Some Extraordinary Notes on the Delight of Some Sufis

IDRIS SHAH

“From the bosom of Egypt sprang a man of consummate wisdom, initiated in the secret knowledge of India, of Persia, and of Ethiopia, named Toth, or Tehuti by the Phoenicians, Hermes by the Greeks, and Adris by the Rabbins.  The Deity had infused into him the sciences and the arts, that he may instruct the whole world… he instituted the ceremonies to be observed in the worship of each of the Gods … the Greeks gave him the name Hermes which signifies interpreter… he instituted hieroglyphics and Egyptian Mysteries; united them in a body, created them priests of the living god … 1500 years before the time of Moses …  Moses unveiled the laws of Hermes, except the plurality of his mystic Gods… he communicated to the Initiates that they should bind themselves by a terrible oath never to divulge them … except to those found worthy to receive them … this secret wisdom included alchemy, astrology, magism, and the science of spirits … these Initiates were honoured and respected by all and Egypt was regarded by other nations as the college or sanctuary of these arts … “

– Extract from Lecture of the Freemasonic Initiation for the 23^rd Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, called “chief of the tabernacle”, quote taken from morals  & dogma of the Ancient Scottish Rite by Albert Pike, 1871.

The Egyptian Winged Solar Disk of Pharaoh

“This is a form that the god Horus Behudety (Horus of Edfu) takes in his battles with Seth. The god Thoth used his magic to turn Horus into a sun-disk with splendid outstretched wings. The goddesses Nekhbet and Uazet in the form of uraeus snakes joined him at his side.”

Above: Sufi Totem of The Luxor Sect
from the Mosque of Abu ‘l-Haggag in Egypt.

The Uraeus

From Kircher’s Oedipus Aegyptiacus

“The spinal cord was symbolized by a snake, and the serpent coiled upon the foreheads of the Egyptian initiates represented the Divine Fire which had crawled serpent-like up the Tree of Life.  It is repeatedly found encompassing the solar disc, as seen above.”  – This represents the Hindu Kali and the Hebrew Lilith.

“A Buddhist emblem of the quadruple deity. (above right)  The rudimentary fig leaf at the summit is the triad or male feature (i.e. phallus plus testicles).  The fish yield in a fanning bias for the yoni or female orifice. These are the origins of the Sufi Heart Symbol.” –

and also the Valentine’s Day Heart.  — as seen below with the Star of Isis or Ishtar (Inana) and the Lunate crest of the Acadian/Scythian god Sin, the latter representing Gog.

“You will see two versions of the logo, one with the wings outstretched and one with the wings folded. Both versions have the same meaning. The symbol of the Sufi Order, which is a heart with wings, is symbolical of its ideal. The heart is both earthly and heavenly. The heart is a receptacle on earth of the Divine Spirit, and when it holds the Divine Spirit,[1] it soars heavenward; the wings picture its rising. The crescent in the heart symbolizes responsiveness. It is the heart which responds to the spirit of God that rises. The crescent is a symbol of responsiveness because it grows fuller as the moon grows fuller by responding more and more to the sun as it progresses. The light one sees in the crescent is the light of the sun. As it gets more light with its increasing response, so it becomes fuller of the light of the sun. The star in the heart of the crescent represents the divine spark which is reflected in the human heart as love, and which helps the crescent towards its fullness.”

Of course, these symbols also bear the ancient Akadian icons for the star goddess Inana, and the moon god, Sin.  These are not legitimate symbols representative of Orthodox Islam.  – oz

The Tughra [2]

Each of the different Sufi Orders have an emblematic calligraphy called a “tughra” formed out of the name of their founding patron saint and often done up in the shape of something with which they identify. The words in a tughra follow the formula Ya Hazrat-i, the saint’s name, and the eulogistic phrase Qadusa Allah Sirrahu. The winged heart is an old Sufi symbol from India and was chosen by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan as the seal of the Sufi Order of the West at its founding in 1910. This winged-heart tughra features “Ya Hazrat-i Inayat” in the wings in mirror image (right-side-out is on the left) and “Qadusa Allah Sirrahu” making up the heart.Hazrat (“The Presence”) is an honorific referring to the still-living Presence of great saints who have passed from the earth. Qadusa Allah Sirrahu means “God sanctify his Secret.” There is a tradition within the Sufi way that a teacher’s barakat (blessing) does not become fully available until after they have become unburdened of their physical bodies. We could say that the whole phrase might poetically be translated: “Behold: the Presence of Inayat. May his message be spread.”   …

Hazrat Inayat Khan. Here is his description of the symbol from the Gatha: “The symbol of the Order is a heart with wings. It explains that the heart is between soul and body, a medium between spirit and matter.[3] When the soul is covered by its love for matter it is naturally attracted to matter. This is the law of gravitation in abstract form, as it is said in the Bible, ‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’ When man treasures the things of the earth his heart is drawn to the earth. But the heart is subject not only to gravitation, but also to attraction from on high, and as in the Egyptian symbology, wings are considered as the symbol of spiritual progress, the heart with wings expresses that the heart reaches upward towards heaven. Then the crescent in the heart suggests the responsiveness of the heart. The crescent represents the responsiveness of the crescent to the light of the sun, for naturally it receives the light, which develops it until it becomes the full moon …”

etc., etc., ad nauseum vobiscum!

The Farohar, seen right, or faravahar, is an emblem of the Zoroastrian religion. Faravahar means “to choose.” The Faravahar is descended from the Egyptian winged disk, a symbol of divine kingship. It once represented the Assyrian sun god Shamash, and may have represented the corona of a solar eclipse. In the Zoroastrian faith, it represents the human soul. The faravahar has several parts:

• A winged disk- the three layers of feathers represent the three pillars of the Zoroastrian faith: good words, good thoughts, good deeds. The ring represents eternity.

• Two streamers, representing the duality of good and evil – left and right, respectively.

• The head of a man, facing left-representing the prophet Zoroaster, and the choice to live a morally upright life.

A representation of Horus, the falcon God of the Egyptians, in his solar aspect. Horus was the protector God of the Egyptian Pharoah, and represented the King’s divine authority. The common depiction of the American Eagle mascot is modeled on this image.  You will find this symbol as a martial icon for several nations.

Comments by other authors on the Sufi reverence for Shakti

“The figure of the Muslim warrior pir, saint martyr, or shahîd was easily accepted into this tradition, associated as he was with the world of the forest, which in Hinduism is the world of Siva. The martial pir was not a divisive being in South Indian society. On the contrary, he was a figure of universal power with deep roots in the world of the Tamil goddess cults and power divinities. The dargâhs or shrines of Sufi saints were thus revered by both Hindus and Muslims. Tota Kuramma was a Muslim woman who after her death became an amman.”

Wilber T. Elmore, Dravidian Gods in Modern Hinduism.
University of Nebraska, 1915, p. 61-63) …

“The result is that Muslim and Hindu conceptions of sacred power are virtually identical. In the case of the warrior goddess, her power is Shakti, “the dynamic, awesome, and sacred power which is the goddess Durga-Kali.” The power of the pir, on the other hand, is his barakat. The merging of these two concepts in South India is demonstrated, for example, in the biography of a Tamil pir, where the word used to describe his power is not barakat but Shakti.”

See: Susan Bayly, Saints, Goddesses, and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society, 1700-1900. Cambridge University Press, 1989).

“There have been Muslims who, from within their awareness of the Divine Feminine Shakti within Islam, have found in their hearts a response to Her manifestations in India. The land of Bengal, where the population is descended from Dravidian ancestral stock (although they now speak an Indo-Aryan language), is a meeting place of Islam, Shaktism, and Tantrism. Muslim Bengali literature thus venerated the sacred women of Islam as manifestations of Shakti. Prophet Muhammad’s daughter Fatimah assumed the popular role of the mother in Bengal, where the cult of the Mother Goddess Shakti dominated religious life. Hayat Mahmud, at the beginning of his Jang Nama, asked to take the feet of Fatimah on his head. Saiyid Murtaza addressed Fatimah as “the mother of the world”. Pagla Kanai, a Bengali Muslim poet in the nineteenth century, identified Fatimah as “Mother Tara” or “Mother Tarini” and prayed to her in this passage that blends Islam and Shaktism:

O mother, Pagla Kanai, who is of no consequence
cries for you with every breath;
please cast a little shadow of your feet on me;
O Mother, take me to your feet.
O Mother Tara, the redeemer of the world,
O Mother Tarini, you shall appear as the savior of Muslims
when Israfil will blow his horn,
when everything will be reduced to water,
and when your father’s community will sink into water without a boat.

Tara is a Tantric Shakti goddess (mahavidya), one of the best-loved manifestations of Shakti for Tantric practitioners, and as such she has appealed to the hearts of Bengali Muslims as much as the Prophet’s beloved daughter Fatimah. Pagla Kanai also compared Fatimah to the goddess Kali and considered her more virtuous:

Mother Kali is virtuous indeed- she stood on her husband’s chest!
Did my gracious mother (Fatimah) ever trample ‘Ali?

Taken from: The Islamic Syncretic Tradition in Bengal,
by Asim Roy, p. 94-95.)

“A modern Bengali poet, Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976), followed the example of earlier poets like Saiyad Jafar in this ode to Kali, using a play on words since in Bengali kali means ‘ink’”:

Oh mother of mine, There’s ink on my hands, ink on my face.
The neighbors laugh. My education amounts to nothing –
I see “ShyaMa” in the letter M  And Kali in the letter K,
I dance and clap my hands. Only my tears multiply
when my eyes light on the rows of black marks
in multiplication tables. I couldn’t care less for the alphabet’s
shades of sound since your dark, lovely shade isn’t among them.
But Mother, I can read all that you write
on leaves in the forest, on the waters of the sea,
and in the ledger of the sky. Let them call me illiterate.

“Many regard him as the greatest poetic force in Bengali literature after the world-famous Rabindranath Tagore. Both Nazrul Islam’s poems and prose writing are exuberant with a certain force and energy, denouncing all social and religious bigotry and oppression. Through the centuries it has been the Sufi orders who were attuned to the Feminine and kept alive Islam’s reverence for the sacredness of women, through the veneration of Mary and of women saints like Râbi’ah. The present spiritual resurgence of Islamic feminism is also being birthed through the Sufi orders that have kept it alive. Moreover, with its emphasis on the heart and God as the Beloved, Sufism has always fostered qualities that have traditionally been considered feminine. As such, it helped balance the more overtly masculine qualities within Muslim cultures. (This pattern has been shared by other esoteric and mystical currents in relation to their surrounding cultures.) However, it may only be in modern times that this aspect of Sufism has reached its fullest potential.”

S. M. Sulaiman in Islam, Indian Religions, and Tamil Culture, p. 15-16.)

Also see: Tantra in Practice, edited by David Gordon
White, Princeton Readings in Religions.

Inayat Khan,

“… a talented Musician, had been sent to Europe by his Master in the Christi order of Sufism in order to introduce Sufism to the West.  In view of the generally negative feelings of Europeans towards Islam, Khan strategically downplayed the Islamic roots of Sufism and emphasized its universalistic elements instead.  He was in a good position to do so, since the Chisti order had flourished in multicultural India by avoiding Islamic sectarianism and embracing sincere mystics of various faiths. The Sufi custom of a close relationship between teacher (sheikh or murshid) and student (murid) was very close to that of the yogic guru and chela (disciple), and seekers in India were often attracted to great mystics regardless of their religious affiliations.  Thus the Sufism that Inayat Khan brought West accepted the love of God expressed by non-Muslims as a valid point of departure for studying Sufism. Khan was a great exponent of what Aldous Huxley called “the perennial philosophy,” and went so far as to create a Universal Worship service that acknowledged the unity behind the great world religions.[4] In his view, there is one religion and there are many covers. Each of these covers has a name: Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, etc., and when you take off these covers, you will find that there is one religion, and it is that religion which is the religion of the Sufi. In addition to his Chisti background, Khan had also been trained in the three other major Sufi orders of northern India, the Naqshbandi, Qadiri, Suhrawardi.  Perhaps because of his multiple lineages, Khan dispensed with the usual Sufi practice of identifying with one primary order and gave his expanding circle the generic designation “The Sufi Order in the West.” After his death in 1927, his followers continued to spread his message of Sufism as the “religion of the heart.”

Richard Smoley and Jay Kinney, Hidden Wisdom: A Guide to the Western Inner Traditions (New York: Penguin / Arkana: 1999).

An Interesting Sufi Tidbit

“For instance; this celebrated bronze in the Vatican has the male organs of generation placed upon the head of a cock, the emblem of the sun, supported by the neck and shoulders of a man. In this composition they represent the generative power or ‘The Saviour of the World’ [Soter Kosmoi); a title always venerable, under whatever image it is represented. The snake and the cock (or peacock or Phoenix) are symbols of power. As such they are worshipped or propitiated by the Yezidis, and have given many a headache of identification to those experts on the Gnostic mysteries who have found them engraved upon seals of uncertain origin in the Middle East.”

The Yezids were reformed by a Pseudo-Sufi Sheik round about the 11 th cent, CE.  – oz

Daraul, pp. 141-142.

This vulgar idol is intimately associated with the Yesidi culture north of Mosul, founded by Sufi Sheik Adi: Adi ben Mosesfir ben Ismail ben Moses ben Marwan ben al-Hassan ben Marwan ben al-Hakam ben al-‘As ben Umayya.  The symbolism is thoroughly associated with the ‘Cult of the Peacock’ as mentioned by Idris Shah in his ‘Way of the Sufi’.  They worship Shaitan, and the Ishmai’lis are their most ardent inner ring.  The Khazars mentioned in previous posts — our present East European Pseudo-Jews and Oppresive Banking Elite out o Franfurter, Germany — were most likely affiliated with this cult.    – oz

The Sufi god and source of their mysterious inscrutability “Aroueris, or Thoth, one of the five immortals, protected the infant Horus after the murder of Osiris. He also revised the ancient Egyptian calendar by increasing the year from 360 days to 365. Thoth-Hermes was called “The Dog-Headed” because of his faithfulness and integrity.  He is shown crowned with a solar nimbus (Catholic halo), carrying in one hand the Crux Ansata, the symbol of eternal life, and in the other a serpent-wound staff symbolic of his dignity as a counselor of the gods.  It is doubtful that the deity called Thoth by the Egyptians was originally Hermes, but the two personalities became melded over time and it is now impossible to separate them.  Thoth was called “The Lord of the Divine Books” and “Scribe of the Company of the Gods.”  He is also generally pictured with the body of a man and the head of an ibis.”

Note that he dons the same solar halo of Helios and Our Lady of New York Harbor.  Now you can understand more deeply the use of the word “dog” among the Hip-Hop Cult.  – oz

See: Wilkinson’s Manners & Customs of Ancient Egyptians & Lenoir’s La Franche-Maconne

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[1] Monism denoting union with Allah!  This is not as innocent as it appears!

[2] This is blatant idolatry after the fashion of ancestor worship or the Catholic Cult of “Patron Saints

which in fact is a remnant from pagan Rome ”.

[3] This is a typical Trinitarian construct requiring union with God for the balance.

[4] This is the ecumenical basis for the New World Order.  You will find this doctrine fundamental to the UN’s World Council of Churches.  Sufism is definitely not Islam.  It is clear that the generation of Crowley’s jinn were extremely and effectively ambitious!  Apologize to others but please spare me the foolishness of this ancient madness … I will not listen!  The unity discussed above is fundamental to the Hermaphroditic concept of Brahma & Baphomet, as well as the Genital Trinitarian construct represented by the Cross ( Phallus & Testicles) being planted in the Yoni (Female Vagina) or Mother Earth, also manifest by the Egyptian Ankh, hence, giving a fourfold god as represented by the face fountain seen in Book One’s appendices.  Beware the man who says: ‘God is Love’ then poetically expounds nonsense.  Love is obedience to Shari’ah, nothing more.  Mr. Khan was a gifted and charming Evangelist of Christos – sorry, Christi—not unlike Billy Graham.