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

SABIAN TEMPLE AND ISMAILISM
particular ritual, to the person of the Angel reigning over the star. However,
it does not greatly concern us whether or not archaeology is somewhere
able to identify the remains of the Temple. What is important is the
ideal configuration of these ritual monuments, into whose architectural
form the soul projects her imago mundi, and thence proceeds to interiorize
its every detail, assimilating it to her own substance through a meditation
which thus enables her to construct her own microcosm. 6 In this sense the
Sabian Temple is above all a Temple-archetype. Its ritual usage is best
defined by an inscription, Platonic in tone, which in the year 332 A.H.
Mas'udi was still able to read on the threshold of the great Temple of
Harran: "He who knows himself is deified." 7
This Temple-archetype is itself a threshold, the communicating Threshold
between the celestial Temple and the Temple of the soul. Inasmuch as it is
a material edifice, constructed in the image of the star or celestial Temple,
it is the passage leading to the inner spiritual edifice. Because it leads back
to the source, it is par excellence the figure and support of that mental activity
designated in Arabic by the technical term ta'wil, that is to say, an exegesis
which at the same time constitutes an exodus, a going-out of the soul
towards the Soul. In Islam, ta'wil, the "exegetic leading back to the
source", answers to that law of interiorization, that experiential actualization
of symbolic correspondences, which, being an innate and fundamental
impulse of the religious Psyche, leads the Spirituals of all communities
to the same goal. In Islam, ta'wil is put into operation by the Batinis, the
esotericists or "interiorizers" of all persuasions; and as it is applied above
all in alchemy, what it effects is the transmutation of external rites into the
rites of the spiritual Temple.
From a dialogue introduced into his famous work by the historian of
religions Shahrastani (eleventh-twelfth centuries A.D.), it is evident that
6 Cf. Mircea Eliade, Technique du Yoga (Paris, 1949), pp 184-186.
7 Man 'arafa nafsahu ta'allaha (Prairies d'or, op. cit., vol. IV pp. 64—65). The technical
Arabic term is the equivalent of the of the Byzantine mystics. Nasir-i
Khusraw gives the Persian literal equivalent "Khuda shudan" in Kitab-e Jdmi'al-
Hikmatayn: le "Livre reunissant Us deux sagesses" ou Harmonie de la philosophic grecque el de
la theosophie ismaelienne, text edited by H. Corbin and Moh. Mo'in, Bibliotheque
Iranienne, vol. 3 (Tehran/Paris, Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1953), § 94, p. 99 of the
Persian text, 1. 6. Cf. also the context of the citations in my edition of Suhravardi,
Oeuvres philosophiques et mystiques, Bibliotheque Iranienne, vol. 2 (Tehran/Paris, Adrien-
Maisonneuve, 1952; anastatic re-edition: Bibliotheque Iranienne, NS 2, 1977),
Hikmat al-ishraq, § 117, p. 114, n. 4. It is hard to understand how Barbier de
Maynard could have translated it as "he who knows God is in dread of him" (!).
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SABIAN TEMPLE AND ISMAILISM
the Sabian ideology of the Temple is an essential stage in this transmutation.
It is the means whereby meditation can pass from the representation
of the Temples or stars (hayakil) inscribed in the astronomical Heavens,
and reproduced symbolically in the architecture of the earthly Temples, to
the representation of a spiritual Temple, constituted by the coalescence of
souls that take the place of the stars as receptacles and icons of the pure
substances of the Light. The Sabians pictured the celestial Temples as
governed by the Angels to whom their cult was addressed. In order for
this transmutation to take place without degrading these beings of Light,
but rather by raising the being of man to their level, the anthropomorphosis
of the Temple is accompanied by a simultaneous angelomorphosis of
man. In this sense, angelology represents a fundamental structure: it
forms the ideal link permitting one to envisage the transition between
Sabianism and Ismaili interiorism.
The term "Sabianism" is employed here deliberately without any of the
precautions and reservations in which it is involved by historical criticism.
Historically, we ought to distinguish carefully between the very different,
not to say heterogeneous, phenomena which are grouped under this
denomination. But if we were to conform to the science of history we
should cease to be in accord with the phenomenology of Sabianism as it
was considered, approved or condemned by those souls for whom it
possessed a contemporary significance. Even though it means distinguishing
between several sects, our Arabic or Persian authors use the term to
denote both the religion of the "Sabians" of Harran (the ancient Carrhae
in the north of Mesopotamia), 8 and the religion of those who are mentioned
in the Koran and in whom it has been possible to recognize those more
commonly known today as Mandeans. The term even incorporates a
certain religion from Southern Arabia, practised by the Arabs from the
country of Saba.
Nevertheless, although the discovery and consolidation of an ideal link
between these religions were the task of meditation, a definite connexion
was already present in the positive facts of history. The religion of the
Sabians of Harran was an extension of ancient Syrian or Syro-Babylonian
cults, reinterpreted in the light of elements borrowed from Neoplatonic
philosophy; 9 and its great interest for the understanding of esoteric move-
8 Zarathustra (Zoroaster) and Buddha have both been represented as "Sabians".
9 Cf. in general D. Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus (St. Petersburg, 1856).
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