Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis - ImagoMundi

tians: Adam is not responsible for the fall, that is to say, for the "expulsion
from the earthly Paradise." We have seen what far anterior causes necessitated
this "expulsion." Adam's error was that by an excess of generosity he
anticipated, we may even say usurped—he, a mere initial Prophet—the
task reserved for the last Imam of his Cycle, the Resurrector (Qa'im). Up
until then, up to the end of our Cycle, the knowledge of the Resurrection
may be divulged only in symbols and always proportionally to the adept's
degree of dignity and capacity. That is why Adam surpassed his "proper
limit," his hadd
And here we encounter a term highly characteristic of the Ismailian lexicon
(hadd, plural hudud) and expressing a very complex notion. An analysis
of this term will bring us close to the secret of Ismailian hierarchism, the
principle which dominates the structure of the esoteric sodality, widening
the field of theophanic vision as the adepts pass from degree to degree.
Simultaneously, the same law of progression imposes the rhythm of the
Cycles of Prophecy and, with each of these Cycles, the succession of Imams
which is its necessary complement, since the Imam is the repository of the
esoteric meaning of the Revelation, that is to say, of saving Gnosis. Thus
both the foundation and the meaning of Imamology may be disclosed to us
and disclose to us in turn a metamorphosis of "Angel Christology."
j. Hierarchies and Cycles:
The Fundamental Angelology of Ismailism
In the principle by which the Ismailians deduced the degrees of Being and
of revelation of Being in beings, we may apprehend a twofold axiom. On
the one hand, he who knows himself (nafs = the soul, anima, and the self)
knows his Lord (man 'arafa nafsahufaqad 'arafa rabbahu). Who is this Lord?
Each of the degrees of the esoteric sodality, whose correspondence recurs
in the different planes of being, in the angelic pleroma as well as in the
astronomical cosmos, is designated as a hadd—in the literal sense a limit,
a term, a definition. The word corresponds to the Greek or better still,
one might render it literally by "that which limits or defines" the
field of vision, hence the horizon Each of the archangelical degrees is a hadd
(the lower hudud, those of the terrestrial world, correspond to the upper
hudud, those of the celestial world). The word is often conveniently trans-
62 Idris, pp. 85-86.
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lated as "dignitary," although this term in fact connotes an idea extrinsic
to its etymology. The hadd defines for each degree the horizon of its consciousness,
the mode of knowledge proportionate to the mode of being realized
by the adept. The notion of hadd, or "limit," implies correlatively that
of mahdud, or "limited." Each lower hadd is the mahdud, the "limited," of
the hadd immediately above it, which is its "horizon." For every "limit,"
to know oneself is to know the hadd—the limit, the horizon—of which it is
itself the "limited," the mahdud. The next higher hadd is, then, the Lord—
that is to say, the Self—of its own mahdud, the Self of that which it limits,
that whose horizon it is. But at the same time each higher hadd is the
mahdud, the limited, of the hadd that is higher than itself. For each mahdud,
to accede to the knowledge of the Self (i.e., of its hadd) is, then, simultaneously
to rise toward the knowledge of the hadd which is the Lord both of
hadd and mahdud.63
At each degree the mode of consciousness rises with the new mode of
being. Each hadd is bound to its mahdud by a companionship of initiatorybrotherhood;
it must draw it along, lift it to its own rank, in order to raise
itself to a higher hadd, or rank. The heavens of the esoteric Church are made
in the image of the astronomical heavens, each encased in the next; here lies
the secret of that perpetual ascending movement which draws the entire
hierocosmos of the initiate from base to summit. Of course we are not speaking
of empirical perception. At each degree the horizon, or limit, defines for
the adept the measure of his being and of his perception; his knowledge of
himself, like his knowledge of his Lord, rises from horizon to horizon, from
Angel to Angel, that is to say, from metamorphosis to metamorphosis. It
is the law of essence measuring its own field of theophanic vision, the same
law expressed in the Acts of Peter by the attestation: Talem eum vidi qualem
capere potui.
Up to what limit, it might be asked, will these ascensions and metamorphoses
continue? Here we encounter a second axiom of Ismailian Gnosis:
The supreme godhead is unknowable, inaccessible, ineffable, unpredicable—-
"that to which the boldest thought cannot attain." 64 The question is then
transformed into this other question: at what hadd, or limit, at what horizon,
does the godhead rise from its abyss of absolute incognoscibility? Or in other
63 Ibid., ch. XIX, p. 211.
64 Cf. Rudolf Strothmann, Gnosis-Texte der Ismailiten (Gottingen, 1943), p. 55 (man Ia
tatajasara nahwahu 'l-khawatir).
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