Now we are going to consider some important facts that will allow us to fathom a lot in human history from Adam to our time… We know from Revelation that Adam approached a certain Tree and tasted the forbidden fruit. In the 35th verse of sura “The Cow,” we read: “And We said: ʻO Adam! Dwell you and your wife in the Paradise and eat both of you freely with pleasure and delight of things therein as wherever you will, but come not near this Tree or you both will be of the wrong-doersʼ.ˮ
It is clear that here we have a language of symbols. It was not that Adam ate some apple. What does a tree symbolize? Usually, a tree has roots, a trunk, branches, and leaves, a kind of branched structure. Arranged in this way, it resembles creation. Therefore, they talk about the tree of the universe.
The eleventh Imam Hasan al-Askari (A) says in the interpretation of the words of Allah, “But come not near this Tree”:
“That is, the Tree of knowledge, the Tree of Muhammad and the Household of Muhammad, peace be upon them, through which, Allah singled them out from of all creations, and this Tree is only for Muhammad and the Household of Muhammad, and no one eats from it at the command of Allah, except them.
And Allah said, ʻBut come not near this Tree,ʼ trying to achieve the degree of Muhammad and the Household of Muhammad (S) and their greatness, for Allah has marked only them with this Tree, and this Tree is such that the one who tasted it [with the permission of Allah] – the knowledge of the first and the last is given to him without any endeavor.”
That is, it was the Tree of the universe, Tree of knowledge, which belongs to Ahl ul-Bait (A). They are Aliin, the Highest ones, that Allah asked Iblis about: a-stakbarta aw kunta mina al-Aliin – “O Iblees, what prevented you from prostrating to that which I created with My hands? Are you arrogant, or are you from among the Highest ones?” (38: 75). And approaching this Tree or eating from it is like “climbing up” the ladder of creation. “But come not near this Tree” – that is, do not desire the position of Ahl al-Bait, the Fourteen Infallibles.
Further, Allah says in surah “The Heights” that Iblis said to Adam and Eve, “Your Lord has only prohibited you from this Tree lest you become angels,” or can be translated as ʻrulersʼ – “or lest you become eternal” (7: 20)… And the hadiths say that khalidin, “the Eternal ones,” are the same as Aliin, “the Highest ones,” that is, the light of Allah, Ahl ul-Bait. And then Allah says, “And he swore to them, that he was their sincere adviser.”
And in the 120th verse of the surah “Ta.Ha,” we read, “Then Satan whispered to him saying, ʻO Adam, shall I direct you to the Tree of eternity and enduring power? ʼ” (20: 120). What is mulk la yabla, enduring power? This is the Wilaya of the Creator’s viceroy, Ahl ul-Bait, and the same power (mulk), about which Allah says, “We bestowed upon the house of Ibrahim the Scripture and wisdom, and We bestowed on them a great power” (4: 54). And the “the house of Ibrahim” here, are they, Ahl ul-Bait.
Now, if we look at the experience of paganic “initiated” contemplators, we will find there the image of a tree – the world tree. It is universal for all pagan traditions. The shaman, falling into a trance, begins to climb the world tree, which leads him up or down the ladder of worlds.
We see here the same attempt to acquire power over the universe, to repeat the mistake of Adam. But Adam rushed to this Tree not for the sake of sin or power but for the sake of approaching his Lord. He wished to reach these lights shining over the Throne of the Most High…
However, Cain, who, as we know, killed his brother, in fact, became the first shaman. Imam Sadiq (A) says: when Adam passed away, Cain and Iblis began to play musical instruments, sing, and dance. And so, everyone on earth who sings and dances, says the Imam (A), is like these two.
And it is clear that Cain did not play the violin. It was a certain magical ritual act. That is, Cain, under the inspiration of Iblis, fell into ecstasy; he practiced immersion in an ecstatic state that would later develop into practices of meditations, orgies, mysteries, magic rituals… The people descended from Cain (Cainic humanity) went so astray that their Prophet (Sheith) was forced to live on the island. So, we can say that Cain was the first shaman or the first magician and pagan contemplator. And the hadith says that he was the first to worship fire.
Adam rejected Cain as his successor and the owner of the sacred heritage, although he was older than Abel. Therefore, he invented a kind of replacement, the ersatz of prophecy, i.e., the magical, contemplative discourse. His descendants and heirs linked power with magic – instead of the connection between power and infallibility (knowledge), coming from God.
That is, such a terrible and dark thing as the magical power based on trance manipulation of cosmic forces stands opposite the prophetic discourse and sacred power (Imamat). As we see from the Quran, the power of the pharaohs was based on magic. Nimrud, who opposed Abraham (A), was known as a tyrant and a great magician…
So, the Cainic discourse is already an attempt to take this Tree by storm and climb it up to gain the crown of power – integrate it into your structure and make a superhuman out of yourself. That is, to carry out precisely what the Almighty forbade Adam to do. In this experience, the contemplator tries to remove human nature and Haikel, through the instrument of ecstasy, and achieve superhuman status, to put on the crown of the master of the universe.
Let’s take a look at what Iblis says to Adam: “Shall I direct you to the Tree of eternity and enduring power?” As we see, he instills the same in his descendants here on earth. He promises them power that does not belong to them. He tells them: you must remove the boundaries of the human Haikel, you must jump into this cosmic stream, and then I will take you by the hand and lead you. I will take you to the great power. “He gives them promises and excites vain desires in them,” says the Quran, “and Shaitan’s promises are nothing but deceptions” (4: 120) – that is, illusions, behind which there is no reality. And therefore, jumping there, the pagan actually throws himself to the bottom of the lower worlds, into the glare of black mirrors. Instead of the shining Muzn tree, he crawls down the Zaqqum tree.
And here it must be said that the bottom of creation, asfalu safilin, “the lowest of the lowest,” about which the Quran speaks, is a sea without shore called Sijjeen, whose water breaks hearts. This black sea on the map of the universe is the opposite pole of the river Sad or Nun, which is the first water flowing from the Mashiyya (the Will) of Allah, or the Light of being – the Light of Muhammad and the Household of Muhammad (S).
From this black sea without shore rises the fire of Gehenna, flow the streams of satanic suggestions and all kinds of batyl (lie and falsehood). As the sura ʻKahfʼ says: “And if they cry for water, they shall be given water like molten brass which will scald their faces; evil the drink and ill the resting-place” (18: 29).
And from this sea one step higher rises Jahl Kulli, the Universal Ignorance, just as from the river Sad comes Aql Kulli – the Universal Intellect, which is the white light and the Holy Spirit. From this Jahl (Ignorance), Iblis was created, and shaitans are the mazhars (manifestations) of this Jahl, just as the angels are manifestations of the First Intellect. From the Universal Jahl comes Thara (a word that is difficult to translate, the conditional translation is “wet earth”), which is opposite to the Universal Soul, then niran (fires), then rih aqeem (hot wind), then chthonic entities – hut (that is, “fish,” “whale”), as opposed to Arsh (Throne), then thaur (“bull”), as opposed to Kursi (Chair), then sahra (stone) as opposed to heaven, then seven earths (land of misery, land of tyranny, land of passions, etc.) – and then our world, our universe, in which we are living now.
And all these worlds – light and darkness – are a sphere revolving around a point in the center, which is the created Will, the Mashiyya of Allah. The closer to the center, the more light, the faster the rotation and the subtler the world. As for Allah Himself, one cannot say about Him “where” He is – within this sphere or outside it – and such a statement of the question itself is absurd because He created every ʻwhereʼ.
And this is the word of Allah: “To Him belongs what is in the heavens and what is on the earth and what is between them and what is under the soil (thara)” (20: 6).
And all these degrees of darkness are the black mirrors set before Haikel of human who answered “no” to the question “Is Muhammad not your Prophet? And is Ali not your Imam?” In our world, he was given a chance to create a new mirror of his deeds so that he would be given a heart and returned to Haikel of Tawhid, and if not, then after death, he will fall into these worlds and remain there forever. Our earthly world is located strictly in the middle, on the border of the worlds of light and darkness, and therefore from here, the path is possible both up and down, and those worlds are mixed in our world. Angels do not go down into the worlds of darkness, and shaitans do not go up into the angelic worlds. But angels and demons come to our world, although we do not see them with material eyes.
Imam Ali (A) says, “I am standing on two streams” or “two bays” – that is, he holds the keys to the worlds of light and darkness. So his Wilaya was presented to all creatures, and whoever accepted him, joined the river Sad and worlds that stem from it, and whoever rejected him – joined Sijjeen and worlds that stem from it. And those worlds of darkness are created from the reverse of light, as its shadows, and if it were not for Ali (A), there would be no light, and therefore there would be no darkness, just as if it were not for the Sun, there would be no light and shadow…
And this is the word of Allah, “He originated the darkness and the light” (6: 1). The darkness here is not something independent, a kind of separate principle opposing the light. The darkness is a shadow of light, i.e., the same light, which (the light) has become the opposite of itself. There will be no light or shadow until you turn on the lamp. But as soon as you turn it on, immediately both light and shadows from objects will appear. So, the worlds of darkness do not have their own basis. Both light and darkness result from the lamp’s glow, that is, the Will of Allah, His Mashiyya. If there is no lamp, there will be neither one nor the other.
The ratio of the worlds of darkness and the worlds of light can be visually imagined as two pyramids (two isosceles triangles) that penetrate each other, touching the bases with their tops. Our world is located at the intersection of these pyramids.
Here is the answer to the well-known dilemma, “Why did the Almighty create evil, while He Himself is only good, and there can be no evil from Him?” Someone says that He created darkness and evil to manifest His light and good… But in reality, He created darkness and evil according to the degree of rejection by the creatures themselves of light and good. We have already given an example with a mirror many times. If you put a crooked, dirty mirror in front of the sunlight, it will reflect this light so that it becomes darkness. Light hasn’t ceased to remain light, but in this reflection, it became darkness. The shape of the mirror made it darkness, i.e., its own opposite.
So, we have said that the task of this anti-prophetic, pagan, magical discourse is to do what God forbade Adam: remove the human form, jump over your ontological boundaries, integrate into your structure those regions of being over which a human has no power. The basis of this is such a fundamental vice as hasad, envy. Envy in the cosmic, not the usual everyday sense. Envy as a challenge to the program of the Almighty and His hierarchy. Allah says in verse about “great power,” to which we have already referred: “Or do they envy people for what Allah has given them of His bounty? We bestowed upon the house of Ibrahim the Scripture and wisdom, and We bestowed on them a great power” (4: 54). Imam Sadiq (A) says, nahnu mahsudoon – “We are the ones who are envied.” And what is “great power”? This is the same thing that Iblis promised the human race, as we saw: “O Adam, shall I direct you to the Tree of eternity and enduring power?” (20: 120). That is, Iblis encourages humanity to undertake an enterprise to achieve something that goes beyond the human. Thus, magic discourse is also a discourse of power – the power promised to the human race by Satan.
And if we look at the modern Western civilization, which has already become worldwide, we will see the same thing here. Only outwardly, this civilization seems to be so rational, “disenchanting” the world, breaking with the “superstitions of the past” and magical practices. Yes, today, no one arranges shamanic dances or mysteries. There are no longer magic kings, no priests (at least on the surface, on the public plane)… But in reality, only the way of achieving this power has been changed. The cosmic aspects of paganism, that is, attempts to integrate the entire cosmic vertical, were abandoned and substituted by manipulating purely earthly forces through experimental science and technology.
During the transition to modernity, there was only a change of emphasis – from manipulating cosmic forces to manipulating the forces of earthly matter. In our terminology, there was a descent from the level of the World Soul and, more specifically, the “world of images” – to the level of our earthly physical matter. But the program has remained the same: it is a program of disobedience to the Almighty, uprising against the human form, desire to become the king of the universe despite the real kings and instead of them – even if not at that, but at least at this specific, visible, material level. Here we have an attempt to grow a homunculus of superhuman in a flask of calculating science and technology. We will consider why such alterations occurred and why only this level was chosen in detail in the following parts of this book.
And this break with the human form is manifested today in everything. In the traditional pagan discourse, we see the desire to remove the human Haikel, dissolve it in some impersonal streams. So today, they talk about the onset of a “transhuman” civilization, where chips will be implanted into our heads, clones and robots will replace people, the gender itself will be abolished – and other aspects of the “wonderful modern world,” which can only be called “black magic” and explicit Satanism.
That is, the result of this Western project, which is nothing more than a secular version of the “great paganism,” was the construction of this terrible impersonal social pyramid with its “effective managers,” “human capital,” endless media lies, gender abolition, dismantling of the institution of family, and soon the chips in the brain – in other words, the complete dehumanization, which, as we have seen, is the dream of paganism. But all of this is accepted, all of this meets with the approval of people because behind this, there is an old temptation to the “great power,” whatever it is called today – “progress,” “development,” “conquest of space” or something else… That is, if a person says, “Listen, in fact, it’s somehow bad to live without a family, and I don’t want to get chips in my head,” – they answer, “Well, you’re a retrograde, you’ve lost touch with life, now we have the 21st century, we have progress on the agenda…” – and these are actually the same words of Iblis, “Shall I direct you to the Tree of eternity and enduring power?”
As a result, such a creepy golem is born, a beast-machine, sliding its mind over the surface of things in order to calculate and manipulate them. We have already said that a person striving to become the king of the universe does not really achieve this: he just falls into the dim glare of the lower worlds. And the same thing is happening here. Well, we will not consider the “effective manager” or the idiot jumping in the disco “the king of the universe”…
And now, again, going back to the “great paganism,” we see such an important thing: the Quran states that Pharaoh said, “I am your supreme Lord” (79: 24) … These words of Pharaoh are conveyed in the Book of the Most High for a reason. Egyptian civilization, which may have been the heir to an older Atlantic civilization destroyed by the flood, was magical par excellence. It is no coincidence that the Quran mentions the battle of Musa (A) with the magicians, with the priests of the Pharaoh. In Egypt, everything was aimed at achieving the magical goals of deifying the man, building a superhuman, a god-man… For this purpose, the pyramids were erected as some magical constructions, a kind of retorts in which this alchemical process was supposed to take place.
Egyptian theology is based on the belief in the underworld – the Duat, which arises from the primordial black waters (Nun). The light itself is born from there. The Sun renews its light and its life by descending into this world. In this regard, it is significant that the self-name of Egypt was “Kemi,” i.e., the black land. And hence the “alchemy,” “al-kemiya,” that is, “the science of black” or “Egyptian science.”
What is Alchemy? People who are not privy to the topic usually think that alchemy is some kind of medieval fraud with the production of gold from lead or the predecessor of modern chemistry. But, in fact, alchemy is nothing more than a magical practice of constructing a deified person who has a certain “subtle” power over the universe. And in particular, he is capable of changing rough metals into gold.
How does this happen? At the first stage, which is called nigredo (“work in black,” or “black marriage”), there is a descent into the worlds of darkness – dissolution in chthonic, infernal entities. If we speak in our terminology, this is the stage of destruction of the human Haikel. In alchemical engravings, this stage is conveyed by gloomy symbols: a king with a severed head, a black raven tearing a skull with its claws, etc. This is a ritual, initiatory death.
In shamanism, it corresponds to the arrival of spirits that dismember the initiate, boil him, separate the bones from the flesh, and perform other terrifying manipulations with him. In schizophrenia, this is an acute stage, when the patient thinks that he is being killed, he goes through unimaginable torments, the personality disintegrates, all connection with the world is lost … After all, what is usually called schizophrenia is not the end, but the beginning. The next stage will be that the forces that caused the death of the personality will begin to reassemble it, that is, to build some new creature. But in the modern world, this stage usually is not reached because doctors simply suppress the symptoms of schizophrenia and prevent the process from reaching its natural boundaries. Schizophrenia actually repeats the pagan initiation process. Only this happens regardless of the will of the person. And therefore, in pagan societies, as we have already said, madmen often became objects of veneration and deification.
The second stage of the alchemical process is called albedo, “work in white,” that is, resurrection, rising after ritual death. The symbol of this stage is a king with a crown on his head. In our understanding, this means that after removing the human Haikel, some cosmic forces reassemble a person, but this is no longer a human person. A new being was born, which is ready for the transition to the level of the “great power.”
This “king” now enters into a second, “white” marriage, resulting in the birth of androgyne, rebis, which corresponds to the fusion of two principles – male and female, matter and form, mercury and sulfur. This is the last third stage – rubedo, “work in red.” The cosmic androgyne is on the other side of all polarities and distinctions. He realized unity in himself and found the Philosopher’s Stone.
It is assumed that this is the ascent to the top of the World Tree, to the peak of the universe – the acquisition of the crown of “great power” and deification. The one who has realized this stage (he is called an “adept”) is able to turn metals into gold, which marks his power over the universe since gold symbolizes the light and perfection of the cosmos.
This, in short, is what is called the “Great Work” of alchemy. Pharaoh was the embodiment of this Work in Egyptian civilization. He was conceived as a primordial androgyne, combining masculine and feminine principles, matter and form. The pyramid texts represent him as a golden fetus drinking the white milk of the black goddess Isis. Black is the color of the first stage of alchemical work, followed by white, from where gold is born.
In the tomb of Ramses IX, the Pharaoh is depicted as the hypotenuse of a right triangle. The hypotenuse is the longest side of such a triangle, opposite the right angle. The other two sides symbolize the male and female principles of the universe, “ka” and “mut.” Their product is a child. However, the child here decapitates the father and copulates with the mother. In Egyptian theology, he was called “ka-mut-ef,” “the bull of his mother” – the embodiment of the pagan dream of reaching the crown of the universe. This child is Pharaoh himself. He is “the bull of his mother,” who has become his own father, that is, a kind of permanent principle that divinely reproduces itself in eternity, above the poles and divisions. That is why Horus, the personification of whom the Pharaoh was considered, is both the son and husband of Isis.
We have seen three stages of alchemical work – separation, purification, conjunction. This symbol of the triad is universal for the entire pagan world (hence, by the way, the Christian “Trinity” ): “death – resurrection – deification,” “mercury – sulfur – salt,” “dissolution – purification – rebirth,” “female – male – child,” “matter – form – thing.”
So, the essence of the pagan program is an initiation into immortality through death and resurrection. It was moving down and up. We have here a certain set of manipulations with human nature to radically transform it from the inside, to grow a homunculus of a superhuman, a god-man. This is the program of paganism. Its essence consists of removing a human Haikel through a specific triadic process. First comes initiatory death, that is, the actual destruction of the human form, then a jump to the worlds of light, that is, to the Tree of the universe, and the last is the construction of a new Haikel, which is considered “eternal” and “divine.”
So, there is a descent into the world of darkness to dissolve in it and, jumping out of it, conquer the worlds of light. Like some black comet charged with darkness, going to storm the solar World Tree… The solar path passes through the darkness of the night. This is the pagan way. It is symbolized by hands raised from the darkness up to the Sun in order to defeat the light and receive it in your hand, to gain divine sovereignty – a gesture that, as you know, was at the same time a Roman battle salute. In the Avestan culture of ancient Iran, this gesture was expressed as “khwareno,” a radiance of glory and victory, symbolized by a falcon. This image played the same role in ancient Egypt. The same meaning had the symbol of crossed arms on the chest, in the form of the Latin letter X, with which the Pharaoh was usually depicted. In the same state, he was sitting on the throne and buried. This symbol means birth below and ascent upward.
So, the goal here is to put oneself in place of God or, better to say, the viceroy of God, i.e., Wali of the universe, by the position of which Satan tempted Adam. There is such an interesting moment in the Gospel where Satan comes to Jesus and says, “I will give you power over all these kingdoms and their glory if you worship me.” And this is a valid passage supported by some of the contexts from our hadiths. In the Gospel that has come down to us, not everything is distorted; there are genuine moments… This is one of them.
To be continued in the following parts. Gradually you will see how all this will come together in a big picture, which will give us some clear guidelines, including an understanding of the world we live in.
The first volume of Amin Ramin’s “Man in Islam” can be purchased on Amazon at this link.
803 total views
As Salamu Alaikum, great info! Jazak Allah Khair
Wa aleikum assalam! Thank you!