Tuesday, January 04, 2005
THE CENTRALITY OF THE DIVINE FEMININE IN ISLAM
Some excerpts from the article:
Before the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad, brought the religion of Islam to Arabia, the Arabs were a polytheistic people....Ancient Indian Vedic texts refer to Makkah as a place where Alla the Mother Goddess was worshiped. In Sanskrit, Alla means "mother." ...
The ancient Arabs prayed to...lesser gods and goddesses to intercede before Allah and to pass their desires on to Allah. As part of their religious practices, they visited Makkah. In Makkah was a cube-like building known as the Ka'ba. This temple contained three hundred sixty idols. ...
The identity of the Black Stone with the Great Goddess and with the moon is recognized by the Hulama - rationalist school of Islam.
Inside the Ka'ba there were fresco paintings including those of Abraham and the "Virgin Mary" with the baby Jesus. When Muhammad retook Makkah he began a program of removing the pagan influences from the Ka'ba...he specifically left on the walls a fresco of the "Virgin Mary" and her child. ...
Sufism cherishes the esoteric secret of woman, even though Sufism is the esoteric aspect of a seemingly patriarchal religion. ...
Divine Feminine has always been present in Islam. ...
Sufism, or as some would define it "mystical Islam" has always honored the Divine Feminine...to the Sufi, Allah has always been the Beloved and the Sufi has always been the Lover. ...
Ibn al-'Arabi wrote a collection of poems...These are love poems that he composed after meeting the learned and beautiful Persian woman Nizam in Makkah. The poems are filled with images pointing to the Divine Feminine. His book _Fusus al-hikam_, in the last chapter, relates that man's supreme witnessing of Allah is in the form of the woman during the act of sexual union. ...
Fatima is regarded by some Sufis and theologians as the first spiritual head...of the Sufi fellowship. ...
The Divine Masculine and the Divine Feminine express two very distinct aspects of Allah. ...
It is stated by some Sufi Sheikhs (Masters) that Sufism originally was named Sophia, which connects Sufism with the Christian Gnostic tradition, in which Wisdom is personified as a woman, the divine Sophia. The physical mother of Jesus was an external image of manifestation of the Virgin Sophia, the word "Sophia" stemming from Sophos (wisdom). The Gnostics, whose language was Greek, identified the Holy Spirit with Sophia, Wisdom; and Wisdom was considered female. The Virgin was closely associated by the early church with Wisdom, the cathedral church at Constantinople, while the ascension of the Virgin Mary refers to the passing of Wisdom into Immortality. The litany of the Blessed Virgin contains the prayer "Seat of Wisdom, pray for us." ...
Sufi, ibn al-Arabi, saw a young girl in Makkah surrounded by light and realized that, for him, she was an incarnation of the divine Sophia. ...
...(Prophet of God - Muhammad) understood that his gnosis was bestowed upon him from the Divine Feminine. ...
Fatima was given the title of "az-Zahraa" which means "the Resplendent One." That was because of her beaming face, which seemed to radiate light. However, others, who must keep their beliefs prudently concealed, know the Prophet Muhammad's daughter as "Fatima Fatir". In Her own sacred words She utters the truth, "There is no God beside me, neither in divinity nor humanity, neither in the Heavens nor on earth, outside of me, who am Fatima - Creator."...
One of the primary goals of the Sufi is to reawaken the body to an awareness of it being an expression of the divine. The body is not basically sinful (as in the Roman Catholic Church's conception of Original Sin) in Islam, rather the body is the seat of the highest reality created by Allah in the whole universe. To understand the Divine Feminine in Sufism, it is helpful to understand a few basics of Tantra Yoga. ...
The basic tenet of Tantrism is that matter, and therefore the body, is also a manifestation of Sakti power, that is, the power emanating from the feminine aspect of Divine Reality. In the domain of the spiritual life, the same term Sakti signifies the celestial energy that allows one to enter into contact with the Divinity. ...
There is a form of Tantra, entitled "Kundalini Tantra". This is the Yoga of sexual intercourse. ...
What ties Tantra to Sufism is contained in the symbolism of Prophet Muhammad's nighttime ascent to Heaven. The Prophet ascended on al-Buraq, a riding beast with the head of a woman, through the seven heavens to the Throne of God. Hadith relates that the Prophet's bed was still warm when he returned...
The Sufic explanation of the fact that the Prophet's bed was still warm, is that Muhammad (Peace be upon him) was making this journey while having sexual intercourse with his wife Khadijah. ...
Sometimes when the Divine Feminine is realized in all Her Splendor, She so transforms her devotees that their forms of worship are transformed also. Hence Islamic and Sufi groups arise that are considered heretical to mainstream Islamic and Sufi belief structures through attention and study of the feminine aspects of divinity. The concept that Allah is the feminine form of the Ultimate Reality is the inner secret of the most esoteric mysteries of Islam. Ibn 'al-'Arabi pronounced: "True divinity is female, and Makkah is the womb of the Earth." Because he said the godhead was feminine, they accused Ibn al-'Arabi of blasphemy.
That's just an overview. There's a lot more in the article. According to the author's bio, he was initiated as a Sufi Dervish in 1980 and has been a student of Sufism for more than two decades.
