A Jungian view of my astrophotography ‘The Veil Nebula‘, the universe interpreted though Maxim Gorky’s famous poem and the philosopher Kant. Immanuel Kant saw the universe as a profound source of aesthetic experience, especially through the concept of the sublime—like the infinite universe or a violent storm— which he distinguished from beauty.
Beauty reflects harmony between imagination and understanding, while the sublime emerges when we face something so vast or powerful that our imagination is overwhelmed.
This dynamic is vividly echoed in art and literature: Van Gogh’s Starry Night and the spiral grandeur of Messier 51 mirror the mathematical sublime ( Van Gogh was likely inspired by the nebula M51 from a best-selling book on French astronomy); while Maxim Gorky’s The Song of the Stormy Petrel and the ghostly filaments of NGC 6960 capture the dynamical sublime—the majesty and terror of nature’s force, met by human mind’s resilient and fierce response.
The Cry Before the Storm: The Veil Nebula
“Let it break in all its fury — Let the storm burst forth!” — Maxim Gorky, Song of the Stormy Petrel (1901)
Nowhere is this fusion of the outer storm and inner cry more visceral than in the luminous wreckage of a supernova shell catalogued as NGC 6960: the Veil Nebula West (the right third of my full Veil Nebula mosaic).
The Mosaic
This 2.92° × 2.05° mosaic spans the luminous filaments of the Veil Nebula, the visible remains of a massive supernova in Cygnus, exploding 10,000–20,000 years ago. At the western edge lies NGC 6960, the so-called “Sturmvogel”—a nickname (storm bird, stormy petrel) popularized in early astrophotographic work by Max Wolf (1863–1932) at the Heidelberg Observatory. The filaments likely evoked the bird’s wings riding a cosmic storm. Just to the north (rotated east) lies Pickering’s Triangle, a chaotic sea of shock fronts, while the eastern arc comprises NGC 6992, NGC 6995, IC 1340, and NGC 6974. Together, they form the bright perimeter of the Cygnus Loop, a vast supernova remnant stretching across 3 degrees of sky.
The imago
This widefield mosaic reveals the Veil Nebula, the torn and glowing remains of a massive star that exploded between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago in the constellation Cygnus. The image covers the most prominent filaments of the Cygnus Loop, a supernova remnant still expanding into the interstellar medium. The progenitor star is estimated to have been 20 times more massive than the Sun, and its explosion may have rivaled Venus in brightness, even visible in daylight to early humans.
The nebula is powered by shock fronts—high-velocity shells of ionized gas colliding with the surrounding medium, lighting up filaments rich in oxygen (O III), hydrogen (Hα), and sulfur (S II). These glowing arcs are what we now see as NGC 6960 in the West, Pickering’s Triangle, and the complex Eastern tangle of NGC 6992, NGC 6995, IC 1340, NGC 6974, and NGC 6979.
The western portion, NGC 6960, became known in early 20th-century German literature as the “Sturmvogel”—a storm bird or stormy petrel. Though the origin of the name is uncertain, it was Max Wolf, the Heidelberg astronomer and pioneer of astrophotography, who brought the term into the astronomical community through his deep-sky survey plates and publications. His 1900s-era astrographs, taken with large plate cameras, helped to popularize poetic imagery and inspired the mapping of thousands of nebulae—Wolf’s catalogs eventually included over 6,000 entries.
The “Sturmvogel” metaphor is more than lyrical. If the image is rotated 90° counterclockwise from north-up (placing east at top), the filaments of NGC 6960 unfurl like a bird in flight, its wings flaring through the turbulent ether of the surrounding shockwaves. Just “beneath” it in this orientation lies Pickering’s Triangle—a chaotic lattice of luminous threads, often overlooked but physically adjacent to NGC 6960. This region resembles a choppy, foaming sea, as though the bird skims low over stormy cosmic surf.
The eastern arc, comprising NGC 6992, NGC 6995, IC 1340, and nearby filaments, forms the other wing of the explosion’s outer shell. Together, these bright edges trace a nearly complete hemispherical shell roughly 130 light-years across, expanding at speeds between 150 and 600 km/s. The gas within glows for tens of thousands of years after the explosion, allowing us to see this dramatic transformation in slow motion.
Though shaped by physics, the Veil Nebula also invites metaphor and archetype. In its wisps we glimpse not just shockwaves, but stories: death and rebirth, flight and disintegration, solitude and cosmic defiance. This Sturmvogel, like Gorky’s revolutionary storm petrel, does not fear the coming storm—it becomes its herald. Turn it. Rotate the image 90° counterclockwise—place North to the left, and East to the sky.
The poem
Maxim Gorky’s 1901 poem, The Song of the Stormy Petrel, (in the English Translation) was written as the czarist state trembled with revolution. It was, at once, a coded call to rebellion and a hymn to those rare spirits who thrive in the coming chaos. While lesser birds cower in fear — gulls, loons, and penguins scuttling to shelter — the stormy petrel soars, shrieking, a “black lightning bolt” against the leaden clouds.
“The clouds are darkening the sky, The waves groan beneath them. The storm! The storm is coming soon!”
Der Originaltitel von Maxim Gorkis poem “Das Lied vom Sturmvogel” ist „Песня о Буревестнике“ (Pesnja o Burevestnike). A special stamp was dedicated by the communist GDR post office to Gorky’s “Sturmvogel” in 1968. The stormy petrel—Sturmvogel—shrieking in the dark heavens above a choppy, silvery sea.
Here, in the Veil Nebula, we see that storm brewing—in literal astrophysical terms.
To call the nebula Sturmvogel—as German astronomer Max Wolf did in the early 20th century—is to see more than a name. Dr. Wolf often assigned names inspired by myth, animal shapes, and poetic metaphor.
Beneath the arc—now the “sky” of this rotated scene—lies a tangled field of mist and filament. These lower tendrils correspond to the chaotic region extending toward the Pickering Triangle, itself a fragment of the same blast. But in this orientation, it becomes the silver sea—choppy, dispersed, alive with current.
“The sea, with lightning crashing down on it, Holds the thunder in its depths.”
The psychological dimension is impossible to ignore. To rotate this nebula is to awaken its archetypal charge.
Toward the Storm, Toward the Self
In standard orientations, it is just beautiful. Rotated — it becomes prophetic or as Kant said sublime. Just as Gorky’s poem was banned, feared, and venerated, this image speaks of thresholds — the point where silence ends and scream begins.
To witness the Veil Nebula as Sturmvogel is to stand at the edge of a cosmic battlefield. A soul cries out — not in despair, but in jubilation. It is ready. It does not retreat. The stars themselves have torn open,. and from their shreds, a winged cry rises.
The night is not quiet. The storm is not tragedy. The nebula is not death. It is all a prelude to flight.
In Jungian psychology, the “archetype of the storm” can be understood through several interconnected lenses, encompassing divine power, emotional turmoil, the force of chaos, and the potential for transformation and judgment. It is not a singular, codified archetype but rather a multifaceted symbol that manifests in various ways within the collective unconscious and individual psyche, often associated with deities like Zeus and Odin (Wotan).
Key Aspects of the Storm Archetype in Jungian thought:
Divine Power and Judgment: Storms, particularly those involving thunder and lightning, are often associated with powerful sky gods like Zeus and Odin. These deities are seen as masters of spiritual phenomena and embody divine justice and judgment, capable of both creation and destruction. The storm can symbolize divine intervention or the manifestation of a higher power.
Emotional Turmoil and Internal States: On a personal level, storms can represent powerful and overwhelming emotions, internal struggles, and psychological crises. The “eye of the storm” can symbolize the need for centering and navigating these internal tempests towards clarity and resilience. This can be seen in dream symbolism, where storms may signify repressed emotions or significant life changes.
Chaos and Disorder: The storm can also embody the archetype of chaos and the destructive forces of the unconscious, as seen in mythological figures like Typhon, the Greek monster of chaotic destruction. It represents the unsettling and unpredictable aspects of life and the psyche, often linked to a struggle for consciousness against overwhelming forces.
Transformation and New Beginnings: Despite their destructive potential, storms can also be seen as catalysts for profound change and renewal. Emerging from the turmoil of a storm can lead to a new paradigm, a resetting of paths, and a transformation in consciousness, akin to a “new beginning” or the emergence of a new understanding.
The “Wotan” Archetype: Carl Jung specifically explored the “Wotan” (Odin) archetype as a powerful, dormant force within the Germanic psyche that reawakened with terrifying force, linking it to the “storm clouds” gathering over Europe in his time. This highlights how archetypal patterns can manifest in historical and collective contexts, influencing societal movements and psychological states.
“Let the storm burst forth— The proud stormy petrel soars, Like a black lightning bolt…”
The Veil Nebula is not the remnant of death but literally rebirth, transformation or revolution. We are all stardust.
The first stars burned their fuel quickly and were able to make only a few elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. When those stars went supernova, they expelled the elements they had produced and seeded the next generation of stars.
Back to Kant, reason steps in to conceive the universe’s magnitude, producing a unique aesthetic response that combines awe, respect, and an awareness of both human limitation and rational capacity.
Mathematical Sublime: Arises when we confront immense size—like the vast universe—that imagination cannot grasp, but reason can conceptualize as infinite.
Dynamical Sublime: Emerges in the face of overwhelming natural power, such as storms, evoking fear yet affirming reason’s ability to comprehend from a safe vantage.
Aesthetic Judgment: Kant held that judgments of the sublime, though rooted in feeling, carry a claim to universal validity, expecting shared recognition.
Transcendental Aesthetic: Refers to Kant’s idea that space and time are forms imposed by the mind, shaping how we perceive the universe from the outset.
1. Stormy Petrel in Flight
Visual feature: The filamentary arc, sharply defined and curving like a wing, cutting diagonally across the lower right (now “south”) quadrant.
Interpretation: The stormy petrel itself — sharp-beaked, wing extended mid-cry.
Poetic line: “High above the silvery sea wind / Screeches the stormy petrel, / A black lightning bolt…”
Science: This structure is a shock front — compressed, illuminated gas being shaped like wind-sculpted feathers.
The rift in the emission line appears as wings opened wide against wind — almost tearing through the stars.
2. Choppy, Silver Sea Below
Visual feature: The fragmented, turbulent lower-left tendrils of nebulosity, dispersed and broken up.
Interpretation: This is the sea whipped by storm — erratic, fragmented lines resembling waves crashing.
Poetic line: “The sea — under the storm’s assault — / Holds the thunder in its depths…”
The Veil’s wispy structure renders a heaving, unsettled ‘sea’ of starlight, luminous and restless.
3. Darkness and Thunderclouds
Visual feature: Opaque, darker patches and intersections between arcs of light — spaces of visual silence.
Interpretation: These become thunderclouds — the pressure between light and void, mirroring psychological tension.
Poetic line: “The storm! The storm will break soon! / The bold petrel flies proudly in the lightning.”
The bright-limb–dark-core contrast functions almost as chiaroscuro — a painterly invocation of rolling storm clouds.
4. Lightning and Cry
Visual feature: Sharp, high-contrast transitions and electric blue Hβ or OIII filaments, especially if narrowband data is used.
Interpretation: Lightning across the sky — like the scream of the petrel, jagged and divine.
Poetic line: “The storm — it is coming! / Let it burst in all its fury!”
The emission filaments serve as luminous nerve endings of the storm — prophetic and electric.
WHY THIS ROTATION MATTERS
Most published astrophotographs of NGC 6960 orient North up or East left — creating a sweeping horizontal arc that reads more like a curtain or a wave. But when North is turned left:
The arc becomes a soaring, vertical figure — winged, crying, slicing through the heavens.
The Veil becomes a storm landscape, not a peaceful emission cloud.
The entire field becomes psychologically activated: no longer passive beauty, but visionary unrest.
This is what Max Wolf may have seen — not just a nebula, but a cosmic Sturmvogel singing against the void.
PSYCHOANALYTIC PARALLEL
The Veil Nebula, when viewed this way, externalizes an internal or external psychological structure:
The stormy petrel = archetype of the prophetic Self or Hero archetype, unafraid to confront chaos.
The storm = collective upheaval, unconscious energies breaking into consciousness.
The sea = psychic depths — turbulent but luminous, full of potential.
The Veil itself = the psychic boundary between known and unknown, being torn open.
In this light, your astrophotography of the Veil is not just scientific image-making, but active imagination — to Jung a lens into cosmic individuation or as to Gorky to a historical revolution.
1901 Poem by Maxim Gorky “Song of the Petrel”Google translation from Russianhttps://ruverses.com/
Over the gray plain of the sea the wind gathers clouds. Between the clouds and the sea the Petrel proudly flies, like black lightning. Now touching the waves with its wing, now soaring like an arrow to the clouds, it cries, and — the clouds hear joy in the bird’s bold cry. In this cry — thirst for a storm! The clouds hear the power of anger, the flame of passion and confidence in victory in this cry. The seagulls moan before the storm — moan, rush about above the sea and are ready to hide their horror before the storm at the bottom. And the loons also moan — they, the loons, do not have access to the enjoyment of the battle of life: the thunder of blows frightens them. The stupid penguin timidly hides his fat body in the cliffs… Only the proud Petrel flies boldly and freely above the sea gray with foam! The clouds are sinking darker and lower over the sea, and the waves are singing, and rushing upward to meet the thunder. The thunder is roaring. The waves are moaning in the foam of anger, arguing with the wind. Now the wind embraces the flocks of waves with a strong embrace and throws them with all its might in wild anger onto the cliffs, smashing the emerald masses into dust and spray. The petrel flies with a cry, like a black lightning, pierces the clouds like an arrow, tears off the foam of the waves with its wing. Here it flies like a demon, – a proud, black demon of the storm, – and laughs and sobs… He laughs at the clouds, he sobs with joy! In the wrath of thunder, – a sensitive demon, – he has long heard fatigue, he is sure that the clouds will not hide the sun, – no, they will not hide! The wind howls… The thunder roars…
The flocks of clouds blaze with a blue flame over the abyss of the sea. The sea catches the arrows of lightning and extinguishes them in its depths. Like fiery snakes, the reflections of these lightnings curl in the sea, disappearing. Storm! The storm will soon break out!
This is the brave Petrel proudly fluttering between the lightning over the angrily roaring sea; then the prophet of victory cries out: Let the storm break out stronger!
Maxim Gorki Das Lied vom Sturmvogel
Ob der grauen Meeresebene schart der Wind Gewölk zusammen. Zwischen Wolken und Gewässern gleitet stolz der Sturmverkünder, einem schwarzen Blitz vergleichbar. Bald die Flut mit Flügeln streifend, bald als Pfeil die Wolken treffend, schreit er hell. Die Wolken hören Lust im Schrei des kühnen Vogels. In dem Schrei klingt Sturmessehnsucht! Kraft des Zornes, Glut der Leidenschaft und Siegeszuversicht. Dies hören in dem Schrei die Wolken.
Vor dem Sturm die Möwen stöhnen. — Stöhnen, treiben überm Meere, möchten ihre Angst vorm Sturme auf dem Meeresgrund verbergen. Auch die Tauchervögel stöhnen. Ihnen ist er unzugänglich, der Genuss des Lebenskampfel. Sie erschrecken vor dem Donner. Der Pinguin, der dumme, feige, birgt den feisten Leib im Felswerk. Nur der stolz Sturmverkünder, frei und stolz, beherrscht die Höhe überm grauen Schaum des Meeres!
II
Immer finsterer und tiefer zieh‘n die Wolken überm Meere, und die Wogen singen, dringen hoch, dem Donner zu begegnen. Donner kracht. Wutschäumend , ächzend streiten mit dem Wind die Wellen. Er umfasst sie rudelweise, drückt sie in die starken Arme. Schleudert wuchtig sie in blindem Wüten an die Klippen, wo die hell-smaragdnen Wogen-berge laut zu Staub und Schaum zerschellen. Schreiend schießt der Sturmverkünder, einem schwarzen Blitz gleich, pfeilschnell durch die Wolken. Seine Flügel reißen Gischt vom Kamm der Wogen. Seht, er rast dahin! Ein Dämon — stolz. Des Sturmes schwarzer Dämon! Und sein Lachen tönt, sein Schluchzen. Er verlacht die finstern Wolken, und er weint und schluchzt vor Freude. Längst vernimmt des Dämons waches Ohr im Donnergroll: Erschöpfung. Das Gewölk, weiß er, es kann nicht, – kann die Sonne nicht verbergen!
III
Sturmwind heult — und Donner poltert. Überm abgrundtiefen Meere flammen blau die Wolkenschwärme. Und das Meer fängt Blitzespfeile, löscht sie aus in seinem Strudel. Und wie Feuerschlangen winden sich im Meere — und verschwinden Spiegelbilder dieser Blitze. „Sturmwind! Bald erdröhnt der Sturmwind!“ Sehrt den stolzen Sturmverkünder! Stolz hin schwebend zwischen Blitzen, überm Zorngebrüll des Meeres, schreit er — ein Prophet des Sieges. „Immer stärker tobe, Sturmwind!“
“Faust I”, the Germans’ favorite drama is about a scholar who wants the impossible, who wants to know what keeps the world together at heart. Goethe’s Faust failed on this worldly question, which ultimately leads either straight to Augustine’s heaven or Dante’s hell. Therefore Faust needed and accepted diabolical assistance. But what keeps the world together is also a fundamental question of today’s particle physics. The essay approaches Faust’s complex question from philosophy, depth psychology, religion and science. Many suggestions and thoughts derived from a monastery-retreat with that title and C.G. Jung, who was aware and fond of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
To enlighten me more,
What Holds the world together at its innermost core
All this potency and seed I shall see,
And stop peddling in words that mean nothing to me.
Daß ich erkenne, was die Welt
Im Innersten zusammenhält,
Schau alle Wirkenskraft und Samen,
Und tu nicht mehr in Worten kramen.
Faust’s path leads from science to magic from humanistic enlightenment to liberal entrepreneurship, from Troy’s Helena to artificial intelligence ultimately to Christianity. Mephisto is not an archetype, but a very personal and likable devil, partly spirit of good and action, partly evil. Faust II and especially Faust I contains the classic devil’s pact (Teufelsbund) motive.
Faust embodies that human curiosity that was the moving principle of modern Enlightenment. Mephisto teaches the magic of FIAT money creation, through which capitalism became a dominant force. That “spirit” is emancipating itself from ecclesiastical institutions, which exposes the internal corruption – in Faust II – by power and money.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe worked extensively on Faust for more than 60 years. Between 1773 and 1775, in the area of enlightenment and four years shy of the French revolution, the Urfaust was born.
TimeLine of Faust Genesis
In 1808 the first part of the Faust tragedy appeared during the German Classic period and German Romanticism. Historically this is the Napoleonic era, which begins roughly 1799 with Napoleon Bonaparte’s coup d’état. Napoleon’s armies soon conquered the Iberian and Italian peninsulas, occupied lands, forced feudal Austria, Prussia, and Russia to ally with him and respect French hegemony in Europe until the Battle of Waterloo 1815. The Congress of Vienna quickly restored Europe to pre-French Revolution days, restore Feudalism that is to say.
“Faust II” was written in 1825 until the summer of 1831, was published in 1832 (a few months after Goethe’s death) and was a continuation of “Faust I” but integrated the classical Helena part, written long before. The second part of the tragedy, however, differs markedly in its narrative structure and style from its predecessor. In the first part, the play deals exclusively with the tormented soul of Faust (inner world). In the second part, Goethe places the figure of the scholar in a historical, cultural and political context of 19th century, at the time of the beginning capitalism (outer world) .
Synopsis Faust I and II
Faust I
Who is more likable
Goethe’s “Faust – The First Tragedy” contains many elements of a tragedy, and can be divided into three parts: Exposition (“Prologue in Heaven” and the “prelude to the theater”), Scholar tragedy (Devil pact) and Gretchen tragedy. So Mephisto will try again and again to pull Faust into nothing and yet fail in the last. The sparks of good will always strike from magic, from the destructive, that is, from the evil intended and affected by Mephisto. Faust, after the conclusion of pact and bet, renounces “knowledge” in favor of “sensuality,” the secluded scholarly existence. After rejuvenation in the “witch’s kitchen” begins the love drama. But sexual desire creates the mystery of the love of Faust and Gretchen, which Mephisto cannot destroy. Mephisto does manage to pull Faust and Gretchen down into the criminal (death of the mother and Valentine, Gretchen’s infanticide, Gretchen’s death). At the end of Faust I, four tragic deaths have occurred.
Faust II
Faust I kills Grete’s Brother
On the other hand, “Faust – the tragedy of the second part” corresponds in its formal structure to the dramatic poetics of Aristotle and the classical German drama: in five acts Goethe designs the story of his protagonist. But the strict five-act structure is only the outer framework. A series of sometimes confusing acts that tell self-contained stories, as well as interludes, mythical scenes with ancient figures and different stages of time through which Faust lives, complicate the overall understanding. It begins with Goethe’s outrageous idea of having Faust awaken on the classical soil. Faust is now brought back to his former study, the student scene repeats itself with exchanged omens: now the “old man” Mephisto is cornered by the advancing Baccalaureate Studiosus. Wagner, as a kind of Prometheus caricature, seeks to fabricate a human being from the retort, which is indicative of the hubris of a technical science. Faust becomes an entrepreneur, again fails morally but ultimately goes to heaven. Not because he was good, but at least endeavored.
The inner world – C.G. Jung’s view
The anima / animus theme
Faust I u Grete II
The Faust in the first part is in a serious life crisis because he despairs on the borders of traditional science. He makes a pact with the devil to help him. If that succeeds, Faust must leave devil his soul as a reward.
Something ostensibly has C.G. Jung with his lecture ‘Faust and Alchemy’ [2] given the alchemical reference and also on the anima/animus theme – especially to scholars this has spoken extensively. Many such Jungian papers say more about the imagination than about the ‘Faus’ and seem to have emerged without any involvement with the many other interpretations of Faust.
The Gnostic C.G. Jung is fascinated by the neutral evaluation of sin as inner preparation and the role of evil in the salvation of men in Goethe’s Faust. As in Luke’s Gospel, sinners are especially soft-painted (Luke 11:37). Also, the meaning of the individual figures and the events of the Faust tragedy can – symbolically – be understood as (failed) individuation process.
Faust I kills Grete’s Brother
Mephisto quickly leads the lonely housemaid in Faust I to erotic ways; Faus promptly falls in love with Margarete (Gretchen), his anima, who admires him, the scholar. The catastrophe takes its course: she kills unknowingly her mother with Mephisto’s “sleeping aid”, becomes pregnant by Faust; he stabs her brother Valentin, who wants to take revenge on the scholar. Margarete finally murdered her (and his) child. The court condemns them to death, but at the end of the tragedy, God saves their soul. Faust, together with the devil, seeks his shadow and wakes up in the second part of the tragedy from a healing sleep. A series of evil – four dead bodies- on Faust’s account still lead at least for Gretchen to salvation.
Augustine’s heaven or after Dante’s hell?
Mephisto and God – Evil and Good
The nullity of evil comes from Augustine because God could not and should not be thought of as the author of evil. The entire proof of the nullity of evil is thus directed against the Gnostic (Manichaeism) dualism. Augustine, at an early stage of his intellectual development, was a follower of the Manichaean sect, a Gnostic religion founded in the third century AD by the Syrian Mani. But since Augustine, with Neo-Platonism against the Manichaean concept, emphasizes the ontological vanity of evil, he must find another explanation for the obvious malum in the world. His answer: Man, by removing himself from the good, and willingly. Although this relieves God of the responsibility for moral evil, man now carries it himself, since he has the freedom to act morally evil. In the course of the development and execution of his theory, Augustine
establishes this “evil will” (to which man freely decides) by means of original sin, which makes him a priori rejected, who can only be redeemed by the grace of God.
RENNES-LE-CHATEAU Church Devil
This contradicts C.G. Jung, he even felt “recognized” in Goethe’s Faust, for in the division Faust / Mephisto he found his inner discord described: “It poured like a miracle balm into my soul. Finally a human being, I thought, taking the devil seriously and even concluding a blood pact with the adversary … Finally, I had found confirmation that there were or had been people who saw the evil and its global power and more that is, the mysterious role it plays in the salvation of people from darkness and suffering. To that extent Goethe became a prophet to me … “[3.65-66].
The Enlightenment, especially some French enlighteners and German Romantics, were, however, convinced that man is good by nature. Of course, Rousseau, an opponent of Voltaire, meant it requires their re-education so that they accept virtuous, peaceful and happy the common good as a will of their own. In this context, C.G. Jung fit Goethe’s Faust in his Gnostic worldview;
“Faust triggered a resonance in me and hit me in a way I could not understand otherwise than personally. Above all, it was the problem of the opposites of good and evil, of spirit and matter, of light and dark that touched me deeply. My inner contradictions appeared dramatized here. In a way, Goethe gave a basic drawing and a scheme of my own conflicts and solutions. The division Faust – Mephisto drew me together in a single human being, and that was me. In other words, I was affected and felt recognized, and since it was my destiny, all the peripetia of the drama affected me as well “[3,238-239].
Exactly the good, as well as the evil, was invested by Goethe as two individuals. For Faust, this Manichaean conception means in the (unchristian) consequence that man is not wholly responsible for his evil actions. Goethe’s answer is of his time, that of enlightenment and romanticism “omne bonum ab homini” or, as Kant says, at least his inclination to do good.
C. G. Jung’s point of view about the “summum bonum” and negation of man as “omne malum ab homini” is an idiosyncratic synthesis of Gnosticism and Augustine of Hippo. It seems that C.G. Jung recognizes a theodicy in Goethe’s Faust, a Christianity in need to add to his own always more theses (theory of the will, the theology of the original sin) and in fact arrives at the very dualistic model it denied.
The Red book: Jung, Salome, Elijah
In the chapter about life after death in [3] C.G. Jung touches the famous final scene of Faust II (3,312), not only because Jung resumes the Septem Sermones ad mortuos here (3, 310 f.), but also because he also outlines a vision of life purpose that is probably his own and his vision of a successful individuation: “The unconscious wholeness appears as the actual spiritus rector of all biological and psychic events. […] Consciousness is a culture in the broadest sense, and self-knowledge, therefore, the essence and heart of this process.” (3,327).
What Jung describes here defines precisely the psychological dynamics that he also illustrates in his Red Book: Like [all do-gooders], [the spiritual deaf] will fall victim to unconsciousness. On the contrary, the aim of man would be to become aware of transcendence pressing from the unconscious, in order to become authentic [and good].
The mystic world – Faust as an alchemist
The Lapis (Alchemy) Quaternia
Alchemy did not appear to be consistent in the early modern period. A distinction should, therefore, be made between the “Alchemia transmutatoria”, the art of metal transformation, as found, for example, in the alchemistic “Florilegium Rosarium phosphonium”, the “Alchemia medica” which tried Medicines against diseases produce and last but not least the “Alchemia mystica”, which tried to reconcile “mystical-Christological elements with science”. The origin of the Alchemiet, which can certainly be regarded as a precursor of modern chemistry was classical Greece, Hellenistic Egypt. The ‘philosophers’ of medieval alchemy: seem to have called, based on the sweeping, Egyptian’ enthusiasm, on the mysteries and revelations of the Nile: the God Thoth, later the Greek Hermes, originally a magic demon, equated with the hermetic writings ascribed to him as the oldest authority,
Walpurgisnacht
In this context, natural-philosophical aspects lay the foundations, on which Goethe created a being that is without any precedent in literature. Paracelsus and his natural philosophy are regarded as the source and model for Goethe’s Homunculus, so here too a historical basis must be created. Above all, it is Goethe’s scientific knowledge, which is important in terms of decoding the homunculus, without forgetting the alchemical origin or wanting to interpret the homunculus purely biologically.
In the words of Wagner that describe so aptly what happens in the laboratory scene, because “it is made a man”. The creation of a human being is less reminiscent of the creation myth than of modern genetic engineering and of today’s reproductive medicine and the Artificial Intelligence under development.
In Faust II, Goethe presents himself as a “progress-oriented poet” who deals with “forward-looking topics and visions”. Unlike to the first part of Faustus, which presents a homogeneous unity of persons and action, the second part breaks down into broadly unfolded individual scenes, in which the abundance of symbols present the fast üacing time.
Political utopias and its nasty realities
Faust meets Grete in prison
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe undertakes in Faust II the daring attempt to guide his protagonist through the history and myths of the Medival Ages to the upheavals of the Enlightenment, right up to his own time the begin of capitalism and entrepreneurs. In his period, there were a number of significant political and social upheavals and changes, to which Goethe refers to his work. Above all, the disintegration of the feudal late medieval society in the transition to entrepreneurship with the current monetary system and the French Revolution with Rousseau’s totalitarian utopia and restoration represent central themes in “Faust II”.
This period is based on an important feature of the Enlightenment: man is portrayed as something good. The most important content-related features of the classical period are: harmony, self-determination, humanity and tolerance, beauty and the French Revolution were influential. In the French Revolution, people advocated that the same rights should apply to all. But the success achieved with the Declaration of Civil and Human Rights did not last long. During the reign of Robespierre, people went through a time of terror and terror. It was not until 1795, after Robespierre was overthrown, that there was a transitional government. This held until four years later, Napoleon came to power and in 1804 even became emperor. He stood after this troubled time for (not feudal) order and security – and for wars and oppression. Meanwhile, significant reforms were initiated in Prussia to liberate and educate the population. At the Battle of Waterloo (1815) Napoleon’s reign ended with his defeat. In the same year, the reorganization of Europe was sealed in the Congress of Vienna, which provided a restoration of the old order before Napoleon’s reign.
Still, there is a lot of utopia and criticism of the capitalism felt in the second part of Faust. Or no? Faust dies in anticipation of the fulfillment of his utopia of creating an earthly paradise in which many people can live in a “free country in freedom”. This promised paradise on earth became in the 20th century several times and inevitably hell on earth. Faust indulges in materialism and loses his bet and therefore his soul to the devil. He still focuses his gaze on the here and now, not the hereafter. The megalomania of an ideology destroyed Faust. But still, the angels wrest the prey from the devil. They raise Faust to heaven because they have always endeavored – to do good things according to the Calvinistic work ethics which was the core of the industrial revolution. Goethe only gives us the subtle, but inconclusive hint.
During the mentioned weekend retreat we approached Faust’s question from the angle of science and philosophy. A monk and priest with a somewhat fitting Faustian cv, who had worked for 12 years in his former profession as particle physicist gave lectures and moderated the discussion.
Science and Religion
Quarks and leptons keep the world together
Credits Contemporary Physic Education Project
Science has come a long way to answer basic questions. What does matter consist of? How is the universe structured? How did it come about? What is the nature of space and time on both a large and a small scale? What is the role of humans and the earth in the cosmos?
For this purpose, the basic components of visible matter, the quarks and leptons and the most important composite particles are named in the standard model. Of course, this is not (yet) a philosophical outline of the meaning and universality of our laws of nature throughout the universe. The standard model is a hugely successful theory of fundamental particles and how they interact. It incorporated all that was known about subatomic particles today and successfully predicted the existence of additional particles as well. There are seventeen named particles in the standard model, organized into the chart shown above. The last particles discovered were the W and Z bosons in 1983, the top quark in 1995, the tau neutrino in 2000, and the Higgs boson in 2012.
The fine tuned universe and the anthropic principle
The Fined Tuned Universe
The peculiarity of our theories, however, goes even further. If the values of many constants of nature were only slightly different, life in space would hardly be possible. For example, the stable ground state of carbon, without it, there would be no heavy elements that allow for complex chemistry, and correspondingly no life. So our existence depends on the thread. Points such a coincidence to intelligent design?
There are some physicists and philosophers who deny this question and refer to the so-called anthropic principle: in its weak version, it simply says that the very fact that we exist answers why the universe must be such that it exists can.
Some are not very satisfied with this form of the anthropic principle because, strictly speaking, it nevertheless does not explain why our universe is now exactly as it is. String theory has a more sophisticated to muddle the water. It assumes that we live in a multiverse that hosts a multitude of universes. All of these universes have different properties, different values of the natural constants. Ironically particle physics arrived at a level of speculation that cannot be falsified in the Popperian sense. Structurally, we are no longer so far from religion, which likes to say that you can not prove the non-existence of a god. If empirical data becomes too scarce, the problem of underdetermination of theories is means, we can no longer decide on the basis of empirical evidence how to interpret the data, but we can only believe. Or not.
Of course, sub determination is not limited to astrophysics but occurs in all sciences. However, astrophysics and particle physics might support (but not answer) philosophical questions, because they are dealing with the unimaginable vastness of the cosmos and creation – and this borders to traditional cosmology.
I like the approach of the legendary String Theory developer Leonard Susskind, who wrote 2006: “Let me be up front and state my prejudices right here. I thoroughly believe that real science requires explanations that do not involve supernatural agents… Evidence has been accumulating for an explanation of the ‘illusion of intelligent design’ that depends only on the principles of physics, mathematics, and the laws of large numbers. This is what ‘The Cosmic Landscape’ is about: the scientific explanation of the apparent miracles of physics a cosmology and its philosophical implications.” ( [4] Pg. xi)
He continues, “On one side are the people who are convinced that the world must have been created or designed by an intelligent agent with a benevolent purpose. On the other side are the hard-nosed, scientific types who feel certain that the universe is the product of impersonal, disinterested laws of physics, mathematics, and probability—a world without a purpose… By the first group… I am talking about thoughtful, intelligent people who look around at the world and have a hard time believing that it was just dumb luck that made the world so accommodating to human beings.”( [4] Pg. xi)
It is, therefore, unwise when gifted astrophysicists overreach their philosophical expertise and make theological claims likeGod did not create the universe. Nor hold theistic arguments any weight in science.
[2] Faust und die Alchemie. Von JUNG, Carl Gustav: Vortrag im Psychologischen Club, Zürich, vom 8. Oktober 1949. Sowie DIENER, Gottfried: Fausts Weg zu Helena. Urphänomen und Achetypus. Darstellung und Deutung einer symbolischen Szenenfolge aus Goethes Faust. Stuttgart 1961, S. 249.
[5] Goethe als Alchemist. Von Gustav F. Hartlaub (Heidelberg). Euphorion : Zeitschrift für Literaturgeschichte 3. Folge, 48 (1954), S. 19-40
[6] KOSTRETSKA, Antonia: Der künstliche Mensch. Vergleich auf der Grundlage der Texte von Goethe, Shelley und Bulgakow. München 2011.
[7] ARENS, Hans: Kommentar zu Goethes Faust II. Heidelberg 1989. (Beiträge zur neueren Literaturgeschichte, Folge 3, 86)
[8] Vgl. u.a. HARTLAUB, Gustav Friedrich: Der Stein der Weisen. Wesen und Bilderwelt der Alchemie. (Bibliothek des Germanischen Nationalmuseums Nürnberg zur deutschen Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte, Band 11, Bilder aus deutscher Vergangenheit). München 1959.
Two of the most famous paintings from Germany’s Romantic period are back on display at a central Berlin museum after a two-year restoration. I recently visited that exibition and appreciated the famed landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich.
The Monk is back. The making of a perfect piece of art has always been a purification process of the artists soul. Especially in Romanticism, in which artworks supposedly not only depict an object, but represent holistic the artists inner side: artwork and artist converge in the Ego. As defined by C.G. Jung, probably not the Ego alone, but the personal and collective Unconscisiousness and finally the Self. When the Artist finished his work, he knew that gods and humans alike would feel pleasure when they see the painting.
“The Monk by the Sea” (“Der Moench am Meer”) Caspar David Friedrich
True. Crowds clustered araound the paintings “The Monk by the Sea” (“Der Moench am Meer”) and “The Abbey in the Oakwood” (“Abtei im Eichenwald”), which were created as a composite work. Investigation of nature, incorporated always proportion, harmony, and unity. Similarly, in his Metaphysics, Aristotle found that the universal elements of beauty were order, symmetry, and definiteness. That was clearly revived in Caspar David Friedrich’s art. What is perhaps the most famous Caspar David Friedrich,”Monk by the Sea”, was completed in 1810, and is large-scale oil paintings in landscape mode 175 x 110 cm. That painting the Monk by the Sea (Der Moench am Meer) has an impressive usage of line and space, but also “uniformity and boundlessness”, as Heinrich von Kleist once remarked: “Nothing can be sadder and more uncomfortable than this position in the world: the only spark of life in the vast realm of the dead the lone center shared circle the picture, with its two or three mysterious objects like an the apocalypse, as if it had Edward Young’ Night Thoughts. And, since it in its uniformity and boundlessness it has nothing but the frame in the foreground“. This sentence was written by the poet Heinrich von Kleist one year before his suicide in an review of this painting “Monk by the Sea”.
Psychoanalytic interpretation
In my humble opinion, this painting of the central Berlin Alte Nationalgalerie on Berlin’s Museum Island, is also a showcase, both for photography and psychoanalytic interpretation. Where are your leading lines directing you? Well – to infinity. There is only on vertical in this painting, that is, that silhouette of the monk. In fact, so I reaffirm this psychoanalytic formulation, the painting has something visionary. It offers an insurmountable simplicity in the composition. Three horizontal zones divide the painting: the sky with raspberry mist, black sea and almost white sand, each delimited by the yank edge and the horizon. The only vertical line is the monk, a point, a human counterpart to the vastness of nature – in the void. Exceptional the human: Upright and defenseless.
“The Monk by the Sea” (“Der Moench am Meer”) Caspar David Friedrich
In his painting, Friedrich steps over all valid rules of landscape painting or a landscape photography, more radical than ever before. There is now nothing more to see. The creation has no perspective, no depth anymore, the narrow dunes shore is just a whitish stripe, that rises at an obtuse angle to the left and from the apex. By the monk, the only vertical line, the dunes shore decreases to the left. In a traditional landscape, the foreground is kept dark, only in the middle distance, the colors are lightened up. Exposed on the horizon, abruptly drawn as with a ruler, and extremely low in between the narrow dark strip of water, is actually: nothing
This is because the image is composed almost entirely of heaven. Up to the horizon line one can find some orientation, because there are still proportions visible, especially the monk.
He represents something like a scale, but embodying the background no proportion can any longer be detected
The background clearly represents the non-measurable, the unconsciousness, the spirituality in nature. This refers to the shoreline because the sky seals over the deep blue in a way that the shoreline is mirrored at the height of the monk figure. All lines literally flee like rays, from the middle of the painting and also the blue awakens the illusion of depth. An impression of bright clouds just above the monk separates the horizon line sharply and creates two zones. The land-maritime zone ínteracts like one, single surface starting at horizon.
The monk vertainly represents Friedrich himself, according to the romantic ideal that every art has to show the inner form of the artist – paintng and artist are the same. Or on other words, the artist paints, what he sees in himself. No wonder, das this art can be easily related to C.G. Jungs concept of our inner world.
Lines
From the worn out “rule of a third” in photography composition, only the horizontal division is viable: pre-foreground, middle ground, background. Each is associated with a natural element: Air, Water, Earth. Drastically, the sky occupies five sixth of the image. Any limiting scenes, like rocks, shrubs, trees or a main motive to frame and highlight is missing. Only the wooden frame limits the image content. This creates openness to all sides and the impression of virtual infinity. As an infrared photograph has shown, Caspar David Friedrich painted over two ships, in the interests of this elementary space and line experience. The deliberately thoughtful, geometric composition of the painting receives its special emphasis through two successful Invasions: The monk is placed by the painter on a little promontory, which protrudes into the sea, like lighthouse. Geometrically his horizontal position conforms to in Golden Ratio , which – in accordance with a classical Cartesian theory of proportions was the harmony ideal of Greek art. The golden ratio (“sectio aurea”) is the division of a straight line in two uneven portions such that the entire route to greater leg behaves like the greater part of the route smaller leg.
Golden_ratio_line
This golden ratio, also known as the divine proportion, golden mean, or golden section, is a number often encountered when taking the ratios of distances in simple geometric figures such as the pentagon, pentagram, decagon and dodecahedron. In mathematics, two quantities are in the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities or: a+b to a as a is to b. The figure on the right illustrates the geometric relationship. This image outlines generated more excitement than the central axis. If you follow the shore line, one ends on the horizon, the other on th border of the clouds and blue sky.
Colors
There are no contrasting colors, which stand out significantly from one another, dominate the picture, but an uniform gray tone with flowing transitions. The image is designed tone on tone. Whitish-brownish extends the sandy beach. Leaden grayish, to almost black surging water. Variations of blue and gray piles up the sky. It gives a gloomy, uneasy feeling, very much the opposite of the light in French impressionism. Well, it is the North Sea with dark water, in pale, melancholical light.
“The Monk by the Sea” (“Der Moench am Meer”) – cut
The land lacks any vegetation, just a barren soil. The blowing of the wind and the noise of waves and a cold breath of unconsciousness seems to meet us. The monk looks vulnerable and lost with himself and the infinity. Although small and fragile, he is not meaningless, because he is the only living creature, aware of the situation, the only vertical in a structure of horizontal. No object no without observer. The Monk represents the opposite of infinity – mortality and consciousness.
Symbolism
The Abbey in the Oakwood
The Abbey in the Oakwood (German: Abtei im Eichwald) is the oil painting by Caspar David Friedrich adjecent to the “Monk by the Sea. It was painted between 1809 and 1810 in Dresden. The ruin is again the golden ratio; the dead trees rise up to the sky.
The Western Monasticism is often not characterizes by contemplatives alone (except strict orders) like Sufism. Benedikt von Nursia, the father of Western Monasticism created that proverbial: “Ora et labora”, pray and work. In other words, following Max Weber’s great sociological-religious studies, rationality and spirituality merge.
Caspar David Friedrich’s painting “Monk by the Sea” has psychological content. It represents the existential fundamental loneliness of man in the universe. A modern, a worldly symbol of the finite ego as guest of the infinite. Both literally and figuratively located in one the “border situation” on the Land border and in the face of centreless limits. It is increasingly strengthened and reaches finally this extreme situation, which may, as C. G. Jung believed, to be the point, at which the collective unconscious opens to an “ubiquitous continuum That continuum represents “an unextended omnipresence” or the “death of the ego”. The picture shows in a metaphysical sense the minor role of the ego, the individual against collective archetypes of the unconsciousness.He also suggested that finding the Self is like a marriage which becomes rarely or perhaps never smoothly and without crises a personal relationship; “There is no consciousness without pain”. The first step to the individuality is the
break off with the unconsciousness of the herd. “It is the loneliness of mature man, who no longer ´depends on the value judgements of his environment, but in his relationship to the Self is firmly established.”
Like in another of my favorite painting of him: “The wanderer above the mist”. Both, “The “monk” in landscape mode and “The wanderer” in portrait orientation show the same basic human condition, in complementary settings, sea and mountains. The theme of the solitary wanderer and his longing for primeval nature is a common one in German Romantic literature. But Caspar David Friedrich sought to express in painting his own mystical or pantheistic view of nature. “The divine is everywhere,” he once wrote, “even in a grain of sand.” He was lonely, a serious and solitary figure, who spent most of his life alone, painting the countryside of his beloved Germany. His mysterious and haunting landscapes expressed not only a love of nature, but also an intense inner world.
Conclusion
To me, Friedrich had a truly unique style; he could transform landscapes from a mere forest to a wooded wonderland where each branch symbolized something greater, something deeper. He was an early symbolist, to early for him. His trees were no longer just trees, but beautiful wooden creatures that represented the German strength or the longing for transcendence. The rays of the sun didn’t just serve to illuminate the ground but to show the light of heaven.
Unfortunately, reception of Friedrich’s work deteriorated as he aged. Eventually even his patrons lost interest. Friedrich died while his art was no longer wanted. Critics thought it too personal to understand, completely disregarding what made the work so original in the first place.
However, his works were regarded highly later, by Symbolist and Surrealist artists, such as Max Ernst. The time took note of the allegorical meanings that saturated Friedrich’s canvases as a great source of inspiration and foundation. Carl Gustav Carus was a friend of Casper David Friedrich. Carus, a painter, nature philosopher and scientist, was seen by C.G. Jung as forerunner of psychoanalysis.
Caspar David Friedrich’s The Solitary Tree
Another fascinating painting in this room: The Lonely Tree (German: Der einsame Baum). This is an 1822 oil-on-canvas painting also by German painter Caspar David Friedrich. The work depicts a panoramic view of a German landscape of plains with mountains in the background. A solitary oak tree dominates the foreground. Notice the broken, rotten top pointing to the sky. Despite the missing tree crown, the old tree still hangs on live visible by its green leafage. The roots, supposedly symbolizing the German people and their culture are firm and deep. The rotten top represents the German elite at that time, during the counterrevolution, 25 years before the tragically failed Revolution 1848. Just like today, a rotten, broken elite, but will the tree survive this time?Not with destroyed roots.
Friedrich loved encryption but coded his messages with clear symbols: The ancient tree, perhaps a German oak, is at the very center; at his feet is a swampy waterhole, a shepherd leaning on the tree and watching over his little flock. Behind, bathed in bright light, we can see a village surrounded by pastures, bushes and fields. Far in the background rises a steeple from behind the hills, the roofs of a city are visible. The city with its gothic church towers shall be read as metaphor for the Christian Middle Age. The painting is thus divided into a row of staggered, parallel planes, from the distant past to the present.
Friedrich influenced quite a few artists. It is no surprise, that among his admirers was another outstanding painter , the Norwegian Symbolist Edvard Munch, whose work has been explicitly related to Friedrich’s. Munch could identify with Friedrich’s symbolism and in one of his work a clear reference is seen to Friedrich’s “Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon” on the left.
Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings tell a lot of the early nineteenth century, inspired by the French occupation and the Napoleonic Wars, the era of Metternichs Restoration, the connection between early nationalism, which was at that time a progessive, liberal movement. The art historian Jens Christian Jensen attaches a clear political meaning to this work: his commitment to liberal political ideas of republicans, who were prosecuted as ‘demagogues’ and disturbance.
Sources
Boime, Albert. Art in an Age of Counterrevolution, 1815-1848. University of Chicago Press, 2004
Jens Christian Jensen, Caspar David Friedrich – Leben und Werk, 1974. 10 Auflage 1995
Rüdiger Safrabski, Romantik eine deutsche Affäre, Hanser 2007
Kurt Kersten, Die Deutsche Revolution 1848-1849, Kassel 1055
Last fall, I travelled all over Al-Andalus in the footsteps of philosophers, poets, warriors and great mystics Sufi’s like Ibn-Arabi. If you are interested in philosophy, science history and intercultural transmission of knowledge, Al- Andalus is your place and I invite you to read further. Al-Andalus represents a singular, tragic and wonderful moment of cultural history, however, also a warning, despite being obscured by its Western romanticized view.
Being an outpost, al-Andalus did give more freedom to outstanding thinkers, but they were a minority. A transmission of knowledge existed, but that was filtered and soon tolerance stopped by fundamentalists from North Africa invited to help out against the Christians advances.
It was the very autumn, when CNN sent those images from Munich of a welcomed mass immigration in the world. Influenced and attracted by the history of Al-Andalus, I remember seeing those strange pictures with rather mixed emotions. Indeed this “German Fall” would on New Years Eve turn into a winter like the “Arab Spring” did.
Anyway, Al-Andalus is one of many icons of Europe’s cultural diversity. It is also a visible warning, despite it’s history has been heavily obscured by a Western romanticized view.
Please be aware, this is just an essay, written to collect my memories of al-Andalus. In first two main chapters I want to connect history and culture with an emphasis on Sufism. In the last chapter this essay presents al-Andalus’ beauty in art and architecture and last but not least its great people.
For those in a hurry, who just want a quick powerpoint intro to the history of al-Andalus:
al -Andalus an anticipated Renaissance
Medivial Spain
“al-Andalus” is the historical and also geographical term for the epoch, when Islam dominated from the eighth to the fifteenth century Southern Spain. It refers to the cities of Almeria, Malaga, Cadiz, Seville, Cordoba, Jaen and Granada. The contact of Islam with all the good and evil of the West created the unique culture of Al Andalus. The culture shock of the invaders anticipated a (failed) Islamic Renaissance, with great thinkers of secular philosophical and mystical Islam.
It is a fact that al-Andalus developed a unique frontier society. Cordoba, at one time the capital city of Al-Andalus, was the center of a sophisticated and rich civilization. In its heyday, Cordoba is often praised for its intellectually advanced culture, its centers of learning and its great libraries. In those years, there were about one million people, 200,000 houses, 60 palaces, 600 mosques, 700 baths, 17 universities and 70 public libraries in the city.
Cordoba The Mezquita
al-Andalus and Andalusia are different two terms and even opposed. The ambiguity, of course, based on the phonetic similarity. In Arabic, al-Andalus refers to any Muslim Hispania (that is to say up to Duero River, the northern border in the tenth century, or only the kingdom of Granada in the XIV century). The word Andalucia (Andalusia) is used in Spanish that in the course of the thirteenth century.
The Moorish era is so regarded as the golden age of cultural prosperity and religious tolerance among Muslims, Christians and Jews. The myth of al-Andalus – too good to be true. Every time, every culture, indeed every society creates myths in which they reflect themselves. This is different to living mythology as defined by C.G. Jung. Every discipline – temporal or spiritual – in the world has among its practitioners, those who engage the faith beyond the common boundaries of doctrine and dogma, seeking an unmediated relationship with reality and self realization. Myths load the cold randomness of existence with meaning, to organize the world into good and evil. Myths are like magical mirrors the viewer reflect the picture that he and his peers have of themselves. One of the favorite myths of the educated classes of the West is the one from Splendor and the decline of Moorish Spain considered as the golden age of science and the arts and Christian-Jewish-Muslim harmony – under the protection of a tolerant, mild, of reason through the Islam on European soil.
The Alhambra, Granada @fallenangel
The Muslim Spain as a place superior humanity was invented 250 years ago in the period of Enlightenment and has been renewed in countless versions. Political myths always serve these interests at the appropriate time. At that time French ideology based on radicalized revolutionary ideals wanted to contrast the sclerotic rigid Catholic Church with an idealized, almost deistic purified Islamic alternative. A world without Pope, dogma or inquisition (which indeed has strong Spanish roots). As Rousseau’s noble savage, also the figure of the noble Muslim or noble Orientals of Pierre Bayle, and later Karl May and others form a critical “model of virtue and self shame” towards the European culture and civilization. Jean-Jacques appeared the cultural activist and champion of the opressed; but he also provided arguments which served the purposes of the Jacobine terror in contrast to Montesquieu and Voltaire.
In Herder’s humanity utopia, it finally appears as the Hispano-Arabs act as “Teacher of Europe”, who bring the light of the “oriental Genius”, to end the culture occidental “darkness” of the Medieval Age. The romantic turnings with their longing for the past and an enchanted place in the Moorish traditions and legends are an ideal decor for tales of chivalry, honor and selfless love. Washington Irving (“Tales of the Alhambra”, 1832) started this with his book an Alhambra cult” and as a result the cultural tourism with relevant travel reports – as mine.
The famous Rainer Maria Rilke wrote 1912 in a letter from Spain: “By the way, you need to know, since I’m from Córdoba an almost rabid Antichristianity, I read the Quoran, often it creates a voice so I feel all it strengths, as the airflow inside an church organ.“
Ibn al-‘Arabi – al-Andalus seen from Jungian view
Little private Museum Córdoba dedicated to mystics an philosophers
There is no better biography (to me), which relates the greatness of al-Andalus and the offer the Islam rejected, than that of the Sufi master, poet and philosopher Ibn al-‘Arabi . The reason, that I am attracted or at least fond of Sufism, is Ibn al-‘Arabi. His Sufism is more of a secular, almost a pantheist like Taoism and approachable for Westeners even from C.G. Jung.
Some say Sufism, or Tasawwuf as it is known in the Muslim world, is Islamic mysticism; others say it is the primordial mystical tradition, much older than Islam, using Islam as a structural frame as Gnostics usually did. Perhaps Sufism is best defined as an universal path to union with God through self reflection – individuation. In Jungian psychology there are many concepts that illumine the relationship between soul and Absolute, human and God: the ego as the center of consciousness and the Self as a path to god; the individuation process whereby the ego increasingly realizes its source and dependence upon the Self; the alchemical conjunction of ego and Self. See here another of my essay about Sufism: Sufism the Gnostic chameleon – muscle and brain of Islam.
Sufis understand themselves as the only heir of a spiritual heritage, which had been split in many religions and sects. Like Tao, Sufi is eternal, and uses words like “drunkenness” or “grape” or “heart” … As Rumi puts it: Before garden, vine or grape were in the world Our soul was drunken with immortal wine.
To Ibn al-‘Arabi Sufism is best defined as a universal path to union with God through self reflection – individuation in Jungian terms. In Jungian psychology there are many concepts that illumine the relationship between soul and Absolute, human and God: the ego as the center of consciousness and the Self as a communication path to God or even rather gnostic, a part of god.
Everything that exists is a part of and a manifestation of the Oneness of God. Humans are part of God. The idea of ones Ego is the result of ignorance.
Ibn al-‘Arabi was born in a Taifa called Murcia, one of the many petty-kingdoms in al-Andalus, in AD 1165. At the age of twenty he was initiated into Sufism.His father Ali Ibn al-Arabi was a man of influence as he considered Cordoba‟s chief judge Ibn Rushd. When Ibn Arabi was 8 years old, Murcia was occupied the family moved to Seville, the great intellectual centre. This is where Ibn Arabi spent the next 30 years of his life. Seville was also an important centre of Sufism, with a record number of Sufis living in the city. He met two women saints here who had a strong influence on him,Yasamin of Marchena, and Fatimah of Cordoba. Due to Ibn Arabi‟s extraordinary scholarship and spiritual insights, his fame spread throughout Andalus.
Cordoba‟s Qazi Ibn Rushd, also the master interpreter of Aristotle, requested Ibn „Arabi’s father for a meeting with Ibn Arabi.This meeting is important in that of the two illustrious men, one was a follower of the edicts of reason, who became the most influential thinker in the West. The other was almost a Gnostic for whom knowledge meant “vision”, who became a towering personality in Sufism. From the 1190s he engaged in three decades of travels as a wandering scholar, poet and mystic, visiting the Maghreb, Egypt, Arabia, Syria and Asia Minor. In 1223 he finally settled in Damascus.
Ibn al-‘Arabi applies Sufism rigorously. To associate anything at all with God would be shirk. Therefore, nothing can exist except God.
However, Ibn al-‘Arabi believed that God had a transcendental as well as an immanent aspect. God was manifested in, but also extended beyond the material universe. Ibn al-‘Arabi had a hidden, non-religious side. In the Juderia, the Jewish quarter of Cordoba, I visited a peaceful little museum to Sufism with a little bookshop. A poem of Ibn al-‘Arabi on rough, self-made paper caught my eye, so tourism or not, I bought it. This is one of my favorite poem by him:
My heart has become capable of taking on all forms. A pasture for gazelles and a convent for Christian monks, and a temple for idols and the pilgrim’s Kaa’ba, and the tables of the Torah and the book of the Quran. I follow the religion of Love: whatever route Love’s caravans shall take, that path shall be the path of my faith.
Tarjuman al-Ashwaq, or the ‘Interpreter of Desires,’ the first edition of which was completed in 1215 A.D.When the poems were later criticized by religious scholars as being to sensous, he had to add an explaining comment. There are other statements from The Bezels of Wisdom and The Treatise on Being, which go in the same direction.
Identity of self and God. Thou art not thou: thou art He. Thou never wast nor wilt be, Thou art neither ceasing to be nor still existing. Thou art He. [TB]
God is all things. The Cosmos is His form. The forms of the Cosmos are the manifest Reality, He being the manifest. He is also their inner essence, being also the unmanifest. He is the first, since He was when they were not, and also the Last, since in their manifestation He is the Essence. [BW X]
God is essentially all things. He permeates through all beings created and originated. [BW X]
He is Being itself, the Essence of Being, He is the Preserver of all. In preserving all things, He is preserving His form, lest anything should assume a form other than His Form, which is not possible. [BW X]
One of the most prolific of the medieval Sufi writers, al-Arabi wrote over 150 books. Unfortunately, very little of this output was translated, up to the early 20th century.
His texts are of great interest, aside from its literary merits as delightful (but highly encoded) Sufi love poetry. Reynold A. Nicholson supplied extensive commentary for each poem. This is key to disentangling the Sufi narrative from the exterior form of the work. At this level, Sufi love poems may actually be interpreted a philosophical treatise with profound insights.
The whole of the spiritual life begins, Ibn ‘Arabi would say, in the realization of transcendence, and Ego ends in it Jung would say. What lies between is the discovery of the intimate heart of each individual being the self. So the discovery of God is equally the self-discovery of the individual. The world is no longer static, but the dynamic theatre of the Divine manifestation, and every movement in it is essentially a movement in love of God. It is simultaneously “He and not He”, as Ibn ‘Arabi says, just like the image of a person in a mirror. The particular quality that he often employs in his writings is that of the constant interplay of paradox, similar to the Zen koan, a Taoist poem, to force the mind to reach its limit so that the truth may be seen without limitation.
al-Andalus Myths and Reality
al-Andalus war and peace
The reality is, that al-Andalus has seen numerous religious and ethic fights and many revolts and revolutions. In short, it was also blunt Islamic imperialism. It is the fact, that 800 years of Islamic rule of Al-Andalus were a permanent war and inner-Islamic struggle between ethnics, sects, Islam fractions, fiefdoms, or dynasties of Islam. There were also constant fights with uprisings of the non-Muslims, slaves, or against Christian intruders and Muslim raids or failed expansions into Christian territory. Furthermore the Renaissance was primarily not defeated by the Christians, but destroyed by “Islamist” fundamentalists (the second wave of Berbers), who viewed Al-Andalus decadent. From al-Andalus from Arab troops and gangs launched regular raids (al-ghazw, Arab. ” the rampage”) deep into the backcountry of the Christian barbarians. They plundered repeatedly the Rhone Valley, terrorizing southern France, occupied Arles, Avignon, Nîmes, Narbonne, which they set on fire 793, devastated 981 Zamora and deported 4,000 prisoners. Four years later, they burned down Barcelona, killed or enslaved all the inhabitants, 987 they devastated the Portuguese Coimbra, which then seven years remained uninhabited. León along with surroundings was destroyed by the Amiriden ruler al-Mansur, “the Victorious” (981-1002), known for burning all philosophical books, which he got hold of. He led during his reign about fifty vampaigns, one regularly in the spring and one in autumn.
al-Andalus Islamic tolerance
The Orientalist Bernard Lewis has pointed out, that the “myth of Spanish-Islamic Tolerance was particularly promoted by Jewish scholars for a very good reason: “One of the main reasons was the prolonged refusal of Christian Europe, in regards of emancipation and recognition of Jews. To offset this, Jewish intellectuals led the historic case of al-Andalus in the battle, “those beautiful and unmatched Civilization “, as the English statesman Disraeli wrote: “During this blessed centuries it was difficult to distinguish the followers of Moses the followers of Mohammed. Both they built palaces, gardens and Wells, sided equal the highest offices of state, competed in an ambitious and enlightened in the distance trade and vied together at famous universities.”
Also in recent years al-Andalus evocative sound soothes confused elites of Europe scared and offended by unending violence and war in the Middle Easte and by the advance of Islamist terror in their own cities. Just opening the borders is and contact is fruitful, isolation and struggle is seen as deadly.True, Christians and the Jews enjoyed under Muslim rule limited religious freedom. Nobody was forced to convert, there, but there were numerous penalties and executions of real or alleged religious violation. Apostasy was like today atoned with the death. Christians as well as Jews were granted a Dhimmi status, an Arabic term that refers to its non-Islamic embracing population living in Islamic conquered lands and subject to special tax. The Dhimmi is a distinctly subjugated second class non-citizen. Granted, this status also brought a certain degree of security and even participation. Influential Christians, as well as Jewish, made a good living as scholars, administrators, even run petty kingdoms called Taifas and were integrated into this rich culture. The attempt of a tiny minority of Islamic scholars to reconcile Islam with Greek philosophy proved ultimately unsuccessful due to persistent religious resistance. Philosophers were banned and their books burned by the orthodox majority. Now, that’s not what I really wanted to focus on. I am interested in the historical and cultural dimension of that period and in particularly Sufism.
Rise and fall of al-Andalus
Pre-conquest
Al-Andalus history is one of invasion and immigration; they came over the Pyrenees or over the sea, warriors or merchants. The blessed Iberian Peninsula at the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic was an attractive place for Carthaginians, Romans, Phoenician and Greeks. Carthage the trade city at the North African coast had its branches in Andalusia. After the Punic wars the Romans valued this piece of country for approximately 700 years. Very important Roman personalities were originally from Andalusia, so the philosopher Seneca to whom a monument is dedicated in Córdoba and Emperor Trajan and Hadrian. After the Fall of the West Roman empire the Visigoths reigned briefly 3 million inhabitants. Visigoths believed to a Christian heresy called Arianism so they were never entirely comfortable with the Church of Rom nor with the Byzantine East Rom. They saw their legitimization from their noble descent.
Andalusia was soon conquered by the Arabs and mostly Berbers, the Moors. They dominated almost 800 years the south of Spain. Unlike the Visigoths, the Islamic rulers did interact with the Roman, Greek and Hispanic culture, which created the uniqueness of Al-Andalus I want to focus on the cultural aspects of that historical period Al-Andalus. If the Arab were conquerors of the Iberian Peninsula or created by the interaction of cultures the identity of Spain is still a hotly debated topic, which has been controversially discussed by two historians Americo Castro and Claudio Sanchez-Albarnoz.
According to Claudio Sanchez-Albarnoz the signs of the Roman and Visigoth culture in Andalusia must not to be discarded and the influence of the Iberian Romans culture to the Muslim Invaders not to be overlooked. Also, it is fact that Islam interacted not only close with the two religions of the book, but also Greek philosophy. This has influenced deeply the history of Spain, also Europe, but not the orthodox Islam in its core constituency.
Rough overview over the Muslim Period
After a passible betrayal of the Byzantine Exarch (viceroy) Julian, the count of Ceuta, an army under the leadership of Berber commander Tariq Gibraltar (Jabal al-Tarik, the Rock of Tarik) invaded 711 AD and short time later controlled, large parts of Spain.It was the most western part of the Islamic Empire, which itself stretched from Lisbon to the Indus. The Muslim rule in al-Andalus can be divided in five major phases:
711-756: Dependent Emirate of Damascus. Al-Andalus is ruled by the Umayyads.
756-929: Independent Emirate after the Abbasids replaced Umayyad dynasty in Damascus and Abd-al-Rahman I takes refuge in Cordoba.
929-1031: Caliphate of Córdoba with Abd-al-Rahman III first proclaimed caliph.
1031-1261: Taifa Kingdoms. Political division of al-Andalus inidependent petty kingdoms called Taifa. Later the Almoravids and then the Almohads took power.
1238-1492: Kingdom of Granada. Last stronghold of the Arab presence in the Iberian Peninsula.
During the whole epoch also Islamic sailors and pirates crossed the Coasts of southern France, Italy, Sardinia, Sicily, Greece on. Their devastating raids resulted in the depopulation as many contemporary accounts document. Crete, recorded in a chronicle, was looted 827 for twelve days, and the inhabitants of 29 cities were driven into slavery. Another chronicle tells of the case of Syracuse after a nine month siege in 878: “Thousands of people were killed, and it was there booty like never before in another city. Only a few managed to escape. “
The troops of the emirs and caliphs consisted partly of large contingents of non-Muslims. The raids presented – in addition to the filling of the rulers treasury – the supply of fighting slaves, but also those of working slaves or women in the harem. And it had yet another purpose, according to the historian Ahmed Mohammed al-Maqqari from the North African. Because of the terror, he wrote, which the Arab horsemen and sailors spread, the later conquest was easier: “Allah, on this manner sows fear among the infidels, so that they are not there dared to stir, and to fight against the invaders; only as a supplicant they approached, begging for peace. “
To be clear, raw brutality, enslavement, pillage were the practice of all armies of the in the past. But the “excess, the regularity and the systematic nature of devastation », says the British-Egyptian Historian Bat Ye’or, distinguish the Islamo-Arab expansion of military operations of the then Greek, Slavic, Latin armies, and make them to “perhaps the greatest of lootings of history”.
The Muslim combatants were inspired by the idea of jihad, the holy war, a central concept in Islam until today. Islam divides the world into the Dar al-Islam (House of Islam), in which the law Allah prevails, and in the Dar al-Harb (House of War), residence of the Infidels, meaning all non-Muslims. The goal of jihad is to bring the people of the world under the law of Allah, to bring under the Sharia. “The jihad is a sacred duty” , wrote 14 in the century the famous Ibn Khaldun, a politician, sociologist and descendant of a noble Arab family from al-Andalus, “because of the Universality of the Islamic mission and the obligation to anyone to convert to Islam , either by persuasion or by force”.
Arab Invasion
The invasion seemed to happen like an accident, more like a private enterprise than centrally ordered. After the brief 710 exploratory raid led by a Tarif bin Malluq (remembered in the town of Tarifa, where it happened), Tariq ibn Ziyad, governor of Tangier, sent 711 an expedition of 7,000 Berbers to the Iberian Peninsula through the Strait of Gibraltar. Tariq ibn Ziyad conquests swiftly Algeciras (Portus Vandalusius) and defeats the Visigoth king Rodrigo at the Battle of Guadalete. The location of the battle has been described at various but was probably thirty-five kilometers to the north-west of. The Visigoth troops were decisively defeated and fled northwards, spreading terror and despair, because the invaders triumphed over the Visigoth army and eliminated their king.
Musa, the Arab governor of Tunisia and Tariq’s superior, follows 712 to incorporate the Berber conquests to the Arab Empire. It is often claimed that religious convulsions and resentments to the Visigoths, may have favored the quick surrender of many cities like Cordoba, Malaga, Seville and Toledo (capital of the Visigoths) In 713 Merida fell, this has been a refuge for many Goths in the region of Murcia. It is true, that the Spanish-Roman population disliked their Visigoth leaders and the Jewish community the treatment of the Christian majority. The existing network of roads laid down by the Romans and the standard pragmatic approach, giving treaty on favourable terms to surrenders have helped. But in any case there is a lack documentation of Arab conquest. The first Arab chronicle that relates the event, that of Ibn’Abd al-Hakam is in effect after a century and a half. Maybe, it is due to the fact, that the first three major actors vanished quickly. In 713 Musa’s son Abd al-Aziz, who was appointed Governor of al-Andalus as Musa had been recalled to Damascus 712 and never heard of. Musa’s deputy Tariq also fades out of history. Musa’s son Abd al-Aziz, married in kingly ambitions Egilona, the widow of Roderic, but got murdered in Seville in 715.
Myth of Visigoth King Rodrigo
With the Islamic conquest a myth is connected. The Visigoth Count Julian sent his daughter Florinda Cava to the Visigoth court of Toledo. King Rodrigo (Roderic) raped her and the enraged Count turned to the Islamic conquerors. This development is said to have led to the rapid demise of the Visigoth kingdom and has probably a historical core. In Spain, the figures of the lecherous King Rodrigo, of Count Julian and his beautiful daughter Cava Florinda were themes of folk romance songs. In those romances the king must pay for his lust, through a two-headed snake, which eats both his heart and his private members as a kind of symbolic punishment for the rape and the destruction of the Visigoth kingdom in southern Spain.
Emirate of Dependent Damascus
Caliphate of Córdoba
It took a while, until the spoils of the victory were divided, and the Berber grumbled, since they counted for the majority in the army, but got short changed by the Arabs, who saw them inferior. Córdoba became the capital a few years after the invasion.
There were numerous uprising of the Berbers. On one occasion the Arabs called in a Syrian relief army in, which, after quelling the Berber unrest turned against the Arabs. The Syrian were given some fertile lands and settled, fractionizing al-Adalus even more. A pattern we will see more often later in the history of al-Andalus. The invasion was brought further, as Arab army crossed the Pyrenees at the eastern end and took Narbonne in 720. In an attack on Toulouse in 721, the Arabs suffered a defeat. A defeat through Charles Martel ended the France adventure, logistically over-extended, and up against an equally powerful force. They continued raiding Christian possessions and got rich by tributes an looting, until fragmented Muslim states weakened under the Taifa period. Muslim petty kingdoms got invaded in return, raided or had to pay tribute.
In 750 the Umayyad Caliph was overthrown by the Abbasid clan. Only one young man, Abd al-Rahman an Umayyad prince fled from Damascus and established the Iberian branch of the dynasty in 756. Only with this establishment of the Emirate of Cordoba Uma by Abdel Al Rahman I, Southern Spain was brought in a solid and permanent form Islamic rule.
Umayyad Emirate and Caliphate
As described above, the Umayyad conquest of Hispania established the dependent Emirate of Cordoba. The situation changed after the Umayyad caliphs in Damascus were defeated by the Abbasids. Al- Andalus and Cordoba became an independent Umayyad outpost of the Abbasids rule in Baghdad. The independent Emirate of Cordoba was established by Abd al-Rahman I, which marks the westernmost expansion of both the Muslim rule in Europe.
Later Abd al-Rahman III, called al-Nasir (or Victorious), succeeded in 912 his grandfather as emir and ruled until 961 for almost 50 moon years. An astute politician, Abd al-Rahman adopted the supreme title of Caliph in 929, to legitimize his imperial pretensions over the claims of Abbasid and Fatimid rivals. Cordoba became during his reign the greatest metropolis of Western Europe, rivaling Constantinople. He had pacified the realm, dealt aptly with his Fatimid rivals, and stabilized the frontier with Christian Spain.
Almoravids 1086 until 1147
His son Al Hakam II brought Cordoba to the height of its power. He expanded the Mosque of Córdoba and a library which included 400,000 books and manuscripts from religion to philosophy and rule book subsidence. His successor was less successful, their period is called in Arabic the time of confusion. Invasion, civil wars and complex ethnic conflicts between newly arrived Berbers from North Africa against Arabs and the already assimilated first wave Berbers brought the caliphate down. On the death of al-Mansur finally internal struggles reappeared and Al-Andalus disintegrated 1031 into numerous kingdoms called Taifa. The caliphate disappeared and the aftermath was a patchwork of petty Taifa kingdoms fighting each other sometimes of religious lines.
The fragmented Taifa Kingdoms of Al-Andalus
1031-1261 Taifa Kingdoms
Al-Andalus fragmented 1031 into numerous kingdoms, the most powerful were those of Seville, Toledo, Zaragoza and Badajoz.
Abdallah ibn Buluggin, a contemporary explained the rise of the Taifas:
“When the ‘Amirid dynasty [of al-Mansur] came to an end and the people were left without an imam [leader], every military commander rose up in his own town and entrenched himself behind the walls of his own fortress, having first secured his own position, created his own army and amassed his own resources. These persons vied with one another for worldly power, and each sought to subdue the other.”
Those Taifa kings were not from the Umayyad family, nor did they have any traditional claims to authority, so their ability to exert authority was limited to their ability to militarily conquer lands. With dozens of commanders rising up in the mid-11th century, conflict was bound to happen. Later the Almoravids and then the Almohads halted momentarily the Christian domination, but also incorporated it in their Berber empire.
Almoravids came to Spain in the eleventh century to stop the inexorable advance of the Reconquista, but their rigid understanding of Islam marked also end of tolerance in al-Andalus. Almoravids were a Berber dynasty controlling an empire stretching from Morocco to al-Andalus, so it lost its independence and became merely a province. Almohades replaced in the twelfth century Almoravids. They were even more literal interpreting the Koran. Almohad (al-Muwahhidun) means ‘monotheistic’.
Defeat at Las Navas de Tolosa (1212)
This fragmented situation obviously favored the advance of the Christian kingdoms of the North which was slowed down by Berber armies from North African kingdoms. This Almoravids dominance 1086 until 1147 and the Almohad dominance from 1172 until 1212 proved more a curse than a blessing. During the Reconquista, Muslim states fell one by one to the Christian kingdoms invading from the North. The major cities of Cordoba, Seville, and Toledo fell from the 1000s to the 1200s. Eventually the Almohades suffered a major defeat at Las Navas de Tolosa (1212) until 1261 all but one Taifa Kingdoms had vanished.
Granada – last stand of Islam in Al-Andalus
1238-1492 Kingdom of Granada
In the days following the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (1212) years, the Spaniards conquered the Guadalquivir valley. One Muslim state – Granada – was able to escape conquest by Christians in the 1200s. After the fall of Cordoba in 1236, the rulers of the Emirate of Granada signed a special agreement with the Kingdom of Castile, one of the most powerful Christian kingdoms. It became the only Muslim kingdom of Granada territory, ruled by the Nasrid dynasty. 1238-1492 the Kingdom of Granada represented the last stronghold of the Arab presence.
Its territory was mountainous, which facilitated the defense. Furthermore, the extent of its coasts facilitated trade. The kingdom of Granada achieved great cultural and artistic splendor, though their kings often were forced to pay tribute to the Christian monarchs of Castile.
Culture of Al-Andalus
We hear that the Spanish are the heirs of the Arab-Muslim culture that has been present in Spain for more than seven centuries. Some even say that the Spanish are “half-Arab”, anxious to find exotic origins, distinct from those of all other Spaniards. The existence of a Spanish vocabulary whose root is Arabic is not a strong argument in favour of the thesis of the Arab-Muslim legacy, as the phonetics, prosody, morph syntax of Spanish Arabs are few, while the Latin affiliations Germanic and Christian are absolutely predominant. There were many languages spoken in al-Andalus.
High Arabic used by Mozarabics and rulers
Latin, the high language used by Christians
Hebrew used by Jews
Mozarabic language a continuum of Romance dialects was spoken by many groups in the territory of al-Andalus.there are preserved documents written in Mozarabic.
Andalusia Arabic, or Hispano-Arabic, was a variety or were varieties of the Arabic dialects spoken by all groups in the territory of al-Andalus
Berber dialects spoken by the new Berber of al-Andalus
Al-Andalus was the birthplace of important philosophers and religious scholars and some of then played a pivotal role in the Jewish history. In Roman times the Stoic philosopher Seneca needs to be mentioned.
Sufi Mystics
Sufism
Sufism is a continuity of Near Eastern tradition using any religion as a vessel and structure. It may be at the same time indigenous to Islam. You may read more about Sufism in my other essays. Muslim mystic-philosopher gave the esoteric, mystical dimension of Islamic thought its first full-fledged philosophic expression, but they were called into doubt by many scholars, who were suspicious of the monastic tendencies of their metaphysical teaching and often allegorical interpretation of the Qur’an. Ibn ‘Arabi, the most well known Sufi in the West, faced fierce theological controversy over the great Muslim mystical thinker. Even during his lifetime, Ibn ‘Arabi’s conformity with the Muslim dogma was called into doubt by many scholars. Following Ibn ‘Arabi’s death, these misgivings grew into an outright condemnation of his teachings by a number of influential thirteenth through fifteenth century theologians who portrayed him as a dangerous heretic bent on undermining the foundations of Islamic faith and communal life. Ibn ‘Arabi’s advocates, however, praised him as the greatest saint of Islam who was unjustly slandered by the bigoted and narrow-minded critics. Ibn ‘Arabi was rejected by many in Islam, for example, Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), the Wahhabi movement as a pantheist who leads people into heresy with are heretical innovations. But supporters see him until today as a saint who explained reality in the most profound way. His writings are not for the layman, but rather in the spiritual and scholarly elect.
The Near Eastern Tradition is based on Christian desert ascetics & monks of Syria and Gnostic Tradition, i.e. salvational knowledge to escape the prison of the material world and reunite with God. In the 9th century those Gnostic themes appeared in Sufism: a model of emanation and return. There were l‘Sober’ (later ‘Orthodox) Sufis prominent in Baghdad and Iran like Junayd (d. 910), al-Sarraj (d. 988), al-Qushayri (d. 1072) who attempted to portray Sufism as thoroughly ‘Islamic’. Early Sufis like Ibn Hanbal were portrayed as Sufis and Gnostics and got even mainstream acceptance.
Ibn al-ʿArabī, in full Muḥyī al-Dīn Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad, also called Al-Sheikh al-Akbar or “Magister Magnus
born July 28, 1165, Murcia, Valencia—died November 16, 1240, Damascus),
His major works are the monumental Al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyyah (“The Meccan Revelations”) and Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam (1229; “The Bezels of Wisdom”). Educated at Sufi school of Ibn al-Arif in Almería (Taifa of Murcia), moved to Sevillia and later Damascus. Father friend of Philosopher Averroes. Human beings as manifestation of God’s attributes God: “I was a hidden treasure….”
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali
Born c. 1058
Tus Persia, Great Seljuq Empire
Died 1111
Muslim theologian, jurist, philosopher, and mystic of Phas been referred to by some historians as the single most influential Muslim
God is ‘Light of all Lights’ – Gnostic model
Jalal al-Din Rumi
born c., 1207, Balkh [now in Afghanistan]—died 1273), l
the greatest Sufi mystic and poet in the Persian language, famous for his lyrics and for his didactic epic Mas̄navī-yi Maʿnavī (“Spiritual Couplets”) the cry of the reed-flute
Neo-platonic philosophers
philo
In Islamic times, the attempt to reconcile Islam with Greek philosophy was to last for several centuries, but ultimately proved unsuccessful due to persistent religious resistance.
Jews were given high positions as something more reliable than Christians who were under latent suspicion to be a treacherous partisan of the enemy Christians States. And towards Muslim dignitaries they had the advantage, that they could never be a threat to the Caliph or Sultan. Without tribal or family connections to the courtyard, infidels never hope itself to gain power, and owed their by sharia in prohibited position only because of the arbitrary decision of their ruler created a strong loyalty.
After Samuel Ibn Nagrella died 1056 under unclear circumstances was followed by his son Josef, also a gifted scholar in his official post. At 1066, there was an anti-Jewish pogrom. The thousands of members of the Jewish community of Granada were slain, with them also the Jewish Vizier. Pamphlets and poems as that of pious jurist Abu Ishaq had the mood prepared: “These Jews, who earlier in the Middens a scrap of colored cloth sought to bury their dead, […]
Granada has now divided among themselves […]. Drag a Tribute and dress up elegant […], and the monkey Josef has his house with marble designed […]. Hasten to cut his throat; He is a fat Hammel, take him off his money, because you deserve it more than him! “
Dishonored intolerably the most famous Jew of Moorish Spain and Cordoba, the great philosopher and doctor Maimonides wrote his works in Cairo in exile. When he fled in 1149 with his family before the persecution of the Jews from Córdoba, already existed hardly any Christian or Jewish communities existed anymore in al-Andalus. He later wrote in a much-quoted letter to the Jews of Yemen, us he had reported the local pogroms: “Remember, my coreligionists that God gives us our great burden of sin because in the midst of this people, the Arabs, has thrown […]. Never us a nation has so complained, humiliated, Humiliated and hated as they […], we were of them in intolerable Way dishonored.”
Al-Andalus has left a rich legacy of lyrical. In Arabic and Hebrew is celebrated nature, the enjoyment of wine, the love Youths, the transience of life. The sophistication, the beauty, and frivolity of poems testify to the intellectual freedom and libertinism a narrow urban and courtly elite, which is rigid from the
Whose rules too strict doctrine of God far away. It is striking, however, also the highest percentage of lobby poetry: Almost all poets have written to the mighty many hymns. This refers to another feature of their life. Not only the court Jews, but also poets and Scholar, science and art were generally part of an Oriental clientele system.
The ruler patron gave the order, and he had the power, the artists in throwing the dungeon, if he did not like the result. Only he could before he protects the snares of a fanatical theology or before vindictiveness another patron. What he chose depended on his mood or his current interests. The artist or scholar was his master dependent to death, and he had every reason to keep these in a good mood.
Fundamentalist
Even more precarious the status of the scholar was the unstable political ratios. The era of al-Andalus was marked by riots, semi-anarchy, civil war, progroms, throne struggles, conquests and reconquests. Times of peace were rare. The protective patron could be suddenly gone, murdered by the brother, expelled from another competitor tribal. The biographies of many Moorish scholars reflect this situation. They tell of escape, a new beginning, banishment, of adjustment. List of a deeper meaning. As that of the great scholar Averroes (1126-1198), the modern European philosophy owes so much.
From his audience with the Almohad Sultan Yusuf I Averroes reported: “After the Commander of the Faithful had asked me my name, just after my origins, he began the conversation by saying: ‘What they think (the philosopher) across the sky and the world? Think of them as forever or created?. It came over me, a mixture of shame and fear. […] I found my composure back, so in the end, I took the floor and he could find out what I thought about. For the goodbye, he order a gift of money, a precious robe of honor and to hand over a horse.”
Averroës was personal physician to the sultan and commented on whose behalf the works Aristotle. When the Sultan died, issued his successor Sultan Jakub”Al-Mansur» 1195 a decree, in which the philosophy and the “Greek”
Studies were sentenced. The books of Averroes were the fire thrown, asked the philosopher in front of the Mosque of Cordoba in the pillory and subsequently banned for three years. Shortly after his release he died.
He developed one of the earliest nonreligious philosophies of history, contained in his work the Muqaddimah (“Introduction”) where he sought to explain the basic factors in the historical development of the Islamic countries. Yet he was limited by his traditional Islamic contempt for non-Muslim cultures.
(ca. AD 801-870), flourished in Iraq under the caliphs al-Maʾmūn (813–833) and al-Muʿtaṣim (833–842).
First notable Muslim philosopher, although his reputation in the Middle East was eventually eclipsed by that of al-Farabi (ca. AD 878-950). Al-Kindi flourished in Baghdad in the ninth century where he wrote on many subjects ranging from medicine, optics, mathematics, Indian arithmetic and basic cryptography to the manufacture of swords.
His attempts to integrate Islamic traditions with neoplatonic Greek thought and Aristotelian philosophy were largely ignored in the Islamic world but were ironically thoroughly studied in Latin Christian Europe. He faced trouble for his work, was expelled and books burned. He is today hailed as a beacon of “tolerance,” yet he was also an orthodox jurist of Makati law and served as an Islamic judge in Seville. He approved, without reservation, the killing of heretics in a work that was entirely philosophical in nature.
He combined Middle Eastern and Greco-Roman Classical teachings with his own innovations and became “Islam’s greatest medieval surgeon.” As a matter of fact he was “virtually the only significant physician in the Islamic world who had practical experience with surgery. Surgery was neglected also by Rhazes and Avicenna.” His surgical treatise had again tremendous influence in Christian Europe.
Avempace, Ibn Bâjja or Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Yahya, Baddscha, Badjdja, Ibn Badj, Ibn Bagga, Ibn Bajja, Ibn Bajjah, Ibn Sa’igh Ibn Baggain
(ca. 1085 – 1138)
Medieval Andalusian: his writings include works regarding astronomy, physics, and music, as well as philosophy, medicine, botany, and poetry
Ibn Ḥazm, in full Abū Muḥammad ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn Saʿīd Ibn Ḥazm
(born November 7, 994, Córdoba, Caliphate of Córdoba—died August 15, 1064, Manta Līsham, near Sevilla)
Muslim writer, historian, jurist, and theologian of Islamic Spain, and leading exponents of the Ẓāhirī (Literalist) school of jurisprudence, he produced some 400 works, covering jurisprudence, logic, history, ethics, comparative religion, and theology, and The Ring of the Dove, on the art of love.
Other Islamic Scholars
Abd Allah al-Qaysi, an early jurist spreading the Zahirite school
Mundhir bin Sa’īd al-Ballūṭī, a prominent judge for the Caliph of Cordoba,
Ibn Maḍāʾ, the first linguist to write about dependency grammar,
al-Qurtubi, a leading jurist of the Maliki school
Moses Maimonides
Cordoba
A rabbi who radically changed Jewish philosophy.
Andalusian religious groups
2 Ways to see it – Los Baños de Doña María de Padilla, Alcazar de Seville
Like in all Islamized countries, also in al-Andalus, the Dhimma law applied. Although less contractual and more like blackmail arrangement- tribute or death – Dhimma methods exerted a civilizing effect on dominated states. Jihad was the tradition of a predatory economy where the migrant Bedouin formed the main forces of the united Islamic occupations. The idea of a binding agreement with the vanquished not to exercise the usual plundering, massacres and enslavement moderated the cruelty of the Bedouins” (Bat Ye’or). A Dhimma law made the Jihad efficient. The modern lovers of Moorish occupation in Spain, with amazing logic see in the Dhimma a striking proof of al-Andalus’ tolerance. “The new Islamic policy, “writes, for example, the Yale professor María Rosa Menocal in her book “The Ornament of the World,” “not only has permitted the survival of the Christians and Jews but according to the Koranic order protected on them as a whole. “But the protection contract obeyed the secular principle of Utilitas, with pragmatic sly usefulness. The protection agreement is also called Pact of Umar, after Umar (634-644), the second Caliph, who urged his followers to protect the Dhimmi, because it is the will of the prophet and because “it for the livelihoods of your families to care”. And one of the companions of the Prophet was asked, so the
Tradition, including the tributaries of the Muslims were good. “They help you, “the answer,” to escape poverty.”The system of tribute, takes the form of Cash, or kind of work, too, “was because the first (and most important) Source » (Bat Ye’or) of economic welfare of the Umma, the Islamic Community.
The sheer demographic reality forced the Muslims to bureaucratization and legalization of raising funds. They stood as foreign conquerors for a long time against huge majority local Christian and Jewish faith. The transfer of resources and makes locking
Knowledge was ensured by the Caliph, the head of the Dhimmi communities, the rabbis and bishops with high positions in business and administration entrusted. As a command receiver and privileged beneficiaries of the Islamic Power were those prepared to squeeze their own people even if the tribute demands had long exceeded the tolerable measure.
At the same time provided a theological, political and everyday rules for permanent humiliation and “ritual humiliation” (Bernard Lewis) of non-Muslim population. The highly respected scholar Ibn Abdun wrote, for example, in 1100 in Seville a long legal appraisal as the representative of the Maliki school of law, which had prevailed in al-Andalus. It states: “A Muslim must not massage a Jew, not a Christian. He is allowed to not eliminate their waste and do not clean their latrines; it is reasonable that Jews and Christians to exercise this trade, because it is the work of the most despised “(n. 153).
“We must not allow a tax collector, policeman, lawyer or a rich Jew a Christian, to dress like a noble. Sincerely, because Satan has taken possession of them and forget the remembrance of Allah. Satan has gained mastery over them and has made them neglect remembering Allah. They are the party of Satan. Behold, the party of Satan will be the losers. (Sura 58:19). You must wear a badge on which one recognizes that you shame enough “(n. 169).
“One must sell the Jews and the Christians no scientific book sell, unless the author confess to their religion, because they translating scientific books and write their trailers and Bishops, while their authors are bishops “(n. 206).
The society was divieded in religous groups:
Muladíes (<muwalladín ‘non-Arab mother’) were the Christians during the Islamic domination embraced the new faith of Muhammad.
Mozárabes (<musta’rabí ‘Arabized): Christians who lived in Muslim Spain until the late eleventh century, preserving their Christian religion and even ecclesiastical and judicial organization
Mudejares (<muwalladín ‘non-Arab mother’) were the Moslems under the Christian domination
Moriscos were the Moslems embraced christianity in reality or deceiving
Jews
Andalusian ethnic groups
Bernard Lewis and before him, Ignaz Goldziher showed from many Arab texts of the time that ethnic criteria were commonly used: Arab north against southern Arabs, Berbers against Arabs against Arabs and Slavs against Muslims of Hispanic origin (who were the most numerous) and, obviously vice versa.
Visigoths noble ruling until conquest
Hispanic-Romans
Jews
Few families of Arab origin ruling the army (Berber and Slaves)
Old Berber, Islamized native inhabitants of North Africa, predominant in invasion army
New Berber, Mercenaries of Caliphs or Berber dynasties
Moriscos, crypto muslims after 1500
The religious “apartheid” continued in a sharp social stratification . At the top of the social hierarchy al-Andalus’ was the
Master race of Arab tribes. Set out from the most inhospitable parts of the world, they had the fertile river valleys of Spain
possession. In constant rivalry with each other for the most lucrative positions in new kingdom, they were united in their contempt for the North African Berber. This, forcibly Islamized by the Arabs and them as clients assumed had the dry mountain and steppe regions make shift and looked down at the turn Muwallad, converted to Islam Locals. The condescension of all turn hit the unbelievers who in theCities in ghettos lived, whose testimony was inalid in court, where it was forbidden to ride on a noble animal like a horse or to have sexual relations with Muslim women and marry them, and had to live constant fear, denigrated for blasphemy and for death sentenced to be. Social deeper were only slaves.al-Andalus Cities and Taifas.
The following is an overview of the most important cities.
Cordoba
Cordoba was founded by the Romans, with its mighty bridge “El Puente Romano” over the Guadalquivir River. But Cordoba’s hour of greatest glory was when it became the Moorish formal capital of the independent Emirate and later Caliphate. A brief period of one-off and relative religious tolerance witnessed al-Andalus in the second half of the 10th century under Abdurrahman III. (912-961), the Caliph of Córdoba, and his successor al-Hakam a bibliophile, who is said to have created the mentioned library of 400,000 volumes. With ruthlessness Abdurrahman had united the disintegrated rich country again and organized it with prudence.The economic boom – not least caused by the peacefulness Christian principalities, which lowered the cost of the army, and by a exceptional series yielding crops – took some pressure off the dhimmi away, helped unprecedented lavish tour of the farm and attracted large European ambassadors and the heads of the international intelligence and Art by Córdoba. Luxury and cosmopolitanism produced a “sham boom multicultural tolerance “as the Orientalist Hans-Peter Raddatz writes, “Whose existence depended less from the spirit of Islam but of its ability to maintain the flow of tribute.
Moses Maimonides was born in 1135 in Córdoba. He was a Jewish rabbi, physician, and philosopher in Andalusia, Morocco and Egypt during the Middle Ages.Little magic hotel
The city’s most famous landmark, The Great Mosque, or “Mezquita” became, after several centuries of additions and enlargements one of the largest in all of Islam. The Romans had built a pagan temple earlier on this site, which was replaced by the Visigoths by a church for St. Vincent which, in turn, was razed by the victorious Moors. The spectacular landmark took more than 200 years to complete and more than 1,000 pillars of granite, onyx, marble and jasper support its arches. When the Christians seized the city in 1236 they built a cathedral in the midst of it, creating today’s extraordinary church-mosque. The juderia is a charming entirely white district, filled with patios and flowers that state the testimony of the Jewish nucleus that already existed at Roman and Wisigoth times. In 1965, in the small Tiberias square, after over 800 years, the Cordobans finally erected a monument in honor of Maimonide, born in 1135 right there in the juderia. Persecuted and expelled from his homeland by the Moors when very young, he traveled the world studying medecine and philosophy becoming the illustrious and wise thinker we known today. Also in its western part, amongst ponds and gardens, a tribute to two others great Cordoban figures: Seneca, Roman writer and philosopher, whose statue is located in a charming square neighbouring the Door of Almodovar, and the statue of Averroes in the street of the Muralla. Another famous monument is the Alcazar, or Fortress, which was constructed by the Christians in 1326.
Seville
The Giralda of the Cathedral in Seville, Spain. It was originally built as a minaret during the Moorish periodb
During the period of Al-Andalus the Arabs arrived under the command of General Musa ibn Nusayr, and made Sevilla one of the most beautiful cities of Al-Andalus. She was known as the Isbiliyya. From 1013 on the town became one the of the Taifas kingdoms.
The Almoravids ruled it from 1086 on, and the Almohads from 1144 on. From that time on Sevillia experienced an economic boom through trade with North Africa . The Great Mosque is built, whose towers the Giralda belongs. During the Christian conquest it was taken by Ferdinand III. 1248
Cádiz
Founded as Gadir or Agadir by Phoenicians from Tyre, Cádiz may be the most ancient standing city still standing in Western Europe.Under Moorish rule between 711 and 1262, the city was called Qādis. The Moors were finally ousted by Alphonso X of Castile in 1262.
Almería
View From Moorish Castle Fortress Of Coastal City Almeria …
In 955 it became the principal harbour of Abd-ar-Rahman III of Córdoba in his extensive domain to strengthen his Mediterranean defences. In this period, the port city of Almería reached its historical peak. Its Moorish castle, the Alcazaba of Almería, is the second largest among the Muslim fortresses of Andalusia, after the Alhambra.
After the fragmentation of the Caliphate of Córdoba in 1031, Almería continued to be ruled by powerful local Muslim Taifa emirs like Jairan and Almotacin, the poet emir. Contested by the emirs of Granada and Valencia, Almería experienced many sieges, including that of Alfonso VII and it was occupied in October 1147. Within a decade, however, Almería had passed to the control of the puritanical Muslim Almoravid emirs. The city surrendered to the Catholic Monarchs, Fernando and Isabel, on December 26, 1489.
Málaga
The castle of Gibralfaro, Malaga
After the Moors invaded Spain Málaga became a major Moorish city and port – it was the main port for Granada tooe. Moorish ruler Yusuf I built the Gibralfaro as a defence against the Christian conquerors. Málaga fell to the Christians in 1487. It was one of the last cities to be taken by the Christian conquerors,
Ronda
Ronda was part of the Visigoth reign until 713, when it fell to the Arabs, who named it Izn-Rand Onda (“city of the castle”) and made it the capital of the Takurunna province.
After the disintegration of the caliphate of Córdoba, Ronda became the capital of a small kingdom ruled by the Berber Banu Ifran, the taifa of Ronda. During this period Ronda received most of its Islamic architectural heritage. In 1065 Ronda was conquered by the taifa of Seville led by Abbad II al-Mu’tadid.
The Islamic domination of Ronda ended in 1485, when it was conquered by the Marquis of Cádiz after a brief siege. Shortly after 1492, when Granada, was conquered, the Spanish decreed that all Muslims and Jews must either vacate the peninsula or convert to Christianity. Muslims who converted were called Moriscos (“Little Moors”). The term later became a pejorative applied those who had outwardly converted but secretly continued to practice Islam. The Spanish Inquisition investigated suspected secret Muslims. Systematic suppression forced the Muslims to seek refuge in mountainous regions; Ronda was one such refuge. Both the poet Salih ben Sharif al-Rundi (1204–1285) and the Sufi scholar Ibn Abbad al-Rundi (1333–1390) were born in Ronda.It was the hometown of Abbas Ibn Firnas (810–887), an inventor, engineer, aviator, physician, Arabic poet, and Andalusian musician.
Conclusion
Myth & Reality
A myth will not be primarily recognized for its upscale, anthemic sound, but especially at the obstinacy with which it resists reality and time. So the transfiguration of of the Islamic rule in Spain and its accompanying complaints of Christian intolerance systematically ignored the Arab military invasion and violent domination in Spain.
Al-Andalus is not only for a the intellectuals a mythical desired country. In one of the apartments of the Islamist bombers who killed 191 people on 11th March 2004 in Madrid trains and injured hundreds more, the police found a video claiming responsibility. The terrorist Islamists justified it by referring to al-Andalus, the land which was once belonged to the Dar al-Islam.
Fact is, there was no permanent confrontation in al-Andalus, but there was also no harmony or tolerance without limits: everything depended on the specific circumstances. The Moriscos, Jewish and Christian communities saw some of their rights (not all, of course) recognized as groups. Jews and Christians practice their religions with restrictions and with the greatest possible discretion. In the middle of the ninth century, there was an anti-Christian persecution in Cordoba, with many martyrs. The largest anti-Jewish pogrom in Granada occurred in 1066. But the situation worsened even further from the twelfth century, after the Almohad took over.
Serafín Fanjul is one of the most prestigious Spanish Arabists and written books and numerous articles denouncing the myth of al-Andalus “the most advanced civilization of the High Middle Ages,” symbol of the peaceful and tolerant coexistence of the three cultures. He refutes a homogeneous historical process of nearly eight centuries. In the eighth century, the society of al-Andalus was different from the tenth century, a time when Muslims were the majority, and Arabic cultural hegemony was a fact and Christianity in full decline. The kingdom of Granada, which lasted two and a half centuries (1238-1492), was not identical to the al-Andalus in the prior period. It was a monoculture society, with one language, one religion and often a terribly intolerant society.
The contribution of scientists of al-Andalus was undoubtedly important, especially in transmitting knowledge of Persian, Indian and Greek antiquity that reached Europe through various channels including that of al-Andalus. However the medievalist Sylvain Gougenheim questioned the claim that the Muslim world has played a single and a fundamental role in the transmission of Greek science and philosophy to the West in the Middle Ages. In his book, Aristotle at Mont Saint-Michel: The Greek roots of Christian Europe, he showed the importance of filiations Latin translations was widely underestimated thus incurring the reproach.
Bibliography
For those who wish to explore further the world that was al-Andalus, the following are recommended in the first instance:
Bernard Lewis. The Arabs in History, 1993 edition
Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East 2002 edition
Georg Bossong, Das Maurische Spanien: Geschichte und Kultur (Beck’sche Reihe)– 25. Juni 2011
Michael B. Barry Homage to al-Andalus: The Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain, ebook . Andalus Press 2014
Washington Irving Tales of the Alhambra – 2009
Claudio. SANCHEZ ALBORNOZ ESPAÑA, UN ENIGMA HISTORICO. (English Translation) Madrid – 1975
Barrucand, M. and Bednorz, A., Maurische Architektur in Andalusien Gebundene Ausgabe – 1991
Stanley Lane-Poole The Moors in Spain – ebook Published by Didactic Press 2013
Fletcher, R., ‘Moorish Spain’, University of California Press, Berkley, 1993.
Guichard, P., ‘From the Arab Conquest to the Reconquest, The Splendour and Fragility of al-Andalus’, Legado Andalusí, Granada, 2006.
Karoline Gimpel, DuMont Kunst-Reiseführer Andalusien: Kathedralen, maurische Paläste und Gärten im Süden Spaniens – 2012
For those who wish to explore Sufism and transmission of cultures, the following were helpful for me:
Idries Shah The Sufis – 1971 An exellent introduction of Sufism interest in philosophical Sufi aspects
Annemarie Schimmel, Mystische Dimensionen des Islam – 1992
Sylvain Gouguenheim Aristoteles auf dem Mont Saint-Michel: Die griechischen Wurzeln des christlichen Abendlandes – 2012
Bat Ye’or, Europe, Globalization, and the Coming of the Universal Caliphate – 2011
Bat Ye’or, The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam by Bat Ye’or – 1985
Idries Shah Tales of the Dervishes – 1993
Idries Shah Caravan of Dreams – ebook 2015
Idries Shah und Doris Lessing Learning How to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way – 1996
Sigrid Hunke, Le Soleil d’Allah brille sur l’Occident : Notre héritage arabe 1. German 1961
Who were the Gnostics? Christian commentators described them as dualists who pitted ‘divine spark or ‘light’ against the of the material world. Christianity painted many Gnostics as heretics for claiming to be Christ’s true followers while denying his singular divinity.
Its claim of a world as a mistake and shadow of the Christian creation myth (if not Christianity as a whole), favors a gloomy view of the world. Carl Gustav Jung warned that if societies do not attend to their collective shadow, a world crisis can result. Our era is one of failing civilizations and broken social covenants, is fraught with the dangers of unleashed economical, military and social chaos. We each can do our part to safeguard each other by understanding black swans.
Are we witnessing a rediscovery of Gnosticism? I’d say yes. Increased academic attention (beginning with the discovery of the Nag Hammadi scriptures in 1945) and the ensuing popular interest have produced utter confusion. It is often difficult even to tell what is meant by the word. Not only Gnosis is gnostic, classical Gnosticism of Valentinus, Basilides, but the heretics are gnostic, the Neoplatonic too, Nazism was gnostic, Islam (at least Sufism) if not also seen of heretic origins, existentialism and psychoanalysis is gnostic too. Certainly the early C. G. Jung can be seen as one.
Evil world
Confused Religions
This metaphysical dream is utterly incompatible with Christianity. The world was made fundamentally good, as the first pages of Genesis remind us. Though Creation has been corrupted by sin, its essential goodness could not be totally destroyed; being corrupted is not the same as being completely corrupt. Both Gnostics and those Christians seeking a rapturous rescue from the world have misread the architecture: our bodies are not “prisons” to be escaped, renovated, destroyed ad lib., but temples of the Holy Spirit.
So the Corinthians heard from St. Paul, whose much-abused spirit-flesh distinction Irenaeus clarifies: “the weakness of the flesh” can be “absorbed by the strength of the Spirit”; the two may then inherit the kingdom together.[1] Our resurrected “spiritual bodies” are not spiritual in substance, but in the sense that they are moved first by spirit and not by flesh. In the Christian metaphysical dream, matter is subordinated in order to be glorified – neither abolished nor discarded, but perfected.
But affirmations of the world’s created goodness require a leap of faith, and thus a rejection of knowing spiritualism and dogmatic materialism; the normativity of this stance tolerates neither.
Certainly it is true that gnostics who ridiculed the idea of bodily resurrection frequently devalued the body, and considered its actions (sexual acts,for example) unimportant to the “spiritual” person. According to the Gospel of Thomas, for example, Jesus says, “If spirit came into being because of the body, it is a wonder of wonders. Indeed, I am amazed at how this great wealth [the spirit] has made its home in this poverty [the body].” I have written here an here of the Chartensians in Southern France, which I consider a as typical medieval Neo-gnostic movement.
Now, any leap of faith has a mystery at its core. But the ‘mystery’ of Gnosticism is less a reasonable affirmation that can be accepted in love than a hopeless and anti-individual agnosticism, ever subject to opportunistic revision. Neo-Gnostics and cultural revolutionaries give us an imagined freedom from norms while imposing – consciously or not – worse commitments. It is the same liberty that defines the right to construct one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life – a sunny ambiguity the employed to extend the right to end and create life.
The Hypostasis of the Archons, recounting Sophia’s tale, says the universe started out “like a miscarriage.”[2] In a world built on stillbirth from the womb of an aeon, or on the freak chance of meaningless matter from nowhere, destruction in our own mothers’ wombs just blends into the landscape. A flight to the pleroma or an escape into “pure pleasure” will not rouse us from this metaphysical nightmare. The threefold promise of Creation, Incarnation, and Resurrection may.
Many argue with same truth in it, however, the established Christianity, that affirmed the threefold promise is merely a cultural construction: it is in fact ‘the greatest marketing sucess a a religion viewed as a product’ or in a Jungian sense a clever use of collective archetypes some of them of Egyptian origin.
The Pauline faction, being both moralistic and power-hungry, desorted the “Christian legend” to launch history’s most successful project of mass mind-control and cultural hegemony.[3] Meanwhile, Christ’s potentially human life with the Magdalene, had to be suppressed; his identification with Yahweh gave the project its trump card. Small bands of dissenters, however, preserved the truth – until Rom – East and West stamped them out.
Divine spark
Divine Spark
Pagels, a professor at Princeton, has devoted her career to the writings of these noble Gnostic underdogs, most of which have only been re-discovered beginning in the 1940s. 2006, Pagels proclaimed that the newly found Gospel of Judas would continue “exploding the myth of a monolithic Christianity and showing how diverse and fascinating the early Christian movement really was.”[4]
Among their most ‘diverse’ elements, Pagels observes, is a vaguely Eastern strain: “the ‘living Jesus’…speaks in sayings as cryptic and compelling as Zen koans.” Whereas “Orthodox Jews and Christians insist that a chasm separates humanity from Its creator,” such that “God is wholly other,” Pagel proffers “the secret of gnosis” with more than a hint of Jung’s individation: “self-knowledge is knowledge of God; the self and the divine are
The Ego, the Self and Jesus – Individuation and Transcendence
identical.” Jesus, no savior, is a mere “guide” showing us the way to a “spiritual understanding” rendering leader and follower “equal—even identical.”[5]. I have written about individuation and the Self here. Gnosis is non-creedal; indeed, the events recounted in the Christian canon are anything but literally true. Belief in the Virgin Birth is an “error,” says the Gospel of Philip, and Christ’s resurrection is metaphorical: “he rose up first and [then] died.”[6]
Self-actualization is just the beginning. Some Gnostics could even be read as bring back the supressed female spirituality – wise women. Valentinians, for example, drank not Christ’s blood in their sacraments, but a mother-spirit’s.[7] Salvation was through “Immortal Androgynous Man”; in the Wisdom of Jesus Christ, his “female name is…‘All-Begettress Sophia’ [Wisdom].” The divine narrator of The Thunder, Perfect Mind frequently adopts a feminine voice; Sophia resurfaces as the self-awareness of a depersonalized One in the Secret Book of John, where Jesus also calls himself “Mother”.[8] There’s a Gospel of Mary with the Magdalene as the favorite disciple, and in Philip Jesus kisses her, leaving the other disciples scandalized, or perhaps jealous.[9] Indeed Sects devoted to these traditions were more inclusive to women and even had priestesses. So Gnostics look almost like looking for their anima (and animus).
Gnostic heretics
The most exhaustive (and hostile) commentary on the early Gnostics comes from St. Irenaeus, the second-century bishop of Lyon. On some points he confirms the popular account of their liberal practices in his condemnation of them. Gnostics would “yield themselves up to the lusts of the flesh with the utmost greediness, maintaining that carnal things should be allowed to the carnal nature, while spiritual things are provided for the spiritual.”[10] Carpocratics even claimed that salvation demanded the experience of everything, and rather than storing up treasure in, say, virtue, it was sexual experiences they were keenest on collecting. But so what? “God,” at any rate, “does not greatly regard such matters.”[11]
Today such a statement is hardly controversial. But the bishop levels other charges – manipulation, brainwashing, adultery, polygamy, intimidation – some of which sound like the very cultish practices we do still condemn. They also sound like charges that some pro-Gnostic writers bring against orthodox churches.
To be fair, Irenaeus is polemical in its purpose to stamp Gnosticism out. But the texts of the Gnostics themselves confirm his account more than not. Their value of women, for example, turns out to be very inconsistent. In the Gospel of Thomas, Simon demands of his guru, “Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.” Instead of reprimanding him, Jesus reassures him: “I shall lead her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.”[12] In a number of texts, “the bondage of femaleness” must be shed for “the salvation of maleness”; even metaphorical interpretations do not celebrate differences, but only obliterate them.[13]
In fact, no one should be comfortable in any human body. Elsewhere in Thomas, Christ says that soul, flesh, and body are each “wretched.”[14] Matter, Christ tells Mary, will all be destroyed.[15] The Secret Book of John consistently refers to the body as a “prison” that degrades the soul, trapping it in cycles of transmigration and reincarnation so long as it lacks salvific gnosis. For Carpocratics, this belief justified the pursuit of carnal knowledge; for others, the harshest asceticism.[16] If they were sometimes ascetics and sometimes aesthetes, it was because the body didn’t matter: anything could be justified or condemned, and almost everything was, depending on what magnified ‘light’. A sort of Gnostic dualism about the texts exists today: the bad is from the Orthodox patriarchy, whereas the good is Gnostic cafeteria ethics, wich maps well onto today’s conventional narrative.
The world a mistake
But whether Irenaeus is right damming the Gnostic myths and truth-claims the bottom line today is, their cosmology deserves a hearing. What did Gnostics teach about the world’s origins?
The Gnostic story of Creation is begins before Adam and Eve. According to this doctrine, there is an unknowable being called the “True Father.” He created a being called Sophia. It is an impersonal father-principle whose emanations filled the divine pleroma, or spiritual realm, with dyads of sexual, sentient aeons. The most important aeon – of course, it’s the wise Sophia – but because Sophia was forbidden to know the True Father, she became angry and created a monstrous god named Yaldaboath or Yahweh (the most sacred Hebrew name for God) – further in her anguish, matter fell stillborn and formless from her womb.[17] Her torment, “by means of a defect,” produced a scheming demiurge, viler but duller than Plato’s.[18] It then formed the universe, and with it corporeal mankind, from the undesired matter: “material substance had its beginning from ignorance and grief, and fear and bewilderment.”[19] Philip puts it bluntly: “the world came about through a mistake.”[20] Recalling the pre-incarnate, star-riding souls of Plato’s Timaeus, the Wisdom of Jesus Christ says we existed as “drop[s] from Light and Spirit” before being trapped in bodies; it is gnosis that breaks our chains and lets us be subsumed into the same impersonal substance of the father-principle whence our drams of divinity were drawn.[21]
Zeitgeist and Gnostic worldviews
SatanCenter
Yet the Zeitgeist and Gnostic worldviews share more than an ill-fitting ethical overlap and a common enemy. For, despite certain peculiarities, their metaphysical dreams of the (new) world unite them. The current world is essentially not good.Who can blame them for this view? Goodness in the material world implies a normativity and an absolute grounding in nature, to which both Gnostics and Zeitgeist are allergic. Out acts in the flesh are irrelevant at the deepest level, since matter is devoid of intrinsic value. The strictest principles we can apply are those of pleasure/pain and that of superiority/harmdoers – individuals perceived attributes. Our refuge is in surregate religion, understood as knowledge, and the sacrosanct orientation of the global will.
Perhaps the newspeak say it best. Alive, the body seems to be what matters. But while the material is denied its intrinsic worth, the mind cannot avoid immaterial experiences like choice and thought: something persists which can say, “What my body is doing is irrelevant.” Our reduction of any life to coperate and economic ressource has really chased us outside of our body, an intellectual and voluntary abstraction of the Ego from itself, the Self. And so, even alive, the body and the soul turns out not to matter.
And it matters even less when wie are in transition from life to death or vice versa. At death, or during pregnancy artifacts might as easily be used as spare parts as be patented. We are quite finished with our bodies when we die, we’re probably finished, period. Almost like the Demiurge (demigurge) starts all over again. In a time, when I have to watch a catholic priest during Chrismas Mass , pacing around the altar, and shouting five times – wir schaffen das (Yes we can), there is almost a perverse comfort in it.
[1] Irenaeus, Bk V, Ch. IX, 1-2.
[2] Hypostasis of the Archons, 94:8-19.
[3] Pagels, Elaine. The Gnostic Gospels. New York: Vintage Books, 1979, p. xii. xv-xxiii. avaiable as pdf
[4] Pagels. “The Gospel Truth.” New York Times. April 8, 2006.
[5] Pagels. The Gnostic Gospels, pp. xv-xxiii.
[6] Gospel of Philip 22
[7] Pagels, Elaine. “The Suppressed Gnostic Feminism.” New York Review of Books. November 22, 1979.
[8] The Secret Book of John 10 and 3, respectively.
[9] Gospel of Mary 5:5, Philip 59.
[10] Irenaeus of Lyon. Against Heresies, Bk. I, Ch. VI, 3.
[11] Ibid., Bk. I, Ch. XXV, 4; Ch. XXVIII, 2.
[12] Gospel of Thomas 114.
[13] First Apocalypse of James 41:15-19; cf. Clement of Alexandria, Excerpts from Theodotus, 79, and commentary in Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies, 5.8.44.
[14] Thomas 84, 87, 112
[15] Mary 4:22-23.
[16] Secret Book of John 23, 26; Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Bk. I, Ch. XXV, 4.
[17] Irenaeus, Book I, Ch. IV, 3.
[18] Ibid., Bk I, Ch. XVI, 3.
[19] Ibid., Bk. I, Ch. II, 3.
[20] Philip 105.
[21] Wisdom of Jesus Christ (verses unnumbered; p. 118 of the Berlin Gnostic Codex).
