In today’s post, I quote interesting words by Idries Shah Sayed about the influence of Sufism on the development of the Kabbalah, from his book “The Sufis”.
I’ve quoted from him earlier, and he writes with the serene confidence of one who knows a lot.
Yet, I’d like to crosscheck what he says, from multiple sources, which I haven’t been able to do, because of several reasons, paucity of time & resources not being the least.
I also don’t necessarily accept all his claims: some of them are over-the-top.
As for Albert Pike, his grandiloquent camp knows no end... this is from Morals & Dogma:
“The Bible, with all the allegories it contains, expresses, in an incomplete and veiled manner only, the religious science of the Hebrews.
The doctrine of Moses and the Prophets, identical at bottom with that of the ancient Egyptians, also had its outward meaning and its veils.
The Hebrew books were written only to recall to memory the traditions; and they were written in Symbols unintelligible to the Profane.
The Pentateuch and the prophetic poems were merely elementary books of doctrine, morals, or liturgy; and the hue secret and traditional philosophy was only written afterward, under veils still less transparent.
Thus was a second Bible born, unknown to, or rather uncomprehended by, the Christians; a collection, they say, of monstrous absurdities; a monument, the adept says, wherein is everything that the genius of philosophy and that of religion have ever formed or imagined of the sublime; a treasure surrounded by thorns; a diamond concealed in a rough dark stone.
One is filled with admiration, on penetrating into the Sanctuary of the Kabalah, at seeing a doctrine so logical, so simple, and at the same time so absolute.
The necessary union of ideas and signs,
the consecration of the most fundamental realities by the primitive characters;
the Trinity of Words, Letters, and Numbers;
a philosophy simple as the alphabet, profound and infinite as the Word;
theorems more complete and luminous than those of Pythagoras;
a theology summed up by counting on one’s fingers;
an Infinite which can be held in the hollow of an infant’s hand;
10 ciphers, and 22 letters, a triangle, a square, and a circle,--
these are all the elements of the Kabalah.
These are the elementary principles of the written Word, reflection of that spoken Word that created the world!
This is the doctrine of the Kabalah, with which you will no doubt seek to make yourself acquainted, as to the Creation.”
Albert Pike is actually a plagiarist.
I may be the first person to reveal this to the world, but all these are not his words, but words taken from Eliphas Levi’s Transcendental Magic.
The correct, original, complete quote (from Levi) is (all italics & highlights are mine):
“When Moses spoke to the people, says the sacred book allegorically, he placed a veil over his face, & he removed it when communing with God: this accounts for the alleged Biblical absurdities which so exercised the satirical powers of Voltaire.
The books were written only as memorials of tradition & in symbols that were unintelligible to the profane.
The Pentateuch & the poems of the prophets were, moreover, elementary works, alike in doctrine, ethics and liturgy; the true secret and traditional philosophy was not committed to writing until a later period and under veils even less transparent.
Thus arose a second and unknown Bible, or rather one which was not comprehended by Christians, a storehouse, so they say, of monstrous absurdities—for in this case believers, involved by the same ignorance, speak the language of sceptics—but a monument, as we affirm, which comprises all that philosophical and religious genius has ever accomplished or imagined in the sublime order, a treasure encompassed by thorns, a diamond concealed in a rude and opaque stone: our readers will have guessed already that we refer to the Talmud.
How strange is the destiny of the Jews, those scapegoats, martyrs and saviours of the world, a people full of vitality, a bold and hardy race, which persecutions have preserved intact, because it has not yet accomplished its mission!
Do not our apostolical traditions declare that after the decline of faith among the Gentiles salvation shall again come forth out of the house of Jacob, and that then the crucified Jew Who is adored by the Christians will give the empire of the world into the hands of God His Father?
...
“On penetrating into the sanctuary of the Kabalah one is seized with admiration in the presence of a doctrine so logical, so simple and at the same time so absolute.
§ The essential union of ideas & signs;
§ the consecration of the most fundamental realities by primitive characters;
§ the trinity of words, letters & numbers;
§ a philosophy simple as the alphabet, profound and infinite as the Word;
§ theorems more complete and luminous than those of Pythagoras;
§ a theology which may be summed up on the fingers;
§ an infinite which can be held in the hollow of an infant's hand;
§ 10 figures and 22 letters, a triangle, a square and a circle:
such are the elements of the Kabalah.
...
“Such also are the component principles of the written Word, reflection of that spoken Word which created the world!
All truly dogmatic religions have issued from the Kabalah & return therein.
Whatsoever is grand or scientific in the religious dreams of the illuminated (the translation! in the Morals & Dogma text, it is the Illuminati), of Jacob Bohme, Swedenborg, Saint -Martin and the rest, is borrowed from the Kabalah; all Masonic associations owe to it their secrets & their symbols.
The Kabalah alone consecrates the alliance of universal reason and the Divine Word; it establishes by the counterpoise of two forces in apparent opposition, the eternal balance of being; it alone reconciles
ª reason with faith,
ª power with liberty,
ª science with mystery:
it has the keys of the present, past and future!
...
“To become initiated into the Kabalah it is insufficient to read and to meditate upon the writings of Reuchlin, Galalinus, Kircher, or Picus de Mirandola; it is necessary to study and understand the Hebrew writers in the collection of Pistorius, the Sepher Yetzirah above all; it is essential in particular to master the great book Zohar, to investigate the collection of 1684, entitled Kabbala Denudata, especially the treatise on “Kabalistic Pneumatics” & that on the “Revolution of Souls”; and afterwards to enter boldly into the luminous darkness of the whole dogmatic and allegorical body of the Talmud.”
Albert Pike, who simply copy-pastes whole paragraphs & pages from Eliphas Levi, conveniently removes the most important reference to the Talmud!
Well, back to the words of Idries Shah (italics & highlights are mine):
“The Ikhwan El Safa (Faithful Friends, generally called in English the Brethren of Sincerity) comprised a secret group which became known through their 52 treatises, published from Basra in about 980 A.D.
An objective of this school was to make available the whole body of knowledge of the time.
Their field covered philosophy, religion, science and every other branch of learning.
They have been accused of being magicians, like the European Rosicrucians, who may have been influenced by them, they are supposed to have reserved an inner knowledge.
The first step toward the realization of this, however, as they saw it, was the establishing of a medium for the dissemination of more ordinary learning.
Their individual identity was never established as authors, but their connection with the Sufis is undoubted.
Their name—Safa—is assonant with one interpretation of the word “Sufi,” and the concept of faithfulness in loving friendship is a Sufic one.
Their name seems to have been adopted from a group of animals in the collection of allegorical stories called the Kalilah, who by their steadfastness preserved themselves from a hunter.
The great master Ghazali shows his debt to them in his Ihya (Revival); and among other Sufic teachers, El-Maari, the predecessor of Omar Khayyam, is known to have at- tended their meetings.
El Majriti, the astronomer of Madrid, or his disciple El Karmani of Cordoba, and Averroes took these teachings to the West, including the musical theories which influenced music so profoundly and the moral philosophy which was linked with illumination by the Sufis.
The great Rumi advises harmony with the Brethren of Purity (Sincerity), showing the Sufi character of the mysterious encyclopaedists:
Think well of the Brothers of Purity
Even though they show harshness toward you;
For when evil suspicion takes hold of you
It severs you from a hundred friends.
If a tender friend treats you roughly to try you,
Tis contrary to reason to distrust him.
“The reference alludes to the Sufi teaching method in which the master may have to test the fortitude of the disciple, or use what seem harsh measures in order to develop bases for Sufic experience.
At some time before 1066, El Majriti (The Madridian) of Cordoba or his disciple El Karmani brought the Encyclopaedia of the Brethren to Spain from the Near East.
Majritis scientific work was translated by the Englishman Adelard of Bath, Britain's first Arabist and the greatest English scientist before Roger Bacon.
Adelard’s importance in Western studies is very great indeed, for he provided an early channel for the transmission of Sufic ideas during the classical phase.
Studying in both Spain and Syria, he must have come into contact with the Sufi centers in both areas which were working for the dissemination of book learning plus inner teaching.
Because of his outlook, Adelard has been considered a Platonist, though from the Sufi point of view Platonism is considered a variety of the current later named Sufism.
A contemporary medievalist shows how Sufic views were propounded by him, as a part of his great contribution to the “center of humane studies and Platonism” of the School of Chartres:“ Adelard’s view amounts to making the individual the same as the universal; it is the senses which impede our minds with the individual. ... He was the first thinker of this period to trace the immediate connection between divine ideas and actual being. This was largely the result of his knowledge of Greek and Arabian science.”
...
“But the impact of the Brethren was even more startling on other forms of mysticism and transcendental thinking in the West.
Since the 11th century some of the great minds of the East and West have been fascinated by the system known as the Cabala—the Jewish mystical concept of microcosm and macrocosm, with its theoretical and practical branches.
By means of the Cabala, man could understand himself, wield incalculable power, perform wonders, do and be almost anything.
Eagerly studied and practiced by Jews and Christians alike, the teaching of the Cabala was thought to be anchored in the very essence of ancient Hebraic doctrine; the true and ancient teaching which was, in fact, the inner, secret doctrine.
There is no occult school, no magician, no mystic of the West who is not to some extent influenced by it.
The very word is redolent of mystery, of power.
...
“What are the origins of the Cabala?
It is a characteristic of Jewish scholarship that honesty and detachment are wedded to a search for truth.
And hence we may not be surprised to find that the Jewish Encyclopaedia stresses the determining role of the Brethren of Sincerity on the production of the mighty Cabala system: “The Faithful Brothers of Basra originated the 8 elements which form God,” it says, “changed by a Jewish philosopher in the middle of the 11th century into 10.”
“The Cabala came from the region of the Faithful Brothers to two places—Italy and Spain.
Its system of word manipulation may he derived from parallel and ancient Jewish teaching, but it is founded upon Arabic grammar.
There is a most intriguing link between the Sufistic stream and the Jews here, which has caused Sufi teachers to stress the underlying identity of the two.
...
“These are some of the facts which link the Sufis and the Judeo-Christian mystics:
Ibn Masarrah of Spain was a precursor of Solomon Ibn Gabirol (Avicebron or Avencebrol), who propagated his ideas.
These Sufi tenets “influenced the development of the Cabala more than any other philosophical system,” says the Jewish Encyclopaedia.
And, of course, Ibn Gabirol, the Jewish follower of the Arab Sufi, exercised an immense and widely recognized influence upon Western thought.
God is called by the Jewish teacher Azriel in his system of the Cabala EN SOF, the absolutely infinite, and it was he who undertook to explain the Cabala to philosophers after its appearance in Europe.
...
“There is no doubt that the Arab study of grammar and the meanings of words is at the base of the usage of words in the Cabala for mystical purposes.
Arabic grammar was the model for Hebrew grammar.
The first Hebrew grammar was written by the Jew Saadi (died 940 and was, like all the early ones, in Arabic, and entitled Kitab al-Lugha, “in Arabic and under the influence of Arabic philology.” (Jewish Encyclopaedia, Vol. 6, p. 69)
It was not until the mid-12th century that Hebrew grammar started to be studied by Jews in Hebrew.
...
“The Sufis and the Brethren had produced what they considered to be the most ancient teaching, the secret lore of fulfillment and power, and handed it to the Arabized Jews.
The Jewish Cabalists adapted this teaching to contemporary Jewish thinking, and the Cabala of the Arabs became the Cabala of the Jews, and later of the Christians.
But the mystical schools of Sufism, which never regarded organized book knowledge as a sufficient source, continued to ally practice of the Sufic rites with the essentials of the old Cabala teaching, and it was in this form that mysticism among the Jews was influenced, not primarily through the Jewish Cabala.
“This Sufi tradition is underlined by the Jewish Encyclopaedia, which says: “To the spread of Sufism in the 8th century was probably due the revival of Jewish mysticism in Mohammedan countries at that period. Under the direct influence of the Sufis arose the Jewish sect called Yudghanites.” (Vol. xi, p. 579)
The effect of the Sufi system upon the mystical Jewish Markabah-riders was so profound that some of the phenomena (the transition of colors and then to colorlessness, for example) produced in the mystic are identical with those of the Sufi.
...
“Hasidism, the mystical piety in practice which arose in Poland in the 18th century, is not only “the real continuation of the Cabala; but it must be based on Sufism or a part of the Cabala, which is identical with it.”
The same source notes the “striking analogy” between the practice of the two systems and the “many points in common with Sufism” of the Hasidist activity, including the relationship of the disciples to the master.
The very first book of the ethical writings of the Judeo-Arabian period is on a Sufi model.
Hence “Sufism has a special claim upon the attention of Jewish scholars, because of its influence on the ethical and mystical writings of the Judeo-Arabian period.”
“It need hardly be added that the words “Arabian” and “Jewish” have little meaning to the Sufis; and this is one reason why there was such an entente between the Span iards who followed the Sufi way and transmitted so much of it to the Christian West.
The Cabala was, of course, a formulation, a frame for the attainment of certain objectives.
Like most other systems—the framework of Sufi Orders is another—of this kind, it lingered on as a husk after the time for its dissolution and readaptation had passed.
...
“Magic and miracles, for the Sufi, have a similar, active function.
They apply for the time and place and other conditions.
Since they are both the product of the time and the means of a development, they have to be considered as limited in one respect and continuing in another.
While people persist in trying to examine them by other criteria, they will continue to convey a bizarre and useless aspect.”
