*
Verify for yourself Thunderbird
Take it into retreat
Come into balance
With the Beauty of your Origin.
*
“Consider: the Measurer is in the rank below the One Who Desires, and the Knower is in the rank above the One Who desires, and the Living is above all; so the manāzil which are under the encompassing of the All- Comprehensive Name (Allah) take pride in his descent to them, when He answers their petitions.” 1
*
Qur’ān Surah 37: 1-2, Ranged in Rows Al-Saffāt: Those who rank themselves in Order, “Ranged in Row”. “By those ‘angels’ lined up in ranks, and those who diligently drive ‘the clouds,’ and those who recite the Reminder! Surely your God is One!”
*
“The Simurgh’s nest is on Mount Qaf. His cry reaches everyone, but he has few listeners; everyone is with him, but most are without him.”2
*
A range of birds
A range of trees
A range of lovers
A rank of angels
*
Driving clouds
Moving moisture
From the sea
To the high desert
*
Coming to see Adam
In his bright sulphur emergence
*
Attending the birth of Jesus
Surrounded by the mother trees
Finding Joseph alone with Beauty, Sorrow, and Love.
*
The Builders have one focus
To make The One
They do it again and again
Make circles and ranges of presence
And make openings for appearances
Covering themselves in the night cloud
Then pulling it back to show the face.
*
Sitting down in oneness, aloneness
Waylaid in Tehran
In the body of Suhrawardi’s “Red Man”, “Crimson Angel”3 , “Book of Light”
*
All of my cells
Look back at his extension and ashes
And instantly know the essence of The True
*
Suhrawardi, Mullah Sadra, Ibn Al-‘Arabi
You are supposedly gone
A great distance and time away
*
But we know better
As they fold the earth for us to be together forever
As we fold the earth to find one another
*
We represent an angel lineage
Are We the last of our species?
*
I show my face as a door between worlds
*
A Row of Birds
Allah
Al-Hayy
Al-Alīm
Al-Wadūd
Al-Qādir
*
Three thunderbirds pierce the empyrean
Filling the open sky
With wild cries
*
In the alchemical alembic the igneous principle has many stages of prominence.
*
The seed, its contents and its husk are bright and sulphurous, tinctured white from the other world, from Adam’s moon. The sulphur spirit of the seed calls forth the earth of its paradise Al-Jāmi. It magnetizes the elements to itself, Al-Wadūd, in its great necessity and desire it draws the womb to it in which the optimal ambient nutrient will be provided in quicksilver, in mercury. The rays of its subtlety infuse the womb and though Her, the star of the Sea, lay the path through the spheres of His resurrection.4
*
This is a buoyant movement, a rising wave of light, stabilized in the cube of salt, the creature’s reality, in harmony with its origin, its states, and its bodies. Ibn ‘Arabi’s method is a theology of tajallī, appearance, the hidden showing its face, as the night cloud passes from covering the luminary to revealing it. This cube of salt, this creature is revealed, and stands in harmony with its origin, in balance. When all of the gates are open, reality pours in. Its essence is sweet, reality is liberating Him to Himself. See Him receive the bright reflections of all of his living Ones. They return to Him yet stand here, in sulphur, mercury, and salt. In the prominence of fire, water, and earth.
*
In the bright appearance of igneous creatures the labyrinth of the ancestors is destroyed and you, stranger, exile in a patched cloak, are invited to return to the family of God. As a Warden, as a Watcher. Everyone of your bodies is descended from Adam, every one of your thoughts from Abraham, every one of your desires from Aaron, everyone of your sciences from Enoch, everyone of your actions from Khidr.
*
Let the night cloud pass, show your face to the open sky of being. Al-Zāhir
*
Your radiance extends into Him, and His love circulates back to You. Two chambers of the Heart.
*
Resurrection complete in the standing wave of Al-Hayy, in, through, and with Him.
*
Unity in totality,
Thunderbird
*
Those who rank themselves in Order, “Ranged in Rows”. “By those ‘angels’ lined up in ranks, and those who diligently drive ‘the clouds,’ and those who recite the Reminder! Surely your God is One!”5
*
Three thunderbirds pierce the empyrean
Filling the open sky
With wild cries
*
Al-Wasi’
Allah
Al-Hayy
Al-Alīm
Al-Wadūd
Al-Azīz
Al-Qādir
Al-Jamāl
*
Three thunderbirds gather in formation Al-Jāmi
Three thunderbirds measure the depth of the sky
Al-Qādir
By filling it with lightning
*
Three thunderbirds
Appear from behind a night cloud Al-Zāhir
*
Three thunderbirds cry out wildly
*
Three thunderbirds
The one, the living, the knowing
*
Three thunderbirds
Ascending descending dwelling
*
A row of trees
*
At every threshold is a tree
A row of trees
*
At every annunciation
A tree reveals an earth, a breath
Date palm, tuba tree, lote tree
A field of trees at the center
A row of trees at the circumference
*
Some leading to extensive roaring forests
*
Each sphere has a Mother Prophet
The Mother hands you off to the next
at the circumference of each sphere
A ladder of Hands. 6
*
As each sphere has a command, a book
A Mother book
A Mother of Revelation
*
As you enter each sphere
Take a handful of Earth
A Handful of Heaven1
And a handful of Ashes
*
Take Her hand
*
Cover yourself in the essence of each
Cover yourself in dust and ashes
And cry like a wild bird
*
Once you are empty
The Knowledge of Each sphere rushes in
And raises you by degrees.
*
Resurrection is His return to Himself
*
Watch the pieces of light, the lamps ascend
See the bliss
of seas and rivers running back
in a circulation of a Heart with two chambers
*
To take The Oath
is to assist in His return
Are you The Watcher, Warden, Witness?
Do you assist at each degree?
*
You thought it was your risings,
your standing,
your alighting
Yet, as you are obscured by the ashes of each sphere
He appears
And He loves to return to Himself
*
Like the Mother who receives you at each row of trees
In a place away,
in shade,
in exile,
cloaked in blue,
in aloneness.
*
Nature loves to receive and nurture Herself
The Oath is His
and is realized in Her
In the worlds,
in the bodies,
on the battlefield,
in the alembic
*
Creatures appearing in the open
In balance with The One
*
His Resurrection is the in breath
After the inundation of the out breath
Nature moves towards obscurity
As He withdraws his treasure.
*
A miracle and a cause for crying out
The disappearance of the prophets form
A handful of ashes.
*
She sits unmoved
Suffering,
exalted,
visited,
alone
Surrounded by grandmother trees
Singing to her in shade,
raising Her by degrees of
song.
*
You see the Trees of your current threshold
Some open to forests of dwellings
Verdant forest, shelter
Shelter for the exile,
the illumined Encompassing, Al-Wāsi
*
Wildly crying out
Allah The One
Al-Hayy The Living One
Al- Alīm The Knowing One
Al- Wudūd The Desiring One
Al-Qādir The Measuring One
Al-Azīz The Mighty One
Al-Jamāl The Beautiful One
*
Measure out my Love
For Nature and its absence
Its blossoming and with-drawl
*
As you are withdrawn from this sphere
You become obscured
by The Command of the next
We grieve here at your disappearance
Yet the celebration in the next is simultaneous.
*
Father ascending
Mother dwelling
Child Ascending
Child descending
Child Dwelling
The moving One
The still One
*
Rock me to sleep in this orbiting brightness
Make it stop
Make it brighter
Make this night last forever
*
This balm
These sheltering trees.
*
Three thunderbirds
gather in formation
Al-Jāmi
Beautiful thunderbirds fill the sky with Gold
Al-Jamāl
*
Three thunderbirds cry out wildly
In the open sky
Measuring its depth with their appearance
And gift.
*
Trees ranged in rows
Birds ranged in rows
A rank of angels
A chain of lovers
*
“By those ‘angels’ lined up in ranks, and those who diligently drive ‘the clouds,’ and those who recite the Reminder! Surely your God is One!
*
Henry Corbin was waylaid
In Tehran
While reading Suhrawardi.
The orbiting letters rushed
Into the living
*
And for Him
The Earth was folded so
They could be alone
With their origin.6
A rank of angels
Your words and presence
In rank, are ranged, are bridged
Into the living reality
*
Only He raises Al-Rāfi
Us to Him
By folding the Earth
So we can be together
*
Each lover’s field
A bridge for our footfalls
A dwelling for our revealing
An obscure place for our contemplation
*
From The Desire of the first
Imam ‘Ali
I will come to Know the last
Al-Madhi
*
And through their houses I see Him raise
The worlds
Each one in balance with its Origin.
*
Sources:
- Ibn al-‘Arabi, The Openings in Makka, Book 3, translated and conveyed bu Shu’ayb Dr Eric Winkel (Taschenbuch Series, Oceans Within) p. 66 ↩︎
- Suhrawardi S., “The Simurgh’s Shrill Cry” in The Philosophical Allegories and Mystical Treatises, Edited and Translated by W. M. Thackston, (Mazda Publishers, Costa Mesa: 1999). ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- On the traction between the alchemical seed and the ambient nutrient of the environment see, R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, The Egyptian Miracle, (Inner Traditions: 1985).
↩︎ - Qur’an, Surah 37: 1 – 2, Ranged in Rows, Al-Saffat
- Mullah Sadra on Ibn ‘Arabi’s theology of tajallī see, Christian Jambet, The Act of Being: The Philosophy of Revelation in Mullah Sadra, translated from the French by Jeff Fort, (New York: Zone Books, 2006)
- On the handfuls of Earth and Heaven while traversing the spheres see Henry Corbin, “Divine Epiphany and Spiritual Birth in Ismaili Gnosis” in Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis, (Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2010) ↩︎
- On Corbin’s time with Suhrawardi see Peter Kingsley, A Book of Life, (Catafalque Press, 2021) ↩︎
Illuminist Lodge 
Leave a comment