Illuminist Lodge

Consider:

The mares that carry me as far as longing can reach

rode on, once they had come and fetched me onto the legendary

road of the divinity that carries the man who knows

through the vast and dark unknown. And on I was carried

as the mares, aware just where to go, kept carrying me

straining at the chariot; and young women led the way.

And the axle in the hubs let out the sound of a pipe

blazing from the pressure of the two well rounded wheels

at either side, as they readily led on: young women, girls,

daughters of the Sun who had left the Mansions of Night

for the light and pushed back the veils from their faces

with their hands.

Parmenides, translation by Peter Kingsley, published in Reality, Golden Sufi Center 2003.

*

“And that is why, when it comes to understanding the humanity (nasut) of the Imam, that is to translating Imamology into anthropological terms as an event lived by the soul, the data of the problem will not partake of the physiology that imposes itself on sense perception and ordinary consciousness. It is an archetypal Image which will function as an organ of perception, replacing the faculties of sense perception and making perceptible an object that might correspond to the “body of transformation” in Mahayana Buddhism-and yet the humanity of the Imam is not reduced to what our “realist” exigencies would qualify s a “hallucination” and does not fit in with the idea of a hypostatic union. The problem is, then: how can a humanity that is the mazhar of the godhead be constituted, to what order of reality must it belong, that is to say, what transfiguration of it is presupposed in order that the epiphany (zuhur, izhar) of this epiphanic Figure (mazhar) may be produced not to the eyes of the body but to the soul’s “eyes of light”?

Henry Corbin, Divine Epiphany and Spiritual Birth, essay presented at Eranos, published in Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis, Routledge, 2010.

*

“Like this (they will pass their life), and We provided them company of Hur (wonderful members of a new creation, with very fair skin, and raven black cornea on a snow white sclera) Eein (possessing beautful wide eyes)”

Surah 44:54 The Evident Smoke, translation Dr. Kamal Omar

*

“contrast eyes, guarded in the pavilion”, “in guarded pavilions in the corners of the world”, “They are the hidden, the guileless, the ones the world is safe from, the ones concealed from the people they live among”, “And tajalli does not persist continuously, except for this tribe in particular; and they are with the True in this world and the next”, “Thus they choose to be veiled from the creation….As their state veils their rank even from themselves”, “By God they stand and by God they observe; and they are the riders to God, onward to the final transformation.” 

Ibn Arabi The Openings Revealed in Makkah Book 3 Chapter 23. Translation Eric Winkle.

*

“They jump out from the fence, despite being finite, because in it is everything that is-from the day God created the universe until the state of this world is wrapped up and the population transfers to the next world”

Ibn Arabi The Openings Revealed in Makkah Book 3 Chapter 22. Translation Eric Winkle.

*

She is a field of white arrows

She is a field of arrows. She gathers the contemplations and offerings of her devotees and creates with them a bliss body for the futurity of her own. Fenced off in the corners of the world, this field of victorious nutrients feed the gnostics in times of darkness.

You must become subtle and dark, absent

in order to be raised

By the golden thread.

*

Her being is a field of white arrows

Let the world become a fast arrow

in a field of bright sulphur depth

*

Let the lines bend and break

Let the star circulate

Let Solomon sink

*

Because Her name is withheld

She dreams you into this world

As a strange attractor

for The Other World

*

A hot spot of absence

As you walk through Her atmosphere

You can feel the winds meet

Feel the bridge that is You

Connecting worlds.

*

She dreams you out of the worlds

You are her talisman

A placeholder

for flowers, flashings, standing waves

*

Take Her echo

Pull Her words from The Other World

Into and Through you

Through this dreaming planet

and your tongue.

*

Water rises to surface in a pillar

Water bends

returns to haunt The Spring

Water falls in sheets

*

She tears into the worlds

Through this shape of water

She feeds her Own

by the disintegration of

all Solid Earths.

*

Let my eye cast a Path

for Her Dominion

*

“You think you were born into a world

But the world was born into you” Peter Kingsley

*

The inner world which is Yours

to contemplate

is not this world

She dreams you into this world

As a nodal point

Your world is One

4 roots, 7 spheres, 12 watchtowers

Her Own are Many.

What is the atmosphere of Your world?

*

Commentary:

It is one thing to hear or be told about the contrast eyes, and another thing completely to be held in the radiance and depth of their field of vision. In Surah Smoke 44:54 “Like this (they will pass their life), and We provided them company of Hur (wonderful members of a new creation, with very fair skin, and raven black cornea on a snow white sclera) Eein (possessing beautiful wide eyes)” we see the contrast described between the raven black and the sclera white of these eyes, the black and white together in eye. The black and white represent this world and the next, the apparent and the hidden, categories which fall away in the guarded pavilions of The Primes because they are both here and there simultaneously (IbnArabi book 3 chapter 23 The Futuhat). And like the contrast eyes, their here-ness and there-ness are combined in their form, they embody, principles and seas which are not supposed to mix, yet in their being, the worlds are “evened out”. This “evening out” or “balance”( recall the Science of The Balances of Jabir ibn Hayyan) of the worlds is described by Ibn Arabi in Book 3 Chapter 22 of The Futuhat, he says, “A spirit based manazil is a torment of souls, a body-based manzil is a sensory torment. It is only for the one who opposes the way of the Law outwardly and inwardly. If one is successful in being evened out, and grace comes in first, one is protected from that – living in good fortune in a fire of the lower-self struggle belonging to a Garden of the seer.” pg 84 Eric Winkle translation.

*

Usually there is a great pressure, a great suffering, a great imbalance between the worlds. We witness a great roaring noise as the worlds battle for prominence in our being. And yet, in the guarded pavilions, at the corners of the globe, we find these sets of eyes of new beings, and in the very form of their eye the worlds are “balanced,” share the perfection and nutrient of the nature of the pavilion and its inhabitants and resident spirits. Surah Ar-Rahman 55-7 “He raised it up, and set the Balance.” (Arberry The Koran Interpreted). In the pavilion embodied form does not suggest dominance of either world, both this world and the other world look, see, and are seen simultaneously because each has a claim in the globe of the eyeball. The other world has a claim and proof in the raven black cornea, bridge and being, of a place usually reserved for the blessed dead, angels, noetic fire, bodies of fire. The white sclera suggests this world “the dawn” of Earth, its movement toward resurrection, revelation, annunciation, and the Imam yet to come. Surah Ar-Rahman 55-7 “He raised the heaven (consciousness; from the level of the self-accusing self [nafs-i-lawwama] to the level of the pleasing self [nafs-i-mardhiya] and established a balance (the ability to live in balance of unity and multiplicity). (Translation Ahmed Hulusi, accessed Islam Awakened website) The black and white together in sets of eyes, see out of both worlds, the path of the gaze sees the center of each world, and in this unity is seen by those held in the gaze. This is suggestive of the consciousness of The Primes, a foot in each world, their very body, soul and spirit bridging supposedly unsurpassable barriers, the balanced unity of a type of being in which resurrection is not some far off or near experience but finds its realization in this moment of embodied life/death. The certainty of being veiled, being committed utterly to this integration of worlds, causes all roaring polarities to be resolved in the stillness of balanced radiance, seeing, being seen, receiving the nutrient of the gaze, of the witness of the True.

*

It is true that being held by this gaze of the contrast eyes delivers the population of this world to the next.

“They jump out from the fence, despite being finite, because in it is everything that is-from the day God created the universe until the state of this world is wrapped up and the population transfers to the next world”

Ibn Arabi The Openings Revealed in Makkah Book 3 Chapter 22. Translation Eric Winkle.

The power of a gaze like this folds of the worlds so the hearts of the lovers can beat together and be refreshed in the guarded pavilions.

“contrast eyes, guarded in the pavilion”, “in guarded pavilions in the corners of the world”, “They are the hidden, the guileless, the ones the world is safe from, the ones concealed from the people they live among”, “And tajalli does not persist continuously, except for this tribe in particular; and they are with the True in this world and the next”, “Thus they choose to be veiled from the creation….As their state veils their rank even from themselves”, “By God they stand and by God they observe; and they are the riders to God, onward to the final transformation.” 

Ibn Arabi The Openings Revealed in Makkah Book 3 Chapter 23. Translation Eric Winkle.

The gaze leads onward to the final transformation, which because the worlds are “balanced” can occur in this very embodied moment of life/death. In fact the awakened body can function as the superior portal for the completion of the circle of being, the golden ring of being completing its circuit from deepest descent to highest ascent, forming a circuitous shape made of body, spirit, soul, becoming a modeled path and inspiration for the next traveler to accomplish this feat. Your great work becomes an offering, gift, paradise to the tribe or greater body of humanity. “How I wish I could stand by Her, my life prolonged, and not disappear at the moment of the meeting! The soothing of the eye for the one who chooses is yours, when She protrudes from the protruding front of the secret conversation during the prayer” poem from Book 3 Chapter 22 The Futuhat. Surah Ar-Rahman 55:72 “Houris, cloistered in cool pavilions” Surah Furqan 25:74 “And those who say: Oh our Lord, gift us a gift for our spouses, our children, the future generations the coolness of eyes and make us leaders over those who are righteous, pious, and fearful.”

*

In Parmenides poetic fragment (at the tope of this post) we see the daughters of the Sun introduced. Functionaries that only prophets, healers, and oracles usually meet as they are carried in their visions, as locks are opened by these women and girls. In the world of prophecy and oracular speech the worlds are folded and this tradition echoes into Ibn Arabi with the Houris’ contrast eyes, guarded in pavilions, locks opened, worlds balanced, in the very gaze of the resident maidens.

*

Alchemically speaking we could associate the black of the eye with the soul (mercury), the white of the eye with the body (salt), and the light of the gaze or seeing of the eye as the spirit (sulphur). The black and white motif of the contrast eyes is repeated by Ibn Arabi in the following sentences describing the most beloved of the friends and arif, “The most beloved of my friends, according to me, is the believer whose back is light”…(the prophet BPUH quoted by Ibn Arabi) ….’They are muswadd (black) in the face, in this world and the next.’ If what he meant is what we discussed about the states of this Tribe, then he meant iswadad: becoming blackened in the face, utterly consumed in this world and the next by the tajalliyat of the True to him.” pg 97 Eric Winkle translation.

*

The rhythm of the black and white, light and dark, this world and the other world unfolds and repeats, echoes like the piping of the axis as the door of the Sun opens and the traveler is delivered into a new realm with new laws, knowledges, with a new queen and a new world. You can only know the armies of God by joining their ranks. Here in the eyes, guarded and veiled are held the balanced Truth of both worlds, embodied, as a Person, a festival, as Eros on the highest arc, magnetizing the elements to a new being that dwells fenced off in the corners of the crossed globe. The four elements balanced, the might of the worlds and seas “evened out” and then the most subtle jump to the net octave, the next dimension, beyond polarity and unity, a new totality, Quintessence, fractal of Her eye, seeing into and beyond.

Poem inspired by Ibn Arabi’s The Openings Revealed in Mecca Book 3 Chapter 23. Translation Eric Winkle. Lines “contrast eyes, guarded in the pavilion” “in guarded pavilions in the corners of the world” “They are the hidden, the guileless, the ones the world is safe from, the ones concealed from the people they live among” “And tajalli does not persist continuously, except for this tribe in particular; and they are the true in this world and the next” “Thus they choose to be veiled from the creation….As their state veils their rank even from themselves” “By God they stand and by God they observe; and they are the riders to God, onward to the final transformation.” In this poem I take the image of The Pivots being in the guarded pavilions in the corners of the world and imagine the localized deity of the pavilions, Her. She is depicted in the images, the field of white arrows in her face and body and being.

Images colored pencil, construction paper, photographic filter, May 2024.