Chapter XVIII

The Mystery of Islam

In the Name of AllaH, the Beneficent, the Merciful.

All praise is due to AllaH, the Cherisher, the Lord of All Worlds,

Most Gracious, Most merciful.

Master of the Day of Judgment.

Thee do we serve and Thee do we beseech for help.

Show us the Straight Way,

The Way of those on whom Thou hast bestowed thy Grace, those whose portion is not wrath, and who go not astray...(Sura 1).

In these Seven verses of the opening Sura of the Holy Qur'an can the entire meaning of the Mystery of Islam be realized. It is understood (and can only be understood), in the fullest meaning of all that has gone before it...

For it is a terrible thing that I will do with thee...(Exodus 34:10).

...and in the light of all that is unfolding and coming to pass here at the end of the age, and particularly here at the Western ends of the earth:

When the heaven is rent asunder

And hearkens to (the Command of) its Lord and it must.

And when the earth is stretched out (from East to West),

And casts forth what is in it and becomes empty (of its mysteries),

And hearkens to (the Command of) its Lord and it must; (then will come home the full reality)...(Sura 84.1-5).

THIS DAY have I perfected for you your religion and completed My favour to you and chosen for you Islam as a religion...(Sura 5.3; John 16:12,13).

Therefore shall Moab howl for Moab...(Isaiah 16:7. Isa. Chapter 21...KJV).

"The great Andalusian Sufi, Muhyi 'd-Din Ibn Arabi, used to pray a prayer which begins: 'Enter me, O Lord, into the Deep of the Ocean of Thine Infinite Oneness,' and in the treatises of the Sufis this Ocean is mentioned again and again, likewise by way of symbolic reference to the END towards which their path is directed. Let us therefore begin by saying, on the basis of this symbol, in answer to 'What is Sufism?' From time to time a Revelation 'flows' like a great tidal wave from the Ocean of Infinitude to the shores of our finite world; and Sufism is the vocation and the discipline and the science of plunging into the ebb of one of these waves and being drawn with it to its Eternal and Infinite source.

Sufism is a way and a means of striking a root through the Narrow Gate in the depths of the Soul out into the domain of the pure and unimprisonable Spirit which itself opens out on to the Divinity.

To follow the Path of the Mystics is to acquire as it were an extra dimension, for this path is nothing other than the dimension of Depth.

The same compatibility is shown by the symbolism of the Circle with its Centre, its Radii, and its Circumference...If the truth were not Radiant there could be no such thing as a radius, not even a geometric one, let alone a spiritual path which is the highest example...It then proceeds to what might be described as an exploitation of this fact, the Radius being a Ray of Divine Mercy which emanates from the Supreme Center and leads back to it." Martin Lings, What Is Sufism?

A Conversation With Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Hugh Hewitt: You've written that Sufism as understood in the United States, is sometimes not the traditional understanding of Sufism in the Islamic world. Can you explain that?

Seyyed Hossein Nasr: Yes. It's really very unfortunate, because Sufism is the inner dimension of the Islamic revelation. It is not something that is extra, or that is out side of Islam, or which could be practiced seriously without paying attention to, or without practicing the Islam religion itself. But there are many people here in this country who are looking for a rapid way of realizing spiritual truths, or having a spiritual life, and who want to circumvent the usual disciplines that have been connected with a spiritual path. And therefore they try to approach Sufism without any interest in Islam.

Hewitt: Are there no shortcuts, then?

Nasr: No. There are no shortcuts UNLESS GOD WILLS IT...

In the ongoing conversation Hugh Hewitt asked: "So, different souls have different growth cycles (in other words, different rates of intellectual and emotional maturity)?" And Nasr replied: "That's right." "And they have to be respected?" "Oh yes. Definitely. Definetly."

Hewitt: Let us return to Islam before we get back to Sufism. In the West, and particularly in the United States, the understanding of Islam is often thimble-sized. What are the biggest misunderstandings about Islam that you run into in the United States?

Nasr: There are several which, unfortunately, are accentuated--not by accident, but by ill will, which is very, very sad. The first is that Islam is a religion that is spread by the sword, AND THEREFORE THERE IS AN ASSOCIATION OF ISLAM WITH WAR. Now this, of course, is not true. BUT it has a certain element that has to be studied; that is, THE FIRST SPREAD OF ISLAM OUTSIDE OF ARABIA WAS THROUGH THE ARAB ARMIES. Christianity, on the other hand, spread within the Roman Empire and caused a crumbling from within itself, you might say. But once Christianity became the religion of the West, it certainly fought as many wars as Islam or Hinduism or any other religion. And the Crusades were not begun by Muslims; they were begun by the Cluny monks, in France. But nevertheless, the idea that Christianity is the religion of peace and Islam is the religion of war has remained in the minds of many Westerners.

(The point to consider here, and it is essential to understanding the nature of Islam and Christianity, is that the Christian revelation does indeed have its roots in the doctrine of absolute pacifism, and only after apostasizing did it become a religion of war; while Islam began as a religion of the Sword and Muslims must search deep, and look beyond their own literal traditions, to discover the doctrine of strict pacifism that is hidden in the Qur-an. It is only there for those who search for it. So what, we may ask, was God's purpose in all of this? Why was God saying one thing to the early Christians and hiding the same from the early Muslims? What is the nature of the Islamic religion? We only have to look into the world to see it. The Tree is known by its own fruits. It is indeed a terrible thing that God has done with us. When Nasr speaks of Christianity here, he is referring, not to what it was at the beginning or to what it shall return to in the end, but to what the religion became in the third century after it abandoned its own doctrines, and after its unholy marriage to the emperors and kings of the Western world...Ezekiel 16; Revelation 17. KJV).

Nasr: At one time in its history the West did fear Islam because Islam had taken over the Mediterranean Sea...And so Christianity felt physically threatened. The second time Christianity felt threatened was after the seventeenth century, when the Ottomans took over Eastern Europe.

Hewitt: Up to the gates of Vienna...(It was here that Like repelled Like).

Nasr: Nevertheless, you point out something very important, (when you state that military power is not always the key to expansion). A threat comes not only from military or economic power, but also from spiritual power. Now, the West is innately afraid of the Islamic world--not because, let's say, it feels Egypt is going to send an army to capture Italy. (The question of the Middle East notwithstanding). The West is afraid of something very profound. I don't mean everybody in the West is afraid, because Christianity is still a living element in the West. But secular Western society, which has come to the fore, wants to live in secularism and not be challenged by any power. Separation of church and state in America is only a very minor aspect of this secularism. The fact is that religion has been marginalized in human society; it's for Sunday morning, but the laws on Wall Street have nothing to do with Christ. The few moral laws that remain from the founders of the American Revolution have been challenged during the last decade...

So in the West the sacred has been evicted or destroyed. And into this vacuum might flow the spiritual values of Islam, where the sacred has not been evicted and destroyed...

Nasr: I think Islam's role in the world is precisely to uphold the primacy of the sacred. And it will do so until the end of history itself. Islam is not going to follow the same trajectory of the West: from a Christian Middle Ages to a somewhat-less-Christian Renaissance to the Age of Enlightenment to the rise of secularism and finally to evolutionism and twentieth-century out-and-out secularism. This is not going to happen in the Islamic world...What you are going to have in the future is not the West versus the Islamic world, which everybody is talking about today. (Yes, the secularly religious West and the fundamentalists, or literalists of the East will come against each other. One, in fact, is ordained against the other). It will really be the secularized West against its own Christian and Jewish elements and the Islamic world. (Yes also, but in such a way as Nasr can not yet realize)...

Nasr: Islamic eschatology is very similar to the Christian--not in details, but in the grand design As far as micro-eschatology is concerned, Muslims like Christians believe that it's Christ who comes back at the end of history, not the Prophet of Islam. We believe in the same coming of Christ. Many Christians do not know that. In fact, we believe that the descent of Christ upon the Mount of Olives (whose Feet will descend at the place of True Peace) will mark the end of human history. After that, terrestrial reality will be leveled, and everyone will be resurrected and judged by the Supreme Judge...These macro-elements of Islamic eschatology are very similar to the Christian...

Hewitt: As we come to the conclusion, I want to ask you about the essay that I found the most interesting for me. It's on spiritual chivalry. What is that?

Nasr: This is called 'fatuwa.' It is very difficult to translate, really, but I've translated it as spiritual chivalry. It is an attitude of the soul and character which is giving of itself, is generous, is noble. A soul that is hard with itself, but generous with others. That is willing to forego its own comforts for others. And which acts, sort of, as God's K-n-i-g-h-t. I don't mean night, in that other sense. God's 'chevalier,' and therefore the word 'chivalry.'

And this chivalry is very important to Sufism. It is also very important in Islamic spirituality in general. Ali was the personification of it in Islamic tradition and is, to this day, for both Sunnis and Shi'ites. And perhaps through contact with Islamic sources, the Order of the Knights appeared in the Christian form in the Middle Ages, but without any precedence. Spiritual chivalry has nothing whatsoever to do with the Roman Empire. It is something which the modern world has lost." Searching For God in America, by Hugh Hewitt, pp.77-96.

The Middle Ages have passed, and this age is coming swiftly to its own conclusion. A new day is dawning upon the earth. And here in America, there is in our own time a shortcut to Islamic awareness. For the path of the just is as a shining light that shineth more and more unto a perfect day. God has brought all of us to this great moment in history in which those who have been prepared for it may leap freely, as it were, from world to world...

Those who overcome will I give to eat of the Tree of Life which is in the midst of the Paradise of God...(Revelation 2:7).

...They may leap from an Eastern to a Western state of consciousness, and back again--from the Islamic world to the Christian world to the Jewish world to the Vedic world, indeed, back to the very root of this ancient mystery of the Tree of Life--the world that the indigenous peoples of these Western continents have been guarding all these millenia. They may leap from the lower world to the higher worlds, and from the outer world to the inner--from outer, literal forms to the deep, inner principles that guide the Universe--the very principles that both restrain and inform the mind of Islam at the same time....

ISMA'ILISM is an extreme branch of the Shi'a. It split off from the main branch after the death of the sixth Imam, Jafar al-Sadiq, over a DISPUTE about the succession (This succession proceeded from Muhammad to Ali, from Ali's sons to the Seventh in line from Ali himself). The Isma'ilis are called SEVENERS because they believe Isma'il, Jafar's eldest son, to be his fathers true successor and THE SEVENTH AND LAST IMAM WHO IS NOW IN OCCULTATION (IN HIDING, UNSEEN) BUT WHO WILL ONE DAY RETURN TO EARTH AS THE MADHI (MESSIAH) TO USHER IN A GOLDEN AGE.

But in the days of the voice of the Seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as He hath declared to His servants the prophets...(Revelation 10:7).

The Shi'a majority, THE TWELVERS, who are found mainly in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon, accepted Ja'far's second son Musa as the next Imam. He was followed up by five Imams up to the Twelfth who disappeared and who is expected to return as the Madhi on the last day. Another Shi'a group, the Zaydis of northern Yemen, are called FIVERS because they accept only the first four common Imams. Their fifth Imam is Zayd, considered by them to be the Madhi.

Isma'ilism was based on four key elements: 1. A secret mystical (esoteric) teaching, which under the outward form of Islam contained a syncretistic mix of metaphysical traditions from many sources. 2. A compact organization as a secret society effectively ruled by a hierarchy. 3. An effective propaganda (missionary) machine. 4. A ruthless political programme. It greatly influenced other extreme Shi'a groups such as the Druze, Alawis, Yezidis and Ali-Ilahis and had a great influence on Sufism and on the Twelver Shi'a doctrine.

The Isma'ilis integrated into their belief system ideas taken from Jewish and Christian mysticism, Gnosticism, Manichaeism, Neo-Platonism, Hinduism and Buddhiism. They have survived centuries of intensive persecution. They have always been highly organized and loyal to their spiritual leaders and active in propagating their faith to others.

SECRET, ESOTERIC KNOWLEDGE - GNOSIS, MA'RIFAH, BATIN

Isma'ili doctrine is founded in the distinction between the literal teaching of the Qur'an and the esoteric (mystical, secret) truth hidden behind it. Every verse in the Qur'an has a literal (Zahir) and a hidden (Batin) meaning. A SPIRITUAL WORLD IS CONCEALED BEHIND EVERY WORD OF SCRIPTURE, WAITING TO BE DISCOVERED BY THOSE WHO ARE TRAINED TO USE THE KEYS OF ALLEGORY, SYMBOLISM AND NUMERICAL COMBINATIONS...The Isma'ili disciple thus gained the emotional satisfaction of discovering the "divine secrets" of the universe. He was also bound by oath and ceremony to the spiritual hierarchy of the sect, headed by the Imam. The secret wisdom which had been transmitted over centuries, was accessible only through the Isma'ili leaders and missionaries who spread the faith and initiated new believers into the sect.

Muhammad was seen merely as the revealer of the literal word and its outward, legalistic, meaning. The Isma'ili Imams were the interpreters of the much more important hidden spiritual truths, and were thus potentially greater than the Prophet himself.

THE ISMA'ILI CONCEPT OF GOD - AIN SOF AND THE TEN SEFIROT

True worship means Tawhid--declaring the Unity of God. The is includes the negation of all attributes which humans would give to God, the Ultimate One, who is totally different and transcendent. He is the unknowable mystery of mysteries, undefinable, unattainable and incomprehensible. God as the "supreme void" is beyond concept, beyond existence and beyond good and evil.

Since God is beyond human comprehension, there must be intermediaries between him and our material world. This was solved by placing a whole hierarchy of emanations (lesser Gods who separated from the same divine essence) between the One Ultimate One and our world. The first emanation from the Divine Essence was the Divine Will, also called the First Intellect or the Universal Mind (The Word). From the Universal Mind emanated the Universal Soul which in turn created the next emanation AND SO ON DOWN TO THE TENTH...

The process of creation was thus accompanied by a cosmic struggle and fall in which fragments of divine light were trapped in the matter of this world...Isma'ilism also accepts the existence of a whole hierarchy of angels and other spiritual beings. An important teaching is that all the emanations and some of the spiritual hierarchy are always manifested in (human form) throughout the ages (Romans 8:38; Colossians 1:16)...

SEVEN CYCLES

Isma'ilis viewed history as a succession of Seven Cycles of Revelation...The sixth cycle is the age of Islam in which the Speaker Prophet, Muhammad, appeared to begin the cycle...The Seven Speakers were Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad...But when the Seventh appears, he will abrogate organized religion all together. He will abrogate their laws and will institute a new era with a universal religion. www.angelfire.com/az/rescon/mgcismai.html

...They may leap out of the past into the future. Muslims must make that leap. It is obvious in the purely kabbalistic doctrines of the Isma'ilis that Islam has already anticipated it. And in the process they must also offer a true atonement for themselves (actually others will make it for them). They must experience their own form of Glasnost (if we may use the word), and awaken, first to the realization that despite what many Islamicists believe and teach, there is much that God hid from the worldly eyes of Islam itself, and then to those realities themselves.

One young woman in a recent documentary on Islam, speaking to her very loving and tolerant father, said to him in her own deeply respectful way, that there were many aspects of Islam that we Muslims do not want to come to grips with realities that we do not want to face about our own religion. This reluctance, of course, results...from zeal to be sure, but also from a lack of real substantive faith. A lack of submission? no, but lack of faith? yes. It comes from an undeveloped and unperfected imagination. It comes in the historical sense from a collective lack of personal experience--a Western experience. (No Magdalines need apply). This happens when individuals--great masses of them to be exact--are still unconsciously and immaturely unsure of the meanings of their own religion (ignorant of its complexities and of the process of human perfection itself), and when these try to expiate those uncertainties by insisting that there are no shortcomings or discrepencies, nor even anomalies in their own system of beliefs whatsoever--that there is no Mystery of Islam. And then such ideas are institutionalized when certain powerful individuals arise who not only attempt to enforce the dictates of such beliefs upon themselves, but upon others as well (shades of old St. Augustine), as if the truth itself had not the power to do so on its own. God has exploited these aspects of the Islamic mind in a great historic way. In fact the exploitation is built into the fabric the Holy Qur'an itself. It was all very intentional. How else could God judge the world? How else could God have finally created Man in Their own Universal image? possessing, as God does, a full understanding of the nature of both Light and Darkness, of the only ways in which the world could learn the difference, and the only ways in which Their own sons and daughters could ultimately learn to see these things in themselves? After all, could not God have the entire human race falling down on its knees five times a day in absolute submission to Divine Will?

Thus, O Adam, has this Night decieved thee. It is not to last forever; but it is only of Twelve hours; when it is over daylight will return...

Strengthen thy heart, and be not afraid. This Darkness is not a punishment...

For I knew thou shouldst sin and transgress, and come out into this land. Yet would I not force thee (as you now know that I can)...nor doom thee through thy fall; nor through thy coming out from Light (see John 1:1-14) into Darkness; nor yet through thy coming from the garden into this land.

For I made thee of Light; and I willed to bring out children of Light from thee and like unto thee.

But thou didst not keep one day My commandment (the commandment I gave to Abel, and afterward to the children of Light through Seth); until I had finished the creation and blessed everything in it...

But little of Darkness now remains, O Adam; and Daylight will soon appear...(I Adam and Eve, chapter XI. The Forgotten Books of Eden).

How else could God have brought us all full-circle back to the words which say: And God said, Let there be Light? (Genesis 1:3), and to those that say: Now stand upon thy Feet. The great spiritual fact is that there is only One true religion in the world, the religion of LOVE. Love is the fulfilling of the Law. Some are coming to it as Muslims, some as Christians, some as Jews, some as Hindus, others are already there. And there is also only ONE reality. Open the window, turn on the television, look out into the world and see it. See the terrible thing that God has done with the sons of Adam, with Hindus and Jews, and with Christians and Muslims alike. See what God has hidden from them all. See Creation unfolding. See the mind of Man being created in the process. The world is aflame, burning up as it is, all shortcomings, discrepencies and anomolies. Didn't you sow good seed in the field? the disciples asked.

Nasr says that Ali was the personification of the perfect spirit of chivalry in Islam. This may have been so for the time, but the Darkness is passing and I personally would not want to be subject to any of the present-day followers of Ali, to the mullahs and the scholars of Iran or Iraq, nor to the Sunnah of the other Middle Eastern nations. For where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. The sainted Ali was an Islamic warrior, a slayer of other men in the name of Allah, a contender for power and authority, and Nasr sees no anomaly in this. Of course there is none (so long as our conversation is confined to the past, and even to the present, for Islam is still performing the perfect will of Allah). It is, indeed, a terrible thing that God has done with men. And when we reason that Ali was motivated in all of these things by the teachings of Islam, then we must reason that it is a terrible thing that God has done with men throught the precepts of the Holy Qur'an.

For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is Life and Peace...(Romans 8:1-14).

In a work entitled The Holy Grail, Norma Lorre Goodrich explores this phenomenon--the knight's quest for purity of thought, excellence of spirit, as well as mastery of the ways of sacred warfare--among Christians in Europe. We reason, however, that the impetus toward knighthood stirred the spiritual imagination much earlier than Seyyed Hossein Nasr might allow, as the oral traditions concerning The Fellowship of the Mystery (and its relationship to the hidden Feminine principle) and the epic confrontation that would unfold at last between the forces of Light and the forces of Darkness in the world, began to slowly filter throughout that ancient world after the time of Christ. (Please consider Ephesians 3:9; Eph. 6:10-17 and 2 Corinthians 10:1-6 in this light, and begin to compare these precepts with what we are learning of the oral traditions of the Torah and the Book of Joshua, and then with the texts entitled The Triumph Of God, Descriptions of the Final Age; The War Of The Sons of Light And The Sons Of Darkness; The Route of Belial and Weal And Woe: An Exhortation in Theodor Gaster's edition of The Dead Sea Scriptures, or in any comparable edition of these texts). The whole of it will provide our basis of understanding, and our means of comparing as well as contrasting Christianity in the West and Islam in the East, and for discovering the spirit of Light and the spirit of Darkness that drives and energizes both. We will not, however, simply compare and contrast them, but we will see how both Christianity and Islam--not in their separate literal traditions which constantly divide them, or in the literal tenor of the Qur'an which has been given not only to enflame the spirit of Darkness in Islam but to ultimately facilitate the judgment of God upon Islam itself, but in their common esoteric tradition--are one and the same. To be a true Christian is to be a true Muslim, and to be either one is to be a true Jew.

Islam and Christianity are both traveling together through time as it is, and both shall be fulfilled in the most excellent way in the lives of those who ultimately receive the Book in their Right Hands here in these last days. (Sura 84.7). These are those who shall come to perfection in the Mystery of Christ, and who shall realize at last the Power and the meaning invested in the Divine number Five, thus in the Name (YHVH), Yod HEY Vaw HEY (10-5-6-5), and how this most Ineffible of Names translates kabbalistically, not only into the name YHShWH (Jehoshua), but into the Name ALLaH and into the piercing cry of DIN, as it is also written: My righteousness is near; my Salvation is gone forth, AND MINE ARMS SHALL JUDGE THE PEOPLE...(Isaiah 51:5).

THE EAST

EL = AL, ALLaH

One of the Arms of the Angel of Divine Presence extends from the center of the Oracle (Central Europe) into Russia, and thus upwards into all the other regions of Asia, including China. The other extends into all of the regions of Islam in the Middle East, and thus into the affairs of Islam everywhere else throughout the Asian continent.

But when Isa (Jesus) perceived unbelief on their part, he said: Who will be my helpers in Allah's way? The disciples said: We are helpers (in the way) of Allah: We believe in Allah and bear witness that we are submitting ones...

And when Allah said: O Isa, I am going to terminate the period of your stay (on earth) and cause you to ascend unto Me and purify you of those who disbelieve and make those who follow you above those who disbelieve to the day of resurrection; then to Me shall be your return, so I will decide between you concerning that in which ye differed...(Sura 3.52, 55).

To interpret this text in the Qur'an one must be versed in the mysteries of Christianity, in the doctrines of Paul and in the subsequent hidden teachings of the Gospels. One must be fully aware that all of these things have been perfecting themselves Westward:

THE WEST

And a party of the followers of the Book say (to you): Avow belief in that which has been revealed...in the first part of the day, and then (they themselves) disbelieve at the end of it, perhaps they go back on their religion...(Sura 3.69-72).

Who are the disbelievers? They are chiefly the religious and political leaders of our time, the leaders of those Indo-Judeao-Christian-Islamic nations who have, as the Qumran Scriptures related, Payed no attention to the hidden meaning of what is actually taking place. And then they are all who follow them, and who partake with them in the ringing clash of nations and in the Unfruitful Works of Darkness, despite all the commandments in the Scriptures not to do so. Thus the Mystery of Iniquity is being fulfilled in the great belligerences and antagonisms that both Islam and Christianity pose, not only to themselves and each other, but to the world at large. For just as each tradition in itself is capable of elevating the souls of the children of Light, bringing them forth to the Greater Light, each is also capable (as all the world can plainly see) of keeping the minds of the children of Darkness in total Darkness, and bringing them instead to the day of war and destruction:

The day wherein there is no doubt...(Sura 3.9).

The day when eyes shall stare...(Sura 14.42).

The day of regret...(Sura 19.39).

The day of the earthquake...(Sura 22.1).

The day of reckoning...(Sura 38.16).

The day of the encounter...(Sura 40.15).

The day of the gathering...(Sura 42.7).

The day of terror...(Sura 56.1).

The day of the indubitable...(Sura 69.1).

The day they shall not speak...(Sura 77.35).

The day when hidden things will be manifest...(Sura 86.9).

We have been with the structure of the Tree of Life long enough now in these studies to understand how what the New Testament refers to as the Great House (2 Timothy 2:20), and what the Qur'an cryptically refers to as the Sacred Mosque (Sura 17.1; Sura 2.191), the Grail Legends refer to as the Grail Castle. Goodrich also speaks of those who see in the Grail Castle an image of Solomon's Temple. Indeed, because they are one and the same, built out of the same "building blocks of enlightenment" as the Buddhist teachers call them. It is into this same structure that God framed the mystery and the mind of Islam. The Grail Castle had three names she says: Eden, Joy, and Souls. "In other words, it was once called Paradise. Then it was called 'Joy' when Lancelot and Elaine resided there and she bore Galahad. But when it was Christianized, or re-Christianized by Perceval, it was renamed Castle of Souls." (p.65).

The Grail stories, which began to assume their present literary form(s) around the 10th century, shaped as they were by the social, political, and religious conditions of those times, are the eventual result of those oral traditions that accompanied the Gospels (back up) into Europe during and after the first century of this age. The fabled Fisher King whose castle it is, with whom we will also associate the figure of Arthur, is a composite figure of the Christ-Mystery. Sadly enough the King (the collective Higher mind of the people) is wounded and ill, and can only be healed by one such as Perceval--who one Grail historian, Goodrich notes, likens to such another unwitting one as Paul.

No one, of course, sets out on such a quest on their own, but must be prepared by the Spirit, without one's knowledge of it. (To realize as a youth that one is even on this path would interfere with life's necessary lessons and the emotional qualifications one must develop along the way). It progresses to a vision, a flash of illumination, a Bath Kol (a Heavenly Voice), which admits the unsuspecting soul into the Castle itself. Proclaim! (or Read! or Recite! or Rehearse!), came the first word to Muhammad:

Read (or Rehearse) in the name of your Lord Who created.

He created man from a clot.

Read (or Proclaim) and your Lord is Most Bountiful,

He who taught (the use of) the Pen,

Taught man that which he knew not...(Sura 96.1-5).

__________

Nun. By the Pen and by the (Record) which angels (men) write,

By the grace of your Lord you are not mad...(Sura 68.1-2).

__________

"Iqraa!--which being interpreted may mean 'Read!' or 'Proclaim!' or 'Recite!' The unlettered Apostle was puzzled; He could not read. The angel seemed to press him to his breast in a close embrace, And the cry rang clear 'Iqraa!'

And so it happened Three times; until the first overpowering sensation yielded to a collected grasp of the words which made clear his Mission; its Author, God the Creator; its subject, Man, God's wondrous handiwork, capable by Grace of rising to heights sublime; And the Instrument of that Mission, the sanctified Pen, And the sanctified Book, the Gift of God, which men might read, or write, or study, or treasure in their souls.

The veil was lifted from the Chosen One's eyes, and his soul for a moment was filled with divine Ecstasy...When this passed, and he returned to the world of Time and Circumstances and this world of Sense, he felt like one who eyes had seen a light of dazzling Beauty, and felt dazed on his return to common sights.

The darkness now seemed Tenfold Dark; the solitude Tenfold empty; The mount of Hiraa, henceforth known as the Mountain of Light, the mere shell of an intense memory. Was it a dream? Terror seized his limbs and he straightaway sought her who shared his inmost life, and told her of his sense of exaltation, and the aweful void when the curtain closed." Commentaries 30 and 31, in Yusuf Ali's The Meaning of the Glorious Qur'an.

The initiations continue, however, and intensify (through prayer and study), but now on an evolving conscious plane. (As a result all the implications of Heisenburg's dictum begin to apply, and every subsequent communication between the prophet and the Higher World will be colored, or marred, or even brought to perfection as it is, by the spiritual perfections, but also by the spiritual imperfections of the prophet himself, or rather of those who memorized and recorded the words). Many orthodox Muslims, being the "manly" religion that it is, and zealous for their own private interpretations of these things, will not entertain the criticisms that attend this period of Islamic history (and many in the Muslim world have payed dearly, even with their lives, for doing so). Many of these insist that Islam has no imperfections and that Muhammad was fully cognizent of the meanings of the revelations he was channeling from above (and also borrowing from the other religious traditions as some say), and that Islam as a religion is set squarely on a foundation of Spiritual Knowledge and a full Understanding of Things Divine. It is true: The Qur'an definetly knows...

Seyyed Hossein Nasr: "The Koran is a central, sacred reality of Islam. It is for Muslims, the verbatim word of God and it corresponds to Christ. It is sacred in the same way that Christ in Christianity is sacred. Everything about Him is sacred--His body, even His robe, His voice, His word, and His Spirit. In that way everything about the Koran is sacred for Muslims. There is the physical Koran that they carry. The calligraphy which writes the word. Of course the sonorous aspect is significant--the chanting of the Koran--because the Koran was first revealed through sound. The Prophet heard it. And then, of course, the content and the ideas and the teachings..."

...even if Islam does not. Muhammad's, however, as the world can presently and clearly attest, was a Night Vision. What he understood, he understood. What he did not understand, he did not understand. And we must reason that he was chosen by the Spirit for his role in history, and as a conveyer of the words of the Sacred Qur'an, precisely for this reason: because of his extraordinary receptivity and obedience to the word, but also because of his very earthly and human inclinations that caused and allowed him to go back and forth across the line that separated the Higher and Lower worlds. Muhammad was indeed a prophet, but of a very natural sort. Like the whole of Judaiasm and Christianity before him, he was a perfect vessel, a bearer in his own person of the sublime elements of Darkness and the unseen elements of Pure Light. Remember: Allah has a plan, and Islam had a mission:

His glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns are like the Horns of Unicorns (a symbol of Allah--One): with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth; and they are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and they are the thousands of Manasseh...(Deuteronomy 33:17).

Thus this equation (this relationship as it is), between the Light of Day and the Darkness of Night passed from the person of the Prophet into the life of Islam to this very day:

Surely We revealed it on the Grand Night.

And what will make you comprehend what the Grand Night is?

The Grand Night is better than a Thousand months.

The angels and Gibreel descend in it by the permission of their Lord for every affair,

Peace! it is till the break of the morning...(Sura 97.1-5).

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I swear by the Mountain (the Higher Sinai),

And the Book written in an outstretched fine parchment.

And the House (the Ka'aba) that is visited.

And the Elevated Canopy and the Swollen Sea...(Sura 52.1-6).

A Night Journey to the Farthest Mosque

Glory to God who did take His servant for a Journey by Night from the Sacred Mosque (from Harim al Sharif in Jerusalem) to the Farthest Mosque;

Whose precincts We did bless--in order that we might show him some of our Signs: For He (Allah) is the One who Heareth and Seeth all.

We gave Moses the Book and made it a guide to the Children of Israel (Commanding them): Take not other than me as a Disposer of your affairs.

O you who are sprung from those whom We carried in the Ark with Noah! He was a devotee most grateful.

And We gave clear warning to the Children of Israel in the Book, that Twice would they do mischief in the earth and be elated with mighty arrogance (and Twice they would be punished), (See Isaiah 40:1,2)...(Sura 17.1-4).

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Say: I seek refuge with the Lord of the Dawn,

From the mischief of created things;

From the mischief of Darkness as it overspreads...(Sura 113.1-3).

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And obey God and the Apostle that ye may obtain mercy. Be quick in the race for forgiveness, And for a Garden whose width is that of (the whole of) the heavens and the earth prepared for the righteous...(Sura 3.132-133).

As we trace the path of Islam full circle, as we have with all the other religious traditions, from Eden back to Eden again, and as we continue to piece the entire World Mystery together in our minds (as we have been doing throughout these chapters) we will see how all of the rituals of the East are a reflection of the realities of the West. And we will want to see how all of us together, everyone who has arrived on these Western shores, have come at last to the words: And to those that overcome will I give to eat of the Tree of Life which is in the midst of the Paradise of God. (Revelation 2:7; 22:14). Having been brought out of the historic conflicts and judgments of the East--God keeping His promise by bringing a remnant out of every race of humankind, and out of every religious tradition, across the Sea, to America--we have the direction now to finally come together across these divisions, to overcome at last the most subtle form of Darkness that exists on earth: that form of Darkness that seems to the unwary, and to the fearful, to be the vanguard of "freedom" in the world; thus that form of Darkness which appears, not as an evil force in their lives, or a threat to their own religious well-being, but as their own Angel of Light. (Please understand the words in Isaiah 14 and 2 Corinthians 11)...Thus the words, Light upon light:

God is the Light of the heavens and the earth. (John 1:1-14).

The Parable of His Light is as there were a Niche,

And within it a Lamp...

The Lamp enclosed in a Glass,

The glass as it were a Brilliant Star,

Lit from a Blessed Tree,

An Olive, neither of the East nor of the West,

Whose oil is well-nigh luminous,

Though Fire touched it not.

Light upon Light!

God doth guide whom He will to His Light:

God doth set forth parables for men; and God doth know all things...(Sura 24.35).

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Or like the depths of Darkness in a vast deep ocean,

Overwhelmed with billow, topped by billow,

Topped by (dark) Clouds:

Depths of Darkness, one above another:

If a man stretches out his hand he can hardly see it.

For any to whom God giveth not Light, there is no Light...(Sura 24.40).

Hebrews 12:1-29 (KJV).

By the Sky, (displaying) The Zodiacal Signs;

By the Promised Day (of Judgment)...

Those who persecute (or draw into temptation) the Believers, men and women,

And do not turn in repentence, will have the penalty of Hell: They will have the penalty of the Burning Fire.

For those who believe and do righteous deeds, will be gardens, beneath which rivers flow: That is the Great Salvation, (the fulfillment of all desires)...(Sura 85.1-2, 10-11).

"The Castle also resembles the human body where the rooms one comes to know are called self-knowledge. What else is meditation but a slow reasoning with the self? Thus the Castle interior is open and close at hand. Our own interior is the Castle of our souls, and similarly another celestial building. (Ephesians 2:17-22; 1 Peter 2:6-8). Each room (mansion) requires us to know our hearts. Humility is no excuse. Apology is no excuse. Why? Humility may be defined as as a refusal to know oneself, or as a total lack of self-knowledge." The Holy Grail, p.120.

Jesus said, Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over the all...(Gospel of Thomas 2).

The heavens and the earth will be roled up in your presence. And the one who lives from the Living One will not see death. Does not Jesus say, Whoever finds himself is superior to the world?...(Gospel of Thomas 111).

Among those things hidden from the imperfect state of mind, in addition to the meaning of the Grail itself, is the realization that the Grail has been in the custody of the Divine Mother (Holy Wisdom Herself) all these centuries, and the Feminine Principle of Reality that attends Her. Thus the Grail knight's particular idealization and service to the divine, the magic, the beauty, and the power of womankind (Femalekind). He seeks not to suppress her, however, or to rule over her, but to find Her and to liberate her from her captors. (And in our times this means from the fundamentalists and literalists who do not know the difference between the Female gender and the term Woman as it is used by Wisdom Herself everywhere throughout the sacred Scriptures.

Actually the Companions fell directly into the little trap that Wisdom Herself had set. Having transcribed the words of the Holy Qur'an as they were channeled from the mouth of the Prophet, or as they later remembered them, they then enacted and followed these words after the dictates of their own purely Bedouine-masculine hearts, without giving a great deal of thought to the meaning of the words themselves, and all of this to the ruin of many. Many true Muslims, along with many "non-religious" over the centuries who have tried to transcend such literal meanings and to release the Divine Feminine from her lower status, and from her house of prison, have payed dearly for their attempts. (Please see chapter 5). Without Her, however, the true knight is helpless, he has virtually no raison d'etre. Without him, of course, she is helpless. There is no balance, and no final liberation. The two are intricately and tantrically (and might we add, erotically) bound to each other, and are much more than equal to each other in the mysteries of the Tree of Life. She who guards and protects is priestess (or Queen). He who gains entrance is priest (or King). Together they are Urim and Thummim--Lights and Perfection.

She, the keeper of the Grail and the Sword, Excalibur, confers upon her Champion the title of Knight of the Round Table, and a place in The Fellowship of the Mystery...He fills the space that is empty in her soul....(Ephesians 3:9; 6:10-17). He, the true knight, the true Mystic Warrior, pursuing the Divine, arrives at last at the Castle of True Love and completes the Circle.

The Mysteries of the Divine Mother (hidden in the figures of the Three Marys--representing the Past, the Present, and the Future, as well as in the Three divisions of the Holy City) were committed to the Christian mysteries from the cross: Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy Mother! and from that hour the disciple took Her into his home. (John 19:25-27). At that time all of the manifestations of the Ancient Mother (which includes the obscure figure of Allatah, the Feminine personality of Allah, of which Islam is very aware), were subsumed in the figure of Mary (or Mariam), and carried away from there to the Western ends of the earth...

"The word 'Shekinah' (an historic manifestation of the Feminine Principle of the Godhead) derives from 'dwelling place'...Islamic tradition also recognizes The "Sakina,' or the Spirit of Allah as resident both within the human soul and the Tent of the Ka'aba." Sophia, Goddess of Wisdom, by Caitlin Matthews, p.115.

Mary--the name, Mare, which means "the Sea,"--reveals the physical and true-mythical relationship between the amniotic fluids (the Waters of Life) that surround and safeguard each developing child in the process of birth, and the Great Sea across which the people have come in their mystical journey to this end of the earth, and to the Birth of the Coming Age. The mystics of Islam know of Her Presence, and know that She would not leave Her daughters subject to the male-principle-out-of-balance for ever, and therefore the full import of the words:

And to Samood (We sent) their brother Salih. He said: O my people! serve Allah, you have no other God but Him; clear proof indeed has come to you from your Lord; this is (as) Allah's She-camel for you--a sign, therefore leave Her alone to pasture of Allah's earth, and do not touch Her with any harm, otherwise painful chastisement will overtake you...

So they slew the She-camel and revolted against their Lord's commandment, and they said: O Salih! bring us what you threatened us with, if you are one of the apostles...(Sura 7.73, 77).

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I swear by the Sun and its brilliance.

And the Moon when it follows the Sun,

And the Day when it shows it...

So Allah's apostle said to them: (Leave alone) Allah's She-camel, and (give) her (to) drink.

But they called him a liar and slaughtered Her, therefore their Lord crushed them for their sin and levelled them (with the ground).

And he fears not its consequence...(Sura 91).

The following excerpts are from a book entitled: Princess. A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia, by Jean Sasson:

"So it was that in 1901, twenty-five year old Abdul Aziz returned to out land...and soundly defeated his enemies, the Rasheeds. In the years to follow, to ensure the loyalty of the desert tribes, Abdul Aziz married more than three hundred women, who in time produced more than fifty sons and eighty daughters. The sons of his favorite wives held the honour of favored status. These sons, now grown, are at the very center of power in our land. (p.18).

"My father (one of these sons) was a merciless man; as a predicted result, my mother was a melancholy woman. Their tragic union eventually produced eighteen children of whom eleven survived...Today, the ten females live their lives controlled by the men to whom they are married. Their only surviving son, a prominent Saudi prince and business man, with four wives and many mistresses, leads a life of great promise and pleasure. (p.19).

"The men of the country feel they are what they have had to become. In Saudi Arabia, the pride of man's honour evolves from his women, so he must enforce his authority and supervise over the sexuality of his women or face public disgrace.

Convinced that women have no control over their own sexual desires, it then becomes essential that the dominant male carefully guard the sexuality of his female. This absolute control over the female has nothing to do with love, only with fear of the male's tarnished honour.

The authority of the Saudi male is unlimited: his wife and children survive only if he desires. In our homes he is the state. This complex situation begins with the rearing of our young boys. From an early age, the male child is taught that women are of little value. They exist only for his comfort and convenience. The child witnesses the disdain shown his mother and sisters by his father; this open contempt leads to his scorn of all females, and makes it impossible for him to enjoy friendship with anyone of the opposite sex. Taught only the role of master to slave, it is little wonder that by the time he is old enough to take a mate, he considers her chattel, not his partner. (p.22).

"The history of our women is buried beneath the black veil of secresy...We yearn for our personal freedom. (p.23).

"Sara (Sultana's sister, a young woman forced without her consent to marry a sixty-two year old man), in Father's view, was doing what women were born to do, serve and pleasure the male, and produce his children...

I wept with the fury of one who questions the wisdom of a God who allows evil to conquer the innocent...Sara's new husband was sadistic. He had subjected my sister to sickening sexual brutality until she felt her only escape was death.

Father stood, unblinking. He probably realized that in all likelihood, Sara would be forced by the men of religion to return to her husband (after her suicide attempt). If the past were any precedent, they would advise the husband to deal with his wife in the manner spelled out in the Koran. And then they would turn their backs (on Sara's despicable situation)...Had Sara been forced to file for separation, many difficulties would have arisen. For the religious authorities might have ruled: You might dislike a thing which Allah has meant for your own good. (p.58).

"In Father's mind Sara had obviously provoked her husband into criminal behavior. It is never the fault of the man in the Middle East. Even if he murders his wife, the man will state "valid" reasons for his actions, which will be accepted by other men without question. In my country I have seen articles that honour a man for executing his wife or daughter for the crime of "indecent behavior." The mere suspicion of sexual misconduct, such as kissing, can bring death to a young girl. In addition public congratulations are given from the men of religion for the father's "notable" act of upholding the commands of the Prophet. (pp.61,62).

"To those who would listen, Hadi (the religious friend of Sultana's brother, Ali), loudly exclaimed his viewpoint that all women should be confined to the home; and that women were the cause of evil on earth...(On a visit to Cairo, however): He devoured the dancers with his eyes, and made crude remarks about their body parts, yet he swore to Ali that they were nothing but whores, and that if he had his way, they would be stoned...

(That night in the hotel): The door was unlocked...and we suddenly realized what was happening before our eyes. Hadi was raping a young girl, no more than eight years old, and Ali was holding her. Blood was everywhere. The two were laughing...

(In Rome): Hadi and Ali spent their time buying women...I saw Ali as I always had, a selfish young man, concerned only with his own pleasure. But Hadi, I knew was far more evil, for he bought the women yet condemned them for their role in the act. He desired them, yet hated them and the system that left them free to do as they would. His hypocrisy was to me the essence of the evil nature of men. (p.80)...

"Within a month (of my Mother's death) we learned from Ali that Father was preparing to wed again, for four wives were common among the Bedouin men...Father's new bride was fifteen. (p.86)...

"Father seemed pleased with his new possession...Ali cracked jokes about Father's sexual prowess. I asked my brother what he thought about the young girl's feelings in the matter--to be wed to one so much older, one she did not know or love? Ali's vacant expression told me all too clearly not only that the thought had never entered his head but that such a consideration would not find fertile ground in his narrow realm of understanding. He well reminded me that nothing would ever penetrate that dark sea of egotistical matter that constitutes the mind of a Saudi man." (pp.89.90).

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Amin Dawidar writes in his "Pictures From the Life of the Prophet," (Cairo, 1968), that Umar bil Al-Khattab, the future Khalif of Muslims, tortured Lubina, a Female Slave. And whenever he paused he said, "I have not stopped beating you out of pity, but only because I am exhausted." Abu Bakr bought her and set her free. Zunayra was another slave who proclaimed her allegience to Islam. She was also tortured by Umar and Abu Jahl.

Let our fundamentalist and orthodox brethren pay particular attention here and accept the indictment. How did the Prophet put it? "Death," it is reported in the Hadith, "is the only preacher you need." What is with you is perishing and what is Allah's is enduring...(Sura 16.96), ...Again He will cause you to die and again bring you to life; then you shall be brought back to him. (Sura 2.28). Let them die to their old nature, and to their old way of understanding and interpreting the Sacred Scriptures:

He granteth Wisdom to whom He pleaseth, and to whom Wisdom is granted receiveth indeed a benefit overflowing. But none will grasp the meaning but men of understanding...(Sura 2.269).

The ABROGATION...Whatever communications We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, We bring one better than it or like it. Do you not know that Allah has power over all things?...(Sura 2.106).

Then evil was the end of those who did evil, because they rejected the communications of Allah and used to mock them.

Allah originates the creation (in Eden), then reproduces it, then to Him you shall be brought back...(Sura 30.10-11).

Be aware, The Khalif...Not Male, not Female, but Both...(Ephesians 4:11-14; Genesis 5:1,2).

And when your Lord said to the angels, I am going to place in the earth a Khalif (Adam), they said: What! wilt Thou place in it such as shall make mischief in it and shed blood, and we celebrate Thy praise and extol Thy holiness? He said: Surely I know what you do not know...

And when We said to the angels: Make obeisance to Adam they did obeisance, but Iblis (did it not). He refused and he was proud, and he was one of the unbelievers.

And We said: O Adam! (interpret correctly here now), dwell you and Your Wife in the garden and eat from it a plenteous (food) wherever you wish and do not approach this tree, for then you will be of the unjust...(Sura 2.30, 34-35).

If he is Adam, and she is Adam, who is "the wife?" Thus the Apostle says, when alluding to Adam and Eve: This is a Great Mystery: but I speak concerning Christ (Adam) and the Church. (Ephesians 5:31-33). The term "woman" in the Sacred Scriptures does not refer to the Female gender, but it refers in its historical, spiritual and allegorical sense to all those to whom the figurative couple named Adam went in those times, and into whose hearts and minds they attempted to sow the seeds of higher consciousness. Those who received them and their teachings became their "church," "Eve." And as we know, this "woman," or rather the hierarchy of these churches (synagogues and mosques) in our time, is comprised almost entirely of males. The implications, not only for the correct allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures (and therefore for the spiritual liberation of at least half of us, no, for all of us), but also in terms of understanding the whole spiritual import of our own times, are momentous...

WELL? Do you get it yet? They don't.

Not only will the Anointed Ones of our time be revealed as the New Adam (a Male and Female joined together as One, as the first Adam was), but it is the "church," the "woman," religion in her collective Indo-Judeao-Christian-Islamic personification, who shall be called the Mother of All Living as a result. And this, because she has given birth to many sons and daughters who understand these things, even if "She" herself does not; and who, despite their love for her (for the religious institutions that have given birth to them), have grown up and removed her breasts (her literal teachings and her fundamentalist doctrines) from their mouths (Understand 1 Peter 2:2; and then Isaiah 28:9 and Hebrews 5:12-14...KJV). (And then understand 1 Timothy 2:11-15 in this same light). These sons and daughters will stand up before the world at last, on their own Two Feet. Of course, it is the spirit of Iblis in men--those who refuse to yield to right interpretation, who refuse to Break every yoke, who refuse to yield to Adam--who shall feel the judgment of the Word of God upon themselves as a result:

And when the graves are laid open,

Every soul shall know what it has put forward and held back.

O man! what has beguiled you from your Lord, the Gracious One,

Who created you, then made you complete, then made you symmetrical?

Into whatever form He pleased He constituted you...

The day on which no soul shall control anything for (another) soul; and the command on that day shall be entirely Allah's...(Sura 82.4-8, 19).

It was the very natural and brutish inclinations of medeival men (and we would like to imagine Mid-Eastern men in particular, but that is not true; the West had its Chrysostoms, its Ambroses and Augustines before Islam had its Companions), that caused and allowed them to misinterpret the Scriptures and the spoken words of the Oracles that were handed on to them, thus institutionalizing into the religious system itself what everyone else outside that system clearly sees as massive injustices, oppressions and crimes against womankind (that is, against Female-kind). But this has been the work of Divine Wisdom Herself, so that the evil in men's hearts could be manifest. And despite the very present fact that the oppressors themselves seem to be in charge of the Qur'an, and of all the interpretations and enactments that flow from it, Fiqh and Sharia, the Qur'an knows what they do not. There is that part of Allah that does not act without the loving approval of His own Beloved. (They are ONE). But She is appearing in the West now, just as She appeared in the East two thousand years ago. She has the very idea of the inferiority of the female firmly under Her feet. (Revelation 12:1...KJV). These realities will have to find their way back into the East after the judgments of the West are complete.

The fact is that every enactment, and every judgment pronounced in the Name of Allah against (or as it is said, in the interest of ) "women" (in the interest that is of preserving the traditional and archaic dictates of the past, and the authority of the male gender over the female, without any higher understanding of what these things mean), is a judgment against those who make the enactments and pass down the judgments. For they, proving they can not interpret Sacred Writ, and unable to discern the difference between the Female gender and the term "woman," become in our minds as the very women the Scriptures are referring to (the ones from which we are commanded to abstain...Revelation 14:4 for instance), and still deeply in need of coition themselves in every matter of Things Divine. Of course the Prophet, it might be reasoned, is innocent of all this. He merely channeled the words, and tried to obey them himself. Others wrote down what they thought they heard, in the only way that they themselves could hear it--through the channels of their own imperfect male-oriented minds.

I swear by the Night when it draws a veil,

And the Day when it shines in brightness,

And the creating of Male and Female,

Your striving is most surely (directed to) various (ends).

Then as for him who gives away and guards (against evil),

And accepts the best (interpretation),

We will facilitate for him an easy end...(Sura 92.1-7).

The lance dripping with "three drops" of blood also seen during the rituals at the Grail Castle are the same which pierced the side of Christ during the crucifixion. It is still dripping because Christ's blood is still being shed throughout the earth, and because the crucifixion (the Mystery of the Cross) is not complete yet. The sons and daughters of Light (the Truest of all Muslims) have still to shed their own blood in the age-ending events of these times. (Revelation 6:9-11; 11:13). Thus the Grail, among the many other descriptions of it, is the Cup of the Last Supper (the Third Meal) which these same sons and daughters will partake of, and drink down to the full. They are those to whom the Grail itself is revealed, and who have completed in their own individual lifetimes all of the stations, or internal rituals of spiritual purification. They are those who have Completed the Hajj. They have come Seven Times around--Seven Times across the pages of history to the place of Perfection here in the West. The Pilgrimage to Mecca, which is enjoined upon every Muslim at least once in their lifetime, is a great ritual reflection-below of those things that have been coming to pass in the most sublime and transcedent ways above:

Seven Times around. As Above, so Below. As in the East, so in the West.

And accomplish the pilgrimage (the Hajj or umra) in the service of Allah. BUT IF YOU ARE PREVENTED (FROM COMPLETING IT), SEND AN OFFERING FOR SACRIFICE, such as ye are able, and do not shave your heads until the offering reaches its destination...But if he cannot afford it, He should fast Three Days during the Hajj. And Seven Days on his return, making Ten Days in all. This is for those whose household is not in (the precincts of) the Sacred Mosque. And fear Allah. And know that Allah is severe in requiting (evil)...(Sura 2.196).

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As a woman with child in her ninth month bringeth forth her child, within two or three hours of her birth great pains encompass her womb, which pains, when the child cometh, they slack not a moment.

Even so shall the plagues not be slack to come upon the earth, and the earth shall mourn, and sorrows shall come upon it on every side.

My people, hear my words; make ye ready to the battle, and in those evils be as pilgrims upon the earth...(2 Esdras 16:35-40).

Because the Torah and the Book of Joshua, and therefore the Mystery of Christ, has been expressed in military terms and metaphors it has (intentionally) given rise to two orders of warriors in the world, those who take those words literally, and who fight in the ways of the lower, fallen world (and quite religiously so), and those who take those words metaphorically, and who fight in the ways of the Spirit. Both are ordained by God, and therein lies the mystique of Islam. Like Judaism and Christianity before it, there are two pathways running directly through the mind of Islam, both of them originating in the Garden of Eden when the spirits of both Cain and Abel appeared in the earth. Only one of them, however, can inherit the age to come and the world to come, as it is also written: Cast out the bondwoman and her son...(Galatians 4:21-31; Genesis 21:1-10). Both Cain and Abel (Ishmael and Isaac, along with Esau and Jacob), were cut out of the same piece of allegorical fabric. Each is a set in the same long sequence of archetypes found in the Scriptures--brothers, one Dark, one Light--representing not only the mixture of Darkness and Light that dwells in the heart and soul of every single individual, but the actual division that finally exists everywhere throughout the Adamic world between the children of Darkness and the children of Light in our time. Each has followed the (pre-ordained) path that is strongest in them:

Recite to them the truth of the story of the two sons of Adam. Behold, they each represented a sacrifice to God. It was accepted from one but not the other. Said the latter: Be sure we will slay thee. Surely, said the former, God doth accept the sacrifice of those who are righteous.

If thou dost stretch forth thy hand against me, to slay me, it is not for me to stretch forth my hand against thee: For I do fear God, the Cherisher of the worlds.

For I intend to let thee draw on thyself my sin as well as thine...(Sura 5.30-31).

Of course this text literally abrogates any other command, or direction the Muslim soul believes it has received in matters of human warfare and self defense, and the taking of human life; for the entire epic, the entire story of the struggle between the children of Light and the children of Darkness in the world, begins in the story of Cain and Abel. If the self-professing child of Adam--whether they be Hindu or Jew, Christian or Muslim--behaves in the ways of Cain (a taker of human life--even though there is permission in the sacred texts to do so), and not in the ways of Abel, it is because God (having also given men commandments appropriate to their own violent natures) for His own creative purposes has willed it:

Because they had not executed my judgments, but had despised my statutes, and had polluted my sabbaths (my higher meanings), and their eyes were after their father's idols (their father's ways).

Wherefore I gave them also statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live;

And I polluted them in their own gifts, in that they caused to pass through the Fire (of human warfare) all that openeth the womb, that I might make them desolate, to the end that they might know that I am the Lord...(Ezekiel 20:24-26).

Among the commandments that God gave Islam which are not good (good for the world in the most paradoxical and ironic ways, but not for the individuals who are so led), is permission to wage human warfare, to fight in the Lesser Holy Wars against other nations and other armies (as opposed to the Greater Holy Wars that are fought only, and purely against the Self). But how else could God judge the world? And again, the Prophet was only, and most "obediently," channeling the words of the angel of the East, Gabriel, as he was receiving them. How did he receive them:

The next question is about the nature of the revelation itself. When Harith, the son of Hisham, once inquired of the Prophet how revelation came to him, he replied: "It comes to me sometimes as the ringing of a bell and this is hardest on me, then he (the angel) leaves me and I remember from him what he says; and sometimes the angel comes in the shape of a man and he talks to me and I remember what he says." (Bu.1.1). These are the only two forms in which the Quranic revelation came to the Prophet. In both cases, the angel came to him and was seen by him; in both cases a certain message was delivered in words which he at once committed to memory...The only difference between the two cases was that in one case the angel appeared in the shape of a human being and uttered the words in a soft tone as a man talks to another; in the other case, it is not stated in what form he came, but we are told that the words were uttered like the ringing of a bell, that is to say, in a harsh, hard tone, which made it a heavier task for the Prophet to receive them....In both cases the Prophet was transported, as it were, to another world, and this transportation caused him to go through a severe experience...which was harder still when the message did not appear in human shape. The Religion of Islam, by Maulana Muhammad Ali, p.21.

At the same time the Prophet was yielding to the conditions that were unfolding around him. These included, of course, the internal conditions of his own heart, but also the rising and overwhelming clamor for divine vengeance that was ringing from the hearts of those who followed him:

"For individual Muslims, abandoning Mecca and people, city and family, in the 'Hijrah' meant a crisis of personal independence. Those who threw in their lot with Muhammad were crossing their own Rubicon as well as his. Emigration meant an end to ambiguity of allegiance...In the definitive first year of the 'Hijrah', Muslim-Quraishi tensions opened into military conflict...Medina was never merely a refuge, but always in intention a base and a structure of power. Adherence, on either side, sharpened, therefore into a political and military either/or. Muslims graduated, so to speak, by the 'Hijrah,' from a group into an army, from a community of faith to an order of authority. A long and patient endurance of minority status was transformed into...political determination...Establishment in the new city could only ensue on such a basis. The 'Hijrah' was thus, in concept and by prelude, a decision for active military measures against Quraishi recalcitrance and, in that form, a definitive conclusion to a long and strenuous 'open question' of prophetic vocation... The migration was an end of passive suffering and enduring patience (please compare Matthew 24:5-13): It was the beginning of vigorous self-assertion and political activism." The Event of the Qur'an, Islam In Its Scripture, by Kenneth Cragg, pp.128,129.

Freely or otherwise, the denizens of the heavens and of the earth submit to Him...(Sura 3.83).

Of The Two Spirits in Man

"All that ever was and is comes from God. Before things came into existence He determined the plan of them; and they fill their appointed roles. It is in accordance with His glorious design that they discharge their functions. Nothing can be changed. In His hand lies the government of all things. God it is that sustains them in their needs.

Now, this God created man to rule the world, and appointed for him Two Spirits after whose direction he was to walk until the final inquisition. They are the spirits of Truth and Perversity.

The origin of Truth lies in the Fountain of Light (in the Higher Spiritual state of mind), and that of Perversity in the Wellspring of Darkness (the Natural Impulse). All who practice righteousness are under the dominion of the prince of Lights, and walk in the ways of Light; whereas all who practice perversity are under the dominion of the Angel of Darkness. Through the Angel of Darkness, however, even those who practice righteousness are made liable to error. All their sins and iniquities, all their guilt and their deeds of transgression are the result of his dominion. And this, by God's inscrutible design, will continue until the time appointed by Him. Moreover, all men's afflictions and all their moments of tribulation are due to this being's malevolent sway. All the spirits that attend upon him are bent on causing the children of Light to stumble. Howbeit, the God of Israel and the Angel of His Truth are always there to help them.

It is God who created these spirits of Light and Darkness (see Genesis 1:16), and made them the basis of every act, the instigators of every deed, and the directors of every thought...

This is why these spirits operate in the world. The enlightenment of man's heart, the making straight before him all the ways of righteousness and truth, the implanting in his heart of fear for the judgment of God, of a spirit of humility, of patience, of abundant compassion, of perpetual goodness, of insight, of perception, of that sense of the Divine Power that is based at once on an apprehension of God's works, and a reliance on His plentious Mercy, of a spirit of knowledge informing every plan of action, of a zeal for righteous government, of a hallowed mind in a controlled nature, of an abounding love for all who follow the truth, of a self-respecting purity which abhors the taint of filth (in one's self), these are the things in the world that come to those in the world who are in communion with the Spirit of Truth. And the guerdon of all that walk in its ways are health and abundant well-being (abundant life, not abundant wealth), with long life and fruition of seed along with eternal blessings and everlasting joy in the life everlasting, and a Crown of Glory and a Robe of Honour, amid Light perpetual." The Manual of Discipline, The Dead Sea Scriptures.

Islam was God's means of both revealing and confronting this perversity in others, in the other Western religions, but it was also God's means of revealing and correcting the very same natural impulse that dwells in the very heart of Islam itself. And even though God, in this sense, raised up Islam in the East as a mirror image of Christianity in the West (which is why these two religions are presently at war with each other), the religion of Islam was also God's means of securing these blessing for all who walk in the pathways of Light, and in the statutes of the Angel of Light--even though they dwell on that other, seemingly forsaken side of the world, at the Eastern precincts of the Sacred Mosque:

As to the righteous (no matter where they live), they shall drink a cup (of wine) mixed with (camphor) (symbolizing that which is cool and refreshiing).

A Fountain where the devotees of God do drink, making it flow in unstinted abundance. (John 7:37,38).

They perform their vows, and they fear a day whose evil flies far and wide.

And they feed, for the love of God, the indigent, the orphan, and the captive...

God will deliver them from the evil of that day, and will shed over them a Light of Beauty and (blissful) joy.

And because they were Patient and Constant, He will reward them with a Garden and (garments) of silk. (Please see Revelation 13:9,10).

And the shades of the Garden will come low over them, And the bunches (of Fruit) there, will hang low over them in humility (Please understand Isaiah 4:1,2). (These are those who learn the mysteries and accept them)...

It is He who has sent down the Qur'an to thee in stages.

Therefore be constant with constancy to the Command of thy Lord, and hearken not to the sinner or the ingrate among them.

And celebrate the Name of thy Lord Morning and Evening...And glorify Him a long Night through....(Sura 76).

__________

Be not in haste with the Qur'an before its revelation to thee is completed, But say, O my Lord advance me in knowledge...(Sura 20.114).

RAMADAN...EASTWARD TO WESTWARD...FROM SUNRISE TO SUNSET

When the scrolls are laid open, When the world on high is revealed. When the Blazing Fire is kindled to fierce heat (1 Peter 4:12-19)...

And when the Garden is brought near, Then shall each soul know what it has put forth...

So verily I call to witness the Planets that receed, go straight or hide, and the Night when it dissipates, And the Dawn as it breaks away the Darkness...

Verily this is the word of the messenger...(Sura 81.10-22).

"The two joys of fasting that, according to the Prophet, a person who is fasting is blessed with--(Iftar) breaking of the fast, and the vision of the New Moon of Id after the Fast of Ramadan--refer to two other joys: The joy of seeing (Jannah) (Paradise) after death, and the joy of having the vision of God after Resurrection." Islamic Spirituality, by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, p.119.

All of these things have been ordained--the Light, the Darkness, the Festivals and Observances, the rituals and reality of Death and Resurrection--so that the Great Cosmic Circle of Divine Revelation might be completed, that it might come to its conclusion and that it might begin again on the next higher plane of human consciousness. All of these things have been instituted in the interest of continuity, so that the beginning of the creation process did not get disconnected from its effects, so that the mind of Light (Life) might be manifest and at last delivered from the mind of Darkness (Death) in the last day. (Genesis 1:14-18). But principally, so that God (Him and Herself, in consort with Creation itself), might be revealed in the Whole. (For that is the whole duty of each soul born into the Light, to know God). They are not only ONE with each other (we cannot comprehend the ONE without also comprehending TWO), but together They are both the Destroyers of worlds and the Creator of worlds. AllaH destroys, in the very interest of Creation Herself. The Lord brings to oblivion all that is unjust and grown out of balance--thus everything that is not conformed to Their own Image in the Universe. They had, of course, to let every thing come to fruition as it has, the Darkness out of which Light emerges (the chaos out of which order emerges), for very essential cosmic and psychological reasons, while, in Their Wisdom and Mercy, providing every means of deliverance from the destructions themselves. These means are awakening, repentance, and transformation.

(Awaken to what? And why, it might be asked, must humanity repent? especially for things that are completely God's own doing, and for which He, and not us, must be held completely accountable? One recent study has suggested that God actually suffers from severe bi-polar disorder. Anthony DeLuca, in his Freud and Future Religious Experience, comes to a somewhat different, wholly materialistic, humanistic conclusion when he refers to "the God man has made." "As the person matures," he says, "our sense of the wholly other matures"...

"For Freud religion was an infantile manifestation because religious people showed the same longings, fears, and desires which the child displays toward his father. (p.3).

IMPLICIT TELEOLOGY...Moving Toward an End: "There is something intrinsic to man by which he moves to an end. The mind seems to have within itself a dynamism by which it stretches out to grasp more of reality...Man grows in consciousness...The endeavor to grasp reality ever more fully we regard as teleological. Religious experience thus bears witness to a person's ability to see ever more fully reality as it reveals itself." (pp.7, 8).

Thus DeLuca suggests that as the human mind matures it will slowly dispense with the idea of God altogether...while Carl Jung, in his Answer to Job, wrestles with God Himself, and also with the question of God's state of mind. In the pages of his book we actually find the solution to the question before the indictment itself is complete:

"My God, my God, Why hast thou forsaken me." Here his human nature attains divinity: at that moment God experiences what it is like to be a mortal man and drinks to the dregs what he made his faithful servant Job to suffer. Here is given the answer to Job, and clearly this sublime moment is as divine as it is human, as 'eschatological' as it is 'psychological.' And at this moment too, where one can feel the human being so absolutely, the divine myth is present in full force." (p.46).

"We can take it for certain that the author of the Epistles of John made every effort to practice what he preached to his fellow Christians. For this purpose he had to shut out all negative feelings, and, thanks to a helpful lack of self-reflection, he was able to forget them. But though they disappeared from the conscious level they continued to rankle beneath the surface, and in the course of time spun an elaborate web of resentments and vengeful thoughts which then burst upon consciousness in the form of a revelation. From this there grew up a terrifying picture that blatantly contradicts all ideas of Christian humility, tolerance, love of your neighbor and your enemies, and makes nonsense of a loving father in heaven and rescuer of mankind. A veritable orgy of hatred, wrath, vindictiveness, and blind destructive fury that revels in fantastic images of terror breaks out, and with blood and fire overwhelms a world which Christ had just endeavored to restore to the original state of innocence and loving communion with God. (p.76).

Of course, God will have to be forgiven for creating humankind as He has, in His own invisible and purely psychological image. We do, however, have a full understanding of who God is now, and insight, not only into the very depths and heights of Divine Consciousness but into the depths and heights of our human minds. God could have left us in the natural state, as innocent members of the animal kingdom, but then there would be no reason for Creation in the first place. We must forgive God, just as we must forgive our own parents for being who they were. We must see the Lotus of Human Creation unfolding. Follow the pathways of the Great Mandala. As Einstein discovered the paradox of Time and Space and simply accepted it, thus revealing an entire new dimension of reality, we must accept the paradox of God's existence and reach for the Highest and most transformative meaning of it all. Or, as the Qur'an so sternly warns, or else).

During the Dark Ages neither the perspective, nor the potential for a collective human awakening existed (history was still in process). But still yet, when the Crusaders assembled out of Europe on their way to liberate what was held by all to be the "Holy Land," the children of Light (surely by the Grace of God most of them were peasants and lowly craftsmen at the time), did not join them. The children of Darkness, led on by the religious and political powers of that age, did. The Crusaders--bewildered peasant, pope and king alike--as well as all the warriors of Islam, unable to distinguish metaphor and allegory, thus myth and legend, thus true reality from the images of it in the lower world, marched off to their own (may we add, still unfolding and still-impending) destructions...

"Even the Knights Templars (who were eventually massacred along with the Cathars, and driven almost out of existence by the Inquisitions of the Roman Church) forgot their order had been constituted as priestly warriors for the defense of routes to and from Jerusalem, and defense of the Holy Sepulchre (the location of this tomb, of course, was the product of Queen Helena's religious imagination)...Even the Templars, who were as an order sworn to celibacy and poverty, became bankers and treasurers before they lost Jerusalem again...

This Grail Quester Lancelot might be taken as a Knight Templar, so many similarities are there between him and his quest, them and their's...There is the question of a lost and unimaginably precious treasure in both cases. The Grail itself puzzles us today and breaks our hearts, so great immeasurably is this lost treasure. (See Deuteronomy 32:34). The vast treasure and fleet of the Knight's Templar similarly have not been traced or recovered...

THE THIRD CRUSADE (1189-90)....King Richard I of England, King Phillip I of France, and the Emperor Fredrick I of Germany, set out magnificently appareled, superbly attended for the Holy Land. Their reason compelled them to hasten, for the brilliant SalaDIN had in 1187 reconquered Jerusalem.

Pope Gregory VIII therefore urgently and personally preached the Third Crusade upon which all Christendom depended. Now it was chiefs against chief, the best against the very best. The Western world hung upon Richard Coeur de Lion. He had all of Europe at his feet. Richard occasionally performed great deeds of personal heroism (while at the same time) ordering acts of utter cruelty and unbelievable barbarity...At that point in his life he was considered by Western Europe the greatest hero of the century, a Lancelot, a nonpereil flower of chivalry. (Had one been present at the parade in New York City celebrating the American triumph in the Persian Gulf they would have seen exactly how it was, and how Richard would have been hailed beyond comparison in our time)...

THE FOURTH CRUSADE (1202-04)...This time the Crusaders unfortunately turned their war machine against an ally, the city of Constantinople. Unbelievably they sacked the city of their own co-religionists. The results of this UTTER INSANITY rang with devastating results throughout the world. It seemed a prelude to the real bouts of mass insanity that were to occur in the fifteenth century (not to mention its continued effects in the 20th century, in the ongoing American crusade against an 'unbelieving' world), then masses of people went totally insane...

THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE (1208-71)...This crusade was called by the Pope in 1208 against the so-called heritics of southern France, including those in the northern cities. They (the truest of believers among them) were hunted, trapped down, interrogated, and burned at the stake. This crusade was launched against heritics, defined as people whose beliefs and practices differed from orthodoxy. Several million people were accused, tried, and burned at the stake while the rest of France looked on. (And this is not to mention the millions of women who were arrested over the centuries, tortured in many various ways, and executed as witches by these same 'christian' authorities and their attending powers)...Those who accepted to go on raids or to serve under the leaders were promised forgiveness for all sins, and a certain paradise thereafter." The Holy Grail, pp.166-180.

Of course we can see now what the Divine Mother was hiding from all of them throughout these times--the very whereabouts of the Holy City itself: My Secret Place as the prophet said (Ezekiel 7:22), and the very same which all ungodly men have been treading under foot all these centuries. (Revelation 11:2). Thus as history would have it, Christianity and Islam were eventually made to meet each other right there at the center of the mystery, at the Gates of Vienna. Not only did they repel one another there but they layed the structure between them, and the political framework for those conditions that eventually erupted in the World Wars of the 20th century):

THE SIEGE OF VIENNA, JULY 14 - SEPTEMBER 11, 1683

Ever since Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 they became the relentless terror of Christendom. For centuries the nations of Europe fought the Turks on land and at sea. There were great battles and victories and temporary peace treaties...The struggle between Islam and Christendom continued and the initiative remained with the Turks so that, by 1683, they controlled most of Hungary with only the upper portion remaining part of the Holy Roman Empire, synonymous with the House of Hapsburg and Austria...

Sultan Mehmed (in an attempt to secure his stronghold against the Hapsburg emperor, Leopold I), sent his Grand Vizier, the swarthy Kara Mustafa, to aid his Hungarian subjects. Mustafa marched straight for Vienna...From the towers of St. Stephens, the people beheld a sea of thousands of multicolored Turkish tents drawn up in crescent moon formation southwest of the city. They included Mustafa's opulent pavilion with his hundreds of concubines and slaves and exotic animals...If Vienna's walls could not hold till help arrived, its streets would run red with Christian blood...

The reinforcements came...And the attack opened with a terrific barrage of musketry, demoralizing and thinning the Turkish defense...With the cry of "Jezus Maria ratuj" (Jesus Maria help) the whole Polish line rode down upon the Turks. Encased in glittering steel that covered head to thighs, with their tiger and leopard pelts fluttering in the wind and eagles' wings affixed to their backs, the leading units of hussars presented an almost unearthly spectacle...At around 10 PM, the battle came to an end. In the Turkish camp, Christian infants and children cringed among hundreds of butchered captives. Starhemberg's garrison took revenge by burning 3,000 abandoned Ottoman sick and wounded alive...

While the allied victory had strained, rather than cemented, the ties between the Holy Roman Empire and Poland, the rest of Christendom celebrated. In the streets of Vienna and in the cities of Austria and all throughout Europe there was a feeling of euphoria...A Turkish victory would not have meant the end of free Christendom, because France would have presented a bulwark to further Ottoman expansion. However, Austria was saved and, more importantly, the initiative passed to the Holy Roman Empire. After hundreds of years of warfare the Christians had turned the tide against the Sword of Islam. Military Heritage, October, 2002.

__________

"Thus, we have already seen...that Lancelot was not so much a military hero as he was a religious hero. For that reason he was himself so shrouded in the very ancient envelopes of mythology.

Thus Lancelot and Perceval, who thus far we assume are our premier Grail heroes and Grail Initiates, emerge from their trappings only momentarily... White doves, chalices, white samite, candles, and broken swords await their entrance into Grail Castles. These Grail heroes have now led us inescapably to the Crusades, during which our Grail texts were written, and in fear and trembling on our part, to the most awful massacres of the Middle Ages. (The mass destruction of Muslims in the East and of 'heritics' in Europe).

Christianity, observed Sismondi, suffered a severe loss. It became...a military religion....

Every serious student of history knows that the loss occurred when (the dark side of) Christianity joined itself to the emperor and empire in the time of Constantine (during the time when the legends of the Grail and the Round Table were still in their formative stages). The gates (the lower limbs) of Christianity were thrown wide open to the world, and every wordling, prince and prelate alike, came into her. (Please read How Christians Made Peace With War, by John Driver). Those who would not come into her were forced to. By now, however, the true mystics of the Church had all gone underground, Buried and hid with Christ as it was.

"Christian virtues most sought (after that) were bravery, constancy and prowess. Christian knights were encouraged to make larger and larger blood sacrifices of Muslims called 'infidels' and 'unbelievers'....

Please see now that Christianity and Islam had each become a reflection of the other, and a judgment on the other (as they still are today). What each saw in the other, the Mind of Light could see in both.

These descriptions should be providing everyone with a window through which they may see into their own souls. The powers of Darkness, church and state together (of which the powers of Islam were a direct reflection), were abroad in the land, wreaking havoc and vengeance, and counter-vengeance, in the Name of God--just as they are today. Anyone who follows these institutions and their leaders (or even worse, their very own heart) into battle, or consents to their excitations, and their executions, or anyone who willingly gives their sons and daughters to them, be they Christian, Jew or Muslim, is in the grip of Darkness. And it is this realm of Darkness itself, this massive state of ignorance of things Divine, that The Lord of All Things is preparing to rise up and destroy. God accomplishes it by bringing the Darkness together against itself. (It has already begun in the Middle East). In the midst of all this historic carnage, however, the blood of the Righteous was being continuously spilled out upon the earth, fertilizing the soil (the soul, that is, of humankind), bringing us to our present state of affairs in the world, and to the meaning of the words:

And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words...(Exodus 24:8).

For the Life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh atonement for the soul...(Leviticus 17:8-14).

Though their own lives may be required of them the children of Light are not permitted to shed the blood of others in the earth, no, not for any single reason whatsoever. The Holy Qur'an, like the Law and the Prophets, is very clear about it. (It is clear to the mind of Light that is). There is, however, as we have already discovered in the previous chapters, an order of spiritual warriors in the earth, an angelic order, that IS called to execute the judgments of God in the earth. These powers (the powers of the Supernal order...look into the East and understand Romans 13), fierce and terrible as they are, have a direct commandment from above to assist the children of Light, and to liberate them in their darkest hour, as it was written long ago: And to divide the Light from the Darkness. (Genesis 1:18). They are sent forth from the Right Hand of the Lord, not only to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation (Hebrews 1:14), but for the destruction of them who despise the Light, and who, in the name of the Risen Lord, obey not the Gospel of the Risen Lord. (2 Thessalonians 1:5-10).

For upon the day when they see the angels, there shall be no joy on that day for the guilty...

And on the day when the heaven shall burst asunder with the clouds, and the angels shall be sent down descending in ranks (John 1:51).

The kingdom on that day shall rightly belong to the Beneficent God, and a hard day shall it be for the unbelievers...(Sura 25.21-26).

"The Bearers of the Throne mentioned in Sura 40.7, these are the Four Angels in the form of an Eagle (Scorpion), a Bull, a Lion, and a Man; They are called 'Those brought nigh.' (Sura 4.172). According to Ibn Abbas God will add four more to their number on the Day of Resurrection; hence the Qur'an says, 'On that day the terror shall come to pass and heaven shall be split asunder. (John 1:51). The angels shall stand upon its borders, and on that day Eight (those situated in the last day around the sefirot named Majesty) shall carry above them the Throne of thy Lord. (Sura 69.15-17)." Islamic Spirituality, pp.327, 333.

"Israfil (the Metatron...the Angel of the Lord's Presence who overshadows and fills up the whole of human affairs). He delivers commands, places spirits within bodies, and will blow the trumpet on the last day. With one of his Four Wings he fills the West, with the second he fills the East, with the third he descends from heaven to earth, and with the fourth he keeps himself veiled. His two feet are below the Seventh earth, and his Head reaches the pillars of the Throne. When God wants something to happen in creation, He causes the pen to write upon the tablet (see Habakkuk 2:1-3), which is situated between Israfil's eyes, and then Israfil relays the commands to Michael." p.327.

"The spiritual-intellectual nature of angels...'Nothing can be known without the intervention of angels. The sage attains to supreme knowledge by purifying themself of the dark clouds of the lower world and establishing a contact with the Active Intellect at the center of one's own being...The whole creation is angelic." p.329.

"Men are forms manifesting the properties of the totality of the human-divine reality in respect to that reality's outward manifestation (elsewhere called the Perfect Man--Adam Kadmon). The angels with all their various degrees are forms that manifest the properties of its inward states and faculties. Thus the supreme angels and the Bearers of the Throne are (all) related (to the image of the Perfect Being on the Tree of Life) as the major organs are related to the faculties deposited in each of the limbs of the human body." Islamic Spirituality, p.333.

Though these two, the powers of the West and the powers of the East, shall meet on the same fields of battle, and wield the same kinds of weapons against each other, and though they have been up till now equally vulnerable to the presence of the other (the West seeming to have triumphed), they are as different from each other in the great heavenly order of things as the Stars above are from the Planets below. The Children of Light in the world transcend in their conversation, indeed, in their evolved state of mind and in their approach to life itself, the entire material order in which these other spirits function, as it is written: To which of the angels (the powers of the East) said He at any time, Sit on my Right Hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool. (Hebrews 1:13).They are the children, actually the grown daughters and sons now, of the Great King who is The ALL and who inhabits ALL, both above and below.

WHO NOW IS ZUL-QARNAIN?

They ask thee concerning Zul-qarnain, say, I will rehearse to you something of his story. Verily We established his Power on earth, And We gave him the ways and the means to all ends.

One such a way he followed: Until, when he reached the Setting of the Sun (in the West), he found it set in a spring of murky water: Near it he found a people.

We said: O Zul-qarnain! Thou hast authority either to punish them, or to treat them with kindness. He said, Whoever doeth wrong, him shall We punish; Then shall he be sent back to his Lord; And He will punish him with a punishment unheard of before. But whoever believes and works righteousness, he shall have a good reward, And easy will be his task as We order it by our command.

Then he followed another way: Until he came to the Rising of the Sun (in the East). He found it rising on a people for whom We provided no covering protection from the Sun. He left them as they were: We completely understood what was before him.

Then he followed another way: Until he reached a tract between Two Mountains (between the East and the West--Europe). He found beneath them a people who scarcely understood a word (a great mass of unlearned souls). They said, O Zul-qarnain! The Gog and Magog people do great mischief in the earth. Shall we render thee tribute in order that thou mightest erect a Barrier between us and them?

He said: The Power in which the Lord established me is better than tribute. Help me therefore with strength and labour: I will erect a strong Barrier between you and them.

Bring me blocks of Iron. At length, when he had filled up the space between the two steep mountain sides (between the West and the East), He said: Blow with your bellows. Then when he made it Red with Fire he said, Bring me that I may pour over it molten lead.

Thus they were made powerless to scale it or dig through it. He said, This is a Mercy from my Lord. But when the promise of my Lord come to pass, He will make it into dust. The promises of the Lord are true.

On that day We shall leave them to surge like waves on one another: The Trumpet will be blown, and We shall collect all of them together. And we shall present Hell that day for unbelievers to see, all spread out...(Sura 18.83-100).

"Zul-qarnain, literally 'the Two-Horned one,' the king with the Two Horns, or the Lord of the Two epochs. Who is he? In what age did he live? 'Qarn' may mean: (1) a horn in the literal sense, as in the case of a Ram or a Bull; (2) or a horn in a metaphorical sense, as in...the horns of a kingdom or territory, two portions at opposite ends...

If we accept the popular identification of Zul-qarnain with Alexander the Great, all the designations would be applicable to him, as he was lord of the West and the East...(And) the generality of the world of Islam have accepted Alexander as the one meant by the epithet...but some of our Uluma have raised doubts about it and made other suggestions. One that it was not Alexander, but an earlier pre-historic king contemporary with Abraham, because they say Zul-qarnain was a man of faith, while Alexander was a pagan and believed in Grecian gods...

Another suggestion made is Zul-qarnain was an ancient king of Persia. A king of Persia is referred to as a Ram with Two Horns in the Book of Daniel (8:3). But in the same book, the Ram with Two Horns was smitten, cast to the ground, and stamped upon by the He-goat with One Horn. (8:7,8).

The question of Gog and Magog and the Iron Barrier to keep them out is of some interest. It is practically agreed that they were the wild tribes of Central Asia which have made inroads on settled kingdoms and empires at various stages of world history, (and which found their way Westward over time to create the American Empire)...The Persian empire suffered from them at various times and at various points. Their incursions into Europe in large hordes caused migrations and displacements of populations on an enormous scale, and eventually broke up the Roman empire. These tribes are known vaguely to the Greeks and Romans as Scythians. (Please see chapter 11).

If we could locate the Iron Barrier or Iron