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

SABIAN TEMPLE AND ISMAILISM
the Cycle of Unveiling which is to come, at the time of the final consummation
of the Ritual by ta'wil.
But it seems that, for the Brothers of Purity, this ultimate consummation
of the Ritual entails a double phase of exegesis. They themselves describe
to us the triple aspect of the Ordo of the divine service. There is the aspect
which is prescribed by the religious law taken in its literal sense. There is
the aspect which is practised by an ideal sect of philosophers who can be
seen both as Sabians imbued with Neoplatonism and as pre-Ismaili theosophers.
Finally, there is the Ritual as conceived and practised by the
Brothers for themselves, which proclaims, in appropriate terms, the Ismaili
exegesis of the Ritual. Both concept and practice are directed towards that
metamorphosis of being which esoteric parlance designates as qiyamah,
resurrection, and whose mode of knowledge and awareness will reveal
itself to us as a mental vision of Person-archetypes. We will thereby be enabled
to envisage the nature of the spiritual experience into which angelology
initiates, and which it both solicits and fulfils. An initial phase of this
experience is revealed to us as an exegesis leading from the religious Ritual
to the philosophical Ritual.
4. Religious Ritual and philosophical Ritual. The transition from one to the
other of these is governed by the classic distinction, in Islamic theology,
between Islam and Iman. 78 The very word Islam connotes consecration and
total submission to the divine will; it also involves strict observance of tinreligious
rituals (the Five prayers, fasting, almsgiving and so on) which set
the seal on the profession of the unitary faith (tawhid), and general conformity
of one's life to the acts of the Prophet. 79 Iman is conscious faith, the
inner assent. If Islam and Iman are the two faces of Religion, the Brothers
of Purity are original in that they identify the degree of Faith with the
"divine service of the Philosophers" [al-'ibddah al falsafiyah), and thereby
postulate positive religion—Islam—as a necessary prerequisite of the religious
life: "Know, oh my brother, that as long as you remain imperfect in
the cult of positive religion, it is in no way proper for you to take up the
philosophical cult, for you could die by doing so." The believer (mu'min) is
a true believer only if he has first been a muslim. When the time comes for
the conjunction of the two cults, the initiate is given this solemn warning:
78 Cf. Wensinck, The Muslim Creed, pp. 23 ff., 94.
79 Rasa'il IV, pp. 301—302.
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SABIAN TEMPLE AND ISMAILISM
know that this is a work whose execution is extremely arduous, and which
exposes the body to danger as well as demanding total renunciation of the
soul. It involves renouncing all the facilities proffered by a world of
familiar facts, in order to attain to the perception of the pure Essences, the
True Realities {haqa'iq). 80
In fact, this conjunction is as yet no more than a preparation for the
unfolding of the esoteric Ritual of the Brothers of Purity; it forms the first
step of ta'wil, the first stage of the exegesis which conducts thither. As such,
it presupposes that the initiate has completely satisfied the prescriptions of
the religious Ritual. Secondly, it introduces a liturgical calendar whose
time is essentially measured according to the relative increase or decrease
of Night and Day, while Night and Day themselves alternate with each
other as symbols of esoteric and exoteric {batin and zahir), of the discipline
of the arcane and revealed Gnosis. 81 There exists a correspondence between
the divisions of the nychthemeron and those of the monthly and annual
cycles: their liturgical recurrence obeys a ternary rhythm, followed each
time by a period of withdrawal or silence. The correspondence also
extends to the phases of a Period and of a Cycle of sacred history. This law
of homology is essential to the understanding of the esoteric exegesis of the
Ritual performed by the Brothers of Purity, for it establishes the cycle of
sacred history as a cycle of cosmic liturgy.
The monthly ritual of the philosopher-Sages includes the celebration of
three holy nights. The duration of each night extends from the hour which
would correspond to our First Vespers until the hour of Second Vespers.
These three nights are the first and middle nights of the month, together
with one that falls between the twenty-fifth day of the month and the first
day of the following month. They correspond to the phases of the moon;
and indeed the cyclic correspondence between the time of the neomenias
and that of the full moon appears in the Ismaili exegesis of these "liturgical
Hours". Each night's ritual is split up into three nocturns. The first third
of the night is taken up by a meditation in the personal oratory; this
prolongs and confirms the official religious ritual, "so that there may be
80. Ibid., pp. 302 ff
81 One must also take into account the ambivalence of each symbol. Esotericism may
be the night of the mystery, but the reign of the letter may be the night of unawareness.
The day may be the disclosure of the mystery in the sole Light of the Temple; it
may also be the reign of ready-made evidence, of the clarity admitted and imposed by
the common run of men.
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