A Few Good Links….
As regular readers will perhaps know, I have an abiding interest in the Shakespeare Authorship Question and as well as not accepting in any way that the plays could have been written by the ‘Stratford Actor’ (and loan shark) of the same name, also have an interest in the links between the works of Shakespeare, Cervantes and Dante and earlier Classical Eastern literature.
I have found an interesting link on the parallels between certain Sufi motifs and the play The Taming of the Shrew which is well worth a read as is the rest of the site - particularly the articles on Shakespeare and his circle. I do not as it happens agree with many of the author’s contentions - certainly I would not agree that Bacon wrote the plays but I am biased and wedded to the idea of a Sufi group under the Earl of Oxford - and some ideas seem a bit ‘way out’ to my mind but it is definitely an interesting read which takes in Shah, Rosicrucians and the Sarmoun. Check it out , it’s a must to anyone interested in the issue.
Speaking of Eastern literature, I have just come across Omphaloskepsis which is an excellent resource for online eastern texts. So far they have Attar’s Tadhkirat al-Auliya and some chapters from his Ilahi-Nama and some works of Sa’di and Rumi. This is definitely one to watch.
PS: I posted a while back about the Psalm 46 coincidence (?) and it’s relevance to the Shakespeare Authorship issue - for those interested in this I have just found an interesting illustration of the conundrum.
October 21 2005 in General Stuff | Read More | Comments [2]
A Saying and a Picture….
Quite a few blogs I’ve seen have one of these emoticon thingies which allegedly display your current mood or state of mind. Apart from the fact that this blog is not cool enough to have one, it would also be a bit of a hypocrisy - aiming as we do here for no state of mind at all - so I’m going to have to do it manually. Here’s three sayings describing what my current state of mind is:
When the camel of our efforts sinks into the mud, what matter if the destination is near or far?
And here’s a picture of what I wish it could be like and hope it soon will again:
October 19 2005 in Sufism/Islam | Read More | Comments [4]
Friends, relationships and stuff…..
Today was (is) one of those days where the ‘real world’ is trying to tell me something: synchronicity is everywhere.
Firstly, I have been pondering all week on the nature of friendship and the lack of it, of how difficult it is to be in harmony with people and meet others of ‘like-mind’ as the saying has it. I have struggled with this for a long time - even moving countries in part because of it and it is still ‘an issue’. All my best friends have somehow disappeared, think I’ve gone mad (which may be true) or just avoid me for unspecified reasons (although I am always careful to make a bad impression and one supposes this must get wearing....) and new ones seem in short supply. Moving country seven times in five years doesn’t help either.....
October 17 2005 in Sufism/Islam | Read More | Comments [3]
Hafez
A friend of mine, Anna Sullivan from the UK, is a very talented artist and has sent me some illustrations she has been working on which accompany (amongst other things) some of the sayings of the Persian poet Hafez.
I thought I’d post a couple of my favourites alongside some of my favourites from Hafez:
Without the beloved’s face, the rose is not pleasant.
Without wine, spring is not pleasant.The border of the sward and the air of the garden
Without the tulip cheek is not pleasant.The dancing of the cypress, and the rapture of the rose,
Without the one thousand songs is not pleasant.With the beloved, sugar of lip, rose of body,
Without kiss and embrace is not pleasant.Every picture that reasons’s hand depicteth,
Save the picture of the idol is not pleasant.Hafez! the soul is a despicable coin:
For scattering, it is not pleasant.
And my long-time favourite:
If that Shirazi Turkish maid
would take my heart in her hand,
I’d give Bukhara for the mole on her cheek....
...or Samarkand.
October 12 2005 in Sufism/Islam | Read More | Comments [1]
Obvious Absurdities
PD Ouspensky, in the first chapter of In Search of the Miraculous
October 10 2005 in Esoteric Christianity | Read More | Comments [0]
More pics
I’m still snowed under with work but it’s easing off a bit and I should get to post a bit more this week. I’ve also been frantically putting the finishing touches to an update of my Islamic Art/Tribal rugs site and have been scanning in dozens of pictures. In the process of this I found a few interesting ones (?) which I post below.
Also been working on an extended article on Ibn Arabi’s work particularly al-futuhat al-makkiyya (The Meccan Openings) with reference to Corbin and Chittick’s researches on ‘Creative Imagination’ and I will post something of that here soon.
Meanwhile, the pics below in order are an Aleppo street scene, the blind Halveti Dervishes in the Mosque of Damascus, Aleppo souq and the Ottoman cemetery in Istanbul.
October 05 2005 in Travelogue | Read More | Comments [0]
Kate Bush is back!
There have been rumours of a new Kate Bush album for about 12 years but as time went by it was generally regarded as a myth - well, it looks like it’s true, the new album, Aerial, will be released later this month. Which is a double-edged sword because it could go either way: ruin the memory or be an awesome life-enhancing milestone. Thankfully, due to the woeful state of current ‘culture’ the second option is almost a given.
I met Kate once when I was about 15, she seemed very small and elfin and not much older than me but I digress. I’ve always loved her music, I first got into it because of the Gurdjieff references and for a long time I viewed her as saying something very profound about the Work through her lyrics but it seems that she really doesn’t have much of an interest at all. Weird how we project our own ideas onto music and extrapolate things about the artist that are very far from the reality - might make a good post someday but on....
There’s something odd about the album cover too (see above). It seems that the cover contains a coded message depicted in the soundwave image there. Apparently it is a ‘visual representation of spoken, or sung words over music? and sound’ analysts and fans alike have been agonisingly attempting to work out the message. The current favourites are wildly different.
The album is a double with one cd being ‘Kate songs’ and the other a ‘concept album’ (uh-oh) which may or may not be one continuous song. Apparently the single King of the Mountain is available for download on the net somewhere for free but I haven’t been able to find it - if anyone has a link let me know.
Another article in the Scotsman has more info and intriguingly it claims that EMI execs are very excited about the album and that it may be a career peak and a masterpiece. We shall see - can’t wait....and how come all these people have heard it already?
October 03 2005 in Music | Read More | Comments [3]
The Magic Sack
‘Know, 0 Fortunate Ones,’ Lateef said, as he sat in his retirement under a tree instructing novices, ‘that without thieves there would be occasions on this Earth of ours when justice is not done, and when the innocent suffer. In our very ancient thieves’ lore there is a moral tale Which has fortified the spirit and nourished the acquisitiveness of many a laggard in the ranks of thiefdom: helping to maintain our numbers and preventing the development of backsliding. This is the tale of the pious man and the thief.
September 27 2005 in Sufism/Islam | Read More | Comments [0]
Travel pics
Still busy - massive scanning job on today but I found some lost pics of my last trip to the Middle East and took the opportunity to scan some in. I’m posting a couple of photos I took below. First is some beautiful calligraphy from the outside area of the Mosque of Ibn Tulun in Cairo, second a street scene from the same area while the third and fourth are the Umayyad Mosque, Damascus and the inside of the Monastery at Petra in Jordan.
September 21 2005 in Travelogue | Read More | Comments [0]
Busy bee…
Not sure how much posting I’ll get round to this week as I’m literally inundated with work. Literally - which is good....and bad. Shall try to avoid some of it but I shall probably manage to post a Latif story and and a Nasrudin story during the next few days to while away the hours of heart-wrenching waiting you are all no doubt hellishly enduring.
In the meantime I’m going to plug a new site by a good friend of mine, Tim, over at Becoming Invisible. There’s some great stuff on there and I know Tim has more goodies lined up so check it out. He’s a Nick Cave fan and loves Istanbul - what more can you want?!
September 19 2005 in General Stuff | Read More | Comments [0]
Through Eastern Eyes
I recently went to see an exhibition here in Barcelona called West by East which attempts to chart perceptions of the West from the perspective of the Islamic world, as opposed to the other way around which is usually the only view that is presented. The idea is a novel one and the exhibition does in fact provide some significant insights.
The exhibition is running at the Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona until the end of September when it moves to Valencia and is the brainchild of the Tunisian writer Abdelwahab Meddeb who was inspired to create the project in the wake of 911.
The exhibition is essentially about how Westerners (ie Europeans) have traditionally been perceived in the Islamic world. According to the exhibition notes, the layout of the show “allows visitors to observe how Islam has been divided in the way in which it sees the West and highlights the different viewpoints and attitudes that have existed side by side throughout history”. In particular it focuses on how concepts which we in the West see as being in opposition - ie, conflict, solidarity, interchange, fascination - actually have existed side by side throughout Islamic history rather than successively superseding each other as is the traditional Western view.
September 17 2005 in Sufism/Islam | Read More | Comments [5]
Mushkil Gusha: Death Comes to Baghdad
The disciple of a Sufi of Baghdad was sitting in the corner of an inn one day when he heard two figures talking. From what they said he realized that one of them was the Angel of Death.
“I have several calls to make in this city during the next three weeks” the Angel was saying to his companion. Terrified, the disciple concealed himself until the two had left. Then, applying his intelligence to the problem of how to cheat a possible call from death, he decided that if he kept away from Baghdad he should not be touched. From this reasoning it was but a short step to hiring the fastest horse available and spurring it night and day towards the distant town of Samarkand.
Meanwhile Death met the Sufi teacher and they talked about various people. “And where is your disciple so-and-so?” asked Death.
“He should be somewhere in this city, spending his time in contemplation, perhaps in caravanserai” said the teacher.
“Surprising,” said the Angel “because he is on my list. Yes, here it is: I have to collect him in four weeks’ time at Samarkand, of all places.”
September 15 2005 in Sufism/Islam | Read More | Comments [0]
Latif the Thief
Many people are familiar with the exploits of Mulla Nasrudin, the wise-fool of the east but there is a similar, although lesser-known, character whose tales are told in chaikhanas and in gatherings throughout Afghanistan and parts of Central Asia: Latif the Thief.
There are both similarities and differences with the Nasrudin stories in the Latif Tales but Latif has a style all his own - and of course he is not a holy man but a thief. An improbably wise and clever one. I shall post some of his stories whenever I get the chance as they are very amusing!
One day Latif the Theif ambushed the commander of the Royal Guard, captured him and took him to a cave.
‘I am going to say something that, no matter how much you try, you will be unable to forget,’ he told the infuriated officer. Latif made his prisoner take off all his clothes. Then he tied him, facing backwards, on a donkey.
‘You may be able to make a fool of me,’ screamed the soldier, ‘but you’ll never make me think of something if I want to keep it out of my mind.’
‘You have not yet heard the phrase which I want you to remember,’ said Latif. ‘I am turning you loose now, for the donkey to take back to town. And the phrase you must always remember is: I’ll catch and kill Latif the Thief, if it takes me the rest of my life.’
September 12 2005 in Sufism/Islam | Read More | Comments [2]
Superheroes
It’s funny how sometimes you observe something and it makes you realise things about something quite different - often with no connection at all. Yesterday morning I was watching my daughter playing with some figures of the ‘Incredibles’ (we don’t really approve but what can you do?) and I realised I knew something I didn’t know I knew (if you catch my drift - if not, bear with me, it gets clearer).
What I realised was this: all desire and effort is on fact a desire an effort to reach God. There is no division into ‘good’ and ‘bad’, there is just misplaced effort - we are all desiring ‘God’ but some of us just don’t realise it. The desire for power, for that new car, to be ‘free’ or ‘enlightened’, to shag the girl next door - all this is the search for God. Of course, one may not be able to find God in these ways but I am not talking about the outward effort rather the underlying impulse which is often unknown even to the person doing the ‘desiring’.
September 12 2005 in Sufism/Islam | Read More | Comments [3]
Snow Upon The Desert
From Fitzgerald’s translation of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám:
The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes - or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert’s dusty Face
Lighting a little Hour or two - is gone.
September 10 2005 in Sufism/Islam | Read More | Comments [3]
