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

THE IMAGO TEMPLI IN CONFRONTATION
the coming of dawn. Likewise, it is only by satisfying the requirements of a
hermeneutic altogether different from historical criticism that we will be
in a position to evaluate the hierophanies of the Imago Templi which form
the tradition of the Temple.
In this way, too, we may perhaps perceive how the secret norm determining
the recurrence and persistence of this Imago is precisely that which
is capable of confronting the secular norms of our own times, because it is
the Witness that challenges the desacralization of the world.
II. The Imago Templi and the destruction of the Temple
I. The world as the crypt of the Temple. We observed at the outset of this study
how, in the visionary recitals of Avicenna and Suhravardi, the Angel
encountered at "the meeting-place of the two seas" replies to the visionary's
question "Where do you come from?" by saying, "I come from the
Temple"—that is to say, from the heavenly Jerusalem. This reply sets the
tone for the entire visionary composition, enabling us to perceive its
difference with regard to an Imago Templi which is the Imago of the cosmic
temple.
This latter is the Image of the world-temple well-known in the cosmic
mysticism of pre-Christian antiquity. For example, Manilius (first century
A.D.), in the prologue to his Astronomica, 15 prays in the temple of the world,
"for the world too is a sanctuary, and Manilius is its priest". Likewise, at
the time of Manilius, the image of the temple of the world was, not exactly
a commonplace, but rather a ruling belief: the Imago templi mundi. For Dion
Chrysostom, the wellsprings of belief in God lead back to the spectacle of
the cosmos. For Plutarch, "the world is a most holy temple . . . Man
enters into it on the day of his birth and contemplates in it... the sensible
objects fashioned, says Plato, by the divine Intellect as copies of intelligible
realities". Cleanthus compares "cosmic religion to an initiation. The stargods
are mystical figures with sacred names". The world is "a temple
filled with a divine presence, a temple in which one must behave with the
holy reverence of an initiate". But this motif, as A. J. Festugiere observes,
is already to be found in Aristotle, in a remark concerning the mysteries of
15 For the quotations gathered together here, we are indebted to A.J. Festugiere's
concentrated chapter 'Le monde, temple de Dieu', in his work La Revelation d'
Hermes Trismegiste, vol. II (Paris, 1949), pp. 233-238.
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THE IMAGO TEMPLI IN CONFRONTATION
Eleusis, where he says that "the first effect of initiation into the mystical
temple of the world is not knowledge, but an impression, a sense of reverent
awe and wonder at the sight of the divine spectacle presented by the
visible world". 16
Whatever there may be in common between this vision of the worldtemple,
assimilated to the Eleusinian temple of the mysteries, and the
Imago Templi in Suhravardi, we are made aware of the profound difference
between them by the reply of the Angel stating that "he comes from the
Temple". This visible world is no longer itself the temple; it is the crypt of
the Temple, or cosmic crypt. The initiation conferred by the Angel consists
in showing the initiate how to leave this crypt 17 and reach the Temple to
which the Angel belongs, and to which the initiate, by virtue of his origin,
also belongs. Inside the crypt he is merely an exile. The meaning and
function of the physical heavens of astronomy are to guide the initiate to
the supra-sensible heavens of the spiritual world, to the heavens of the
Temple (the Malakut that was revealed to Abraham; Koran 6:75).
Suhravardi is emphatic on this point. There are several ways of regarding
the heavens. One of these is common to men and beasts. Another is
that of the men of science, the astronomers and astrologers, who see the
heavens with the eyes of the heavens. Finally, there are those who see the
heavens neither with their eyes of flesh nor with the eyes of the heavens,
but with the eyes of inner vision. 18 In them the organ of the inner vision is
an Imago caeli that does not originate in empirical perceptions, but that
precedes and governs all such perceptions. It determines the whole way of
viewing the heavens, of seeing them, in fact, as the Imago Templi, which is
to see them at "the meeting-place of the two seas". This is why the Imago
Templi is not subject to the vicissitudes of the history of positive astronomy:
it is not a chapter in the history of science.
Like their world {Jabarut and Malakut), spiritual beings are always
described as sacrosanct, as "hieratics" (qudsi, quddus, qiddis), because they
form the Temple (Bayt al-Maqdis) in relation to this world which is itself
16 The following remark of Seneca's sums this up: "There are mysteries into which one
cannot be initiated in a single day. Eleusis has secrets that are shown only to those
who go back to it and see it for a second time. No more does Nature reveal all her
mysteries at once." Quoted in ibid., p. 237.
1 7 Cf. my Avicenna and the Visionary Recital, op. cit., pp. 17-18 ff. Compare Suhravardi's
'Le Recit de l'Archange empourpre', the French translation in my anthology
L'Archange empourpre, op. cit., VI, pp. 201—213.
18 See Suhravardi, 'Un jour, avec un groupe de soufis . . .', in ibid., XI, p. 374.
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