Temple and Contemplation brings together for the first ... - ImagoMundi

SABIAN TEMPLE AND ISMAILISM
for the Imam of the Resurrection (Qa'im al-Qiyamah), who will come to
conclude our Cycle and inaugurate a new Cycle of Unveiling. This Knowledge
is the Gnosis that is Life, which is why it is represented in the Tree of
immortality, whose fruit Adam is forbidden to taste—on pain of infringing
the privilege of the Imam to come, and of inverting the cosmic order. Iblis,
however, can only arouse personal ambition in Adam indirectly, by appealing
first of all to his generosity. Since the blessedness of the preceding
Cycle was rooted in this disclosure of the Gnosis that constitutes the state
of actualized Angels, this state must be restored, even if it means transgressing
the sacrosanct Order of the necessary secret. So Adam "breaks
the fast", 72 the vow of silence which is the ritual prescription par excellence
of the esoteric Order. 73 "To break the fast" is to taste of the Tree of
Knowledge that is the preserve of the actualized Angel. At the same time,
it is to strip oneself of the protective veil of symbol; and this is how Adam
appears before his own appalled dignitaries, in that state of terrifying
nakedness which leaves him and his Temple of light defenceless in the face
of the hate and vengeance of the Adversary. Thus all are forced to leave
Paradise.
Having thus betrayed the secret of the Imam of the Resurrection to
come, it is, conversely, by means of a pre-recognition of the Imam that
Adam is enabled to hold a "secret conversation" with his Lord. 74 The
anticipatory vision of the Epiphany to come thereby becomes the mediator
for his nostalgia, for such a vision leads to the establishment of the
"potential Paradise" (jannah fi'l-quwwah), the da'wah (literally "the Call")
or Ismaili esoteric Church, into which those souls that are "angels in
potentiality" must be received, and within which they can grow. These
72 Idris, chap. XIII; cf. also Massignon, op. cit., pp. 116-117: "To be nourished solely
by the divine will is not only the vow of the fast, but also the complete guarding of
the mouth, the vow of silence, which alone allows the heart, preserved from (he
world's tumult, to conceive the divine Word (like Mary's vow at the Temple,
according to the Koran 19:27) ... it is the Flight to the desert undertaken by the
first Essenian and Egyptian hermits, the Solitude of God alone: al-Ghurbah" (cf.
note. 92).
73 Cf. Kalami Pir, p. 96 of the text. In the perspective of this exegesis, the fall of man
and the fall of the Angels are not differentiated or opposed. But the fall of man is the
Fall of the human Angel, while the fall of the Angels is the fall of the angelic man.
Anthropology can only be established, and is established, on the basis of angelology,
which premisses both the pre-existence and the supra-existence of the human
person.
74 Jami'ah 20b.
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SABIAN TEMPLE AND ISMAILISM
souls constitute the "posterity of Adam"; they are the souls that together
with Adam oppose the "posterity of Iblis" and take refuge, like the
Brothers of Purity, in the Cave—that is to say, in the Temple of the
Imamate. 75 In this Temple, day after day, the esoteric Ritual must be
performed; that is, the exegesis (ta'wil) of the religious Ritual ascending,
like a succession of resurrections, from one heaven to another in the
mystical hierarchy. For Adam was initiated by the Angel sent to him into
the arts and sciences with whose help he could cultivate an Earth on
which symbols were able once more to blossom; and this blossoming has
to spring from the hard soil of the letter and religious prescriptions of the
Ritual: prayer at the five canonical hours, fasting, almsgiving, pilgrimage . . .
This is how it will be, say the Brothers in their secret Epistle, until the
appearance of "the Child of Ishmael, that is to say, the Tree rooted in the
earth and whose branches are lost in the heaven, the lotus of the limit
(Koran 53:14) . . . until God brings to pass the Second Birth, and Creation
returns to its source. Then the evil tree will perish . . . the Tree of direct
Certitude will appear, around which the believers, the gnostics and the
pure adorers of God will gather . . . when the Sun rises in its West,
dazzling white after its eclipse. Then the Occident will become the Orient
and the Orient will become the Occident. . . You will see the lights (of the
beneficent stars) on the Earth of the Orient, while the Earth will be
changed into a new Earth and the Heavens into new Heavens." 76 The
"Sun rising in its West" designates par excellence the Imam of the Resurrection.
77 It is not impossible to see this as alluding to the imminence of
contemporary events: the rising of the Fatimids on African soil. But there
is a great deal more to it than that, for the text ends with these words:
"when the Soul of the World manifests itself, and when the epiphany of
individual souls outside their bodies of flesh is consummated." Thus what
is in question is the manifestation of the Temples of Light at the time of
75 Cf. note 61, the assembly of believers personified in Fatimah.
76 Jami'ah 26a. Cf. Revelation 21:1; cf. also Rasa'il IV, p. 86: "May the Merciful One
help you, and also the assembly of our brothers, to understand these indications and
symbols; may he open your heart, expand your breast, purify your soul, illumine
your intelligence, that you may contemplate, with the eyes of the inner vision, the
True Realities (haqa'iq) of these mysteries. So be no longer afraid of the death of the
body when you separate yourself from it, for that itself is the life of the soul. For you
are of the number of the Friends of God, of those who dare to desire death!" (and
not of those who imagine themselves to do so—an allusion to Koran 62:6).
77 On the religious mystery concealed in the astronomical doctrine of the two opposing
motions of the celestial spheres, see Paul Kraus, Jabir ibn Hayyan I, p. 1.
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