque may be destroyed, but the mihrab remains.” - Turkish Proverb “The
spiritual presence and essence of Fatima has inspired thousands of
artists, poets, writers and artisans.” - Laleh Bakhtiar “The
womb of the mother is a manifestation of Allah Himself!” - Hadith “We’re
entering a new era, it will be the resurgence of the divine feminine
spirit. We must honor that spirit, in ourselves, and in others.” -
“Bliss” “I
am not afraid of Allah; I love Allah.” - Nailya Beidulayeva THE
SPIRITUAL EQUALITY OF MEN AND WOMEN Exoteric
religions tell us that we must look outside ourselves for the answers.
Rather than respecting our inner responsibility, exoteric religions teach
us that we should put someone else in charge of our lives, be it our
rabbi, our imam, our pastor, or our priest. The
dominant religions of the Western World and the Near East have an
essentially masculine orientation. They emphasize perfection, which is a
masculine characteristic, rather than wholeness, which is a feminine
characteristic. Males cannot give birth; therefore, patriarchal religion
is centered upon pseudo-creative elements such as breath, modeling with
clay (the way Yahweh constructed Adam), numbers, and words. The
male-oriented religions are mental and cerebral with great emphasis on
memorization of lengthy religious tracts and prayers. Since the
patriarchal Gods could not give birth, as they have no wombs or vaginas,
they would create by saying a “word” or breathing into a form of clay.
Yet, what was that clay? Some
writers consider the matriarchy and patriarchy issue as a contest between
the Sky religions and the Grounded/Nature/Earth religions, or the Machine
Culture vs. the Natural Symbiotic culture. The Natural Symbiotic culture
sees all of humanity as interconnected. The Machine Culture sees nature as
the wild uncontrollable fury that must be controlled, just as we must
control the “stranger” in us. Science has seen the world as a
well-organized “machine” that they must dissect. The science of modern
medicine is dehumanizing. While the intentions and actions of many
scientists and doctors are noble, the paradigm behind much of their work
is the notion that they can “do” something to control nature. We
fear what is uncontrollable. This “control” attitude results in an
“order-fetish.” People become obsessed with mowing and grooming their
lawns and obsessed with neatness. People living in contemporary society
are split beings divided against themselves. Our Euro-centric society is
wounded. Society does not want to feel pain. Therefore, society denies
history, and hides its collective head in the sand. People feed their
spirits with junk food and entertainment that distracts. Television
removes us from an authentic connection with nature. “I shop therefore I
am,” sums up people’s sense of self. We
must reintegrate what we have taken apart and love the thing we fear. Our
thinking must change to the consideration of long-term cycles and
consequences. The Iroquois nation would think of the next seven
generations before taking an action! True Islam has always accepted
responsibility for the next generation’s children. We are not machines,
but sensitive, holistic beings. Spirituality has reached a metanoia, a
turning point. This is a tyros, a moment in which things that seemed
impossible become possible. We need to begin to re-appropriate compassion
and give importance to fertility and nurturance. We need to care about
others and ourselves. Out of the loss of the old can come the affirmation
of something new. We must ask ourselves the question, “Are we really
evolving spiritually?” Female-oriented
religions are directly connected with birth and the body, nurturing,
fecundity, nonviolence, wholeness, spirals, circles and the Underworld.
Perhaps this is the profound insight that the Prophet Muhammad (Upon him
be peace) had when he said, “Paradise is found at the feet of the
mother.” The secret Sufi understanding of this hadith is that the Arabic
word for foot is the same word for the female pubic bone, suggesting that
illumination can be found through sexual intercourse between two married
Sufis in the station of Haqq. In Sufism, Woman is the Secret. The great
Sufi Sheikh, Ibn ‘Arabi, “practiced . . . the exaltation of sexual
intercourse as a supreme method of realization,” and transmitted his
direct knowledge from Allah to fourteen women, eight of whom received this
transmission in dreams. Sheikh
el-Hajj Serif Çatalkaya er-Rifa’i er-Marufi teaches that Sufism was
first known as Theosphia. Theosophia means “knowledge of things
divine.” The word comes through Medieval Latin from Late Greek; that is,
the type of Greek spoken from the first or second to the sixth century C.E.
However, Sheikh Serif Çatalkaya refers to the existence of a universal
initiatory form, from which issued all the great religions and to which
human beings can reach at the end of an inner divine search, passing to a
complete metamorphosis of BEING. The
Nag Hammadi Library, a collection of thirteen ancient codices containing
more than fifty texts, was discovered in upper Egypt in 1945. This
immensely important discovery includes a large number of primary Gnostic
scriptures. Here Eve whose mystical name is Zoe, meaning life, is shown as
the daughter and messenger of the Divine Sophia, the feminine hypostasis
of the supreme Godhead: “Sophia
sent Zoe, her daughter, who is called ‘Eve,’ as an instructor in order
that she might raise up Adam, in whom there is no spiritual soul so that
those whom he could beget might also become vessels of light. When Eve saw
her companion, who was so much like her, in his cast down condition she
pitied him, and she exclaimed: ‘Adam, live! Rise up upon the earth!’
Immediately her words produced a result for when Adam rose up, right away
he opened his eyes. When he saw her, he said: ‘You will be called
“mother of the living”, because you are the one who gave me
life.’” The
Gnostic Christians who wrote the Nag Hammadi scriptures did not read
Genesis as history with a moral, but as a myth with a meaning. To them,
Adam and Eve were not actual historical figures, but representatives of
two intrapsychic principles within every human being. Adam was the
dramatic embodiment of psyche, or soul, while Eve stood for the pneuma, or
spirit. Soul, to the Gnostics, meant the embodiment of the emotional and
thinking functions of the personality, while spirit represented the human
capacity for spiritual consciousness. The former was the lesser self (the
ego of depth psychology), the latter the transcendental function, or the
“higher self,” as it is sometimes known. Obviously, Eve, then, is by
nature superior to Adam, rather than his inferior as implied by orthodoxy.
Nowhere is Eve’s superiority and numinous power more evident than in her
role as Adam’s awakener. Ibn
‘Arabi married a holy woman by the name of Mariam al-Bajiya who
introduced him to sacred sexuality. “She certainly nourished his soul,
thus enabling him, in experiences that were certainly very rare, to
combine orgasm with ecstasy.” She introduced him to meditation and
contemplation through persuading him to learn Sufism from another pious
woman, Nãna, the famous Fatma Bent Ibn El Mutanna of Cordoba. Ibn
‘Arabi became her servant and Murid for two years. The Greatest Sheikh
of all, Ibn ‘Arabi, was taught by a woman! The concept that Eros is the
fuel for the human love of God is not new. Saint Augustine said this and
before him Plotinus, and before him Plato. “The
body of a woman, therefore, is a microcosm of the masterly work of God. To
lose oneself in it is to find oneself in God. To run over it is to
continue the great book of Allah.” Ibn Hazm adopts in “Tawq al-hamama”
an attitude of sympathy toward love and the inclination of human nature to
appreciate beauty, holding these feelings to be neither commanded nor
forbidden. The Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) declared, “Gazing at
a comely face is an act of worship.” Archaeologists
have uncovered a wealth of evidence suggesting that before God was
worshiped as a male, the Presence of Life was worshiped as a female. A
nomadic hominid tribe, who predated even the Neanderthal era, has recently
been carbon-dated to have existed between 232,000 and 800,000 years ago.
Until the past few decades, the famous Willendorf goddess carved of bone
30,000 years ago was the earliest human-crafted work of art and
veneration. They have recently discovered a new goddess figure, named the
Acheulian goddess, in the excavation of the above-mentioned nomadic
hominid tribe. It predates Willendorf by an amazing quarter-million years!
They unearthed the five inch figurine at Birket Er-Ram, Golan Heights,
Israel during the 1980s. Due to its extremely old age, some claimed it had
to be a natural rock formation. Microscopic analysis, however, reveals the
figure is not a natural rock formation. Marks left from flint tools
indicate the figurine was “deliberately sculpted and shaped.” The
Israel Prehistoric Society believes this sculpture may be the “world’s
earliest object of art.” Woman is the secret. Even
in the sacred patriarchal traditions, we sense the presence, however
repressed or denied, of the feminine aspect of Absolute Existence. In the
Judaic Tradition, we find the Shekinah (perceived as The Holy Cloud, Holy
Shadow, Holy Fire, Holy Radiance of the Divine Glory, and The Clouds of
Heaven). “The
Reapers of the Field are the Comrades, masters of this wisdom, because
Malkbut Shekhinab [the feminine Divine Presence], is called the Apple
Field, and She grows sprouts of secrets and new flowerings of Torah. Those
who constantly create new interpretations of Torah are harvesting Her.” The
Shekinah is a dwelling Presence of Divinity. When Muhammad (Peace be upon
him) was a young boy, a cloud watched over him wherever he went. In
addition, the Hebrews worshiped the Goddess Asherah, a female deity. King
Solomon paid her homage. Josiah, a King of Israel, built her a sanctuary
on the Mount of Olives. In Christianity, there exists the Holy Spirit, and
in Islam, there exists the Sufic and Ismaili honor given to the Blessed
Maryam (the mother of the Prophet Jesus), and to Lady Fatima Zahra (the
Prophet’s daughter), and to Boraq. During
the atomic explosion at Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, a German Jesuit and
seven of his colleagues were living only eight blocks from the blinding
center of the nuclear flash, yet all escaped while flaming death screamed
all around them. To this day, all eight occupants of that building are
alive and well while others living some distance away continue to die of
the radiation effects of that frightful holocaust. Over the years some two
hundred scientists have examined these eight survivors, trying to discover
what could have spared them from incineration or the lethal storm of
radiation. Speaking on television in the United Sates, the German Jesuit,
Father Hubert Shiffner, gave the startling answer. “In that house, we
were living the message of Fatima.” He was, of course, referring to the
apparition that occurred to three young shepherd children in Fatima,
Portugal on July 13, 1917. His words seemed to underline Sister Lucia’s
statement in 1977, “Our Lady will protect all her dear ones.” Does
the reader know that before becoming a Holy Place to Catholics in honor of
Our Lady of Fatima, the shrine in Portugal was a holy place to Muslims who
used to make pilgrimages there in honor of Muhammad’s (Peace be upon
him) daughter Fatima (‘Alaiha Assalam)? So then, who really is Our Lady
of Fatima? The same phenomenon occurred in Nagasaki, which was hit with
the second atomic bomb three days later: a Franciscan monastery, founded
by Saint Maximilian Kolbe, was left standing, unharmed by the blast while
everything around it was leveled to the ground. Sufism
cherishes the esoteric secret of woman, even though Sufism is the esoteric
aspect of a patriarchal religion. Muslims pray five times a day facing the
city of Macca (al-Mukarramah). Inside every Mosque is a niche called the
“Qibla,” a vertical rectangle curved at the top. The Sufis know this
to be the vagina of the female aspect of divinity. In Sufism, woman is the
secret, for woman is the soul. Toshihiko Izutsu writes, “The wife of
Adam was feminine, but the first soul from which Adam was born was also
feminine.” In
the words of the living Sufi Saint Habiba, “Our culture went through the
influence of many great people. The Hellenistic culture integrated with
our remote cult of the Mother, the Great Mother Anahita. Along centuries,
we exchanged with the Indians, the Egyptians, and the Persian cultures,
the Christians and the Buddhists. When the Muslim religion appeared, it
unified all these different styles and conceptions. We consider all the
powerful masters of the past as Prophets, and we don’t deny any other
faith. Muslim is a newborn religion that originates from all the other big
religions.” The
Sufis say that each Prophet had a woman who made him into a Prophet.
Blessed Jesus (Peace be upon him) had Mary Magdalene. She initiated him.
There is biblical proof of their relationship in that Jesus (Peace be upon
him) used a particular word (incorrectly translated by Biblical
translators as “touch”) when he met Mary in the garden. The exact
translation of the word is “to touch as in fondling and sexually
stimulating.” According
to the Gospel of Philip 63:31, the Prophet Jesus (Peace be upon him) loved
Mary Magdalene more than all the disciples and often kissed her on the
mouth. “But Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to
kiss her often on the mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended by it
and expressed disapproval. They said to him, ‘Why do you love her more
than all of us?’ ”(Philip 63. 30-35). Occasionally we have seen
various Sheikhs kiss their Murids on the mouth, whether they be male or
female. Mary Magdalene and the Prophet Jesus (Peace be upon him) had long
and intimate conversations together, on mystical topics way above the
heads of the disciples. Each
Sheikh has a woman that makes him into a Sheikh. Therefore, in this
seemingly patriarchal mystery tradition, we see that woman is the Hidden
Initiatrix, the Shadow Guide, the Blackness that births the Light.
However, there have been women in Islamic history whom Allah called to
service of a manifest nature. These women became Sultanas and Malikas
(Queens). One such famous woman was Razia Sultana, who took power in Delhi
in the year 634/1236. Another Queen bearing the title of Sultana was
Shajarat al-Durr, who gained power in Cairo in 648/1250 like any other
military leader. In fact, she brought the Muslims a victory during the
Crusades and captured the King of France, Louis IX. Fatima
tul Zehra (Fatima the Radiant, Fatima the Brightest Star, Fatima-Star of
Venus, Fatima-The Evening Star), the daughter of the Prophet, is the
secret in Sufism. She is the Hujjat of Ali (‘Alaihi Assalam). In other
words, she establishes the esoteric sense of his knowledge and guides
those who attain to it. Through her perfume, we breathe paradise. Though
she was his daughter, the Prophet Muhammad (Upon him be peace) called her
“Um Abi’ha” (mother of her father). What
mystery was the Prophet hinting at by this statement? While Fatima Zehra
(‘Alaihi Assalam) was Muhammad’s (Peace be upon him) daughter, the
Rasulallah understood that his gnosis was bestowed upon him from the
Divine Feminine. Fatima Fatir as representative of Allah’s Jamal, saves
humankind from Allah’s Jalal. Esoterically, if it were not for Fatima
(Mercy), Allah would never have sent Muhammad (Peace be upon him) and the
Qur’an to humanity. The
night is the exemplification of our sovereign Fatima (‘Alaiha Assalam),
especially the “Night of Destiny” (laylat al-Qadr). Lady Fatima
(‘Alaiha Assalam) was chosen from all women to be the Mother source of
Muhammad’s lineage, the core of the generation of Muhammad. Through her,
the progeny of the Prophet multiplies – through a woman. The
process of giving birth to the spirit is the feminine principle. That to
which has been given birth is the masculine. “This is why, in spiritual
transformation and rebirth, only the masculine principle can be born, for
the feminine principle is the process itself. Once birth is given to the
spirit, this principle remains as Fatima, the Creative Feminine, the
Daughter of the Prophet, in a state of potentiality within the spirit
reborn.” Fatima
the Gracious (‘Alaihi Assalam), “The Leader of all the Women of all
the Worlds,” is a wonderful role model for not only women in Islam, but
also for men in their understanding of the importance of women in Islam.
“Fatima spent her life in struggle, resisting poverty and difficulties.
We learn of Fatima as a Muslim female child who defends her father against
the elders of her tribe. Fatima, the Muslim woman, who stands at the door
and defends her husband and her home when usurpers try to burn it down.
Fatima tells the newly elected Khalif that he has displeased God and
God’s Prophet by not listening to the Prophet’s advice and taking his
own interests to heart.” Fatima
(‘Alaiha Assalam) is the secret within the human being. She is our
ability to appreciate pleasure and beauty. Henry Corbin posits this view
of Fatima’s (‘Alaihi Assalam) spiritual reality, “Fatima symbolizes
the essence of the feminine because she was the creator of the being
(Logos) by whom she herself was created (in other words Muhammad). That
is, whereas the Virgin Mary is the mother of the Logos, Word, Fatima is
the daughter of the Logos, who in turn, through her marriage to Ali, gave
birth to the Logos as manifested in the Imams.” Before
a Sufi performs any action, he or she says, Bismillah ir Rahman ir Rahim
(In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, and the Merciful). We also
pronounce this most sacred phrase before the recitation of any part of the
Qur’an. Rahman is one of the Divine Names and is usually translated as
“Compassion.” Rahim, another Divine Name is translated as “Mercy.”
Both words are derived from the root: rah’m that means womb, and is an
ancient name of the Goddess. Al Rahman is properly defined as the
possessor of the womb; and Al Rahim is ascertained as the womb. Therefore,
they might render Bismillah ir Rahman ir Rahim more precisely as “In the
Name of the Unknowable, the Matrix of the Womb.” Ibn
al-’Arabi has a fascinating insight into the secret of the divinity of
the feminine. The Mother-Father aspect of Allah is most clearly seen in
the two categories: of the Names of Beauty and the Names of Majesty. As
the Incomparable God of Majesty, Allah is like the strict and indifferent
Father. He is the Remote Absolute, the Unknowable, and Beyond Attributes.
Fadlou Shehadi in his work “Ghazali’s Unique Unknowable God” writes
that Ghazali seems to be saying, “that positive attribute-statements
assert that God is such and such, but He is not actually so. Although we
say God is just, forgiving, merciful, yet in a strict sense God is not. As
descriptions of God these are false, yet they are what we should accept
about Him. Such are the attributes in terms of which the believer is to
characterize God, although they are not descriptively true
characterizations. Man is therefore left to worship God in a human
language version of Him which is descriptively inapplicable to Him.”
Yet, here we are faced with a dilemma. What in a God that is wholly other
and incomprehensible would prompt people to worship and pray to Him?
Ghazali says: “God is . . . an Existent who transcends all that is
comprehensible by human sight or human insight . . .” D B. Macdonald, in
commenting on this “aloof” aspect of Allah declares, “It is
magnificent, but it is not - religion!” However, when we consider the
Names of Beauty, as the Compassionate God of Similarity, Allah is most
like a good-natured Mother who never falls short in Her duty to look out
for the well-being of Her children. The
attitude that the Murid adopts in relation to the Divine will influence
his or her perception of the way the Divine relates to the Murid. If the
Murîd acts in a certain manner because he or she believes Allah is a
stern and cold deity and the Murid fears punishment, then Allah will
appear to be such a deity. However, if the Murid acts out of his or her
love for Allah, then Allah will manifest as a caring and loving deity to
the Murid. Allah approaches us in the same manner in which we approach
Allah. Inasmuch
as you are reflections of Allah’s attributes, it is when you pull back
from Allah, that you experience Jalal. If you continuously see the world
with the eyes of love, beauty, and compassion, then you continuously
experience Allah’s Jamal. You cannot change the world, but you can
change the way you see the world. Sara
Sviri in her book “The Taste of Hidden Things: Images on the Sufi
Path”409explains to us how creation is both the act and product of
divine erotic energy, also symbolized as an act of writing or speech in
the myths of the major religions. In Islamic mythology, the pen (qalam)
represents “the thrust and outpouring” of divine male energy that
writes human destinies in the Book of Creation, the Mother of Books (Umm
al-kitab). In
ancient Egyptian mythology, the hieroglyphic symbol of a Throne represents
the Goddess Isis. This is because from ancient times, through the medieval
age (and even beyond), they believed that the King received his power
through the Goddess of the Land, represented by the Throne upon which he
sat. Allah sits on the Throne of Mercy (sarir al-rahmaniyya). Mercy, in
Arabic, is a feminine noun. The universe consists of the circumference of
a circle (which is the Cosmos) and a point at the center of the circle
(which is the Essence). Allah sits on the Throne of Mercy and governs the
whole Cosmos. Hence, the masculine (Majestic) aspect of Absolute Existence
draws Its power from Its feminine (Beautiful) aspect. There
is only one person buried inside the Ka’ba, the “House of God” and
that is a woman, the slave Hagar, the second wife of the Prophet Abraham
and the mother of Ismail. Ibn
‘Arabi speaks thus about woman, “Woman is the highest form of earthly
beauty, but earthly beauty is nothing unless it is a manifestation and
reflection of the Divine Qualities.” Continuing, he says, “Know that
the Absolute cannot be contemplated independently of a concrete being, and
It is more perfectly seen in a human form than in any other, and more
perfectly in woman than in man.” Whenever
a religion attempts to present some one-sided, in other words, sexist view
of a deity, that particular religion perforce is incomplete. Again, as in
all things, balance is necessary when it comes to religion, spirituality,
and divinity. The body is not some donkey that we must ride through life
until the rider can be united with his or her true destination. The rider,
who does not realize that the “donkey” is just as much the
destination, as the means to that destination, can never arrive at his or
her goal. Jelaluddin
Rumi says, “The physical form is of great importance; nothing can be
done without the consociation of the form and the essence. However often
you may sow a seed, stripped of the pod, it will not grow. Sow it with the
pod, it will become a great tree. From this point of view, the body is
fundamental and necessary for the realization of the Divine intention.” The
patriarchal religious adherent is a frustrated person, for he or she can
never live up to the standards that his or her God supposedly commanded.
This leaves the believer feeling like a failure, down in the dumps,
feeling hatred for his or her physical self. Statements such as, “. . .
the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Matthew 26:41)
cause the sincere devotee to experience a hopeless duality and gulf
between his mind and body. The
person becomes embarrassed, wondering if anyone else has this problem of
living up to the commands of his or her religion. The follower becomes
unsure of him or herself and feels that he or she must hide his or her
inferiority. Adherents
of these religions are generally not empowered by their religion; they are
made to feel inferior. Moreover, what is the behavior of people who are
made to feel inferior? Some bow down under the slave yoke of the religion,
others attack people who do not believe as they do. In a desperate need to
feel self-empowerment in their lives, these people resort to religious
violence and terrorism. “Indeed, solicitude in caring for God’s
servants is better than [killing them from an excessive] zeal for God.”
Some people begin to see their spiritual leaders as “Daddy” or
“Mommy” while they play the role of the child. Some of these
“children,” after a time, will act out an adolescent rebellion against
their “parents.” The
Shadow side of religion must be recognized and dealt with propitiously.
The spiritual Way must include the female principle in balance with the
male principle, as certainly as Allah Most High created day and night! As
a society, as a spiritual community, and as individuals we must
incorporate the contra sexual. The want of the feminine principle is
keenly felt in today’s spirituality. The
solution: do not pursue perfection (for that is a patriarchal and
intellectual notion), rather work on developing each of your qualities and
aspects into a Complete Holistic Human Being. When the Sufi uses the term insan
kamil, (the Perfect Human), he or she is referring to a flowering of
the full potential of the Human Being. We say “perfect” in the sense
that the person is a perfect reflection of his or her Lord, complete and
whole, but not “perfect” by the human minds’ measure of perfection
(which is based on an incomplete view of reality). The
Spiritual Woman must be united to the Spiritual Man, the Sun with the
Moon, Ali (May the peace of Allah be with him) united with Fatima - Al-Batool
(Mother of the Succession of Epiphanies). Their house is the living
Ka’ba. PRACTICE This
exercise will develop your spatial acuity. Observe objects in relation to
one another. Notice their spatial relationship. As you walk toward your
car, for instance, observe how the perspective and proportion change.
Experience dimensional space while you approach the car. See your car
coming toward you in space as you move toward it. Observe how the car
grows larger in your field of vision. Do
not tell yourself anything while you do this exercise. Just watch closely.
Look at the distances between things. Observe how they sit near or far
from each other. Notice how far, how near. Observe
the walls, ceiling, and floor in the room you are sitting in right now
Watch and examine the relationship between ceiling and floor, wall to
wall, wall to ceiling, and wall to floor. Sense how they interrelate with
one another. Become intensely aware of the form and proportion of the room
as the walls, ceiling and floor delineate it. Sensing
geometric relationships and correspondences reveals unutterably
significant spiritual truths. Arabic
calligraphy and design are an example of profound truths revealed through
proportion. The art in mosques and masjids is contemplative and
transporting. This art requires time to enter one’s being and work its
spatial and abstract effect on the viewer. As Islamic art does not depict
human beings, it has a kind of clearness that allows us to encounter
realities beyond our ordinary, day-to-day, realities. All
the symbolism of the geometric patterns in Islamic art originates from the
number one, through the concept of symmetry. It is helpful to contemplate
on the revealed name of The Maker From Nothing: ya Bari’. About
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