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

this Night until the dawn", meaning until the Manifestation of the Qa'im,
the dawning of the new Cycle of Unveiling.
We now know, thanks to L. Massignon, a Nusayri canticle (qasidah) of
extraordinary spirituality, in which Fatimah is glorified as being Initiation
in person. Through her, the divine principle manifested in her
father is manifested afresh in her sons. She unites feminine and masculine
in herself: she is al-Zahra' (She who dazzles with whiteness), and she is
Fatir (in the masculine), Fatimah—Creator, or rather, she who "makes
visible" the human form in which the divine is manifested through the
Cycles. 144
Because of the encounter to which the Ismaili exegesis of individual
eschatology "leads back", this mental vision of Person-archetypes affects
every existence in the profoundest depths of its being. In this sense,
eschatology is no more than the goal, the culminating point of the exegesis
of the Ritual. We can recall only one version here, a version which extends
the visions of a Persian proto-Ismaili text (still in use today among the
Ismailis of Pamir), and in which the soul is represented as respiralling
through the levels of the cosmos to reach the level of Salman and become
the "Salman of the microcosm". 145 As we have already seen, Salman the
Persian (Salman Farsi), or Salman the Pure (Salman Pak), is the Stranger,
the Exile from afar, regarded by a long tradition as the Prophet's initiatorcompanion,
who helped him become aware of the "exemplary cases of
conscience" of previous prophets. 146 His person is the earthly typification
both of the Angel Gabriel as the Angel of Revelation, and of the Angel or
Spirit of exegesis. He is this Angel's earthly angel, performing, close to
him whose companion he is, the angelic ministry of exegesis or ta'wil. As
the Prophet manifests the Law, shari'ah, so he manifests the gnostic truth
144 Cf. L. Massignon, 'Der gnostische Kult der Fatima im schiitischen Islam', Opera
minora, vol. I (Beirut, 1963), pp. 514-522. The name Fatimah, the numerical value
of whose letters in the order of the abjad (290) is the same as that of the letters of
the name Maryam, Jesus' mother, signals a recurrence which led L. Massignon
(p. 521) to the problem of the reciprocal relations between the two figures.
Another Night typifies Fatimah as the hujjah of the Imam: the first Night of the
month of Rajab, which comes seventh in the order of the months (Strothmann,
Texte II, p. 28). Similarly, the day and the night of the mid-sha'ban are respectively
the exemplification of the Annunciator of the Zahir ( the Koran and
the Law), and of the Wasi, keeper of the ta'wil (batin, " ibid., II, 8, p. 29).
145 A term employed in the Persian proto-Ismaili treatise Umm al-Kitab; cf. my 'Livre
du Glorieux', (supra, ch. II, n. 3) p. 71.
146 Massignon, Salman Pak, p. 31.
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SABIAN TEMPLE AND ISMAILISM
(haqiqah) of the Imam; this is the meaning of the remark, attributed to the
Imam: "Salman proceeds from me, and I from Salman." 147
There are thus two aspects to Salman the Pure: on the one hand he is
seen as hujjah of the Imam in his eternal essence at the start of the
Muhammadan Period, and on the other as signifying the status which the
soul is invited to assume at the end of its "pilgrimage". In the merging of
these two aspects, the intuition, like a flash of lightning, perceives who
may be the person-archetype of the Soul that unfolds, and in which is
unfolded, this new way of being and knowing that we have seen characterized
as the disclosure of the angelic Form, whose peculiar function it is to
typify in itself the celestial existences, and by this perfect symbolization to
exist in a state in which its wishes are totally fulfilled.
The exemplary role played by Salman with regard to the Prophet is
repeated in the case of each initiate. It is actually said that "Salman is one
of the gates of Paradise". Indeed, "Salman is the soul" (or the life, jan) of
Paradise. And the scope of the mental vision is affirmed in the following
remark: "If the soul of Paradise is a human being, then certainly the
Person of Paradise (shakhs-i Bihisht) is by the same token a human being."
148 What, then, are this soul and this Person of Paradise?
Paradise as Qiyamah (resurrection)—regarded either as being in the
state of potentiality which is created here and now by the knowledge of
gnosis (haqiqah), or as being in its state of actuality beyond the limits of
our world and our Cycle—is the mode of being which is spoken of in a
Koranic verse: "The abode of the future world is the Living" (29:64). And
the whole of this abode is the kingdom of the angelic substances (ruhdniyat),
where, it is said, "the stones and the clods of earth will be granted the
gift of speech". Now, as there is no being other than man that is gifted
with the Annunciatory Word, this means that the future world possesses
the human Form; 149 it means that at its every level the archetype of the
Angelos-Anthropos is reproduced, and that all representations (minerals,
plants, animals, landscapes) are spiritual forms projected by spiritual
beings (ruhdniyat) and typifying, each in its own fashion, that same archetype
in its various modes of being and knowing. The idea of typification
147 Shanakht-i Imam (see note 143), pp. 33, 42-44.
148 Ibid., p. 33, and Haft-Babi Baba Sayyid-na, pp. 30—31, in Two Early Ismaili Treatises,
Persian text ... by W. Ivanow, Islamic Research Association, no. 2 (Bombay,
1933)-
149 Kalami PIR, p. 91 of the text, and Haft-Bab, pp. 27—28.
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