Mystical Astrology According to Ibn ‘Arabi pdf

MYSTICAL ASTROLOGY ACCORDING TO IBN ‘ARABI – Book Sample

Introduction MYSTICAL ASTROLOGY ACCORDING TO IBN ‘ARABI

THE WRITTEN work of the ‘greatest Master’ (ash-shaikh al­ akbar) Sufi, Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi, contains certain considerations on astrology which permit one to perceive how this science, which arrived in the modern occident only in a fragmentary form and reduced only to some of its most contingent applications, could be related to metaphysical principles, there­ by relating to a knowledge self-sufficient in itself. Astrology, as it was spread through the Middle Ages within Christian and Islamic civilizations and which still subsists in certain Arab countries, owes its form to the Alexandrine hermeticism;

it is therefore neither Islamic nor Christian in its essence; it could not in any case find a place in the religious perspective of mono­ theistic traditions, given that this perspective insists on the responsibility of the individual before its Creator and avoids, by this fact, all that could veil this relationship by considerations of intermediary causes. If, all the same, it were possible to integrate astrology into the Christian and Moslem esotericism, it is because it perpetuated, vehicled by hermeticism, certain aspects of a very primordial symbolism :

the contemplative penetration of cosmic atmosphere, and the identification of spontaneous appearances constant and rhythmic of the sensible world with the eternal prototypes corresponding in fact to a mentality as yet primitive, in the proper and positive sense of this term. This implicit primordiality of the astrological symbolism flares up in contact with spirituality, direct and universaI, of  living csotericism, just like the scintillation of a preci­ us stone flares up when it is exposed to the rays of light

Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi encloses the facts of the hermetic astrology in the edifice of his cosmology, which ·he summarises by means of a schema of concentric spheres by taking, as the starting point and as terms of comparison, the geocentric sys­ t m of the planetary world as the Medieval world conceived it.

The ‘subjective’ polarisation of this system we mean by that the fact that the terrestrial position of the human being serving s the fixed point to which will be related all the movements of the stars here symbolises the central role of man in the cosmic whole, of which man is like the goal and the centre of gravity. This symbolic perspective naturally does not depend upon the purely physical or spatial reality, the only one envisaged by modern astronomy, of the world of the stars; the geocentric system, being in conformity with the reality as it presents itself immediately to the human eyes, contains in itself all the logical) coherence requisite to a body of knowledge for constituting

\ exact sciencsToe discovery of the heliocentric system, which corresponds to a development both possible and homogeneous but very particular to the empirical knowledge of the sensible world, obviously could not prove anything against the central cognition of the human being in the cosmos;

only, the possibility of conceiving the planetary world as if one were contemplating it from the non-human position, and even as if one could make abstraction of the existence of the human being even though its consciousness still remains the ‘container’ of all conceptions had produced an intellectual dis-equilibrium which shows clearly that the ‘artificial’ extension of the empirical knowledge has in it something of the abnormal, and that it is, intellectually, not only indifferent but even detrimental…

ASTROLOGICAL SYMBOLISM resides in ‘points of junction’ of the fundamental conditions of the sensible world, and especially in the junctions of time, space and number. We know that the definition of the regions or parts of the great sphere of the sky without stars by means of reference points that the fixed stars offer coincide in astronomy, with the definition of divisions of time.

Now, the limit-sphere of the sky is not measurable except by reason of the directions of the space; when one speaks of parts of the sky one does no other than define the directions; on the other hand, these are the expressions of the qualitative nature of the space, so that the limits of the spatial indefinity are reintegrated in some ways in the qualitative aspect in question, the whole of the directions that radiate from one centre virtually containing all the possible spatial determinations.’

The extreme and indefinite expansion of these directions is the vault of the sky without stars and their centre is each living being which is on earth, without the ‘perspective’ of the directions changing from one individual to the other, because our visual axes coincide without confusion when we fix our gaze on one point of the celestial vault – in which is expressed obviously a coincidence of the microcosmic point of view with the macro- cosmic ‘point of view’. One must distinguish these ‘objective’

This coincidence of perspectives happens not only when one looks at one directions, that is to say equal for all the terrestrial beings looking at the sky at the same temporal instant, and the directions one can call ‘subjective’ because these are determined by the individual zenith and the nadir; we will point out in passing that it is precisely this comparison between these two orders of the directions of the celestial space that is the basis of the horoscope.

The indefinity of the directions of the space is in itself undifferentiated, we mean to say that they have in them virtually all the spatial relations possible without it being possible to define them.

But the qualities of these directions of the celestial space are interdependent; we mean that as soon as one direction of the celestial space- or point of the limit-sphere which corresponds to it–is defined, the whole of the other directions become differentiated and polarised with respect to that one.

It is in this sense that the Master says that the divisions of the sky without stars or the sky of the zodiacal ‘towers’ are ‘virtual determinations which are not differentiated except with respect to the sky of the ‘stations’ of the stars.

However, the fixed points of the sky of the ‘stations’ are above all the respective poles of the diurnal revolution of the sky (or of the earth) and of the annual cycle of the sun, and are consequently the points

point of the sky-limit, but even when one fixes on a planet. It is expressed in current experience according to which each spectator who looks at the sun rising or setting on the other side of an expanse of water sees the “paths” of the rays reflected in the water coming directly towards him; when the spectator moves to another point, this luminous path follows him.

Let us note in passing that the North American Indians consider this luminous path. reflected on water by the rays of the setting sun, a path for the souls on their return to the world of their ancestors; in fact, one can see in this a “horizon- tal’ projection of solar rays, which, according to the Hindu symbolism. represents the tie by which each particular individual is attached directly to his principal.

We know that the sacred texts of Hinduism describe this ray as going from the ‘crown’ of the head to the sun. The same symbolism – implying at the same time the idea of a direct tie and that of the Divine Way”

can be found in this passage from the Sura of Hod: There does not exist a living being whom He (Allah) does not hold by his forlock; in truth my Lord is on a straight path”. – Like the Divine Way’, the direction which goes from any one of the terrestrial beings to a determined point of the celestial vault is at the same time unique for each and the same for all.

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