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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 |
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