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Glimpses to a genealogy of
sufi heritage in the poetry of
spanish american cultureIn some of the pages of Don Quixote de la Mancha, the
memorable novel that marks the consolidation of the Spanish
language, there is a statement that sustain that what is
known is silent and after silent forgotten, meaning that
normally human being wants to believe that only
contemporary presumptions are correct, and that any element
that can put in danger such believing is a distortion that triesto confuse him.
But often happens also that there is this precise fact or detail
-lost in the past and which almost no one remembers - that
allows us to glimpse, as from Plato's cavern, in the distance,
the real nature of things in which we never have had a chance
to doubt, so our eyes can be suddenly disclosed.
Fine words in Spanish language are the heritage from thelanguage of Al Andaluz Emirate, that was part of the Umayyad
Caliphate in Andalusia. Words like pillow (Almohada), I hope
(Ojal), sill (alfizar), are a living proof that one day, christians
and muslims shared a common cultural space, and despite
the distance claimed by their faiths, they had time to share
what the Chilean poet Jorge Teillier has called "a little bit of air
moved by the lips-Words / to hide perhaps the only truth: /
that we breathe and we stop breathing".As these words say, we live in language, and the past is a
privileged witness of that. So, if we retrace the path of
languages and cultures, we can quickly realize that the
connections between the Sufi wisdom and Christian mysticism
are far more than some wants to acknowledge. And since this,
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until the arcane world of poetry, there is only one second that
takes us to get to the language of the heart, in wich Sufism
and poetry have citizen cards.
Even before the coming of Prophet Muhammad, blessed be his
name, the spiritual brotherhood of godly men in the world,
were already seeking a synthesis between Pythagoras
numbers and cosmic dualism of Plato and Aristotle. Before
Spain or Islam even existed, these Greeks and Gnostics
scholars had the feelling that first Christ was the final
synthesis, until they chose the exegesis of Islam to be the seal
of the prophets, as it is written en the Qoran.
According to the Turkish scholar and writer Edmund KabirHelminski, "Sufism can be seen as a way of realization in two
fundamental ways: One is a path that comes from, and carries
to the human consummation, the complete human being. On
the other hand it is a path that uses all possible effective
means to orchestrate the transformation of a human being. "
The act of rebirth, or rather, die and reborn for the Divine, is a
path that almost all mystical disciplines share in every culture,
and in that sense, the Sufi path is also an expression of
human nature hungrier for spiritual transcendence.
The traditions of this spiritual knighthood go hand in hand
since then, and for the first time in history, Sufism and
Christianity become two religions stating the same path, as
the Spanish scholars Germain Ancochea and MaraToscano
say:
"In Occident, knight errantrys ideal is well beyond thephysical existence of the knighthood. In fact, Christianity was
introduced by military orders that come in contact with
Islamic tradition and they spread at the same time of the
tradition of the Holy Grail. By contrast, in the Islamic tradition,
especially in the Sufism of Iranian tradition (which itself dates
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back to the Zoroastrian tradition), knighthood appears very
soon linked to the spiritual path and, as the Sufis say, the
birth of their own tradition. Before the appearance of Islam,
the tradition of knighthood in the Middle East was preserved
only through the training of men to be knights. "
Knighthood values include respect for others, the sacrifice of
self, devotion, support the weak and the helpless, kindness to
all creation and preserving of the word. All qualities that later
emerge as attributes of the perfect man from the point of
view of Sufism. Islam quickly gained membership of these
knights, who worked to found the Sufism on common bases to
Islam and knighthood.
In the West, the Templar Order inheritors of the rule of St.
Bernard of Clairvaux, would have already incorporated some
of these ideals. In Chapter XIII of his book "From Bethany, St.
Bernard's turns knight faith on words like this, so similar with
those from the prophet: "The Lord is my strength, my refuge
and my deliverer. And also: "Not unto us, Lord, not us, but
unto thy name give glory."
According to Alexander Seleukis in his Book of Alchemy "it
was in Holy Land where Sufis and Templars found a suitable
framework for connecting the respective traditions. There was
also, where the charges that culminated in the dissolution of
the Order in 1307 began. According to several authors, the
Knights Templar held a deliberate brotherhood with Sufis and
Kabbalists, being the most known the connection with the
order of the ismaelitas knights called assacis that means
guardian.
On the other hand, we have the testimony of the murcian
master Ibn Arabi, known as Sheikh of Akbar, (The greatest of
Sheikhs), who was named into the Christian West as "Doctor
Maximus", an important reference in the tasawwuf, the
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history of Sufism and, as we will see later, the key master in
the birth of some christian secret orders. In 1201 he makes a
trip across the south Mediterranean toward the Middle East
that took him up to Cairo, Jerusalem and Damascus. Ibn Arabi
also formulates the existence of "the sacred pillars", as wecan see in his work "Illuminations":
"Every Pilar (watad) is a corner of a house: The one that
depends on Adam corresponds to the Syrian angle; the one
that depends on Abraham corresponds to the Iraqi angle; the
one that depends on Jesus corresponds to the Yemeni angle,
and the one that depends on Muhammad is the angle of the
black stone, this is mine, praise be to God. "
In another text of Ibn Arabi called The Truth, it is stated
about him:
He confused to scholars of Islam,
To all those who studied the Psalms,
To every rabbi,
To all Christian priest.
From everything exposed before, we can see that there was
and there is a spiritual and initiatory tradition preserved over
the centuries, common to all three religions of the Book and
that can be accessed with humility and purity of heart. The
search is often confusing, as happened to the women who
went at dawn to the tomb of Jesus and they did not found his
body, and the Angels said to them: Why seek ye the living
among the dead?" (Luke 24:5).A few years after Ibn al Arabi described that the four pillars
supporting the world, a Christian mystic would have an
encounter that would radically change their perception of the
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world the same world that, in turn, would dramatically be -
thanks to him - renovated.
Giovanni Bernardone, best known as St. Francis of Assisi, was
in full stage of defining his mission on earth when he joined
what is known in the West as the Fifth Crusade. It was 1219,
and the third time that he tried to fulfill the biblical principle to
evangelize in Holy Land, and when the expedition arrived to
Damietta, Egypt, after sharing galley with murderers and
thieves who joined the Christian expedition by mere interest,
and living for months with the Crusaders that embarrassed
him because of their profligate behavior, he asked permission
to cardinal pelayo, who headed the expedition, permission for
being interviewed by the Sultan of Egypt, Palestine and Syria,
known as al Malik al Kamil, who had given samples of being a
peaceful and devout man, on having offered repeatedly truces
and compensations to the Christians among them even had
been the right on the city of Jerusalem. Offers that the self-
seeker Pelayo had rejected for his excessive pride and
ambition.
the historian Donald Spoto tells about this interview betweenSan Francisco and Malik Al Kamil:
"The visit of Francisco to the Sultan Malik al Kamil is narrated
not only in medieval French and Italian papers about the
crusades and Celano's biography, but also in Islamic
chronicles. These texts tell that Francis and Lit (his disciple)
left the Christian camp in early September due to the
headquarters of Al Kamil. When the Sultan's guards saw their
arrival, they were confused or by messengers who came tonegotiate, or by holy men as their "sufiyya" (Sufis), mystics
who were also dressed in rustic tunics with rope tight and
begging to survive. So quickly led them to the sultan's
presence.
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"The Muslim ruler of Egypt, Palestine and Syria was the same
age of Francis, he ran his empire's forces since 1218 and also
as Francisco, he lived entirely dedicated to the traditions and
the disclosure of their faith. Although he hated war and
violence, Al Kamil did not hesitate to call on them to achievetheir religious and political aims. Educated by his uncle, the
redoubtable Saladin, Al Kamil was an expert in warfare, but he
preferred the disciplines of prayer. Five times a day, when he
heard the call to worship Allah, he was the first to adopt a
more humble position. In addition, Francis was now before a
peaceful and deeply religious man who believed in one God. "
After Francisco spoke through an interpreter, Al Kamil decided
to call their main religious advisors. After hearing the brief
account that Francis gave to him about the Bible and faith in
Christ as soon as the prayers for peace in the name of God
and His son Jesus, the advisors resolved that visitors had to be
beheaded in the act by trying to convert them to Christianity.
But the Sultan could appreciate the true faith where there
was. He admired also the character of Francis, his
unconditional surrender to the faith and its blatant disregardfor the luxuries of the world. "This time I will go against the
law," he said to Francis when they were alone. I will not
sentence to death who has come to save my soul, risking his
own life. "
Finally Francis and his disciple Lit stayed for a week in the
court of Malik al Kamil, as an example of interfaith dialogue
that even today carries more than a lesson for our times,
Kamil finally dismissed him with a pass to Jerusalem and asthe historian Spoto said, "although Francis went to the
Sultan's camp with the desire to convert him or die trying to,
the years immediately after writings reveal that he left there
with a completely different attitude. We could even say it was
the conversion of Francis himself which was strengthened.
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Francis perhaps saw in his return among Christians that, most
Muslims, were Christians who really needed to be become to
christianity, but, anxious for material rewards promised by the
Crusade, they were not prepared to accept peace. Spoto
continues saying that "the blessing of Francis and his prayersfor peace of the Lord never been as neglected as in 1219,
when his own invocation and the Salam from the Arabs fell on
deaf ears among the officers and troops.
According to the butterfly effect theory, sometimes more
subtle changes have unexpected consequences, and might
say something like that went to Westal thought and culture,
after this event, the figure of Francis of Assisi. His experience
in Damietta allowed him ultimately develops his doctrine of
absolute detachment, sine glossa" (without commentary),
perhaps mimicking the figure of Sufi: sort of holly beggar who
in that moment form the basis of his thought and legacy.
The Chilean philosopher Humberto Gianini says that "the
legacy (of Francis) was clear: leaving everything, and sine
glossa, as true minstrels of God, but the loosening which
symbolizes the new minstrel goes even further (as exclusivelymaterial ): a detachment of the images and memories that
bind us to the world, ways to retain and still have things;
detachment of contentious knowledge learned that keeps us
in the vain dispute and the desire to excel; detachment of
arguments, principles, reasons that hold us in a speech
without beginning or end. And this one is principally the
interior detachment of which the poverty of the spirit consists
and that allows to the jongleur to be a jongleur and to makethe heart of the men happy
Poverty of spirit that has been blessed by Jesus in the New
Testament was also impressed by San Francisco to the
Chilean poet and Nobel laureate Gabriela Mistral, who in her
poem "La Caridad" she sings to the saint:
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"And so, Francisco, you spent as the moons in its last quarter
(...)
You discovered a hidden truth: we have no right to give, but
To ourselves. Other things are of the earth. "
For Humberto Giannini, the importance of Westal thought of
Saint Francis was that first meant a rejection of the Thomistic
dialectic that prevailed until then. A second consequence was
the revaluation of the contemplative life as a link with other
human beings. And finally, thanks to Francis, the current
scholastic motto since Augustine " Fides quaerus intellectum
(Faith seeking understanding) which had helped to build the
cathedrals of Christian scholasticism even at the expense of
reason, would lead place to the investigation of nature , the
merry intuition of the one that talks with the animals, whom
preaches of equally to equally, supported by a faith that seeks
in external phenomena signs of a universal love that is
sensed, thus anticipating the scientific curiosity of the
Renaissance.
A fourth consequence to Christianity may be that with SaintFrancis the Gnosis (God's existential knowledge), again
gradually acquire citizenship card in Westal culture under the
name of mysticism, almost a millennium after the first
patriarchs diverge of his way to the Christian Gnostics
declaring them heretics. With San Francisco remains open a
path for mystics as Juan de la Cruz or Teresa de Avila, appear
within the Spanish language and the Catholic Church a couple
of centuries later.Somehow, thanks to Francis and his poor monks, the heritage
of spiritual knighthood Sufi, came to these mystics to be
transfigured by example in "The Mansions" of Santa Teresa or
in her mystical proposal of an interior castle in which we must
feverishly defend from the attacks of the tempter, and the
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same situation exists when we talk about symbols like the
mystical marriage of the soul with God in San Juan de la Cruz.
We read in "The Mansions" of Santa Teresa:
"While praying to our lord now speak for me, because I couldnot seem anything to say or how to begin serving this
obedience, he offered me what I shall say to start with some
foundation, that is to consider our soul, like a house of a
diamond or crystal clear where there are many mansions.
That if we consider, sisters, is nothing but the soul of the
righteous ..."
The reference to St. Teresa of Avila could not be more direct
to the Gospel of St. John 14.2:
In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I
would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for
you
San Juan for example expresses this same approach to
Divinity in his Songs of the Soul in intimate communication, a
union of love of God.
Oh flame of love alive,
Tenderly hires
Of my soul in the deepest center!
As you are no longer elusive,
Just as, if you want;
Breaks the clothe of this sweet encounter!
Maybe we'll find in the words above reminiscent of the famous
Sufi master Adawiyyah Rabee'ah who have transmitted the
sublime and lofty mystical poems, which was an important
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benchmark for Christian devotional poetry by his prodigious
spiritual states:
I love you in two ways: selfishly,
and also in a manner worthy of you.
This selfish love dominates my thoughts,
dedicating it to you completely.
The purest love is when you lift
the veil from my eyes of worship.
For neither I deserve praise,Are to you the praises of these two loves.
The Mansions of Santa Teresa is equivalent to an interior
castle, which is also internal fighting, and where the enemy
iare the own weaknesses and passions, and all kinds of
selfishness, vanity and pride. The book describes the beauty
and dignity of our souls and explains that the door of this
castle is prayer. That is why when Santa Teresa launches this
true mystic war cry, actually is referring to the peace of the
Lord:
All that you fight
Beneath this flag
No more sleep, no more sleep
because there is no peace on earth.
Not without reluctance and many ecclesiastical supervision, is
that mystics as Teresa and John, survive from his time in
medieval Christendom. They, along with Francis of Assisi,
Bernard of Clairvaux, his Cistercians and Templars, also of St.
Benedict and Benedictine monks is that scholars are slowly
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recovering Spain and the West the personal experience of
divinity.
In this regard we would add that perhaps the culmination of
this process could be established with the publication of The
Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, a book that in
1605 marks the final consolidation of the Spanish language,
as the way will eventually be considered to Goethe's Faust for
the German or Dante's Divine Comedy for the Italian.
And if we look more closely at Cervantes' Don Quixote, we see
that its author shows no little heritage of Arab culture to the
point that you imagine the chronicler of the colorful Christian
knight is a Muslim scholar named Hamete Benenguelli. Butthe humorous image of a Knight of the sad figure and his
chubby squire, is enigmatic to this day even the mystics, for
the depth of his commentary about the human condition.
In this respect let me draw attention to one of the many
episodes in which Cervantes seems to pay tribute in Don
Quixote to Islam. In the second part of the novel where he
wanted to refute all the novels of knighthood (then
transformed into a discredited genre) and yet be transformed
into the quintessential novel of chivalry, Don Quixote
suddenly goes to the Cave of Montesinos , where he is
informed of a mission that awaits him because of his great
courage and skill, expected in the future and it consist in
disenchant the knights Durandarte and Montesinos, who also
Doa Belerma, Doa Ruidera and seven daughters and two
nieces, were already 500 years encharmed, with
disenchantment announced for the end of time. Montesinostells him this:
This is my friend Durandarte, flower and mirror of the true
lovers and valiant knights of his time. He is held enchanted
here, as I myself and many others are, by that French
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enchanter Merlin, who, they say, was the devil's son; but my
belief is, not that he was the devil's son, but that he knew, as
the saying is, a point more than the devil. How or why he
enchanted us, no one knows, but time will tell, and I suspect
that time is not far off.
In the eyes of this century, the mysterious mission of Don
Quixote to disenchant captives knights of the times and
wizards, it sounds vaguely familiar to the episode of The
sleepers, the Qur'an (Sura The Cave 18.8), in which seven
knights mystic are also excited, waiting to wake up and meet
the spiritual Futuwah cavalry.
According to the Spanish Hermetist Alexander Seleukis, thereis a tradition that "when Moses asks" what is Futuwah? "He is
replied," You give God the soul pure and immaculate, as the
man has received. Seth, the son of Adam, is, according to
Islamic tradition, the first entirely dedicated knight to the
divine service, while his brothers are dedicated to mastering
the world. The angel Gabriel comes to Earth a green wool
tunic with Seth is dressed, and returns to heaven with the
news that there is a man entirely devoted to divine service. The men of the Futuwah, spiritual knights, will be neither
secular nor monks, is a new category of men that goes
beyond the time of the cloisters, which will be called "Friends
of God".
This is also the ideal that Christians writers like Chretien de
Troyes and von Eschenbach propose in their stories of the
quest for the Holy Grail. In this meet, somehow, spiritual
chivalry of Islam and Christianity. Seleukis adds that"according to Islamic tradition, we find Abraham as the
continuing of Futuwah, becoming in the founder and father of
all the mystic knights of faith. The Futuwah then covers all the
heroes of the Bible along with Christian knights and the Seven
Sleepers which are mentioned in the Qoran. The Sufi ideal of
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chivalry is a community of knights that encompass all the
Abrahamic tradition.
Many Sufi authors have identified the Imam expected in Islam,
with the Paraclete of John's Gospel, so that Sufi and Christian
chivalry match over religions. The spiritual Knights, "friends of
God, eternally young, form, generation after generation, the
lineage of Gnosticism never interrupted but ignored by the
mass of men. This lineage is the tradition itself. In order To
occupy a place in is necessary undergo a second birth. "You
can not enter the kingdom which is not born a second time,"
says the Gospel of John. "
SUFISM AND ILLUSTRATION
Apart from the mystical poetry of authors who - like Santa
Teresa and San Juan - are now Doctors of the Church, the
Sufism legacy in Westal literature and culture seems to be
submerged in the West from the IX to the XVII centuries, in
some secret societies of ritual vocation through initiatives
such as the Masons or the Rosicrucians, which would
subsequently have significant involvement in history and
culture of Europe.
According to the Iranian Ayatullah Morteza Mutahari in his
book "The Science of Gnosis", one of those figures who made
the link with western societies like the Rosicrucians, was Abd
al Qadir al Jilani, founder of the Sufi order Qadiriyyah or
Quadiri.
"This is one of the most controversial figures in the Islamic
world. Is kept many prayers and those sublime says from him.He was a Sayyid descendant of Imam Al Hasan, who died in
560/1164 or 561/1165. His order was organized by his
followers, who used a very similar terminology to what later
would use the Rosicrucians in Europe. Abd al Qadir specialized
in the induction of spiritual states, called the Science of
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States. Their acts have been described by his followers in so
exaggerated terms that his personality, by all accounts, bears
little resemblance to their own definitions of the nature of a
Sufi master.
Exaggeration of mystical states in his followers, apparently
caused the degradation of these teachings, transforming
those experiences into an end and not the medium that is,
which should also be adequately controlled by a master. But
in his story, "States and jackals," Abd al Qadir himself
specifically warns against this:
"The Jackal thought has been given a banquet, when in fact it
has eaten remnants left by the lion. I transmit the science ofproducing "states." But this can hurt if it is used in isolation.
Anyone who uses it well and still managed to hold power. But
it will take men to worship the "states" until they are almost
incapable of returning to the Sufi Way.
The lessons from this and from other Islamic masters are for
the origins of the Rosicrucians, who are defined as "an occult
brotherhood of spiritual seekers that emerged in Germany
during the seventeenth century, in which there are however
first news in Europe on the XIV century. The first public
manifestation of the Rosicrucian Order as charter school
seems to have taken place in Paris when, in August 1623,
appeared set a few signs on some walls of this city that said:
"We, members of the principal College of the Brothers of the
Rosicrucian, take visible and invisible abode in this city by the
grace of the Almighty, to which becomes the heart of theRighteous ..."
In the introduction to "The Alchemical Wedding of Christian
Rosicrucian" by Jean Valentin Andreae (1616) we learn that
Fraternitatis Fame, the first publication of the Rosicrucian
secret, alludes to a secret fraternity founded by the character
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throughout his travels through the Muslim East, where he
received the revelation of the secrets of the "universal
harmonic science.
Based on these teachings, Christian devised a plan to reform
philosophical, religious, artistic, scientific, politically and
morally the world, for whose implementation was surrounded
by some disciples. Christian Rosicrucian would then come into
contact with "The Brothers of Purity" philosophical society
formed in Basra in the first half of the IV / X.
The doctrines of this society were not quite in accordance with
Islamic orthodoxy, but relied heavily on the ancient Greek
philosophers and the Neopythagoreanism. But this is how the"Brothers of Purity" differs with the Sufis on some points,
agree on many others. Both are 'mystical theology deriving
from the Koran'. The dogma is supplanted here by faith in the
divine Reality.
From their precursors mainly Greeks and Alexandrians, Islamic
scholars studied and developed astrology and alchemy,
through the Crusades, Europe again transfigured. Many of the
main ideas of these two sciences are not only Fraternitatis
Fame, but also in "Alchemical Wedding" of the Rosicrucians.
But the real Rosicrucians always remained anonymous. If any
of them played an important role in history, was careful not to
stand as a Rosicrucian. As the Sufis in Islamic esotericism,
authentic Rosicrucians never use in public this title. As a
Gunon writes bluntly, "If someone has declared himself
Rosicrucian or Sufi, we can say, no need to consider thingsmore deeply, which really was not."
But it seems undeniable that there was, on the origins of the
Rosicrucians, a collaboration between the two esoteric started
in the Christian and Islamic worlds, and this collaboration
would continue to take place, in other forms, since their
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purpose is precisely to maintain the bond between the
initiations of East and West.
Ayatullah Morteza says that progress Mutahari Sufism had
always been gradual. "But in the seventh century / XIII with
the appearance of Ibn al Arabi, 'irfan and sufism theorist, gave
a sudden leap and reached its peak of perfection." About this
new phase, in which Islamic esoteric tradition is mixed with
similar Christian Mutahari Ibn al Arabi says:
"It was an amazing person, and this has led to the existence
of widely divergent views on it. Some see him as 'the Wali to
Kamil' (the Holy Perfect) and the 'Qutb al Aqtab' (the Pole of
Poles). Others will degrade to the point considered a heretic,and call him 'Mumit al Din' (the murderer of faith) or 'Mahi al
Din "(the draft of the faith). Sadr al Muta'allihin (Mulla Sadra),
the great Islamic philosopher and genius, he had great
respect for him, considering it far above Ibn Sina (Avicenna)
and even the philosopher al-Farabi, who was known as the
four centuries before "Second Master", referring to Aristotle,
for that matter, was considered the first of its kind. Mutahari
says that Ibn al Arabi wrote over two hundred books andalthough there are many comments that have been written
about "may not have been more than two or three people in
every age that may understand."
How not to be grateful of that wise Al Farabi, without being a
Sufi, sought nothing less than understanding between Plato
and Aristotle, which Westal philosophy has already failed in
assimilate, and that only after recent discoveries of particle
physics -the fabulous neutrinos that pass through the materialat the speed of light- report us that inexplicably each of us is
in direct contact with the sun, in the middle of the
astonishment of our scientists, who are amazed how light and
matter can share the same space, matter and spirit, idea and
form.
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For the present time is really unusual for a Sufi master of such
high rank as Al Arabi promote the integration of four biblical
peoples by the spiritual "pillars" described above and if their
teachings are also on the basis of secret societies like the
Rosicrucians, that in practice they developed a Christianphilosophy bound to secrecy and even Kabalism seems to
coincide with a likely syncretism between ancient Hermetic
teachings and Christianity. Indeed, Fraternitatis Fame (as in
the "Confessio" and the "Alchemical Wedding") naturally
secretive and cabalistic doctrines that the Adept is to go
looking to the East, are collected.
But do not concern the Rosicrucians to the east of our maps,
but the mystical East. The so-called "Liber Mundi", a spiritual
book that, according to Corbin is the "concrete totality which
man feeds on its own substance, beyond the limits of this
life."
Shortly after this founding junction in the eleventh century /
XVII, members of the Rosicrucian lodges would be joined by
the nascent European Masonic orders to the point that in 1787
the Masons recognize as part of the Scottish Rite in grade 18,the so called "Sovereign Prince Rose-Croix Mason, Knight of
the Eagle and Pelican.
If we have to believe those who think that it was under the
influence of these secret societies which came to be realized
as the French Revolution and the American independence,
and if we add that it never denied the rumor that many of the
Masonic societies were actually spiritual heirs of the dissolved
Templars, we may understand that story in another contextthat speech hat tells that, in 1793 when King Louis XVI was
beheaded at the Bastille, there was a voice in the crowd who
shouted their lungs "Jacques de Molay is avenged !, "alluding
to the execution of the last Grand Master of the Templars by
King Philip IV of France in 1314.
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A current publication about the Rosicrucians ranks among
masters of all time among other Islamic philosophers like al-
Razi, Al Farabi and Ibn Sina, which appear to share fellowship
with people like Roger Bacon, Raymond Lull or Paracelsus, a
swarm of alchemy, mysticism and philosophy that we aresurprised. Alongside them, Sufi masters like Ibn Arabi and Abd
al Qadir are so to speak as the missing links between West
and East from the perspective of religious mysticism.
Thus we see how the mystical poetry of the Sufis expressed
not only the human soul experiences in its encounter with
God, but also shows that everything is related to the mystical
and ecstatic experience is always personal but are possible
shared with the brothers who also seek such experiences of
union with the Divine.
DE IBEROAMERICA
In Chile as in whole Latin America, after independence from
Spain in 1810 Poetry and song were popular as privileged
heritage of the farmers who cherish the rich poetic material
inherited from the peninsula and turned it into oral tradition.
The man of the people forward, compose and administer at
home since this legacy, incorporating the changes necessary
to integrate indigenous roots and new urban and rural
experiences of the new continent, even as the airtight
element pass virtually forgotten.
According to what the scholar Ins Dolz says, in Chile, "the so-
called Song of the Divine will have its natural expression in
the so-called Tenth glossed, sung to the tune of a guitar, bassguitar or rebec. As comment, we can say that the divine song
is performed by the 'puetas' in the usual environment of a
daily and family atmosphere, which develops the dialogue
between human and celestial beings. Both live in the same
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sphere of existence, sharing the same happy and pain and
expressing similarly. About Jesus, for example, we say:
'As a child he suffered / promised Messiah / suffered some
colds / and then improved', and the Devil, the Lord says' you
re gonna remember me / I'm not going to allow / this lack of
respect / and the top Sky / whoever wants to raise up ' ".
Through religion, all religious calendar with songs and folkloric
customs passed from Spain to the colonies. However, during
the eighteenth century so religious brotherhoods grew and
their extra-demonstrations in 1763 that would lead to
establish through a formal synod that "only devotional music
were permitted in temples and that does not causedistraction.
The oral tradition inherited from Spain and in which the Song
of the Divine in Chile was born and would soon give birth to
the Call Human Song as two compartmentalized specialties
available to the popular minstrel. For example in 1893, Rosa
Araneda had this real declaration of principles on the wisdom
in verses that somehow resonate with the Sufi perspective to
address the issue of Knowledge. The poem is entitled "Verses
from the ignorance of the singers:"
One who treads lofty
Living on Science,
knows his incompetence
When he is down.
Anyone who desecrates in song,
Without following a ground,
Walk in his thinking
The area with dazed,
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Causing awe and terror
Speaking to a large extent,
I already to look messy,
For more read in history,
Go troubled memory,
Lofty One who treads.
If unsuspecting poet
I want to be more than Homer,
We must look first
Not to come down.
If a flight goes back
By finding the eloquence,
In the highest eminence,
With dictionary in hand,There will be sovereign
Living on Science.
If you find any consonant
That is little doubt,
There is the scholar
Without going further;
As a wandering pilgrim
With dementia may wander,
Asking for God audience
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For your sorrow,
I can not move
He knows his incompetence.
In over thirty singers
I have watched this case,
That until the Parnassus
They make thousands of mistakes;
One of the best
Enough moralizing
Scientific and educated
I had enough capacity,
Mourns his fate
When he is down.
In order to be a poetYou want to study enough;
But today any ignorant
He wants to reach the goal;
Not subject to talk
Because it has a tongue and mouth;
If you are a rock
The meaning is changed,
I founded to give you an
Do not know what's their turn.
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The crossing between this Canto a lo Pueta and the
picaresque Spanish poetry is also an important feature of this
period of the Chilean and American poetry. For example in the
tenths El Diablo, an anonymous author called JM was joking
this way of the personage
The devil died stuck
With a bone in his nose:
They were the devils children
Facts about convicted
And then in the development of the tenth:
Said a lame devil
Guarding the pantry:
"By greedy and shameless
Grandfather died my daddy. "
Other youngsters hell
They said: "My father is rich."
Were found in bolsico
The charter of a Mason.
The rascal is dead
With a bone in his nose.
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Somehow we might affirm that the tradition named popular
lira reaches masterfully the immortal figure of Violeta Parra,
the authoress of this real anthem to the human condition that
is Gracias a la Vida. Violeta has certainly many mystical
take-offs that maybe conjugate essentially in the poetry ofthis song:
Thanks to life that has given me so much.
I gave two stars that, when open,
perfectly distinguish the black from white,
and in the high heaven its starry background
and the multitudes the man I love.
Thanks to life that has given me so much.
It has given me ear that, in all its breadth,
night and day recorded crickets and canaries;
hammers, turbines, barking, rain,
and so tender voice of my beloved.
Thanks to life that has given me so much.
It has given me sound and the alphabet,
with him the words I think and declare:
mother, friend, brother, and light illuminating
the path that I'm loving soul.
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Thanks to life that has given me so much.
It has given the course of my tired feet;
I went with them cities and puddles,
beaches and deserts, mountains and plains
and the house of yours, your street and your yard.
Thanks to life that has given me so much.
He gave me the heart that shakes its frame
when I see the fruit of the human brain;
when I look good so far from bad,
when I look at the bottom of your eyes.
Thanks to life that has given me so much.
It has given me laughter and tears have given me.So I distinguish this from brokenness,
the two materials that are my song,
and the song of you is the same song
and the song of all, my own song.
Thanks to life which has given me so
In this way then the Chilean poetry inherits directly from the
Spanish poetic tradition that mystical dimension which in turn
had enjoyed the spiritual contact between Christians and
Sufis. During the twentieth century this tradition in Chile
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becomes a more personal voice, whose exponents are cutting
important writers as Edward Anguita mystic, who wrote "the
only reason NSJC passion."
Harlequin:
Our Lord Jesus Christ suffered only Jenaro Medina
Our Lord Jesus Christ went to Calvary by Hortensia
Our Lord Jesus Christ died only for the chip Cruz
Our Lord Jesus Christ "Eli Eli lama sabajtani-by Alemparte by
Gaete by the children of Scott Weir
For me and for all Chileans all Uruguayans, the South
Americans
French American British the Germans the Spanish
Italians Russians the blind Egyptian scholars fat athletes
The Chaldeans the Iranian military's liberal utopians Lisbonese
The exploited the wretched of the earth slaves operatorsWithout bread vendors Mormons consumer producers
The Swiss musicians rulers deaf, ay
His wounds were made by all of them for all of us
And all fit in them and we are all redeemed
But Genaro Medina only
Or I just
Or simply Hortensia
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It is the cause of all the Passion and Death of Our Lord Jesus
Christ.
Another who also cultivated in Chile mystical streak was the
founder of Mandrake Group, Braulio Arenas, attached to the
surrealism movement in the 50s of the last century. His poem
"Saint John of the Cross" goes like this:
Bird colorless
From time to join the sky every hour
Lower until your fascinating world
Song, and sings in all fascinated
Opera with the grace and sin,
With the shadow of the world at this hour,
Opera with the lovely soul
And with the mortal body anchored
It's time for this, which raise
The soul of the song as their flight,
Heading east of paradise.
Help her by order and is not afraid
Stop the misery of its soil,
O San Juan de la Cruz one and divisible!
The Chilean poet Gonzalo Rojas has said about his poetic: "Inmy role very close to the religiosity of Sufi thought. Constantly
returns to these themes of sacredness. For example, I speak
in my poetry lighted. The lighting is a way of lighting. It is the
kind you see further than ordinary mortals. The lighting Arab
ancestry are mystical, Sufi. In this regard I believe that San
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Juan de la Cruz is quite linked to the Sufis, that's why I love
you so much to San Juan.
Indeed, in his book, "illumination" Rojas admits precisely that:
We name the world what an exercise in diamond
Grape bunch of grapes, so kiss
Blowing the number of origin
No chance
But navigation and number, nature
And number, network into the abyss of thingsAnd number.
A century before him in Chile, Eduardo de la Barra poet (1839-
1900) had confessed in his poem "The Jordan" by two famous
aversion to his trial judges who refused to Christ with your
inquiries:
Oh Jesus, oh, Rabbi!, Your divine
Word to the Jordan seeded
He could never leave the cruel doctrine
That leads to Loyola and Torquemada!
Your word fruitful
Light sweet soul flooded,
The infused noble desire,
Their wings open and back to heaven
Another who paid tribute to the Spanish mystical poetry is
Pedro Antonio Gonzalez (1863-1903) in the poem "A Santa
Teresa de Jess"
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Beauty caste Oh!
O mystical Virgin, Santa Teresa Oh!
Hossanna the celestial, divine perfume
That spreads the fire that consumes your soul
While Pedro Prado (1886-1952) contrived impressed about the
mystery of the Resurrection:
"Who calls me?" And Lazarus out
From the grave,
He looked at Jesus and she understood everything."Art thou O sun! The shining?
Is that you, or everything is a dream? Mary,
My sister! Martha, my sister ... "
As already mentioned, that enlightened and generous who
was Gabriela Mistral dedicated several poems to the figure ofSaint Francis of Assisi, founder of the doctrine of evolution
that changed Christianity and whose conversion was
strengthened by his contact with Islam when was in Damietta
with Sultan Malik al Kamil. The poem is called "Naming
things":
You, Francisco, you had the gift of choice and a gift of praise.
You loved
things that are best; walking on the earth all
met, but I chose the most beautiful creatures. And the gift of
long love, which is the richest of all those we receive, we were
given the
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grace to be able to name them gracefully.
Loved the water as Teresa, your sister subtle, sun and fire,
and the
groove brown earth. Three different beauties are sisters only
because each one perfect.
Another grater of the list of Chilean writers Pablo de Rokha
was, for many of the same size as Neruda but without his
Nobel Prize, son of the twentieth century, from the people andtheir revolutions, and although always worried by the social
destiny of its people still had also a time for the inner journey.
In his "Jesus Christ" as he wrote the stone size:
"Jesus grew in spirit and strengthened, adding meat disaster
For addition heroic "
Martyr like Jesus, but of the liberation struggles of the
twentieth century was in Chile the poet Jose Domingo Gomez
Rojas (1896-1920), died at age 24 just days after an obscure
right-wing attack on the Federation of University Students
Chile to which he belonged. He wrote in his poem a
premonitory Miserere:
Youth, love, what you want,
It must go with us. Miserere!
The beauty of the world and whatever
He will die in the future. Miserere!
The land itself dies slowly
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With the distant stars. Miserere!
And maybe even death hurts us
There will also be death. Miserere!
Pablo Neruda would not like to be called as a mystic, with
many specific emergency and non-ethereal man of the times
to circulate, however, the fact is that from its heights and
valleys, which are only comparable with telluric depths,
marinas and minerals, which comes just connecting with the
world's heart, this heart burning and boiling, Neruda achieves
ecstatic seer trimmed in such works as "Residence on Earth"
in whose poem "Poetic Art" says about himself:
"Between shadow and space, between garrisons and maidens,
endowed with unique heart and dreams dismal
abruptly pale, withered in the face
mourning widower and furious for every day of life,
ay, invisible water for each drink sleepily
and of all sound which I trembled,
I have the same thirst away and the same cold fever "
Neruda does not want to be a believer, the Faith to him is in
the proletarian men and their causes, not in things that come
from the mystery and so declares in this poem, where,
however, sensed, perhaps, its mission of quasi prophet the
words:
"But the truth, suddenly, the wind that whips my chest,
infinite substance nights fall in my bedroom
the noise of a day of burning sacrifice
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I call the prophetic in me, sadly
and a stroke of objects that call not be answered
there, and a relentless movement, and a confusing name. "
Neruda connects better with the planet, its mountains and
rivers, if they understood every last gap, and especially our
American continent, which describes in the poem "Love
America":
Land mine without name, without America,
Stamen equinoctial purple spear,
Your scent I climbed up the roots
To drink he drank up the thinnest
Unborn word from my mouth
His American love is perhaps the connection with the
intangibles of this our poet who called himself atheist. But it
can not be completely oblivious to the Deity who understands
at this point to Mother Nature, as this passage from "The
stones from heaven" that describes the sacred stone that
exists only in Chile and Pakistan, lapis:
"Snoring is the American Cordillera,
Snow, hairy, hard,
planetary
there lies the bluest of blue,
lonely blue, blue secret
the nest of the blue, lapis lazuli,
blue skeleton of my country.
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Sacred is the blue as cathedrals, and sings Neruda
Oh blue cathedral buried
blue glass jar,
eye of the sea covered by snow
again back to the light water
a day to clear skin
space,
the blue sky turns to blue ground.
Cathedrals stone is something that in South Americainherited from Catholic Spain. But the blue is older, because in
the cosmology of the native peoples of Chile and the
Mapuche, the color of the abode of the ancestors, or as they
call the "land above", where they will dwell those who, having
gone through this earth below, have honored his people and
his race to get the prize of eternal life, so he sings Blue today
that the Chilean poet and Mapuche Elikura Chihuailaf:
"I ride in a circle, led by the breath,
Animal
I offered in sacrifice
Gallop gallop, dreaming I
by the ways of heaven
From all sides come to greet
the stars
Oo!, Elder, Elder
Maid and Young Earth
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Arriba
rejoices in your blue my blood
We could say that the spirit of chivalry, the futuwah, also
applied to Mapuche cosmology, heroic people who hasundoubtedly earned the right to fight for that today yearning
for peace from the earth above. Blue Sea then the word that
allows me to conclude this alien look is even closer to the feet
of the elephant which is the Islamic Sufism, that if a tree or
planted a vineyard would be one of Gnostic Christians,
Zoroastrians, Buddhists Greeks, like Plato and Aristotle,
survived thanks to Islam, without accident or by design that
made the first encyclopedia of all things old and was thenfarmed for generations to embrace the world.
Sufism would then be for me a vine that took root, grew and
spread from medieval Spain to our America, transfigured into
poetry, tradition and also a little tight and politics, why not to
say, things that perhaps the King of Spain did not think when
they decided to found this new world, but again told, also has
six or seven thousand years, and although records are scarce
materials we are confident that the archetypes that make us
human are the same as in the rest of the world and to dream
a future, there is only one road, a long, long interior journey.
This is the Sufism of wandering dervishes were contrived to
combine in a unique way of knowing the mass of three or
more civilizations, in order to convey this desire for knowledge
in which peace is the currency.
I will conclude by quoting Al Shibli, who devised the followingSufi story about the brother and companion of the man who is
the dog:
I asked a wise man who guided you in the way?
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The sage answered a dog. One day I found almost died of
thirst on the banks of river. Whenever I saw her reflection in
the water, became frightened and walked away thinking it
was another dog. Finally, such was his need, overcoming his
fear plunged into the water, and then "the other dog wasgone.
The dog had discovered that the obstacle was itself and the
barrier that separated him from what he sought was gone.
In the same way my own obstacle disappeared when I realized
that "my ego was that obstacle. It was the behavior of a dog
which I first pointed out the Way.
A dog that challenges his own fear is against every instinct for
survival is the one to teach in the Sufi path
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fin