by Jay Weidner
If Jesus was a student of the Bahir, then he would have known the secret of the Teli. From the elders’ answer to the question of authority, Jesus knew that they no longer grasped the secret of time. John the Baptist had preached that the kingdom of heaven was near. How could he have known that? This is really what Jesus is asking the priests and elders. They, of course, have no answer, so Jesus refuses to tell them the truth. By asking the right question, we can see that he must have already known the answer.
ISLAM: SANCTUARY OF SACRED SCIENCE
Muhammad, like Abraham and Isis the Prophetess, received his wisdom directly from an angelic messenger. The Koran is the collection of Muhammad’s revelations. They were written down within fifty years after his death by his followers, who had memorized the words as they were pronounced. The Koran leaves little doubt about angelic intervention. Like all successful prophets and spiritual leaders, Muhammad gave a voice to the needs and longings of his time.
The Arabs were influenced by the Christians and the Jews who lived among them, and they eagerly awaited their own messenger from God. Muhammad admired the ethical precepts of Christianity and the monotheism of the Jews. He was also conscious of the power of a divinely inspired scripture to mold a religion. Others may have had similar thoughts. From Byzantine sources we hear of several Arab “prophets” who rose to prominence during the late sixth and early seventh centuries. Muhammad’s difference, and perhaps the root of his success, lies in his connection through the Kaaba with the mysteries of creation given to Abraham. He could speak with authority because he had rediscovered the window into the cycles of time, and his proof was the Koran, which flowed from above in a torrent of revelation.
Muhammad’s revelations began on the night of the twenty-seventh of Ramadan in the year 610 C.E. Muhammad was alone in the great cave at the foot of Mount Hira, a few miles outside of Mecca. He had gone there to pray and meditate, but he was asleep when the angel Gabriel appeared with a curious book and demanded that he read it. Muhammad was illiterate so he protested that he could not read. Then the angel pressed its weight down on him to the point that he thought he was going to smother to death. When the angel released him, Muhammad sat up and found that he could read. On awakening, Muhammad felt that words from the magical book were engraved in his heart. He fled out of the cave, into the early-morning sunlight, and beheld a vision of the angel Gabriel as the cosmic man. In that moment Gabriel declared that Muhammad was indeed the messenger of Allah.
Thereafter, the revelations came thick and fast. Often, when they came, Muhammad would fall to the ground in a convulsion or a swoon. He would become drenched with sweat. Even his camel would become skittish when a spell hit. Muhammad was transformed by these experiences; from a shy and introspective orphan, he became the patriarch of the Arab people.
His cousin and son-in-law, Ali, left us a vivid description of Muhammad a few years after his revelations began. He describes Muhammad as “of middle stature, neither tall nor short. His complexion was rosy white, his eyes black; his hair, thick, brilliant and beautiful, fell to his shoulders. His profuse beard fell to his breast. . . . There was such sweetness in his visage that no one, once in his presence, could leave him. If I hungered, a single look at the Prophet’s face dispelled the hunger. Before him, all forgot their grief and pains.”23
Later, when he was pressed to describe the process of revelation, Muhammad declared that the entire text of the Koran was a book written in heaven. He said the angel Gabriel communicated it to him one piece at a time. Asked how he could remember these divine discourses, Muhammad replied that he repeated each phrase after the angel. The stress from the experience, he said, caused his hair to turn gray.
For a decade, Muhammad preached in Mecca. He made little headway in converting the population, except for his immediate family and the ones that became known as the Companions. The Companions were the true believers, such as Abu Bakr and Omar al-Khattab. For a while Muhammad moved to al-Taif, a center of the goddess al-Uzza, the mighty one worshipped by his mother’s clan. From this brief exodus came the so-called Satanic Verses, where the Koran seems to endorse goddess worship. Within a year after this, Muhammad was back in Mecca preaching in front of the Kaaba.
This time, however, he was without protection. The control of the main clan had passed to the mortal enemies of Muhammad’s uncle. Islam found itself severely persecuted. But just when things looked bleakest, a miracle happened, or so it seemed to Muhammad. Before he left for the city of al-Taif, Muhammad had preached to a group of pilgrims from the garden city of Yathrib. Afterward it would be forever known as Medina, or The City.
The town of Yathrib had a large Jewish population that responded to Muhammad’s teachings. Because of the similarity to their own religion, they accepted his teaching and began to spread the word back home. They were also willing to accept Muhammad as the messenger of a monotheistic Allah who will reign over the earth at the Last Judgment. So Muhammad fled Mecca for Yathrib, which became the City of the Prophet. The year of his departure, or hejira, became the starting point for the Islamic calendar.
Eight years later, after much skirmishing and caravan raiding, Muhammad marched back into Mecca as the conquering messenger. He cleaned out the Kaaba, removed the altars to Allah’s wives and daughters, but kept the Black Stone and its ritual kiss. He then proclaimed Mecca the Holy City of Islam. For the last two years of his life, Muhammad ruled from Mecca with a gentle hand. As Islam grew, Muhammad sent letters to the capitals of the world announcing his revelation. He received no replies to these letters. Casually he watched the mutual destruction of Byzantium and Persia. There is no indication that Muhammad ever considered spreading the Islamic faith outside of Arabia.
That was not the case, however, with his heirs. Muhammad had appointed no successor. After a brief rivalry, the Muslim leaders elected Abu Bakr, the first Companion, to be caliph, or representative of the faithful. Abu Bakr’s faith and steadfastness saw the faith through its first war and rebellion. Khalid ibn al-Walid was the most brilliant and ruthless of the Muslim Arab generals. He went from pacifying Arabia to defeating the Greek emperor Heraclius outside Damascus. With that, Syria became an Arab and Islamic stronghold.
By then Abu Bakr had died and a fellow Companion, Omar al-Khattab, had been chosen caliph. Omar encouraged the Islamic conquest. In 644 Omar was cut down by a Persian slave in the Medina mosque. But by then the Muslim armies ruled Egypt, Palestine, and Persia. The conquests continued under Othman the Unfortunate, until by the time of Ali’s caliphate (656–661), the Islamic domains extended from the Atlas Mountains in North Africa to the Black Sea and the mountains of Afghanistan.
Less than thirty years after the death of Muhammad, Islam ruled more of the earth than Rome had at its height. It is hard to imagine how a political, social, and religious shift of this magnitude could have happened. But it did.
Muhammad taught of a stern, yet merciful, God in terms more than faintly reminiscent of the Bahir and the Sefer Yetzirah. In the Koran, sura 2:255, the famous Throne Verse, we find Allah described in terms remarkably similar to those used to describe the Teli, or Pole Serpent. “His Throne extends over the heavens and the earth . . . He alone is Most High and Supreme.”
The Koran is filled with references to the Last Judgment. Only Allah, the Koran tells us, knows the time of the Last Judgment. We are also told that certain signs will prefigure its arrival. Disbelief in God will be widespread, along with moral chaos. There will be tumults in the sky and on the earth. Wars of such magnitude will occur that the wise men will wish themselves dead. The final signal will be three trumpet blasts. At the first, our material universe will be destroyed. The second will “uncreate” all men and angels and spirits, while the third will accomplish the resurrection. Then Allah will arrive to conduct the Judgment. Only those who can cross the bridge of al-Sirat, which is finer than a hair and sharper than a sword, will be allowed to enter Paradise.
In the Koran, Paradise is described as a perfe
ct garden where all manner of good things to eat and drink are available, including wine that exhilarates while leaving one clearheaded. These eternal feasts are attended by nubile beauties whom neither age nor weariness nor death can mar. The blessed will see the face of Allah and become immortal, “never growing old.” Who could resist such an image of Paradise?
The most significant sura in the Koran, from the perspective of the secret at the heart of alchemy, is sura 24 (fig. 4.15). It is named al-Nur, or the Light. In verse 35 of the sura, the secret is revealed with blinding clarity: “Allah is the light of the heavens and the earth. The semblance of His light is that of a niche in which is a lamp, the flame within a glass, the glass a glittering star as it were, lit with the oil of the blessed Tree, neither of the East nor of the West, whose oil appears to light up even though fire touches it not—Light upon Light!”
We shall wait until we have heard from Fulcanelli before we interpret this most significant verse. For now, let us note that this verse is the origin point for Islamic mysticism, illumination, and gnosis. Mansur al-Hallaj, the great Sufi mystic, tells us that the Light is from “a star whose astrological house is in the empyrean.” Empyrean in this sense refers to the highest of heavens, and this suggests the mid-heaven point of the north ecliptic pole. He also suggests that the light symbolizes the peace of the tranquil heart.
Figure 4.15. The Light Verse, sura 24:35, in a modern circular motif.
Muhammad apparently gave esoteric teachings on these and other verses of the Koran to his son-in-law Ali, who passed them down to his son and grandson. Ali’s caliphate ended in the first great schism of Islam, when the religious and political authorities of the Arabs split away from the family of the prophet. By 680 C.E., most of Muhammad’s family had been killed. Only an infant son, Ali’s grandson and the great-grandson of the Prophet, survived to carry on the tradition. From this came the split in Islam between Sunni and Shi’ite that exists to this day.
For the first two hundred years or so of Islamic civilization, mysticism took a backseat—except among the Shi’ites, or the “adherents” of the family of the Prophet.24 The caliphs became ever more corrupt as their power grew. Persecutions of the Shi’as increased. A general feeling developed that Islam had somehow conquered the world and lost its soul.25 Mansur al-Hallaj, quoted above, symbolized this defiantly mystical spirit. He was burned alive for blasphemy in 923 C.E.
But a new spiritual current emerged from the Islamic underground. Composed of fragments of all the conquered civilizations and religions but held together by the teachings of the Prophet, the mystical tradition that in many cases far predated Islam found a home within it. The new Sufi movement accepted the corruption of the ruling classes and set to work to renovate the human soul. Another branch of Shi’ite Sufis, however, moved from mysticism to covert political action. Their goal was to create a theocracy based on the inner teachings of Muhammad.
The word sufi—composed of three Arabic letters, the sa, the wa, and the fa—has many different connotations and derivations. To some, it means safa, or “purity.” Others see it as safwe, or “the selected ones.” Other contenders are saf, “line” and “row,” because the Sufis follow the “straight path” of Muhammad. Suf, “wool,” is also a good candidate because the Sufis often wore long woolen robes. The Greek word sophia, or wisdom, is also a possible candidate. But the inner meaning of sa-wa-fa is sufah, or “whirlwind.”26 This inner meaning points to the process of spiritual transformation that is at the heart of Sufism. One of the later Sufi orders, the Mevlevis of Turkey, founded by Rumi, made whirling or spinning one of their spiritual disciplines as an outward demonstration of this principle.
Fifty years after the death of al-Hallaj, Sufism blossomed. The eleventh century saw the rise of the first great Sufi teaching orders in the East and the West.27 As the Sufi movement grew, the more worldly and political branch of the Shi’ites almost succeeded in conquering the Muslim world.
After the first wave of Arab conquest swept over North Africa, its provinces soon became independent kingdoms. By the tenth century, three great Islamic kingdoms ruled in North Africa. They were the Idrisid dynasty in Morocco, the Aghlabid in Libya, and the Tulunid in Egypt. In the first decade of the tenth century, a Shi’ite adventurer, Abu Abdallah, gained a following in Libya and Tunisia by preaching the coming of the Mahdi, the Shi’ite savior or world ruler. Within a few years, Abdallah overthrew the Aghlabid dynasty. To fulfill his claims he invited a descendant of the Prophet, Obeidallah ibn Muhammad, to become king. Since Obeidallah was a descendant of Fatima, Muhammad’s daughter, the new dynasty called itself Fatimid.
Under the Fatimids, North Africa regained a wealth and prosperity that it had not seen since the days of Carthage and republican Rome. Trade routes crossed the Sahara to Lake Chad and Timbuktu in central Africa. After the Fatimids conquered Egypt in 969 C.E., the Sudan and Abyssinia were also integrated into the Islamic trading network. Egypt became the commercial link between Europe and Asia. By the early eleventh century, the Fatimid caliph, ruling from Cairo, controlled two thirds of the Muslim world, from Fez in Morocco to Damascus in Syria.
The Fatimid mosques of Cairo provide an important link, both architecturally and spiritually, to the Gothic cathedrals of Europe. The mosque of Ibn Tulun, begun before the Fatimid conquest, combines pointed arches and vaulting with rosette stained-glass windows in stellar and geometrical patterns. This impulse reached its high point with the Al Azhar Mosque.
Jauhar, the converted Christian slave who conquered Egypt for the Fatimids, built the mosque between 970 and 972. The Al Azhar Mosque (al-azhar means “the brilliant” or “the illuminated,” from the same root as the Hebrew bahir, “brilliance” or “illumination”) contains the pointed arches and vaulting—supported by 380 pillars of marble, granite, and porphyry—used in the Ibn Tulun Mosque. It is also famous for its stained-glass designs. The reds and blues used in the Al Azhar Mosque were duplicated in the great cathedrals of Europe. But they were never equaled for their depth and purity of color.
In 988, Al Azhar Mosque became the world’s first university. The caliph Aziz provided tuition and maintenance for thirty-five scholars. As this school developed, it drew students from all over the Muslim world. It continues to this day with thousands of students and hundreds of teachers. Its influence on the course of history has been profound, especially to medieval Europe.
Al Azhar’s most famous scholar was the Muslim scientist known to the West as Alhazen. Mohammed ibn al-Haithan, or Alhazen, was a mathematician and engineer, a sort of Fatimid Leonardo da Vinci. His most important work is a book on optics that anticipates the telescope. Roger Bacon quotes his work extensively, as do Kepler and Leonardo. We can hardly exaggerate the importance of Alhazen for the foundation of modern astronomy.
Attached to the Al Azhar Mosque was the Dar al-Hikmah, or the Hall of Wisdom, where Shi’ite theology was studied alongside medicine and astronomy. Ali ibn Yunus, perhaps the greatest of Muslim astronomers, worked in the observatory of the Hall of Wisdom for seventeen years, compiling the first accurate tables of planetary cycles, measuring the inclination of the ecliptic, and discussing the precession of the equinoxes.28 These are all astronomical preoccupations suggested by the Bahir and the Sefer Yetzirah, and provide the key to understanding the great cycles of time.
As the Fatimid dynasty spread, it propped up its power by gathering all of the Shi’ite sects into one grand lodge of Cairo. This vast semisecret society was held together by complex initiations and hierarchical degrees. Its members were used for political espionage and intrigue. The forms of the order strongly influenced the rituals and organization of the Templars.29 It is possible that much of Western esotericism and its secret societies originated with the “Illuminated Mosque” and its Hall of Wisdom.
Muhammad’s revelation transformed a nomadic and barbarian culture into a world-class civilization. The power of that revelation, as we saw above, came from its ancient roots in the astrological magic of A
braham. With the Kaaba of Mecca as its focus, Islam managed to hold on to its ancient wisdom and even transmit it to the spiritually bankrupt West. The Crusaders, especially the Knights Templar, came looking for conquests and kingdoms. They found both, but they also discovered the secret mysteries of the alchemy of time. They brought this astronomical alchemical knowledge to Europe.30 Because of the contact between the Templars and the Islamic scientists, Europe enjoyed an unparalleled spiritual renaissance, the era of the Gothic cathedrals.
The builders of the Middle Ages had the natural attributes of faith and modesty. The anonymous creators of pure works of art, they built for Truth, for the affirmation of their ideal, for the propagation and the nobility of their science. . . .
The alchemists of the fourteenth century used to meet there once a week on the day of Saturn, either at the main porch, at the Portal of St. Marcel or else at the little Porte-Rouge, all decorated with salamanders.
—LE MYSTÈRE DES CATHÉDRALES
FIVE
THE HERMETIC POPE AND THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR
THE ALCHEMICAL TRANSMISSION AND THE RECOVERY OF THE WEST
Having examined the first thousand years of alchemy’s history, it is time to take stock of what we have discovered. The earliest surviving alchemical texts all have pre-Christian Gnostic associations. The Emerald Tablet inclines toward Greco-Egyptian Gnosticism as its source, while the “Isis the Prophetess” story suggests an Egypto-Hebraic origin. The connection point is ancient Egypt.