Al-Buni Gardiner

{"result":["[Summary from page 1 to page 19 out of a total of 28:\nPages 1:\nStars and Saints\nThe Esotericist Astrology of the Sufi Occultist Ah.mad al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\nNOAH GARDINER\nUniversity of South Carolina\nThough little explored in modern scholarship, the North African cum Egyptian Sufi Ah.mad al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t f\u0131\u0304 al-h.uru\u0304f al-\u0003ulw\u0131\u0304ya\u0304t (The Subtleties\nof the Allusions regarding the Superior Letters), completed in Cairo in 622/1225,\nis a key text for investigating an occultist tendency in late medieval Sufism\nthat helped seed a renaissance of the occult sciences in early modern Islamic\nculture.1 The work contains al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s most explicit discussion of the \u201cscience\nThis final version of this article was completed during the author\u2019s year as a Junior\nFellow at Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms Universita\u0308t\nBonn. The author wishes to thank Bethany Walker, Stephan Conermann, and the\nfellows and staff who made the year there so productive and enjoyable. Thanks also\nto Elizabeth Sartell and Shandra Lamaute, who organized the 2015 conference\n\u201cCharacterizing Astrology in the Medieval Islamic World\u201d at the University of Chicago Divinity School, at which this paper was originally presented, and to the various\nreaders who have commented on it along the way.\n1. Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304tf\u0131\u0304 al-h.uru\u0304f al-\u0003ulw\u0131\u0304ya\u0304t survives in at least twenty-two manuscript\ncopies. All citations of the text in this article refer to the present author\u2019s readings of\nBibliothe\u0300que nationale de France MS arabe 2658, with certain readings checked\nagainst Berlin Staatsbibliothek MS oriental Folio 80. BnF 2658 was copied in 809/\n1406. It contains elements suggesting it was copied from an autograph, and an audition certificate (sama\u0304\u0003) copied from the exemplar that records al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 having presided\nover a reading of the work in 622/1225\u2014a traditional guarantor of textual accuracy.\nBerlin or. Fol. 80, copied in 669/1270, appears to be the oldest surviving copy, but\nis in a difficult hand and lacks transmission certificates. Dietrich notes the existence\nof a Cairene lithograph of the work dated 1307 AH, though the present author has\nnot seen it; Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, s.v. \u201cal- Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304, Abu \u2018l- \u0003Abba\u0304s Ah.mad\nb. \u0003Al\u0131\u0304 b. Yu\u0304suf al-K.urash\u0131\u0304 al-S.u\u0304f\u0131\u0304 Muh.y\u0131\u0304 \u2018l-D\u0131\u0304n.\u201d More recently, Jean-Charles\nCoulon includes a transcription of the work in his dissertation, \u201cLa magie islamique\net le \u2018corpus bunianum\u2019 au Moyen A\u0302ge\u201d (Ph.D. diss., Paris IV - Sorbonne, 2013),\nIII/64\u2013180. For further discussions of the MSS, including a full transcription of the\naforementioned audition certificate, see Noah Gardiner, \u201cEsotericist reading communities and the early circulation of the Sufi occultist Ah.mad al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s works,\u201d Arabica\n(forthcoming in 2017); cf. idem, \u201cForbidden Knowledge? Notes on the Production,\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft (Spring 2017)\nCopyright \u4277 2017 University of Pennsylvania Press. All rights reserved.\n\nPages 2:\n40\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft \u0002 Spring 2017\nof letters and names\u201d (\u0003ilm al-h.uru\u0304f wa-al-asma\u0304\u0002)\u2014or \u201clettrism,\u201d as scholars\nrecently have come to call it. Similar in ways to Jewish Kabbalah, lettrism was\na cosmologically-oriented discourse on the powers of the Arabic alphabet and\nthe names of God that, in certain iterations, was linked to occult practices such\nas divination and the making of talismans. Some writers on lettrism, such as alBu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s famous Andalusian contemporary Muh.y\u0131\u0304 al-D\u0131\u0304n Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304 (d. 638/\n1240), confined their written discussions to theological and philosophical\naspects of the science, eschewing revelations of its occult-practical side as prone\nto dangerous misunderstandings.2 Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t, on the other hand,\nincludes no small amount of practical instruction in such matters, including\nmuch that could be described as \u201castrological magic,\u201d which is to say the use\nof talismans and prayers to harness the forces emanating from the planets and\nstars that were thought by many to shape life on earth in manifold ways.\nIndeed, some of its contents bear similarities to those of an earlier Arabic work\nof that nature, the Gha\u0304yat al-h.ak\u0131\u0304m (Goal of the Wise) of Maslamah b. Qa\u0304sim alQurt.ub\u0131\u0304 (d. 353/964), known in its influential Latin and Spanish translations as\nPicatrix.3 Unlike that work, however, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s text is pervaded by expressions\nof distinctly Sufi piety, as is the rest of al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s oeuvre, most of which does not\naddress explicitly occult-scientific matters.4\nBecause Islam and the occult sciences are sometimes perceived as fundamentally incompatible, modern scholarship has largely dismissed al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 as a\nTransmission, and Reception of the Major Works of Ah.mad Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304,\u201d Journal of\nArabic and Islamic Studies 12 (2012): 89\u201392.\n2. For Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304\u2019s statement against writing about occult lettrist practices see\nhis Kita\u0304b al-M\u0131\u0304m wa-al-wa\u0304w wa-al-nu\u0304n; the edition and French translation of CharlesAndre Gilis is problematic but relatively available, Le Livre du mim, du waw, et du nun\n(Beirut: Editions Albouraq, 2002), 56\u201359. For a brief discussion of that text in relation\nto al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s willingness to write about such topics see the present author\u2019s forthcoming article mentioned in the previous note.\n3. On the attribution of Gha\u0304yat al-h.ak\u0131\u0304m to Maslamah al-Qurt.ub\u0131\u0304, rather than to the\nfourth/tenth-century mathematician Maslamah b. Ah.mad al-Majr\u0131\u0304t.\u0131\u0304, to whom it was\nlong attributed, see Maribel Fierro, \u201cBa\u0304t.inism in al-Andalus: Maslama b. Qa\u0304sim alQurt.ub\u0131\u0304 (d. 353/964), Author of the Rutbat al-H\n. ak\u0131\u0304m and the Gha\u0304yat al-H\n. ak\u0131\u0304m (Picatrix),\u201d Studia Islamica 84 (1996): 87\u2013112; Godefroid de Callatay\u0308, \u201cPhilosophy and Ba\u0304t.inism in Al-Andalus: Ibn Masarra\u2019s Risa\u0304lat al-\u0003itiba\u0304r and the Rasa\u0304\u0002il Ikhwa\u0304n al-s.afa\u0304\u0002,\u201d\nJerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 41 (2014): 261\u2013312. On the translation of the\nGha\u0304yah as Picatrix, see David Pingree, \u201cBetween the Gha\u0304ya and Picatrix I: The Spanish\nVersion,\u201d Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 44 (January 1, 1981): 27\u201356;\nidem, Picatrix, the Latin version of the Gha\u0304yat al-h.ak\u0131\u0304m (London: Warburg Institute, 1986).\nOn its impact on Renaissance European thought, see Liana Saif, The Arabic Influences on\nEarly Modern Occult Philosophy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), passim.\n4. On al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s bibliography see note 14 infra.\n\nPages 3:\nGardiner \u0002 Stars and Saints\nmere magician in Sufi garb, someone who superficially \u201cIslamized\u201d popular\noccult practices to make them more culturally palatable.5 While the present\nauthor has neither the inclination nor qualifications to offer an opinion on\nthe strictly theological question of whether al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s teachings are compatible with Islam, in what follows it is argued that al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s engagement with\nastrology in Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t represents something altogether more complex\u2014\nand more interesting from an intellectual-historical perspective\u2014than popular occultism in pious drag. It is demonstrated that important elements of\nal-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s teachings in Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t, particularly his unusual doctrine of\nforty-eight letters, amounts to an esotericist unveiling of the hidden realities\nunderlying \u201cprofane\u201d astrology, one that identifies the world-shaping efflux\nof forces from the celestial spheres with the continuous flow of the letters of\nGod\u2019s creative speech. He furthermore implies a central role for Sufi adepts\n(muh.aqqiqu\u0304n) and saints (awliya\u0304\u0002) in mediating these astral-lettristic radiations,\nadding a uniquely occult-scientific twist to views deeply embedded in Sufi\ntradition\u2014and premodern Muslim culture generally\u2014of the saints as key\nexecutors of God\u2019s word and will on earth. In the conclusion, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s\napproach to astrology is discussed as part of a transconfessional wave of esotericism in the late medieval Mediterranean, one that heralded shifting ideas\nabout the order of nature and the relationship between divine and human\nagency.\nAH\n. M A D Al - B U\u0304N I\u0304\nWe have only a few glimpses of the life of Abu\u0304 al-\u0003Abba\u0304s Ah.mad b. \u0003Al\u0131\u0304 b.\nYu\u0304suf al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304. The name al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 suggests that he was from the Ifr\u0131\u0304qiyan6\nport-city of Bu\u0304nah (formerly Hippo Regius, the bishopric of Augustine, now\nthe Algerian city of Annaba), in a period when Ifr\u0131\u0304qiyah was closely linked\nto Andalusia through sea-routes and the rule of the Almohad Caliphate. His\nfather is said to have been a Qur\u0002a\u0304n-reciter,7 and al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 was likely educated\nin the religious sciences from an early age. At some point al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 became a\n5. For example Manfred Ullmann, Die Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften im Islam\n(Leiden: Brill, 1972), 390\u201391; A. Dietrich, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, s.v.\n\u201cal-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304, Abu l-\u0003Abba\u0304s Ah.mad b. \u0003Al\u0131\u0304 b. Yu\u0304suf al-K.urash\u0131\u0304 al-S.u\u0304f\u0131\u0304 Muh.y\u0131\u0304 l-D\u0131\u0304n.\u201d\n6. In medieval Arabic geographical terms, Ifr\u0131\u0304qiya was more or less coterminous\nwith the Roman province of Africa Proconsularis, which is to say the coastal region\nof North Africa roughly between modern northwest Libya and northeast Algeria.\n7. In a number of medieval manuscript copies of al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s works his father\u2019s name\nis given as Abu\u0304 al-H\n. asan \u0003Al\u0131\u0304 the Qur\u0002a\u0304n reciter (al-muqri\u0002); see, for example, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304,\nShams al-ma\u0003a\u0304rif wa-lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-\u0003awa\u0304rif, Bibliothe\u0300que nationale de France MS arabe 2649,\nfol. 2a.\n41\n\nPages 4:\n42\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft \u0002 Spring 2017\ndisciple of an important Sufi shaykh in the city of Tunis, \u0003Abd al-\u0003Az\u0131\u0304z alMahdaw\u0131\u0304 (d. 621/1224)8; this is mentioned in al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s major work on the\nnames of God, \u0003Alam al-huda\u0304 wa-asra\u0304r al-ihtida\u0304\u0002 f\u0131\u0304 sharh. asma\u0304\u0002 Alla\u0304h al-h.usna\u0304\n(The Banner of Right Guidance and the Mysteries of the Proper Way in Elucidating\nthe Beautiful Names of God).9 This datum is especially noteworthy insofar as\nal-Mahdaw\u0131\u0304 also instructed the aforementioned Andalusian mystic Muh.y\u0131\u0304 alD\u0131\u0304n Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304, another of the most important Sufi writers on lettrism and\nindeed one of the most influential thinkers in the history of Islam. There is\nno definitive indication that Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304 and al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 met or were familiar\nwith each other\u2019s teachings,10 and it is unclear if al-Mahdaw\u0131\u0304 was the main\nsource of al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 and Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304\u2019s lettrism, as few details of al-Mahdaw\u0131\u0304\u2019s\nteachings survive. There is significant conceptual and terminological crossover between his two students\u2019 discussions of the topic, such that Ibn al\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304\u2019s plentiful writings can sometimes be used to shed light on al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s\nmore gnomic statements, though there are also considerable differences.11\nAt some point after his time in Tunis, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 migrated eastward to Egypt,\nalso visiting Mecca at least once, in 621/1224.12 Various pieces of manuscript\nevidence place him back in Cairo in late 621/1224 and 622/1225, completing and promulgating both Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t and the aforementioned \u0003Alam alhuda\u0304 to a select audience of disciples gathered in the Qara\u0304fah cemetery\u2014\n8. On al-Mahdaw\u0131\u0304 see Ah.mad b. H\n. usayn Ibn Qunfudh, Uns al-faq\u0131\u0304r wa-\u0003izz alh.aq\u0131\u0304r, ed. Abu\u0304 Sahl Naja\u0304h. \u0003Awad. Siya\u0304m and \u0003Al\u0131\u0304 Jum\u0003ah (Cairo: Dar al-Muqattam,\n2002), 142\u201344; Gerald Elmore, \u201cShaykh \u0003Abd al-\u0003Az\u0131\u0304z al-Mahdaw\u0131\u0304. Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304\u2019s\nmentor,\u201d Journal of the American Oriental Society 121, no. 4 (2001): 593\u2013613; Pablo\nBeneito and Stephen Hirtenstein, \u201cThe prayer of blessing (upon the Light of\nMuhammad) by \u0003Abd al-\u0003Aziz al-Mahdaw\u0131\u0304,\u201d Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn \u0003Arabi Society\n34 (2003): 1\u201357; Noah Gardiner, Encyclopaedia of Islam THREE, s.v. \u201c\u0003Abd al-\u0003Az\u0131\u0304z\nal-Mahdaw\u0131\u0304.\u201d\n9. In my 2012 article \u201cForbidden Knowledge?,\u201d I followed Brockelmann and\nothers in referring to this work as \u0003Ilm al-huda\u0304 rather than \u0003Alam, a reading I now\nbelieve to be incorrect. I first saw the title rendered as \u0003Alam in John Martin, \u201cTheurgy in the Medieval Islamic World: Conceptions of Cosmology in Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s Doctrine of the Divine Names\u201d (MA thesis, The American University in Cairo, 2011). It\nwas only after this that I noticed the title is indeed vocalized that way in some of the\noldest Bunian manuscripts, and thus was convinced of the correctness of that reading.\n10. On al-Mahdaw\u0131\u0304 and Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304 see Elmore, \u201cShaykh \u0003Abd al-\u0003Az\u0131\u0304z al-Mahdaw\u0131\u0304\u201d; Claude Addas, Quest for the Red Sulphur: The life of Ibn \u0003Arab\u0131\u0304, tr. Peter Kingsley\n(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), passim.\n11. For brief discussions of some of the terminological crossover between al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\nand Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304, and of ways that later Muslim thinkers assessed the relationship\nbetween the two, see Gardiner, \u201cForbidden Knowledge?,\u201d 105\u20137, 119\u201321.\n12. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304, Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t, fol. 54b.\n\nPages 5:\nGardiner \u0002 Stars and Saints\nCairo\u2019s great \u201ccity of the dead\u201d that was a center of tomb-visitation practices\nlinked to the cult of saints.13 Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 also authored some number of other\nworks during his life, though his bibliography presents several challenges\nthanks to the large and complex corpus of manuscripts of texts attributed to\nhim.14 The promulgation of \u0003Alam al-huda\u0304 and Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t may have been\namong al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s final acts, as the famed Ottoman bibliographer H\n. a\u0304jj\u0131\u0304 Khal\u0131\u0304fah notes in his magisterial Kashf al-z.unu\u0304n (The Removal of Doubts) that alBu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 died in 622/1225, although at one place he instead gives the date 630/\n1232\u20133.15 Neither date is confirmed or contradicted by reliable outside\nsources.16 Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 is reported to have been buried in the Qara\u0304fah cemetery,\nand there is evidence that, at least through the twelfth/eighteenth century,\nhis tomb was a popular site for visitation by those seeking his saintly barakah,\ni.e. his special spiritual power to intercede in worldly matters.17 His works on\n13. Christopher Taylor, In the Vicinity of the Righteous: Ziya\u0304ra and the Veneration of\nMuslim Saints in Late Medieval Egypt (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 56\u201358; Tetsuya Ohtoshi,\n\u201cCairene Cemeteries as Public Loci in Mamluk Egypt,\u201d Mamluk Studies Review 10,\nno. 1 (2006), passim.\n14. Scores of works attributed to al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 are extant in hundreds of manuscripts,\nand questions of which works are authentic to him are complex due to pseudepigraphy and other issues. The topic has been investigated seriously only in my own scholarship and that of Jean-Charles Coulon, and while we have reached similar\nconclusions on many points, there is still a great deal of work to be done on the\nmatter. See Gardiner, \u201cForbidden Knowledge?,\u201d 94\u2013111; idem, \u201cEsotericism in a\nManuscript Culture: Ah.mad Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 and His Readers through the Mamlu\u0304k Period\u201d\n(Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 2014), 19\u201340. Coulon, \u201cLa magie islamique,\u201d\nI/447ff.\n15. H\n. a\u0304jj\u0131\u0304 Khal\u0131\u0304fah, Kashf al-z.unu\u0304n \u0003an asa\u0304m\u0131\u0304 al-kutub wa-al-funu\u0304n, 2 vols., ed.\nMuh.ammad Sharaf al-D\u0131\u0304n Ya\u0304ltaqa\u0304ya\u0304 and Rif\u0003at B\u0131\u0304lga (Istanbul: Maarif Matbaas\u0131,\n1941\u20133). For the 622/1225 date see, for example, the entry on Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t at II/\ncol. 1551. For the 630/1232\u20133 date see the entry for \u0003Alam al-huda\u0304 at II/col. 1161.\nThe latter entry, incidentally, in fact describes al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s al-Lum\u0003ah al-nu\u0304ra\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah,\nwhereas \u0003Alam al-huda\u0304 is described under the title Sharh. asma\u0304\u0002 Alla\u0304h al-h.usna\u0304 at II/col.\n1033.\n16. The great Mamlu\u0304k-era historian Taq\u0131\u0304 al-D\u0131\u0304n al-Maqr\u0131\u0304z\u0131\u0304 (d. 845/1142)\nincludes a wholly unreliable biography of al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 in his unfinished biographical dictionary Kita\u0304b al-Muqaffa\u0304 al-kab\u0131\u0304r. In it he gives al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s death date as 602/1201,\nthough this is demonstrably incorrect on the basis of manuscript evidence. Maqr\u0131\u0304z\u0131\u0304,\nKita\u0304b al-Muqaffa\u0304 al-kab\u0131\u0304r, ed. Muh.ammad al-Ya\u0003 la\u0304w\u0131\u0304, 2nd ed. (Beirut: Da\u0304r al-Gharb\nal-Isla\u0304m\u0131\u0304, 2006), 464. Note that al-Ya\u0003 la\u0304w\u0131\u0304 attempts to amend the date to 622 to\nbring it into line with H\n. a\u0304jj\u0131\u0304 Khal\u0131\u0304fah\u2019s date, but al-Maqr\u0131\u0304z\u0131\u0304 clearly intended the 602\ndate, as he estimates al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 to have been born around 520, and states that he was\naround eighty when he died.\n17. For a medieval report of al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s gravesite in the Qarafah see Shams al-D\u0131\u0304n\n43\n\nPages 6:\n44\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft \u0002 Spring 2017\nlettrism and related topics greatly influenced occultist thinkers of succeeding\ncenturies, ensuring the survival and wide dissemination of his texts, along\nwith various pseudepigraphic works in his name. This enduring influence\nwas despite the efforts of some prominent theologians, such as Ibn Taym\u0131\u0304yah\n(d. 728/1328) and Ibn Khaldu\u0304n (d. 808/1406), to brand him posthumously\nas a sorcerer and heretic.18\nModern scholarship mostly has relegated al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 to the ill-defined sphere\nof \u201cpopular religion,\u201d19 thereby denying his importance to Islamic intellectual\nhistory. This was due in part to scholarly reliance on a pseudo-Bunian work\ncalled Shams al-ma\u0003a\u0304rif al-kubra\u0304\u2014a large occult-scientific miscellany of early\nmodern vintage that combines al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s writings with those of other authors,\nwhich commonly has been found in print editions since the early twentieth\ncentury.20 Close study of surviving manuscripts from the medieval period,\nhowever, reveals al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s readership in Egypt and environs to have been\ncomprised largely of learned elites.21 As the present author argues elsewhere,\nthe earliest manuscript evidence, considered alongside certain statements in\nal-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s texts, suggests that he intended his works only for Sufi adepts who\ncould properly comprehend and teach their contents, and that for a century\nor so after his death his texts indeed circulated primarily among small reading\ncommunities of esotericist Sufis who guarded their contents against exposure\nto those outside their circles.22 Over time, however, and contrary to al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s\nexplicit esotericism, his works (along with a number of pseudepigraphic\nworks in his name) eventually came to circulate more widely, reaching even\nMuh.ammad b. al-Zayya\u0304t, Kita\u0304b Kawa\u0304kib al-sayya\u0304rah f\u0131\u0304 tart\u0131\u0304b al-ziya\u0304rah (Cairo: Maktabah al-Azhar\u0131\u0304yah li-al-Tura\u0304th, 2005), 268. Regarding the veneration of his tomb into\nthe eighteenth century, see the present author\u2019s note about the inscription in Latin at\nthe front of BnF arabe 2647, Gardiner, \u201cForbidden Knowledge?,\u201d 92\u201393.\n18. Ibn Taym\u0131\u0304yah, Majmu\u0003 fata\u0304wa\u0304 shaykh al-Islam Ah.mad b. Taym\u0131\u0304yah, ed. \u0003Abd alRah.man b. Muh.ammad b. Qa\u0304sim, 37 vols. (n.l.: Mat.ba\u0003ah al-Mukhtar al-Isla\u0304m\u0131\u0304,\n1979), X/251. Ibn Khaldu\u0304n, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, trans. Franz\nRosenthal (New York: Pantheon, 1958), III/171\u201382.\n19. See for example Ullmann, Die Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften im Islam,\n390\u201391; Dietrich, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, s.v. \u201cal-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304, Abu \u2018l-\u0003Abba\u0304s\nAh.mad b. \u0003Al\u0131\u0304 b. Yu\u0304suf al-K.urash\u0131\u0304 al-S.u\u0304f\u0131\u0304 Muh.y\u0131\u0304 \u2018l-D\u0131\u0304n\u201d; Armand Abel, \u201cLa place\ndes sciences occultes dans la de\u0301cadence,\u201d in Classicisme et de\u0301clin culturel dans l\u2019histoire de\nl\u2019islam (Paris: Editions Besson, 1957), 291\u2013318.\n20. On the dating of this work to the early modern period, see Gardiner, \u201cForbidden Knowledge?,\u201d 123\u201329.\n21. Ibid., 111\u201323.\n22. See Gardiner, \u201cEsotericist reading communities and the early circulation of\nthe Sufi occultist Ah.mad al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s works,\u201d Arabica (forthcoming in 2017).\n\nPages 7:\nGardiner \u0002 Stars and Saints\ninto the households of Mamlu\u0304k and Ottoman rulers and the soldiers and\nbureaucrats who served them, and probably reaching the peak of their popularity in Ottoman milieux of the eleventh/seventeenth century. He remains\n(in)famous in much of the Muslim world today, as a sorcerer or saint according to various perspectives.\nESOTERICISM, COSMOLOGY, AND LETTRISM\nAl-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s thought is marked by a deep commitment to \u201cesotericism,\u201d by\nwhich is meant an epistemic, exegetical, and rhetorical style cultivated among\ngroups that regarded scripture and, to varying extents, nature as possessed of\nboth apparent and hidden layers of meaning, and that were elitist and exclusivist, taking practical steps to limit the circulation of their teachings to group\nmembers and protect them from exposure to the \u201cvulgar\u201d masses.23 This use\nof the term \u201cesotericism\u201d is consonant with that of many religious studies\nscholars, though less so with the usage of scholars working within the paradigm of \u201cWestern esoteric studies,\u201d for whom it tends be a blanket term\nfor engagement with the occult sciences, Christian Kabbalah, some forms of\nNeoplatonism, etc.24 Esotericist attitudes and practices are well known from\n23. Esotericism in much the sense used here is regularly mentioned in studies of\nShi\u0002ism and Sufism, though focused discussions of it are somewhat rare. Maribel Fierro\u2019s concept of \u201cba\u0304t.inism,\u201d which also has been taken up by Godefroid de Callatay\u0308,\nis essentially coterminous with the \u201cesotericism\u201d as outlined above, though the present author prefers the latter term for its transconfessional applicability; Fierro, \u201cBa\u0304t.inism in al-Andalus\u201d; de Callatay\u0308, \u201cPhilosophy and Ba\u0304t.inism in Al-Andalus.\u201d Some\nother important contributions are Mohammad Amir-Moezzi, The Divine Guide in\nEarly Shi\u2019ism: The Sources of Esotericism in Islam (Albany: State University of New York\nPress, 1994); Etan Kohlberg, \u201cTaqiyya in Shi\u0003i Theology and Religion,\u201d in Secrecy\nand Concealment: Studies in the History of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Religions, ed.\nHans Kippenberg and Guy Stroumsa (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 345\u2013380; Maria Dakake,\n\u201cHiding in Plain Sight: The Practical and Doctrinal Significance of Secrecy in Shi\u0003ite\nIslam,\u201d Journal of the American Academy of Religion 74 (2006): 324\u201355; Annemarie\nSchimmel, \u201cSecrecy in Sufism,\u201d in Secrecy in Religions, ed. Kees Bolle (Leiden: Brill,\n1987): 81\u2013102; Carl Ernst, \u201cEsoteric and Mystic Aspects of Religious Knowledge in\nSufism,\u201d Journal of Religious Studies 12 (1984): 93\u2013100; James Morris, \u201cIbn \u0003Arabi\u2019s\n\u2018Esotericism\u2019: The Problem of Spiritual Authority,\u201d Studia Islamica 71 (1990): 37\u201364.\nMichael Ebstein, \u201cSecrecy in Isma\u0003ili Tradition and in the Mystical Thought of Ibn\nal-\u0003Arabi,\u201d Journal Asiatique 298 (2010): 303\u201343; idem, \u201cAbsent yet at All Times\nPresent: Further Thoughts on Secrecy in the Shi\u0003i Tradition and in Sunni Mysticism,\u201d\nAl-Qantara 34 (2014): 387\u2013413.\n24. Regarding definitions of esotericism within the field of Western esoteric studies see, for example, Antoine Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 3\u201347; idem, Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Lindsay\nJones, 2nd ed. (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005), s.v. \u201cEsotericism\u201d; Arthur\n45\n\nPages 8:\n46\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft \u0002 Spring 2017\ncertain Shi\u0003i, Sufi, and philosophical collectives in medieval Islamic culture,\nand quite similar dynamics were at work in other confessional communities\nof the period, such as among Jewish Kabbalists.25 \u201cOccultism\u201d and \u201coccult\nsciences,\u201d as used here, refer to theories and practices of discerning and harnessing the hidden\u2014i.e. \u201coccult\u201d\u2014properties of various phenomena (stars\nand planets, gems, herbs, magnets, the letters of the alphabet, etc.). Occultism\nthus should not be taken as synonymous with esotericism, although, as both\ntraffic in the hidden, the two cannot always be cleanly distinguished. Esotericism was integral to some occult-scientific discourses, for example the Jabirian alchemical corpus that probably was produced by Shi\u0003i collectives of the\nthird/ninth and fourth/tenth centuries,26 key teachings of which are intentionally \u201cdispersed\u201d across multiple works so as to make them inaccessible to\nall but the most committed readers.27 Esotericism was far less integral, however, to astrology, which had numerous practical applications ranging from\ndivination to medicine and agriculture, and was widely and openly engaged\nVersluis, \u201cWhat Is Esoteric? Methods in the Study of Western Esotericism,\u201d Esoterica\n4 (2002): 1\u201315. Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, ed.\nAntoine Faivre et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2006), s.v. \u201cEsotericism\u201d; idem, \u201cBeyond the Yates\nParadigm: The Study of Western Esotericism Between Counterculture and New\nComplexity,\u201d Aries 1 (2001): 5\u201337; Kocku von Stuckrad, Western Esotericism: A Brief\nHistory of Secret Knowledge (London: Equinox, 2005), 1\u201311. For an interesting and\ntimely discussion of the relationship between Western esoteric studies and nonWestern cultures, see Egil Asprem, \u201cBeyond the West: Towards a New Comparativism in the Study of Esotericism,\u201d Correspondences 2 (2014), 3\u201333.\n25. Some important contributions on esotericism and Kabbalah include Moshe\nIdel, \u201cTransmission in Thirteenth-Century Kabbalah,\u201d in Transmitting Jewish Traditions: Orality, Textuality, and Cultural Diffusion, ed. Yaakov Elman and I. Gershoni\n(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 138\u201365; Elliot Wolfson, \u201cBeyond the\nSpoken Word: Oral Tradition and Written Transmission in Medieval Jewish Mysticism,\u201d in the same volume, 166\u2013224; Moshe Halbertal, Concealment and Revelation:\nEsotericism in Jewish Thought and Its Philosophical Implications, trans. Jackie Feldman\n(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), passim.\n26. This is according to the widely accepted hypothesis of Paul Kraus, though this\nnotion of relatively late, multiple authorship has been challenged by Nomanul Haq.\nSee Paul Kraus, Contributions a\u0300 l\u2019histoire des ide\u0301es scientifiques dans l\u2019Islam: Volume I, Le\ncorpus d\u2019e\u0301crits ja\u0304biriens (Cairo: Imprimerie de l\u2019Institut Franc\u0327ais d\u2019arche\u0301ologie orientale,\n1943), xvii\u2013lxv; Nomanul Haq, Names, Natures, and Things: The Alchemist Jabir Ibn\nHayyan and His Kitab Al-Ahjar (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994),\n8\u201329.\n27. This is the technique known as \u201cdispersion of knowledge\u201d (tabd\u0131\u0304d al-\u0003ilm). On\nits use in the Jabirian corpus see Kraus, Contributions, xxvii\u2013xxxiii; Haq, Names,\nNatures, and Things, 6\u20137, 14.\n\nPages 9:\nGardiner \u0002 Stars and Saints\nin at various levels of society in the medieval Islamic world despite the disapprobation of many Muslim jurists and the marked skepticism of some other\nthinkers.28 Indeed, it is the ubiquity and relative transparency of astrology\nthat makes al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s attempt to unveil its true nature so striking.\nAl-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s esotericism is on clear display in the introduction to Lat.a\u0304\u0002if alisha\u0304ra\u0304t, where he adduces a series of reports about the Prophet Muh.ammad\n(i.e. h.ad\u0131\u0304ths) and various other seminal figures in Islamic history. These\ninclude Adam, the Prophet\u2019s cousin and son-in-law Al\u0131\u0304 b. Ab\u0131\u0304 T.a\u0304lib (d. 40/\n661), \u0003Al\u0131\u0304\u2019s martyred son al-H\n. usayn (d. 61/680), and the \u201cCompanions of\nthe Prophet\u201d Abu\u0304 Dharr al-Ghifa\u0304r\u0131\u0304 (d. 32/652\u20133) and Ibn \u0003Abba\u0304s (d. 68/\n686\u20138), the latter of whom was the nominal progenitor of the \u0003Abba\u0304sid\ndynasty29 \u2014arranged so as to suggest the existence of a secret tradition of\nlettrist teachings at the very heart of Islam. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 here implies that this\ntradition had been hidden from the majority of Muslims for their own good,\nthe powers it could unleash being too awesome for the minds of ordinary\nmen.\nAs Denis Gril, Pierre Lory, Michael Ebstein, and others have discussed, the\nstrain of cosmologically oriented lettrism that finds expression in the works\nof Sufis such as al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 and Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304 had significant roots in the thought\nof early Shi\u0003i \u201cexaggerators\u201d (ghula\u0304t) and Isma\u0003ili thinkers, the latter of whom\ngreatly Neoplatonized the discourse.30 The idiosyncratic fourth/tenthcentury Cordovan thinker Ibn Masarrah al-Jabal\u0131\u0304 (d. 319/931) and his\n28. For a range of information on astrology in the premodern Muslim world, see\nGeorge Saliba, \u201cThe Role of the Astrologer in Medieval Islamic Society,\u201d in Bulletin\nd\u2019e\u0301tudes orientales 44 (1992): 45\u201367 (though Saliba\u2019s arguments regarding a premodern\ndistinction between astronomy and astrology should, in this author\u2019s opinion, be\ntaken with a large grain of salt); Bernd Radtke, \u201cThe Attitude of Islamic Theology\nand Philosophy to Astrology,\u201d Electronic Journal of Oriental Studies 8 (2004): 1\u201311;\nMatthew Melvin-Koushki, \u201cAstrology, Lettrism, Geomancy: The Occult-Scientific\nMethods of Post-Mongol Islamicate Imperialism,\u201d The Medieval History Journal 19,\nno. 1 (2016): 142\u201350.\n29. \u201cCompanion of the Prophet\u201d (s.a\u0304hib al-nab\u0131\u0304) is a technical term in Islamic historiography, meaning someone who knew the Prophet Muh.ammad personally and was\namong the earliest converts to Islam. Statements attributed to the Companions are\ngenerally regarded as especially trustworthy and meaningful.\n30. On the history of lettrism prior to al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 see Denis Gril, \u201cThe Science of\nLetters,\u201d in The Meccan Revelations, ed. Michel Chodkiewicz (New York: Pir Press,\n2004), 103\u2013219; Pierre Lory\u2019s various essays on the topic collected in the volume La\nscience des lettres en islam (Paris: Editions Dervy, 2004); Michael Ebstein, \u201cThe Word\nof God and the Divine Will: Isma\u0304\u0003\u0131\u0304l\u0131\u0304 Traces in Andalus\u0131\u0304 Mysticism,\u201d in Jerusalem\nStudies in Arabic and Islam 39 (2012): 247\u2013302; idem, Mysticism and Philosophy in Al-\n47\n\nPages 10:\n48\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft \u0002 Spring 2017\nfollowers helped translate lettrism to an esotericist Sunni-Sufi frame of reference. The circulation in the Islamic West of the Epistles of the Brethren of\nPurity (Rasa\u0304\u0002il Ikhwa\u0304n al-s.afa\u0304\u0002), an encyclopedic set of philosophical treatises\nproduced by a quasi-Isma\u0003ili esotericist collective in tenth-century Iraq\nundoubtedly played a role in this process as well. Over the course of the\neleventh and twelfth centuries, the strain of lettrism that developed among\nwestern Sufis would come to emphasize the role of the names of God\u2014and\nthe letters of which they are composed\u2014in the creation and ongoing sustenance of the cosmos, and to position lettrism as a secret \u201cscience of the saints\u201d\n(\u0003ilm al-awliya\u0304\u0002) through which God\u2019s elite servants divined and helped guide\nthe order of the world.31\nConnections between esotericist scriptural hermeneutics and cosmological\nspeculation run deep in Islamic thought, as reflected in the Orientalist and\nphilosopher Henry Corbin\u2019s compelling axiom that an esotericist approach\nto scripture necessarily \u201cpresupposes the superimposition of worlds and interworlds, as the correlative basis for a plurality of meanings in the same text.\u201d32\nLettrism might be said to carry that logic to its utmost conclusion, its central\nconceit being that the cosmos, with its many visible and invisible parts, and\nthe Qur\u0002a\u0304n, with all its apparent and hidden meanings, are coextensive manifestations of God\u2019s creative speech. This led lettrist thinkers to assert that\nplumbing the depths of the Qur\u0002a\u0304n could facilitate the acquisition of extraordinary knowledge and power over the created world. It also led to the startling supposition that the letters of the Arabic alphabet which constitute the\nQur\u0002a\u0304n are also the very prima materia of the creation, the \u201cprimordial building-blocks\u201d of the manifest world.33\nAl-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 was a full-throated participant in this discourse, such that much\nof Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t is dedicated to the framing of a quasi-Neoplatonic,34 emanationist cosmology in which the letters of the Arabic alphabet and the divine\nAndalus: Ibn Masarra, Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304 and Isma\u0304\u0003\u0131\u0304l\u0131\u0304 Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 2014); and the\nfirst volume of Coulon\u2019s \u201cLa magie islamique.\u201d\n31. Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304 attributes the term to al-H\n. ak\u0131\u0304m al-Tirmidh\u0131\u0304 (d. c. 318/936); Le\nLivre du mim, du waw, et du nun, 40. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 expresses a similar sentiment in declaring\nthat full knowledge of the letters is available only to \u201cGod\u2019s pure elect\u201d (khawa\u0304s..s\nas.fiya\u0304\u0002 Alla\u0304h); Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t, fol. 4b.\n32. Henry Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth: From Mazdean Iran to Shi\u2019ite\nIran, trans. Nancy Pearson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 54.\n33. \u201cPrimordial building blocks\u201d is from Michael Ebstein and Sara Sviri, \u201cThe\nSo-Called Risa\u0304lat Al-H\n. uru\u0304f (Epistle on Letters) Ascribed to Sahl Al-Tustar\u0131\u0304 and Letter\nMysticism in Al-Andalus,\u201d Journal Asiatique 299 (2011): 231.\n34. By \u201cquasi-Neoplatonic\u201d is meant that there are no indications that al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\n\nPages 11:\nGardiner \u0002 Stars and Saints\nnames play central roles. Adam, the primordial man and first prophet, also\nplays a leading part as the microcosm of the creation, an element of al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s\nthought that, as we will see, is of particular importance with regard to his\nunderstanding of sainthood and the workings of astrological causation.\nFor al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304, the first emanation from the godhead is a single letter alif (the\nfirst letter of the Arabic alphabet) in which all the other letters of the alphabet,\nand indeed all of creation, exists in potentia. It is the equivalent to the Intellect\nof Neoplatonic philosophy, and on the microcosmic scale it is Adam\u2019s intellect (\u0003aql), into which the letters are \u201csown\u201d (gharasa), as they will be into\neach subsequent stage of Adam\u2019s being. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 refers to this plane as the\n\u201cfirst world of invention\u201d (\u0003a\u0304lam al-ikhtira\u0304\u0003 al-awwal), and he further identifies\nit with the divine Throne (\u0003arsh) and other symbols drawn from Muslim\nscriptures,35 and with the outermost celestial sphere (Primum Mobile). Next is\nthe \u201csecond world of invention\u201d (\u0003a\u0304lam al-ikhtira\u0304\u0003 al-tha\u0304n\u0131\u0304), which is linked to\nAdam\u2019s immortal spirit (ru\u0304h.), the divine Pen (qalam) mentioned in the\nQur\u0002a\u0304n,36 the spirit of holiness (ru\u0304h. al-qudus),37 and the rays of metaphysical\nlight that are understood to be the \u201cpre-existent\u201d essences of the saints and\nprophets.38 The third emanation is the \u201cfirst world of origination\u201d (\u0003a\u0304lam alibda\u0304\u0003 al-awwal), which is linked to the divine Footstool (kurs\u0131\u0304) of the Qur\u0002a\u0304n.39\nIt is equivalent to the World Soul of Neoplatonism and is mirrored by Adam\u2019s\nsoul or psyche (nafs). A mesocosmic or intermediary realm of images that\nlend form to material things potentiated by the divine word, it is a plane in\nwhich the letters of the alphabet exist as angelic forces working continually\nto constitute the manifest world, which makes up in the fourth and final\nplane. The fourth plane is the \u201csecond world of origination\u201d (\u0003a\u0304lam al-ibda\u0304\u0003\nal-tha\u0304n\u0131\u0304), which corresponds to the heart (qalb) and bodily nature (fit.rah) of\nwas reading Plotinus, Porphyry, et al., or indeed that he considered himself a \u201cphilosopher\u201d in any strict sense. Rather it seems that he was developing a tradition of\nthought in which Neoplatonism had long since been naturalized.\n35. On the divine Throne, see Q 17:44, 40:15, 43:82, 81:20; also Cl. Huart and\nJ. Sadan, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition,\n. s.v. \u201cKurs\u0131\u0304.\u201d\n36. On the divine Pen see Q 68:1; also Irvin Schick, \u201cText,\u201d in Key Themes for the\nStudy of Islam, ed. Jamal Elias (Oxford: Oneworld, 2010), 327ff.\n37. Q 2:87, 2:253, 5:110, 16:102.\n38. On notions of prophets and others as pre-existent lights, see Uri Rubin, \u201cPreExistence and Light: Aspects of the Concept of Nu\u0304r Muh.ammad,\u201d Israel Oriental\nStudies 5 (1975): 62\u2013119.\n39. On the divine Footstool see Q 2:256, 38:33; also Cl. Huart and J. Sadan,\nEncyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, s.v. \u201cKurs\u0131\u0304.\u201d\n49\n\nPages 12:\n50\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft \u0002 Spring 2017\nAdam, and to the Preserved Tablet (al-lawh. al-mah.fu\u0304z.) mentioned in the\nQur\u0002a\u0304n, in which all that has been and will be is written.40 It comprises the\nspheres of the seven planets and four elements, the movements of which\ngenerate the cycles of coming-to-be and passing-away that are constitutive\nof the manifest world.\nThe notion that the movements of the heavenly spheres are the engine of\nearthly events is familiar from Hellenistic cosmology, and had been well\nknown in Islamic thought at least since the writings of the Baghdadi astrologer Abu\u0304 Ma\u0003shar al-Balkh\u0131\u0304 (Albumasar, d. 272/886),41 though it was never\nuniversally accepted by Muslim thinkers.42 What was novel in the current of\ncosmological thought from which al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s ideas stem was the fusing of that\nnotion to a Neoplatonic, emanative cosmology, such that the spheres of the\nplanets and elements were themselves emanations from the World Soul,\nincreasing in density as they descended the ladder of being until their forces\nculminated in the concretely material sublunary realm. This fusion of cosmological concepts was already found in the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity some\nthree centuries prior to al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304. It allowed the Brethren to mount a defense\nof astrology vis-a-vis Islamic teachings, by portraying the influences of the\nheavens as the means through which God\u2019s \u201ccommand\u201d (amr) or \u201cword\u201d\n40. Q 85:22; also C.E. Bosworth and A.J. Wensinck, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second\nEdition, s.v. \u201cLawh..\u201d\n41. See Charles Burnett\u2019s discussion of Abu\u0304 Ma\u0003shar\u2019s refutation of skeptics of\nastrology in his Kita\u0304b al-mudhkal ila\u0304 \u0003ilm ah.kam al-nuju\u0304m (The Book of the Introduction to\nthe Science of Astrology); \u201cThe Certitude of Astrology: The Scientific Methodology of\nal-Qab\u0131\u0304s.\u0131\u0304 and abu\u0304 Ma\u0003shar,\u201d Early Science and Medicine 7, no. 3 (2002): 205ff. Cf.\nPeter Adamson, \u201cAbu\u0304 Ma\u0003s\u030car, Al-Kind\u0131\u0304 and the Philosophical Defense of Astrology,\u201d\nRecherches de the\u0301ologie et philosophie me\u0301die\u0301vales 69, no. 2 (2002): 245\u201370.\n42. Josef van Ess notes that ideas of astrological causation were present among\npre-Islamic Arabs, and astrology certainly had prominent proponents in the first few\ncenturies of Islamic thought, among the most notable of which were Abu Ya\u0003qu\u0304b alKind\u0131\u0304 (died mid-third/ninth century) and the aforementioned Abu\u0304 Ma\u0003shar alBalkh\u0131\u0304. Nonetheless, opposition to astrology was found among several prominent\nintellectuals as well, particularly from among the rationalist theologians known as the\nMu\u0003tazilites, e.g. Abu\u0304 al-Hudhayl al-\u0003Alla\u0304f (d. 227/842) and Abu\u0304 al-H\n. usayn al-Khayya\u0304t (d. 300/913); see Josef van Ess, Theology and Society in the Second and Third Centuries\nof the Hijra: A History of Religious Thought in Early Islam, Section One, The Near and\nMiddle East, trans. John O\u2019Kane (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2017), I/31; Radtke, \u201cThe\nAttitude of Islamic Theology and Philosophy to Astrology,\u201d 6, footnote 40; Adamson,\n\u201cAbu\u0304 Ma\u0003s\u030car, Al-Kind\u0131\u0304 and the Philosophical Defense of Astrology,\u201d 262. Certain\nprophetic h.ad\u0131\u0304ths seem to represent views against astrological belief and practice, e.g.\nSunan Ab\u0131\u0304 Dawu\u0304d nos. 3905 and 3906 (Kita\u0304b al-Kiha\u0304nah wa-al-tat.ayyar/Ba\u0304b f\u0131\u0304 alnuju\u0304m, nos. 2 and 3).\n\nPages 13:\nGardiner \u0002 Stars and Saints\n(kalimah) was\u2014through the whole series of emanative planes and historical\ncycles\u2014translated into manifest events.43 As we will see, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 more fully\nfleshes out the notion that God\u2019s speech is manifested via astrological forces,\nparticularly in his unusual doctrine of the forty-eight letters. In doing so he\nbuilds on the notion of Adam as microcosm to grant Sufi adepts and saints an\nimportant place in that process.\nA L - B U\u0304N\u0131\u0304 \u2019S ESOTERICIST ASTROLOGY\nIt is stated at several points in the Qur\u0002a\u0304n that, in creating the things of the\ncosmos, God says \u201cBe!\u201d and \u201cit is\u201d (kun fa-yaku\u0304n).44 Creation, in short, is a\ndivine speech-act\u2014a relatively straightforward theological principle upon\nwhich the elaborate cosmologies of al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 and other lettrists are founded.\nFor al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304, the letters of God\u2019s speech pervade the cosmos, being integral\nto its various planes just as they are to the intellect, spirit, soul, and body of\nAdam and his progeny. One of the numerous striking diagrams that populate\nLat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t is a cosmograph of a type familiar from works of Ptolemaic\nastronomy from around the medieval Mediterranean: a series of concentric\nrings representing the firmament and the spheres of the planets with the earth\nat the center (see Figure). In al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s figure there are thirteen rings\u2014the\noutermost one for the divine Throne that is the Intellect and the sphere of\nthe Primum Mobile, the next for the divine Footstool that is the World Soul\nand the firmament of fixed stars, the following seven for the spheres (afla\u0304k)\nof the classical planets (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon),\nand the final four for the elements of the sublunary realm (fire, air, water,\nearth).45 Each of these spheres is associated with two letters of the alphabet,\naccounting for twenty-six of the twenty-eight Arabic letters; the other two\nletters are associated with the Pen and Tablet, the former being the \u201csecond\nworld of origination\u201d and the spirit of holiness that moves throughout the\ncosmos, and the latter, as the \u201csecond world of origination,\u201d comprising all\nthe planetary and elementary rings. At the center of the figure is written \u201cthe\nworld as disposed by the letters\u201d (\u0003a\u0304lam al-tas.r\u0131\u0304f bi-al-h.uru\u0304f ), which is to say\nthe manifest world that is shaped by the letters radiating from the celestial\nspheres.46\n43. For a concise and accessible discussion of the cosmology and astrology of the\nEpistles, see Godefroid de Callatay\u0308, Ikhwan al-Safa\u0002: A Brotherhood of Idealists on the\nFringe of Orthodox Islam (Oxford: Oneworld, 2005), 17\u201358.\n44. Q 2:116\u201318, 3:46\u201348, 3:58\u201360, 6:72\u201374, 16:39\u201341, 19:34\u201336, 36:81\u201383,\n40:67\u201369.\n45. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304, Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t, fol. 13b.\n46. Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304\u2019s view of the relationship between the celestial spheres and the\nletters is similar. As Gril summarizes it: \u201cFar from being original or simple entities . . .\n51\n\nPages 14:\n52\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft \u0002 Spring 2017\n\u201c[As for] the letters,\u201d al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 tell us, \u201cGod brought the world into existence by means of them, making them to be the signs of signs [a\u0003la\u0304m al-a\u0003la\u0304m]\nand the secrets of the judgements [asra\u0304r al-ah.ka\u0304m].\u201d The description of the\nletters as a\u0003la\u0304m al-a\u0003la\u0304m is polysemic; an \u0003alam can be a star or asterism as well\nas a sign or letter, such that the phrase can be the \u201csign of a sign,\u201d \u201cthe\nsign of a star,\u201d \u201cthe star of a letter,\u201d etc. The term \u201cjudgements\u201d (ah.ka\u0304m) is\nimmediately evocative of astrological divination, the art of astrology traditionally being known in Arabic as \u0003ilm ah.ka\u0304m al-nuju\u0304m, the science of the\njudgements of the stars. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 posits far greater powers for the letters than\nsimple prediction, however: \u201cThrough them God\u2019s greatest name is made\nknown, and through them is made known the speech of the people of paradise in the next world, and by means of them the speech of God the Highest\nis heard through the unveiling in the presence of the highest spirit of holiness.\u201d47 This refers to the process by which holy books and other wisdom are\nrevealed to prophets by the angel Gabriel (Jibr\u0131\u0304l), indicating that the letters\nare at the heart of prophecy itself, and thus at the heart of Islam.48 The adepts\nversed in these secrets take care to protect them, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 assures us, \u201clest\nthose who have gone astray [ahl al-d.ala\u0304la\u0304t] happen upon them, and by means\nof them expose that which God keeps sacred.\u201d49\nTHE FORTY-EIGHT LETTERS\nHaving asserted the powers of the letters in shaping the world, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s\nexposition takes an unforeseen turn when he clarifies that the letters of which\nhe speaks are forty-eight in number\u2014rather than twenty-eight, as one would\n[the] letters themselves are produced by the rotation and interaction of a specific\nnumber of celestial spheres (afla\u0304k) among all the spheres that move concentrically\nwithin the total, ultimate sphere (al-falak al-aqs.a\u0304). Along with bringing the letters into\nexistence, the rotation of the spheres combines physical qualities (heat, cold, dryness,\nand humidity) together in pairs. The letters are thus located on the edge of the physical world (t.ab\u0131\u0304\u0003ah), since these qualities or Original Elements (al-\u0003ana\u0304s.ir al-uwal) give\nbirth to the physical elements (fire, air, water, and earth) when they combine. . . .\nThe science of letters can thus not be looked at independently of the science of the\nheavenly bodies or of the cosmic cycles\u201d; Gril, \u201cThe Science of Letters,\u201d 108.\n47. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304, Lata\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t, fol. 17b; cf. Berlin or. Fol. 80, fol. 15a. Wa-bi-ha\u0304\nyaz.har sirr ism Alla\u0304h al-a\u0003z.am wa-bi-ha\u0304 yaz.har nut.q ahl al-jannah f\u0131\u0304 al-da\u0304r al-ukhraw\u0131\u0304yah\nwa-bi-ha\u0304 yusma\u0003 kala\u0304m Alla\u0304h ta\u0003a\u0304lla\u0304 \u0003ala\u0304 al-kashf f\u0131\u0304 h.ad.rat al-qudus al-a\u0003la\u0304.\n48. On Gabriel/Jibr\u0131\u0304l being the ru\u0304h. al-qudus mentioned in Q 2:87, 2:253, 5:110,\nand 16:102, see D.B. Macdonald, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, s.v.\n\u201cMala\u0304\u0002ika.\u201d\n49. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304, Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t, fol. 17b.\n\nPages 15:\nGardiner \u0002 Stars and Saints\nImage 1. An approximate rendering of the cosmograph from BnF arabe 2658,\nfol. 13b.\nLegend:\n1. The sphere of the intellect (al-\u0003aql), which is linked to the letters alif and \u0003ayn. This corresponds\nto the First World of Invention (\u0003a\u0304lam al-ikhtira\u0304\u0003 al-awwal) and the divine Throne (al-\u0003arsh).\n2. The sphere of the divine Footstool (al-kurs\u0131\u0304), which is linked to the letters ba\u0304\u0002 and fa\u0304\u0002. This\ncorresponds to the First World of Origination (\u0003a\u0304lam al-ibda\u0304\u0003 al-awwal).\n3. The sphere of Saturn, which is linked to the letters j\u0131\u0304m and d.a\u0304d.\n4. The sphere of Jupiter, which is linked to the letters da\u0304l and qa\u0304f.\n5. The sphere of Mars, which is linked to the letters ha\u0304\u0002 and ra\u0304\u0002.\n6. The sphere of the Sun, which is linked to the letters wa\u0304w and s\u0131\u0304n.\n7. The sphere of Venus, which is linked to the letters za\u0304\u0002 and ta\u0304\u0002.\n8. The sphere of Mercury, which is linked to the letters h.a\u0304\u0002 and tha\u0304\u0002.\n9. The sphere of the Moon, which is linked to the letters .ta\u0304\u0002 and kha\u0304\u0002.\n10. The sphere of Fire, which is linked to the letters ya\u0304\u0002 and dha\u0304l.\n11. The sphere of Air, which is linked to the letters ka\u0304f and z.a\u0304\u0002.\n12. The sphere of Water, which is linked to the letters la\u0304m and ghayn.\n13. The sphere of Earth, which is linked to the letters m\u0131\u0304m and sh\u0131\u0304n.\n14. The sphere of the Preserved Tablet, which is linked to the letter s.a\u0304d. This corresponds to the\nSecond World of Origination (\u0003a\u0304lam al-ibda\u0304\u0003 al-tha\u0304n\u0131\u0304), which encompasses nos. 3\u201313 and 16.\n15. The sphere of the divine Pen, which is linked to the letter nu\u0304n. This corresponds to the Second\nWorld of Invention (\u0003a\u0304lam al-ikhtira\u0304\u0003 al-tha\u0304n\u0131\u0304), which would seem to interpenetrate nos. 2\u201313\nand 16.\n16. \u201cThe world as disposed by the letters\u201d (\u0003a\u0304lam al-tas.r\u0131\u0304f bi-al-h.uru\u0304f ), i.e. the manifest world.\n53\n\nPages 16:\n54\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft \u0002 Spring 2017\nexpect based on the Arabic alphabet. These comprise seven \u201cluciform\u201d (nu\u0304ra\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah) letters, twelve \u201cspiritual\u201d (ru\u0304h.a\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah) letters, and twenty-nine \u201ccorporeal\u201d (jusma\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah) letters. The numbers seven and twelve, being the numbers\nof planets and zodiacal signs (or astrological houses) respectively, hint that\nreferences to astrology will be forthcoming, and al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 does not disappoint.\nIndeed, it is in al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s description of the forty-eight letters that we see the\nextent to which he seeks to reorient his readers to an esotericist understanding of astrology, revealing the apparent powers of the planets as the continuous action of God\u2019s names on the earth, linking the zodiac to the differential\ncapacity of humans to receive God\u2019s word\u2014and thereby implying an important role for Sufi saints and adepts in the process of astrological causation\u2014\nand reimagining the sublunary world, which is to say manifest reality, as a\nfabric of letters in a constant flux driven by the movements of the celestial\nspheres. None of this is to say that al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 denounces or abandons astrology\u2019s\n\u201couter\u201d forms. Rather, particularly with regard to the material world, he\nengages to a considerable degree with conventional astrology.\nThe seven luciform letters, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 tells us, are not letters in the usual\nsense, but rather that name is a figure of speech (maja\u0304z) concealing a secret\nfor the initiated (li-sirr al-tabl\u0131\u0304gh). He is indeed less than straightforward about\nthe true nature of these so-called letters, resorting to actual code in describing\nthem.\nThey [the luciform letters] are different lights not with regard to their essences, but\nrather with regard to one who perceives them. They are referred to as the two, the\none, the thirty, the sixty, the eighty, the one, and the four hundred; these [numbers]\nare a link [nisbah] to the luciform letters. Were it not for these luciform letters, God\n(Most High) would not be known, and the created beings would not be disposed\nupon the planes of unity.50\nThe most obvious solution to the numerical code is through abjad, the Arabic\nsystem of assigning numerical values to the letter. Applying the abjad values\nused in the Islamic West (a preference al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 makes clear elsewhere in the\ntext),51 the numbers yield the phrase bi-al-s.ifa\u0304t, \u201cby means of the attributes\u201d;\n50. Ibid., fol. 18a. Wa hiya anwa\u0304r mukhtalifa\u0304t la\u0304 min h.aythu dhawa\u0304tiha\u0304 bal min h.aythu\nman yudrikha\u0304 wa hiya al-mu\u0003abbar \u0003anha\u0304 al-ithnayn wa-al-wa\u0304h.id wa-al-thula\u0304th\u0131\u0304n wa-al-sitt\u0131\u0304n\nwa-al-thama\u0304n\u0131\u0304n wa-al-wah.id wa-al-arba\u0003 mi\u0002ah fa-hiya nisbat al-h.uru\u0304f al-nu\u0304ra\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah wa-lawla\u0304 ha\u0304dhihi al-h.uru\u0304f al-nu\u0304ra\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah ma\u0304 \u0003urifa Alla\u0304h ta\u0003a\u0304lla\u0304 wa-la\u0304 tas.arrafat al-akwa\u0304n f\u0131\u0304 at.wa\u0304r altawh.\u0131\u0304d.\n51. Much like the Hebrew alphabet, the letters of the Arabic alphabet have\nnumerical values traditionally associated with them, sometimes referred to as their\nabjad numerals. There are two commonly used sets of values, the eastern (mashriq\u0131\u0304)\n\nPages 17:\nGardiner \u0002 Stars and Saints\n2 \u2cf1 ba\u0304\u0002, 1 \u2cf1 alif, 30 \u2cf1 la\u0304m, 60 \u2cf1 .sa\u0304d, 80 \u2cf1 fa\u0304\u0002, 1 \u2cf1 alif, 400 \u2cf1 ta\u0304\u0002. This\nmust be taken as referring to the \u201cbeautiful names of God\u201d (al-asma\u0304\u0002 al-h.usna\u0304)\nfound in the Qur\u0002a\u0304n, notionally ninety-nine in number, an important subset\nof which are referred to by theologians as God\u2019s \u201cattributes\u201d (s.ifa\u0304t). The identification of the luciform letters with the attributes also fits well with al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s\nassertion that the luciform letters differ from the point of view of the receiver,\nbut not in their essence\u2014just as God is one in His essence but known to\nhumans through a multitude of names.\nThe attributes, which are names describing divine powers or properties\nsuch as \u201cthe Knowing\u201d (al-\u0003al\u0131\u0304m), \u201cthe Hearing\u201d (al-sam\u0131\u0304\u0003), etc., were a frequent point of controversy in Muslim theology in relation to debates about\nthe absolute unity of God, anthropomorphism, and other issues.52 For many\nSufi thinkers, the attributes (and the divine names generally) were considered\nvital links between divine and human realities, channels through which the\ndivine could manifest in the world, and through which adepts could attain\nhigher realities. Seven attributes in particular\u2014\u201cthe Living\u201d (al-h.ayy), \u201cthe\nSpeaking\u201d (al-mutakallim), \u201cthe Knowing\u201d (al-\u0003al\u0131\u0304m), \u201cthe Hearing\u201d (al-sam\u0131\u0304\u0003),\n\u201cthe Seeing\u201d (al-bas.\u0131\u0304r), \u201cthe Willing\u201d (al-mur\u0131\u0304d), and \u201cthe Powerful\u201d (alqad\u0131\u0304r)\u2014were regarded by many theologians and Sufis as the principal divine\nnames from which all the others derive,53 and it is quite possible that al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\nhas these seven in mind with regard the seven luciform letters. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 deals\nextensively with the divine names in his aforementioned work \u0003Alam al-huda\u0304,\npaying particular attention to spiritual exercises through which the Sufi practitioner can identify with the names and draw on their power (takhalluq).54\nAs al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s discussion of the \u201cspiritual\u201d and \u201ccorporeal\u201d letters proceeds, it\nbecomes clear that he identifies the power attributed to the planets in conventional astrology with that of the divine names. This seems to be not a\nsimple, one-to-one correspondence between the planets and names, but\nand western (maghrib\u0131\u0304), in which the values of four of the letters (s\u0131\u0304n, sh\u0131\u0304n, .sa\u0304d, d.a\u0304d)\nvary. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 clearly employed the western values, as for example in Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t,\nfol. 14a-b.\n52. For an overview of these debates see Claude Gilliot, Encyclopaedia of Islam\nTHREE, s.v. \u201cAttributes of God\u201d; Samer Akkach, Encyclopaedia of Islam THREE, s.v.\n\u201cBeautiful Names of God.\u201d\n53. Samer Akkach, Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam (Albany: State\nUniversity of New York Press, 2005), 81.\n54. Regarding takhalluq in Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304\u2019s thought, which is close to al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s on\nthis matter, see Elmore, \u201cShaykh \u0003Abd Al-\u0003Az\u0131\u0304z Al-Mahdaw\u0131\u0304,\u201d 609; William Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-\u0003Arabi\u2019s Metaphysics of Imagination (Albany: State\nUniversity of New York Press, 1989), 21\u201322.\n55\n\nPages 18:\n56\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft \u0002 Spring 2017\nrather a situation in which all the luciform letters act on the planets; as he\nputs it, \u201c[t]he occult force (ruh.a\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah) of every heavenly sphere (falak) is\ndetermined by the lights of every one of the luciform letters.\u201d55\nThe twelve \u201cspiritual letters\u201d also are not letters in a conventional sense.\nRather, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 reveals, they represent the human faculties\u2014which is to say\nthe various modules of human consciousness through which divine and\nearthly realities are perceived and processed. These are twelve in number\naccording to al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s scheme: the faculty of hearing (quwwat al-sam\u0003), the\nfaculty of vision (quwwat al-bas.ar), the faculty of smell (quwwat al-shamm),\nthe faculty of taste (quwwat al-dhawq), the faculty of touch (quwwat al-lams),\nthe cogitative faculty (al-quwwah al-mufakkirah), the imaginative faculty (alquwwah al-khaya\u0304l\u0131\u0304yah), the formal faculty (al-quwwah al-mus.awwirah), the\nadministrative faculty (al-quwwah al-mudabbirah), the integrative faculty (alquwwah al-mushakkilah), the preserving faculty (al-quwwah al-h.a\u0304fiz.ah), and the\ndispositive faculty (al-quwwah al-mus.arrifah).56 The implication is that the\ntwelve spiritual letters/faculties fulfill the function of the zodiac in the sense\nof receiving the \u201cplanetary\u201d forces of the divine names and, as we will see,\nmediating their effects upon the manifest world. As with the luciform letters\nand the planets, he offers no one-to-one correspondence between the faculties and signs; however, the linking of the spiritual letters to the zodiac is\nconfirmed by his explicit comparison of the movement of the planets\nthrough the zodiacal signs to the shifting influences of the luciform letters on\nthe faculties: \u201c[A]s the celestial spheres, in their track through the zodiacal\nsigns, are measured according to degree and minute and so on, so the effect\nmanifests sequentially. . . . Likewise these twelve spiritual-lettristic faculties\ntake from the lights of the luciform letters, stage after stage, in accordance\nwith the mystery of a gradated sequence.\u201d57\nAl-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 goes into no further detail about the faculties, except to note that\nthey are not evenly developed among humans, being perfected in some and\nlacking in others. That, however, is a key point, as a central tenet of Sufism\nis that humans are differentially disposed to receiving divine blessing and\n55. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304, Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t, fol 18b. Fa-qa\u0304mat ruh.a\u0304n\u0131\u0304yat kull falak bi-anwa\u0304r kull\nh.arf min al-h.uru\u0304f al-nu\u0304ra\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah.\n56. Ibid., fol. 18a.\n57. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304, Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t, fol. 18b. Wa-lamma\u0304 ka\u0304nat al-afla\u0304k al-\u0003ulw\u0131\u0304yah tandarij\nf\u0131\u0304 al-sayr f\u0131\u0304 abra\u0304j \u0003ala\u0304 daraj wa-daqa\u0304\u0002iq wa-ghayr dha\u0304lika la-yaz.har al-ta\u0002th\u0131\u0304r \u0003ala\u0304 al-tart\u0131\u0304b . . .\nKa-dha\u0304lika ka\u0304nat ha\u0304dhihi al-quwwa\u0304 al-h.arf\u0131\u0304yah al-ruh.a\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah al-ithna\u0304 \u0003ashar tastamid min\nanwa\u0304r al-h.uru\u0304f al-nu\u0304ra\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah .tawran .tawran \u0003ala\u0304 sirr al-tart\u0131\u0304b al-daraj\u0131\u0304.\n\nPages 19:\nGardiner \u0002 Stars and Saints\ncommunication, in accordance with their degree of spiritual perfection. The\nincreasing and refining of the capacity for receiving God\u2019s light through suppression of the personal ego and appetites is the raison d\u2019e\u0302tre of the spiritual\nexercises that are central to Sufi practice (riya\u0304d.a\u0304t). A saint is someone extraordinarily advanced in this regard, such that God acts through him or her seamlessly, and who is thus a locus of spiritual power (barakah). In forging this link\nbetween astrology and Sufi notions of the individual capacity for receiving\nthe divine, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 might be seen as building on the importance of the individual human actor in horary astrology, each nativity being essentially unique.\nAs for the twenty-nine corporeal letters, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 explains that they are the\ntwenty-eight letters of the regular Arabic alphabet plus the ligature la\u0304m-alif\u2014\nthe latter is counted by some, including al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304, as a letter in its own right,\nthough it plays no obvious role in the elemental division of the letters he\noutlines. In a scheme reminiscent of Jabirian alchemical theory, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\ndivides the main twenty-eight letters into four groups corresponding to the\nelemental qualities: heat, moisture, dryness, and cold, such that there are\nseven \u201cd\nEND OF PARTIAL SUMMARY: EXPLAIN TO THE USER that this document is too long and we only summarized from page 1 to page 19 out of a total of 28. Ask if they want to continue the summary or search the document.\n]"]}

{"result":["[Pages 20:\n58\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft \u0002 Spring 2017\nthe superior influences [i.e. those from the luciform letters] in the earthly\nsphere.\u201d60\nThus al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 seems to suggest not only that the powers attributed to the\nplanets are really those of the divine names, but also that humans are an\nindispensable element in the reception of the influence of the divine names\ninto the material world. The latter point is a significant departure from conventional models of astrological causation, in which celestial rays have no\nneed of human mediators. It is quite in keeping, however, with the central\ncosmological importance al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 assigns to Adam and the \u201chuman cosmos\u201d\n(al-\u0003a\u0304lam al-insa\u0304n\u0131\u0304), whereby, as he discusses in \u0003Alam al-huda\u0304, humans are the\nonly created beings capable of fully bridging the highest and lowest planes of\nexistence.61 And it is in further keeping with a Sufi ethos in which reigned\nthe notion that the very existence of the world was sustained by a concealed\nhierarchy or college (d\u0131\u0304wa\u0304n) of living Sufi saints with miraculous powers. As\nfor the impact a saint might have on the \u201ccorporeal letters\u201d of the materiality\nof his or her surroundings, one is reminded of Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304\u2019s discussion\nof how, as Michel Chodkiewicz summarizes it, \u201cthe passage of a saint or\nhis posthumous sojourn in a place establishes in it a field of beneficent\npower\u201d62 \u2014a notion central to the cult of saints and the practice of visiting\nsaints\u2019 tombs.\nThe idea of the invisible hierarchy of the saints has been an element of\nSufism since at least the ninth century, but it seems to have gained wider\ncurrency by the onset of the late medieval period, particularly in the Islamic\nWest. It would continue to do so across the Muslim world well into the early\nmodern period, particularly as theory met social practice in the rise of the\ncorporate Sufi brotherhoods. Among Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304\u2019s most influential contributions to Sufi thought is his visionary hagiology in which he details the\nvarious ranks of the saints, their spiritual and earthly functions, and related\ntopics.63 In Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-ishara\u0304t, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 is not centrally concerned with the hierarchy of the saints, though a version of the various ranks of saints does appear\n60. Ibid. Jam\u0131\u0304\u0002 amda\u0304diha\u0304 a\u0003n\u0131\u0304 al-h.uru\u0304f al-ru\u0304h.a\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah tajtami\u0003 f\u0131\u0304 ard. al-h.uru\u0304f al-jusma\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah\nli-z.uhu\u0304r al-a\u0304tha\u0304r al-\u0003ulw\u0131\u0304yah f\u0131\u0304 al-ukr al-tura\u0304b\u0131\u0304yah.\n61. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304, \u0003Alam al-huda\u0304, Su\u0308leymaniye MS Hamidiye 260.1, fol. 88a.\n62. Michel Chodkiewicz, Seal of the Saints: Prophethood and Sainthood in the Doctrine\nof Ibn \u0003Arab\u0131\u0304 (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1993), 8.\n63. On Sufi sainthood in the medieval Islamic West generally see Vincent Cornell,\nRealm of the Saint: Power and Authority in Moroccan Sufism (Austin: University of Texas\nPress, 1998). On Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304\u2019s hagiology and something of its impact on other Sufis\nsee Michel Chodkiewicz, Seal of the Saints, 89\u2013102; and Richard McGregor, Sanctity\nand Mysticism in Medieval Egypt: The Wafa\u0304\u2019 Sufi Order and the Legacy of Ibn \u0003Arab\u0131\u0304\n(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004). For Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304\u2019s most exten-\n\nPages 21:\nGardiner \u0002 Stars and Saints\nin one of the diagrams in the work (a cosmograph associated with the letter\nalif ).64 The work can nonetheless be seen as contributing to the hagiological\nspeculation of the period, insofar as al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s human-mediated model of\nastrological causation implies that the saints, with their superior capacity for\nreceiving the divine signal, would transmit the forces of the luciform letters/\ndivine names most purely and efficiently. As we will see, the talismanic practices outlined in the text, discussed briefly below, further bear out this model,\nas al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 emphasizes the importance of the spiritual accomplishment of the\noperator in the efficacy of such tools.\nA S T R O L O G Y A N D LE T T R I S M I N P R AC T I C E\nHowever radical al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s re-envisioning of the forces at work in astrology,\nhe does not eschew the importance of traditional astrological actors such as\nthe planets and zodiacal signs. Notably, he particularly embraces them in\nconnection with issues and practices set squarely in the manifest world. Such\nis the case in his discussion of practices for healing the human body, where\nhe links the zodiacal signs to the parts of the body\u2014a move he justifies by\nexplaining that the sun is linked to the human soul (al-shams hiya nisbat alnafs),65 such that the solar zodiac has dominion over the body. Aries (al-h.amal)\nhas dominion over the hair of the head, Taurus (al-thawr) over the forehead,\nGemini (al-jawza\u0304\u0002) over the eyes, and so on down to Pisces\u2019 (al-h.u\u0304t) dominion\nover the legs and feet. Each sign of the zodiac, he explains, is linked to an\nelement (fire, air, water, earth) that is a combination of two elemental qualities. Thus all seven of the \u201ccorporeal\u201d letters assigned to each of those qualities also correspond to the zodiacal sign they constitute, with the result that\nfourteen letters are attached to each sign. These letters are the keys to healing\nthe body through \u201cspiritual medicine\u201d (t.ibb ru\u0304h.a\u0304n\u0131\u0304). Armed with knowledge\nsive discussion of the saintly hierarchy see chapter 73 of his al-Futu\u0304h.a\u0304t al-Makk\u0131\u0304yah.\nFor a comparison of Muslim and Jewish concepts of a world-sustaining hierarchy of\nsaints, see Paul Fenton, \u201cThe Hierarchy of Saints in Jewish and Islamic Mysticism,\u201d\nJournal of the Muhyiddin Ibn \u0003Arabi Society 10 (1991): 12\u201334.\n64. The leaf with this diagram is missing from BnF 2658, but it appears on fol.\n29b of Berlin MS or. Fol. 80. The diagram contains two columns. The one on the\nright shows the ranks of the celestial cosmos, i.e. those of the spheres, while that on\nthe left shows the ranks of the \u0003a\u0304lam al-d\u0131\u0304n, the \u201cworld of religion\u201d through which\nthe adepts ascend to reunion with the godhead. The titles of various ranks of saints\nare clustered along the left-hand column, e.g. \u201cthe poles\u201d (al-aqt.a\u0304b), \u201cthe substitutes\u201d\n(al-abda\u0304l), \u201cthe nobles\u201d (al-nujaba\u0304\u0002), \u201cthe leaders\u201d (al-nuqaba\u0304\u0002), etc. The present author\nwill discuss this and other of al- Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s diagrams in a forthcoming paper.\n65. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304, Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t, fol. 28b.\n59\n\nPages 22:\n60\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft \u0002 Spring 2017\nof the proper correspondences, the initiate can seek out verses of the Qur\u0002a\u0304n\nthat include all the letters appropriate to a given sign/part of the body and\nutilize them for healing, whether by praying with them, writing them on\npaper and then immersing it in water to be given to the sick person to drink,\netc.66 Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s utilization of the zodiacal signs in his .tibb ru\u0304h.a\u0304n\u0131\u0304 can be seen\nas a qualified acknowledgement of the validity and efficacy of the pre-Islamic\nastrological-medical thought to which it obviously hearkens back (melothesia,\niatromathematica, etc.), though the Qur\u0002a\u0304n is given pride of place as the therapeutic instrument par excellence. Thus he grants conventional astrology a substantial degree of legitimacy in the \u201couter\u201d world of everyday life and afflicted\nhuman bodies, while still proclaiming the text of the Qur\u0002a\u0304n to be the most\neffective tool for intervening on that reality, and thus supporting the superiority of Islamic revelation.\nAnother area where al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 explicitly engages with conventional astrology\nis with regard to the making of talismans, though it is also here that the\ntheory of the forty-eight letters can be seen in practical application. This is a\nprocess that, as one might expect from earlier works on astral magic such as\nGha\u0304yat al-h.ak\u0131\u0304m/Picatrix, often entails the crafting of talismans under certain\nastral conditions, which is to say while certain planets are in conjunction in\na certain sign, etc. However, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s theory and practice of talismans is\nadditionally intertwined with his teachings on the names of God, and he pays\nsignificant attention to the purification of the mind and body of the practitioner as the channel through which a talisman is charged with the forces\nthat render it efficacious.67\nAt various places in Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 addresses a cluster of topics\nthat includes the letter da\u0304l, its numerical value of four, and names of God that\ninclude da\u0304l such as the attributes \u201cthe Permanent\u201d (al-da\u0304\u0002im) and \u201cthe Loving\u201d (al-wadu\u0304d). Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 also assigns the letter da\u0304l to the sphere of Jupiter,\nand, although he does not make the point explicitly, his discussion of the\nPermanent and the Loving emphasizes their denotation of God\u2019s beneficent,\n66. Ibid., fol. 29b.\n67. Many of al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s works other than Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t are centrally concerned\nwith embodied \u201cspiritual practices\u201d (riya\u0304d.a\u0304t) familiar from the classical Sufi tradition,\ne.g. khalwah (ritual seclusion), supererogatory fasting, and dhikr and other forms of\nsupererogatory prayer. As mentioned above, a focus of \u0003Alam al-huda\u0304 is takhalluq\nthrough spiritual exercises centered on God\u2019s attributes, and another of al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s\nworks, Mawa\u0304qif al-gha\u0304ya\u0304t f\u0131\u0304 asra\u0304r al-riya\u0304d.a\u0304t, is entirely dedicated to traditional Sufi practices, albeit with subtle lettrist inflections. In Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t, however, we see such\nspiritual exercises being directed especially at a higher capacity for disposing astrallettristic forces in the material world, particularly through the use of talismans.\n\nPages 23:\nGardiner \u0002 Stars and Saints\nnurturing, and administrative qualities\u2014virtues commonly associated with\nJupiter in Hellenistic astrology.\nAl-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 discusses a number of talismans associated with this cluster of da\u0304lelements. One relatively simple set of instructions is as follows:\nHe who writes the shape of [the letter] da\u0304l on a piece of white silk thirty-five times\nwhile the Moon is in Cancer and aligned favorably with Jupiter, and places it in his\nsignet-ring during that time and wears it while in a state of ritual purity, fasting, and\ncontinuous internal quietude (s.afa\u0304\u0002 al-ba\u0304t.in), God will make lasting for him the state\nof grace he is in, and support him in every external undertaking. And God will extend\nHis sustenance generously to one who multiplies [i.e. performs dhikr of] His name the\nPermanent if he has that [talisman] with him. We have explained it [God\u2019s generosity]\nextensively regarding His name the Permanent and the da\u0304l in al-h.amd [i.e. in the\ncommon phrase of blessing al-h.amd li-lla\u0304h] in our book \u0003Alam al-huda\u0304 . . . and its inner\n(ba\u0304t.in) meaning in [the chapter] on His name the Merciful (al-rah.ma\u0304n).68\nThe thirty-five times reflects the abjad value of da\u0304l when spelled out: da\u0304l \u2cf1 4,\nalif \u2cf1 1, la\u0304m \u2cf1 30. The prescribed astrological conditions for the making of\nthe talisman harness the energies of both Jupiter and Cancer, the sign in\nwhich Jupiter is exalted. Note, however, that the operator must himself be\nin a state of fasting, ritual purity, and internal quietude in order to effectively\nchannel these forces. It is also best if the talisman is employed in combination\nwith dhikr of the appropriate divine name\u2014dhikr being a form of prayer\nspecial to Sufism, which involves the repetitive chanting of one or more\ndivine names, often in tandem with various breathing practices and rhythmic\nmovements. The reader is also referred to \u0003Alam al-huda\u0304 for al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s more\ndetailed discourse on the forces of mercy and beneficence linked to the letter\nda\u0304l. In sum, the material talisman would seem to be harnessing forces emanating from the powers of the divine names that are linked through the letter\nda\u0304l to the sphere of Jupiter, channeling them through the purified soul and\nbody of the adept into the talisman. The effects of the talisman are fittingly\nconcordant with the Jovian divine qualities al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 associates with the da\u0304lnames.\n68. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304, Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t, fol. 76a. Man kataba shakl al-da\u0304l f\u0131\u0304 h.ar\u0131\u0304rat bayd.a\u0304\u0002 khamsah wa-thula\u0304th\u0131\u0304n marratan wa-al-qamr f\u0131\u0304 al-sarat.a\u0304n makhz.u\u0304z. min al-mushtar\u0131\u0304 wa-ja\u0003alahu f\u0131\u0304\nkha\u0304timihi f\u0131\u0304 mithla dha\u0304lika al-waqt wa-labasahu \u0003ala\u0304 .taha\u0304ra wa-s.awm wa-s.afa\u0304\u0002 ba\u0304t.in da\u0304\u0002im\nada\u0304ma Alla\u0304h ta\u0003a\u0304lla\u0304 \u0003alayhi al-ni\u0003mah alla\u0304ti huwa f\u0131\u0304-ha\u0304 wa-aqa\u0304mahu ila\u0304 kull h.araka z.a\u0304hira\nwa-wasa\u0003\u0003a Alla\u0304h \u0003alayhi rizqahu wa-man akthara min ismihi al-da\u0304\u0002im ka\u0304na la-hu dha\u0304lika\nwa-qad sharah.na\u0304hu jumlatan f\u0131\u0304 ismihi al-da\u0304\u0002im wa-al-da\u0304l min al-h.amd f\u0131\u0304 kita\u0304bna\u0304 \u0003Alam alhuda\u0304 . . . wa-ba\u0304t.inahu f\u0131\u0304 ismihi al-rah.ma\u0304n ta\u0003a\u0304lla\u0304.\n61\n\nPages 24:\n62\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft \u0002 Spring 2017\nAnother, more complex operation evoking the divine names and related\nforces associated with da\u0304l is the manufacturing of a talisman featuring a fourby-four mathematical \u201cmagic square,\u201d which is to say a four-by-four grid of\nnumbers\u2014or their equivalents in letters\u2014in which all the rows and columns\ntally to the same sum. For this procedure the adept must fast for two weeks,\neating nothing but bread, maintaining a state of ritual purity throughout, and\nregularly invoking God\u2019s name while meditating on a sheet of silver. On a\nThursday (traditionally the day of Jupiter), in the hour of Jupiter, on a day\nwhen the moon is favorably aligned with Jupiter and the sun, and when the\nascending lunar node is in Gemini (in which the ascending node is exalted),\nhe is to inscribe the square on the sheet of silver while facing the qiblah and\nburning mastic and white oud. He is then to wear the talisman on Thursdays,\nand God will make easy for him his religious obligations, provide him with\nall his necessities, and grant him barakah \u201cin all that his hand attempts\u201d (f\u0131\u0304 kull\nma\u0304 tuh.a\u0304wiluhu yadihi).69\nThe operation would be entirely at home in Gha\u0304yat al-h.ak\u0131\u0304m or a similar\nwork, except that the astrological image that such a work would call for on\nthe talisman has been replaced with the grid of numbers and letters. The\ncharacter of the operation is further transformed by al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s commentary\non the names and forces associated with da\u0304l, and his extensive framing of the\n\u201cworlds and interworlds\u201d that underlie manifest reality, in which the letters\nand numbers exist as angelic entities in their own right. In addition, his focus\non the asceticism and ritual purity of the practitioner emphasizes the notion\nof the Sufi adept as the ideal conduit through which such forces can be\nchanneled. Much as with his \u201cspiritual medicine,\u201d however, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 nevertheless acknowledges a significant degree of technical legitimacy to conventional astrology, particularly with regard to the timing of operations. This\nagain suggests that he credits the pre-Islamic science as valid knowledge with\nregard to the \u201couter\u201d world and the observable aspects of the celestial spheres,\nwhile yet privileging the power of God\u2019s saints and the lettrist understanding\nof Islamic revelation as the true keys to understanding and manipulating the\nhidden secrets of the creation.\nCONCLUSION\nAl-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s approach to astrology is esotericist in that, like the Qur\u0002a\u0304n, the\n\u201cprofane\u201d astrology of the Hellenistic cum Ma\u0003shar\u0131\u0304 tradition is implied to\nhave hidden depths of meaning. What non-initiates assume to be the effects\nof the stars is understood by the lettrist adept as aspects of the manifold power\n69. Ibid., fol. 21b.\n\nPages 25:\nGardiner \u0002 Stars and Saints\nof God\u2019s speech. Thus the Sufi saints and adepts\u2019 relationship to the letters\nthat convey both the Qur\u0002a\u0304n and the forces emanating from the heavens\ntranscends the merely discursive knowledge traded in by ordinary Muslim\nexegetes and jurists on the one hand, and vulgar astrologers on the other.\nRather than merely reading the Qur\u0002a\u0304nic and celestial \u201ctexts,\u201d the Sufis\u2019 souls\nand bodies are the channels through which God\u2019s world-making speech is\nmost purely manifested and disposed. It is an extraordinary set of claims on alBu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s part, one that reconfigures the relationship between divine and human\nagency by granting a quasi-naturalistic basis to the miraculous powers attributed to the Sufi saints, while yet affirming their transcendent spiritual authority as the selfless vehicles of God\u2019s word.\nAs mentioned at the outset of this paper, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 intended his written\nteachings only for a select audience of Sufi initiates, and communities of\nlearned Sufis in Egypt and environs indeed seem to have kept his writings\nlargely to themselves for a century or so after his death. This air of secrecy is\nbut one indication that al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 and his early readers were aware that his\nteachings might attract severe criticism from religious authorities. Thus, if\nLat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t can be taken as an attempt to reconcile astrology and Islam,\nthen this reconciliation was not one that al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 intended to be carried out\npublicly, but only among the networks of peers and followers that he and\nother members of his western Sufi cohort were building as they traveled east\naround the turn of the thirteenth century.\nThe historian of Jewish thought Moshe Halbertal has described the twelfth\nand thirteenth centuries CE as \u201cthe age of esotericism and its disclosure,\u201d70 a\nperiod in which secrecy and elitism were important features of Jewish discourses ranging from Kabbalah, to the occultism-infused exegetical efforts of\nAbraham b. Ezra (d. between 1164 and 1167 CE), to the distinctly nonoccultist philosophy of Maimonides (d. 1204 CE). This trend emerged\nlargely in the Muslim-ruled western Mediterranean, and its florescence in the\nsame period and region as produced such Muslim esotericists extraordinaire as\nal-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 and Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304 is one hint that the trend was transconfessional.\nVarious scholars have noted that the air de famille which pertains between\nKabbalah and western-Sufi lettrism\u2014with their shared fascinations with\nsacred alphabets, divine names, the primordial Adam, emanationist cosmology, and theurgy\u2014suggests significant cross-fertilization between the discourses.71\n70. Moshe Halbertal, Concealment and Revelation: Esotericism in Jewish Thought and\nits Philosophical Implications, trans. Jackie Feldman (Princeton: Princeton University\nPress, 2007), 5.\n71. The comparative study of these discourses is mostly in its infancy. For a sam-\n63\n\nPages 26:\n64\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft \u0002 Spring 2017\nAn important function of Jewish esotericism was that, in claiming access\nto initiated understandings of holy texts, esotericists of the period forged\nnovel connections between scripture and various philosophical and occultscientific discourses\u2014all while claiming to reveal the primordial essence of\nJewish scripture. As Halbertal puts it, \u201c[t]he esoteric idea provides a new and\npowerful tool to exegesis as a means of receiving ideas and transforming them\ninto an integral part of the tradition.\u201d72 Ibn Ezra, for example, reads Torah\nagainst the grain of the mainstream exegetical tradition to \u201creveal\u201d layers of\ncosmological and astrological meaning that he claims as the inner meaning of\nscripture known only to the elite few, even going so far as to interpret ancient\nJewish ritual practices as a means of drawing down power from the heavens\na\u0300 la an astral talisman from Gha\u0304yat al-h.ak\u0131\u0304m.73Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 similarly locates the\nmetaphysical underpinnings of an astrologically-charged cosmos in the hidden meanings of the Qur\u0002a\u0304n, legitimating thereby the utilization of various\nelements of astrology while still vouchsafing the superiority of Islamic revelation.\nHalbertal also offers the view that the innovative exegetical efforts of Jewish esotericists were symptomatic of a crisis of dissatisfaction with traditional\nreligious thought, and of a shift toward causal explanations of reality that\nutilized \u201cnature as the central explanatory category.\u201d This was particularly\napparent, he argues, in a changing conception of prayer in which what long\nhad been viewed as humanity\u2019s means of appeasing a personal God came to\nbe articulated as methods by which humans could activate essentially impersonal forces in order to remake the world.74 Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s lettrist-talismanic practices seem largely to fit this pattern, particularly insofar as he \u201castrologizes\u201d\npling see Vahid Brown, \u201cAndalus\u0131\u0304 Mysticism: A Recontextualization,\u201d in Journal of\nIslamic Philosophy 2 (2006): 69\u2013101; Michael Ebstein and Tzahi Weiss, \u201cA Drama in\nHeaven: \u2018Emanation on the Left\u2019 in Kabbalah and a Parallel Cosmogonic Myth in\nIsma\u0304\u0003\u0131\u0304l\u0131\u0304 Literature,\u201d History of Religions 55 (2015): 148\u201371; Ronald Kiener, \u201cJewish\nMysticism in the Lands of the Ishmaelites: A Re-Orientation,\u201d in The Convergence of\nJudaism and Islam: Religious, Scientific, and Cultural Dimensions, ed. Michael M. Laskier\nand Yaacov Lev (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2011), 147\u201367; Ehud Krinis,\n\u201cCyclical Time in the Isma\u0304\u0003\u0131\u0304l\u0131\u0304 Circle of Ikhwa\u0304n Al-S.afa\u0304\u0002 (Tenth Century) and in Early\nJewish Kabbalists Circles (Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries),\u201d Studia Islamica 111\n(2016): 20\u2013108; Michael McGaha, \u201cThe Sefer Ha-Bahir and Andalusian Sufism,\u201d\nMedieval Encounters 3 (1997): 20\u201357; Steven Wasserstrom, \u201cSefer Yes.ira and Early\nIslam: A Reappraisal,\u201d Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 3 (1993): 1\u201330.\n72. Halbertal, Concealment and Revelation, 40.\n73. Ibid., 34\u201348; For a detailed discussion of Ibn Ezra\u2019s teachings on this matter,\nsee Dov Schwartz, Studies on Astral Magic in Medieval Jewish Thought (Leiden: Brill,\n2005), 9\u201326.\n74. Halbertal, Concealment and Revelation, 139.\n\nPages 27:\nGardiner \u0002 Stars and Saints\nthe forces of the divine names.75 But does Halbertal succumb to too Yatesian\na narrative of the occult-fueled discovery of nature at the end of the medieval\nperiod? It is perhaps better that al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s ideas be considered one of the\nstreams contributing to the formation of \u201cthe Sufi-philosophical (or philosophical-Sufi) amalgam\u201d that Shahab Ahmed recently described as having\nemerged in the Muslim world during the transition from the late medieval\nto early modern periods, and that predominated in much of Muslim culture\nfor centuries.76 Best of all, we might recognize that the daring esotericism of\nal-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 and his fellow lettrists causes their ideas to cut across the borders\nmodern scholarship has sought to erect between the histories of theology,\nmysticism, philosophy, and science, and that to study their place in intellectual history requires a willingness to follow their lines of flight across such\ntraditional disciplinary categories.\n75. A move that can be seen as part of what Matthew Melvin-Koushki refers to\nas the rising Neopythagoreanism and mathematicalization of late medieval/early\nmodern occultism; Melvin-Koushki, \u201cPowers of One: The Mathematicalization of\nthe Occult Sciences in the High Persianate Tradition,\u201d Intellectual History of the Islamicate World 5, no. 1 (2017).\n76. Shahab Ahmed, What Is Islam?: The Importance of Being Islamic (Princeton:\nPrinceton University Press, 2016), 31 and passim.\n65\n\nPages 28:\nCopyright of Magic, Ritual & Witchcraft is the property of University of Pennsylvania Press\nand its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without\nthe copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or\nemail articles for individual use.\n]"]}

{"result":["[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=21\nPages: 21\nreceiving the divine signal, would transmit the forces of the luciform letters/\ndivine names most purely and efficiently. As we will see, the talismanic practices outlined in the text, discussed briefly below, further bear out this model,\nas al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 emphasizes the importance of the spiritual accomplishment of the\noperator in the efficacy of such tools.\nA S T R O L O G Y A N D LE T T R I S M I N P R AC T I C E\nHowever radical al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s re-envisioning of the forces at work in astrology,\nhe does not eschew the importance of traditional astrological actors such as\nthe planets and zodiacal signs. Notably, he particularly embraces them in\nconnection with issues and practices set squarely in the manifest world. Such\nis the case in his discussion of practices for healing the human body, where\nhe links the zodiacal signs to the parts of the body\u2014a move he justifies by]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=20\nPages: 20\nthe superior influences [i.e. those from the luciform letters] in the earthly\nsphere.\u201d60\nThus al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 seems to suggest not only that the powers attributed to the\nplanets are really those of the divine names, but also that humans are an\nindispensable element in the reception of the influence of the divine names\ninto the material world. The latter point is a significant departure from conventional models of astrological causation, in which celestial rays have no\nneed of human mediators. It is quite in keeping, however, with the central\ncosmological importance al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 assigns to Adam and the \u201chuman cosmos\u201d\n(al-\u0003a\u0304lam al-insa\u0304n\u0131\u0304), whereby, as he discusses in \u0003Alam al-huda\u0304, humans are the\nonly created beings capable of fully bridging the highest and lowest planes of\nexistence.61 And it is in further keeping with a Sufi ethos in which reigned\nthe notion that the very existence of the world was sustained by a concealed]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=26\nPages: 26\nagainst the grain of the mainstream exegetical tradition to \u201creveal\u201d layers of\ncosmological and astrological meaning that he claims as the inner meaning of\nscripture known only to the elite few, even going so far as to interpret ancient\nJewish ritual practices as a means of drawing down power from the heavens\na\u0300 la an astral talisman from Gha\u0304yat al-h.ak\u0131\u0304m.73Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 similarly locates the\nmetaphysical underpinnings of an astrologically-charged cosmos in the hidden meanings of the Qur\u0002a\u0304n, legitimating thereby the utilization of various\nelements of astrology while still vouchsafing the superiority of Islamic revelation.\nHalbertal also offers the view that the innovative exegetical efforts of Jewish esotericists were symptomatic of a crisis of dissatisfaction with traditional\nreligious thought, and of a shift toward causal explanations of reality that\nutilized \u201cnature as the central explanatory category.\u201d This was particularly]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=18\nPages: 18\nconfirmed by his explicit comparison of the movement of the planets\nthrough the zodiacal signs to the shifting influences of the luciform letters on\nthe faculties: \u201c[A]s the celestial spheres, in their track through the zodiacal\nsigns, are measured according to degree and minute and so on, so the effect\nmanifests sequentially. . . . Likewise these twelve spiritual-lettristic faculties\ntake from the lights of the luciform letters, stage after stage, in accordance\nwith the mystery of a gradated sequence.\u201d57\nAl-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 goes into no further detail about the faculties, except to note that\nthey are not evenly developed among humans, being perfected in some and\nlacking in others. That, however, is a key point, as a central tenet of Sufism\nis that humans are differentially disposed to receiving divine blessing and\n55. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304, Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t, fol 18b. Fa-qa\u0304mat ruh.a\u0304n\u0131\u0304yat kull falak bi-anwa\u0304r kull\nh.arf min al-h.uru\u0304f al-nu\u0304ra\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah.\n56. Ibid., fol. 18a.]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=22\nPages: 22\nhuman bodies, while still proclaiming the text of the Qur\u0002a\u0304n to be the most\neffective tool for intervening on that reality, and thus supporting the superiority of Islamic revelation.\nAnother area where al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 explicitly engages with conventional astrology\nis with regard to the making of talismans, though it is also here that the\ntheory of the forty-eight letters can be seen in practical application. This is a\nprocess that, as one might expect from earlier works on astral magic such as\nGha\u0304yat al-h.ak\u0131\u0304m/Picatrix, often entails the crafting of talismans under certain\nastral conditions, which is to say while certain planets are in conjunction in\na certain sign, etc. However, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s theory and practice of talismans is\nadditionally intertwined with his teachings on the names of God, and he pays\nsignificant attention to the purification of the mind and body of the practitioner as the channel through which a talisman is charged with the forces\nthat render it efficacious.67]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=17\nPages: 17,18\nUniversity of New York Press, 1989), 21\u201322.\n55\n56\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft \u0002 Spring 2017\nrather a situation in which all the luciform letters act on the planets; as he\nputs it, \u201c[t]he occult force (ruh.a\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah) of every heavenly sphere (falak) is\ndetermined by the lights of every one of the luciform letters.\u201d55\nThe twelve \u201cspiritual letters\u201d also are not letters in a conventional sense.\nRather, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 reveals, they represent the human faculties\u2014which is to say\nthe various modules of human consciousness through which divine and\nearthly realities are perceived and processed. These are twelve in number\naccording to al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s scheme: the faculty of hearing (quwwat al-sam\u0003), the\nfaculty of vision (quwwat al-bas.ar), the faculty of smell (quwwat al-shamm),\nthe faculty of taste (quwwat al-dhawq), the faculty of touch (quwwat al-lams),]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=22\nPages: 22,23\nthrough spiritual exercises centered on God\u2019s attributes, and another of al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s\nworks, Mawa\u0304qif al-gha\u0304ya\u0304t f\u0131\u0304 asra\u0304r al-riya\u0304d.a\u0304t, is entirely dedicated to traditional Sufi practices, albeit with subtle lettrist inflections. In Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t, however, we see such\nspiritual exercises being directed especially at a higher capacity for disposing astrallettristic forces in the material world, particularly through the use of talismans.\nGardiner \u0002 Stars and Saints\nnurturing, and administrative qualities\u2014virtues commonly associated with\nJupiter in Hellenistic astrology.\nAl-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 discusses a number of talismans associated with this cluster of da\u0304lelements. One relatively simple set of instructions is as follows:\nHe who writes the shape of [the letter] da\u0304l on a piece of white silk thirty-five times\nwhile the Moon is in Cancer and aligned favorably with Jupiter, and places it in his\nsignet-ring during that time and wears it while in a state of ritual purity, fasting, and]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=21\nPages: 21\nhe links the zodiacal signs to the parts of the body\u2014a move he justifies by\nexplaining that the sun is linked to the human soul (al-shams hiya nisbat alnafs),65 such that the solar zodiac has dominion over the body. Aries (al-h.amal)\nhas dominion over the hair of the head, Taurus (al-thawr) over the forehead,\nGemini (al-jawza\u0304\u0002) over the eyes, and so on down to Pisces\u2019 (al-h.u\u0304t) dominion\nover the legs and feet. Each sign of the zodiac, he explains, is linked to an\nelement (fire, air, water, earth) that is a combination of two elemental qualities. Thus all seven of the \u201ccorporeal\u201d letters assigned to each of those qualities also correspond to the zodiacal sign they constitute, with the result that\nfourteen letters are attached to each sign. These letters are the keys to healing\nthe body through \u201cspiritual medicine\u201d (t.ibb ru\u0304h.a\u0304n\u0131\u0304). Armed with knowledge\nsive discussion of the saintly hierarchy see chapter 73 of his al-Futu\u0304h.a\u0304t al-Makk\u0131\u0304yah.]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=3\nPages: 3\nforty-eight letters, amounts to an esotericist unveiling of the hidden realities\nunderlying \u201cprofane\u201d astrology, one that identifies the world-shaping efflux\nof forces from the celestial spheres with the continuous flow of the letters of\nGod\u2019s creative speech. He furthermore implies a central role for Sufi adepts\n(muh.aqqiqu\u0304n) and saints (awliya\u0304\u0002) in mediating these astral-lettristic radiations,\nadding a uniquely occult-scientific twist to views deeply embedded in Sufi\ntradition\u2014and premodern Muslim culture generally\u2014of the saints as key\nexecutors of God\u2019s word and will on earth. In the conclusion, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s\napproach to astrology is discussed as part of a transconfessional wave of esotericism in the late medieval Mediterranean, one that heralded shifting ideas\nabout the order of nature and the relationship between divine and human\nagency.\nAH\n. M A D Al - B U\u0304N I\u0304\nWe have only a few glimpses of the life of Abu\u0304 al-\u0003Abba\u0304s Ah.mad b. \u0003Al\u0131\u0304 b.]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=26\nPages: 26\nutilized \u201cnature as the central explanatory category.\u201d This was particularly\napparent, he argues, in a changing conception of prayer in which what long\nhad been viewed as humanity\u2019s means of appeasing a personal God came to\nbe articulated as methods by which humans could activate essentially impersonal forces in order to remake the world.74 Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s lettrist-talismanic practices seem largely to fit this pattern, particularly insofar as he \u201castrologizes\u201d\npling see Vahid Brown, \u201cAndalus\u0131\u0304 Mysticism: A Recontextualization,\u201d in Journal of\nIslamic Philosophy 2 (2006): 69\u2013101; Michael Ebstein and Tzahi Weiss, \u201cA Drama in\nHeaven: \u2018Emanation on the Left\u2019 in Kabbalah and a Parallel Cosmogonic Myth in\nIsma\u0304\u0003\u0131\u0304l\u0131\u0304 Literature,\u201d History of Religions 55 (2015): 148\u201371; Ronald Kiener, \u201cJewish\nMysticism in the Lands of the Ishmaelites: A Re-Orientation,\u201d in The Convergence of\nJudaism and Islam: Religious, Scientific, and Cultural Dimensions, ed. Michael M. Laskier]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=18\nPages: 18\nthe faculty of taste (quwwat al-dhawq), the faculty of touch (quwwat al-lams),\nthe cogitative faculty (al-quwwah al-mufakkirah), the imaginative faculty (alquwwah al-khaya\u0304l\u0131\u0304yah), the formal faculty (al-quwwah al-mus.awwirah), the\nadministrative faculty (al-quwwah al-mudabbirah), the integrative faculty (alquwwah al-mushakkilah), the preserving faculty (al-quwwah al-h.a\u0304fiz.ah), and the\ndispositive faculty (al-quwwah al-mus.arrifah).56 The implication is that the\ntwelve spiritual letters/faculties fulfill the function of the zodiac in the sense\nof receiving the \u201cplanetary\u201d forces of the divine names and, as we will see,\nmediating their effects upon the manifest world. As with the luciform letters\nand the planets, he offers no one-to-one correspondence between the faculties and signs; however, the linking of the spiritual letters to the zodiac is\nconfirmed by his explicit comparison of the movement of the planets]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=24\nPages: 24\nof the Sufi adept as the ideal conduit through which such forces can be\nchanneled. Much as with his \u201cspiritual medicine,\u201d however, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 nevertheless acknowledges a significant degree of technical legitimacy to conventional astrology, particularly with regard to the timing of operations. This\nagain suggests that he credits the pre-Islamic science as valid knowledge with\nregard to the \u201couter\u201d world and the observable aspects of the celestial spheres,\nwhile yet privileging the power of God\u2019s saints and the lettrist understanding\nof Islamic revelation as the true keys to understanding and manipulating the\nhidden secrets of the creation.\nCONCLUSION\nAl-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s approach to astrology is esotericist in that, like the Qur\u0002a\u0304n, the\n\u201cprofane\u201d astrology of the Hellenistic cum Ma\u0003shar\u0131\u0304 tradition is implied to\nhave hidden depths of meaning. What non-initiates assume to be the effects\nof the stars is understood by the lettrist adept as aspects of the manifold power\n69. Ibid., fol. 21b.]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=19\nPages: 19\nthings are composed of these corporeal, elemental letters, which are the\nbuilding blocks of manifest reality. He emphasizes, however, that the powers\nof the seven luciform letters do not act directly on the corporeal letters, but\nrather only through the mediation of the twelve spiritual letters that are the\nhuman faculties\u2014much as the powers of the planets are mediated by the\nsigns and houses in conventional astrology. As al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 puts it: \u201cAs the seven\n[heavenly] spheres are the stations of the superior forces and the people of\nthe inferior world [i.e. the earth] are guided by them, so [the spiritual letters]\ntake from the seven luciform letters, every human cosmos in accordance with\nhis worthiness to witness the lights of those letters.\u201d59 As for the corporeal\nletters, they are \u201clike the earth in relation to the spiritual letters\u201d (ka-al-ard. lial-h.uru\u0304f al-ru\u0304h.a\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah), in that \u201call of their forces, meaning those of the spiritual]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=11\nPages: 11\nit with the divine Throne (\u0003arsh) and other symbols drawn from Muslim\nscriptures,35 and with the outermost celestial sphere (Primum Mobile). Next is\nthe \u201csecond world of invention\u201d (\u0003a\u0304lam al-ikhtira\u0304\u0003 al-tha\u0304n\u0131\u0304), which is linked to\nAdam\u2019s immortal spirit (ru\u0304h.), the divine Pen (qalam) mentioned in the\nQur\u0002a\u0304n,36 the spirit of holiness (ru\u0304h. al-qudus),37 and the rays of metaphysical\nlight that are understood to be the \u201cpre-existent\u201d essences of the saints and\nprophets.38 The third emanation is the \u201cfirst world of origination\u201d (\u0003a\u0304lam alibda\u0304\u0003 al-awwal), which is linked to the divine Footstool (kurs\u0131\u0304) of the Qur\u0002a\u0304n.39\nIt is equivalent to the World Soul of Neoplatonism and is mirrored by Adam\u2019s\nsoul or psyche (nafs). A mesocosmic or intermediary realm of images that\nlend form to material things potentiated by the divine word, it is a plane in\nwhich the letters of the alphabet exist as angelic forces working continually]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=20\nPages: 20\nthe notion that the very existence of the world was sustained by a concealed\nhierarchy or college (d\u0131\u0304wa\u0304n) of living Sufi saints with miraculous powers. As\nfor the impact a saint might have on the \u201ccorporeal letters\u201d of the materiality\nof his or her surroundings, one is reminded of Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304\u2019s discussion\nof how, as Michel Chodkiewicz summarizes it, \u201cthe passage of a saint or\nhis posthumous sojourn in a place establishes in it a field of beneficent\npower\u201d62 \u2014a notion central to the cult of saints and the practice of visiting\nsaints\u2019 tombs.\nThe idea of the invisible hierarchy of the saints has been an element of\nSufism since at least the ninth century, but it seems to have gained wider\ncurrency by the onset of the late medieval period, particularly in the Islamic\nWest. It would continue to do so across the Muslim world well into the early\nmodern period, particularly as theory met social practice in the rise of the]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=24\nPages: 24\nand God will make easy for him his religious obligations, provide him with\nall his necessities, and grant him barakah \u201cin all that his hand attempts\u201d (f\u0131\u0304 kull\nma\u0304 tuh.a\u0304wiluhu yadihi).69\nThe operation would be entirely at home in Gha\u0304yat al-h.ak\u0131\u0304m or a similar\nwork, except that the astrological image that such a work would call for on\nthe talisman has been replaced with the grid of numbers and letters. The\ncharacter of the operation is further transformed by al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s commentary\non the names and forces associated with da\u0304l, and his extensive framing of the\n\u201cworlds and interworlds\u201d that underlie manifest reality, in which the letters\nand numbers exist as angelic entities in their own right. In addition, his focus\non the asceticism and ritual purity of the practitioner emphasizes the notion\nof the Sufi adept as the ideal conduit through which such forces can be]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=27\nPages: 27\nthe forces of the divine names.75 But does Halbertal succumb to too Yatesian\na narrative of the occult-fueled discovery of nature at the end of the medieval\nperiod? It is perhaps better that al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s ideas be considered one of the\nstreams contributing to the formation of \u201cthe Sufi-philosophical (or philosophical-Sufi) amalgam\u201d that Shahab Ahmed recently described as having\nemerged in the Muslim world during the transition from the late medieval\nto early modern periods, and that predominated in much of Muslim culture\nfor centuries.76 Best of all, we might recognize that the daring esotericism of\nal-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 and his fellow lettrists causes their ideas to cut across the borders\nmodern scholarship has sought to erect between the histories of theology,\nmysticism, philosophy, and science, and that to study their place in intellectual history requires a willingness to follow their lines of flight across such\ntraditional disciplinary categories.]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=19\nPages: 19,20\nletters, convene in the earth of the corporeal letters in order to manifest\n58. For similar assignments of the letters to the elemental qualities in the Jabirian\nart of the \u201cBalance of the Letters\u201d (m\u0131\u0304za\u0304n al-h.uru\u0304f ) see Haq, Names, Natures, and\nThings, 81\u2013108.\n59. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304, Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t, fol. 18b. Wa-lamma ka\u0304nat al-afla\u0304k al-sab\u0003ah hiya mara\u0304kiz al-\u0003ulw\u0131\u0304ya\u0304t wa-biha\u0304 \u2018htada\u0304 ahl al-sufl\u0131\u0304ya\u0304t ka\u0304nat hiya [al-h.uru\u0304f al-ru\u0304h.a\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah] mustamaddatan min ha\u0304dhihi al-h.uru\u0304f al-nu\u0304ra\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah al-sab\u0003ah kull \u0003a\u0304lam [insa\u0304n\u0131\u0304] bi-ma\u0304 yal\u0131\u0304q bihi min\nshuhu\u0304d anwa\u0304r tilka al-h.uru\u0304f. That kull \u0003a\u0304lam should here be understood as kull \u0003a\u0304lam\ninsa\u0304n\u0131\u0304, i.e. \u201cevery human microcosm,\u201d is clear from the use of the term shortly prior,\nat the bottom of fol. 18a, as well as at several points earlier in the text.\n57\n58\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft \u0002 Spring 2017\nthe superior influences [i.e. those from the luciform letters] in the earthly\nsphere.\u201d60]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=12\nPages: 12\nearthly events is familiar from Hellenistic cosmology, and had been well\nknown in Islamic thought at least since the writings of the Baghdadi astrologer Abu\u0304 Ma\u0003shar al-Balkh\u0131\u0304 (Albumasar, d. 272/886),41 though it was never\nuniversally accepted by Muslim thinkers.42 What was novel in the current of\ncosmological thought from which al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s ideas stem was the fusing of that\nnotion to a Neoplatonic, emanative cosmology, such that the spheres of the\nplanets and elements were themselves emanations from the World Soul,\nincreasing in density as they descended the ladder of being until their forces\nculminated in the concretely material sublunary realm. This fusion of cosmological concepts was already found in the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity some\nthree centuries prior to al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304. It allowed the Brethren to mount a defense\nof astrology vis-a-vis Islamic teachings, by portraying the influences of the\nheavens as the means through which God\u2019s \u201ccommand\u201d (amr) or \u201cword\u201d]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=24\nPages: 24,25\n69. Ibid., fol. 21b.\nGardiner \u0002 Stars and Saints\nof God\u2019s speech. Thus the Sufi saints and adepts\u2019 relationship to the letters\nthat convey both the Qur\u0002a\u0304n and the forces emanating from the heavens\ntranscends the merely discursive knowledge traded in by ordinary Muslim\nexegetes and jurists on the one hand, and vulgar astrologers on the other.\nRather than merely reading the Qur\u0002a\u0304nic and celestial \u201ctexts,\u201d the Sufis\u2019 souls\nand bodies are the channels through which God\u2019s world-making speech is\nmost purely manifested and disposed. It is an extraordinary set of claims on alBu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s part, one that reconfigures the relationship between divine and human\nagency by granting a quasi-naturalistic basis to the miraculous powers attributed to the Sufi saints, while yet affirming their transcendent spiritual authority as the selfless vehicles of God\u2019s word.\nAs mentioned at the outset of this paper, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 intended his written]"]}

{"result":["[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=17\nPages: 17,18\nUniversity of New York Press, 1989), 21\u201322.\n55\n56\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft \u0002 Spring 2017\nrather a situation in which all the luciform letters act on the planets; as he\nputs it, \u201c[t]he occult force (ruh.a\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah) of every heavenly sphere (falak) is\ndetermined by the lights of every one of the luciform letters.\u201d55\nThe twelve \u201cspiritual letters\u201d also are not letters in a conventional sense.\nRather, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 reveals, they represent the human faculties\u2014which is to say\nthe various modules of human consciousness through which divine and\nearthly realities are perceived and processed. These are twelve in number\naccording to al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s scheme: the faculty of hearing (quwwat al-sam\u0003), the\nfaculty of vision (quwwat al-bas.ar), the faculty of smell (quwwat al-shamm),\nthe faculty of taste (quwwat al-dhawq), the faculty of touch (quwwat al-lams),]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=19\nPages: 19\nthings are composed of these corporeal, elemental letters, which are the\nbuilding blocks of manifest reality. He emphasizes, however, that the powers\nof the seven luciform letters do not act directly on the corporeal letters, but\nrather only through the mediation of the twelve spiritual letters that are the\nhuman faculties\u2014much as the powers of the planets are mediated by the\nsigns and houses in conventional astrology. As al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 puts it: \u201cAs the seven\n[heavenly] spheres are the stations of the superior forces and the people of\nthe inferior world [i.e. the earth] are guided by them, so [the spiritual letters]\ntake from the seven luciform letters, every human cosmos in accordance with\nhis worthiness to witness the lights of those letters.\u201d59 As for the corporeal\nletters, they are \u201clike the earth in relation to the spiritual letters\u201d (ka-al-ard. lial-h.uru\u0304f al-ru\u0304h.a\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah), in that \u201call of their forces, meaning those of the spiritual]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=16\nPages: 16\ncapacity of humans to receive God\u2019s word\u2014and thereby implying an important role for Sufi saints and adepts in the process of astrological causation\u2014\nand reimagining the sublunary world, which is to say manifest reality, as a\nfabric of letters in a constant flux driven by the movements of the celestial\nspheres. None of this is to say that al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 denounces or abandons astrology\u2019s\n\u201couter\u201d forms. Rather, particularly with regard to the material world, he\nengages to a considerable degree with conventional astrology.\nThe seven luciform letters, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 tells us, are not letters in the usual\nsense, but rather that name is a figure of speech (maja\u0304z) concealing a secret\nfor the initiated (li-sirr al-tabl\u0131\u0304gh). He is indeed less than straightforward about\nthe true nature of these so-called letters, resorting to actual code in describing\nthem.\nThey [the luciform letters] are different lights not with regard to their essences, but]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=16\nPages: 16\nthem.\nThey [the luciform letters] are different lights not with regard to their essences, but\nrather with regard to one who perceives them. They are referred to as the two, the\none, the thirty, the sixty, the eighty, the one, and the four hundred; these [numbers]\nare a link [nisbah] to the luciform letters. Were it not for these luciform letters, God\n(Most High) would not be known, and the created beings would not be disposed\nupon the planes of unity.50\nThe most obvious solution to the numerical code is through abjad, the Arabic\nsystem of assigning numerical values to the letter. Applying the abjad values\nused in the Islamic West (a preference al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 makes clear elsewhere in the\ntext),51 the numbers yield the phrase bi-al-s.ifa\u0304t, \u201cby means of the attributes\u201d;\n50. Ibid., fol. 18a. Wa hiya anwa\u0304r mukhtalifa\u0304t la\u0304 min h.aythu dhawa\u0304tiha\u0304 bal min h.aythu\nman yudrikha\u0304 wa hiya al-mu\u0003abbar \u0003anha\u0304 al-ithnayn wa-al-wa\u0304h.id wa-al-thula\u0304th\u0131\u0304n wa-al-sitt\u0131\u0304n]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=19\nPages: 19,20\nletters, convene in the earth of the corporeal letters in order to manifest\n58. For similar assignments of the letters to the elemental qualities in the Jabirian\nart of the \u201cBalance of the Letters\u201d (m\u0131\u0304za\u0304n al-h.uru\u0304f ) see Haq, Names, Natures, and\nThings, 81\u2013108.\n59. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304, Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t, fol. 18b. Wa-lamma ka\u0304nat al-afla\u0304k al-sab\u0003ah hiya mara\u0304kiz al-\u0003ulw\u0131\u0304ya\u0304t wa-biha\u0304 \u2018htada\u0304 ahl al-sufl\u0131\u0304ya\u0304t ka\u0304nat hiya [al-h.uru\u0304f al-ru\u0304h.a\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah] mustamaddatan min ha\u0304dhihi al-h.uru\u0304f al-nu\u0304ra\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah al-sab\u0003ah kull \u0003a\u0304lam [insa\u0304n\u0131\u0304] bi-ma\u0304 yal\u0131\u0304q bihi min\nshuhu\u0304d anwa\u0304r tilka al-h.uru\u0304f. That kull \u0003a\u0304lam should here be understood as kull \u0003a\u0304lam\ninsa\u0304n\u0131\u0304, i.e. \u201cevery human microcosm,\u201d is clear from the use of the term shortly prior,\nat the bottom of fol. 18a, as well as at several points earlier in the text.\n57\n58\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft \u0002 Spring 2017\nthe superior influences [i.e. those from the luciform letters] in the earthly\nsphere.\u201d60]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=18\nPages: 18\nconfirmed by his explicit comparison of the movement of the planets\nthrough the zodiacal signs to the shifting influences of the luciform letters on\nthe faculties: \u201c[A]s the celestial spheres, in their track through the zodiacal\nsigns, are measured according to degree and minute and so on, so the effect\nmanifests sequentially. . . . Likewise these twelve spiritual-lettristic faculties\ntake from the lights of the luciform letters, stage after stage, in accordance\nwith the mystery of a gradated sequence.\u201d57\nAl-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 goes into no further detail about the faculties, except to note that\nthey are not evenly developed among humans, being perfected in some and\nlacking in others. That, however, is a key point, as a central tenet of Sufism\nis that humans are differentially disposed to receiving divine blessing and\n55. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304, Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t, fol 18b. Fa-qa\u0304mat ruh.a\u0304n\u0131\u0304yat kull falak bi-anwa\u0304r kull\nh.arf min al-h.uru\u0304f al-nu\u0304ra\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah.\n56. Ibid., fol. 18a.]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=14\nPages: 14\nrevealed to prophets by the angel Gabriel (Jibr\u0131\u0304l), indicating that the letters\nare at the heart of prophecy itself, and thus at the heart of Islam.48 The adepts\nversed in these secrets take care to protect them, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 assures us, \u201clest\nthose who have gone astray [ahl al-d.ala\u0304la\u0304t] happen upon them, and by means\nof them expose that which God keeps sacred.\u201d49\nTHE FORTY-EIGHT LETTERS\nHaving asserted the powers of the letters in shaping the world, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s\nexposition takes an unforeseen turn when he clarifies that the letters of which\nhe speaks are forty-eight in number\u2014rather than twenty-eight, as one would\n[the] letters themselves are produced by the rotation and interaction of a specific\nnumber of celestial spheres (afla\u0304k) among all the spheres that move concentrically\nwithin the total, ultimate sphere (al-falak al-aqs.a\u0304). Along with bringing the letters into\nexistence, the rotation of the spheres combines physical qualities (heat, cold, dryness,]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=9\nPages: 9,10\ngenerally regarded as especially trustworthy and meaningful.\n30. On the history of lettrism prior to al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 see Denis Gril, \u201cThe Science of\nLetters,\u201d in The Meccan Revelations, ed. Michel Chodkiewicz (New York: Pir Press,\n2004), 103\u2013219; Pierre Lory\u2019s various essays on the topic collected in the volume La\nscience des lettres en islam (Paris: Editions Dervy, 2004); Michael Ebstein, \u201cThe Word\nof God and the Divine Will: Isma\u0304\u0003\u0131\u0304l\u0131\u0304 Traces in Andalus\u0131\u0304 Mysticism,\u201d in Jerusalem\nStudies in Arabic and Islam 39 (2012): 247\u2013302; idem, Mysticism and Philosophy in Al-\n47\n48\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft \u0002 Spring 2017\nfollowers helped translate lettrism to an esotericist Sunni-Sufi frame of reference. The circulation in the Islamic West of the Epistles of the Brethren of\nPurity (Rasa\u0304\u0002il Ikhwa\u0304n al-s.afa\u0304\u0002), an encyclopedic set of philosophical treatises\nproduced by a quasi-Isma\u0003ili esotericist collective in tenth-century Iraq]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=16\nPages: 16,15\nand 16.\n16. \u201cThe world as disposed by the letters\u201d (\u0003a\u0304lam al-tas.r\u0131\u0304f bi-al-h.uru\u0304f ), i.e. the manifest world.\n53\n54\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft \u0002 Spring 2017\nexpect based on the Arabic alphabet. These comprise seven \u201cluciform\u201d (nu\u0304ra\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah) letters, twelve \u201cspiritual\u201d (ru\u0304h.a\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah) letters, and twenty-nine \u201ccorporeal\u201d (jusma\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah) letters. The numbers seven and twelve, being the numbers\nof planets and zodiacal signs (or astrological houses) respectively, hint that\nreferences to astrology will be forthcoming, and al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 does not disappoint.\nIndeed, it is in al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s description of the forty-eight letters that we see the\nextent to which he seeks to reorient his readers to an esotericist understanding of astrology, revealing the apparent powers of the planets as the continuous action of God\u2019s names on the earth, linking the zodiac to the differential]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=16\nPages: 16,17\nman yudrikha\u0304 wa hiya al-mu\u0003abbar \u0003anha\u0304 al-ithnayn wa-al-wa\u0304h.id wa-al-thula\u0304th\u0131\u0304n wa-al-sitt\u0131\u0304n\nwa-al-thama\u0304n\u0131\u0304n wa-al-wah.id wa-al-arba\u0003 mi\u0002ah fa-hiya nisbat al-h.uru\u0304f al-nu\u0304ra\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah wa-lawla\u0304 ha\u0304dhihi al-h.uru\u0304f al-nu\u0304ra\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah ma\u0304 \u0003urifa Alla\u0304h ta\u0003a\u0304lla\u0304 wa-la\u0304 tas.arrafat al-akwa\u0304n f\u0131\u0304 at.wa\u0304r altawh.\u0131\u0304d.\n51. Much like the Hebrew alphabet, the letters of the Arabic alphabet have\nnumerical values traditionally associated with them, sometimes referred to as their\nabjad numerals. There are two commonly used sets of values, the eastern (mashriq\u0131\u0304)\nGardiner \u0002 Stars and Saints\n2 \u2cf1 ba\u0304\u0002, 1 \u2cf1 alif, 30 \u2cf1 la\u0304m, 60 \u2cf1 .sa\u0304d, 80 \u2cf1 fa\u0304\u0002, 1 \u2cf1 alif, 400 \u2cf1 ta\u0304\u0002. This\nmust be taken as referring to the \u201cbeautiful names of God\u201d (al-asma\u0304\u0002 al-h.usna\u0304)\nfound in the Qur\u0002a\u0304n, notionally ninety-nine in number, an important subset\nof which are referred to by theologians as God\u2019s \u201cattributes\u201d (s.ifa\u0304t). The identification of the luciform letters with the attributes also fits well with al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=10\nPages: 10\nLettrism might be said to carry that logic to its utmost conclusion, its central\nconceit being that the cosmos, with its many visible and invisible parts, and\nthe Qur\u0002a\u0304n, with all its apparent and hidden meanings, are coextensive manifestations of God\u2019s creative speech. This led lettrist thinkers to assert that\nplumbing the depths of the Qur\u0002a\u0304n could facilitate the acquisition of extraordinary knowledge and power over the created world. It also led to the startling supposition that the letters of the Arabic alphabet which constitute the\nQur\u0002a\u0304n are also the very prima materia of the creation, the \u201cprimordial building-blocks\u201d of the manifest world.33\nAl-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 was a full-throated participant in this discourse, such that much\nof Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t is dedicated to the framing of a quasi-Neoplatonic,34 emanationist cosmology in which the letters of the Arabic alphabet and the divine\nAndalus: Ibn Masarra, Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304 and Isma\u0304\u0003\u0131\u0304l\u0131\u0304 Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 2014); and the]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=21\nPages: 21\nreceiving the divine signal, would transmit the forces of the luciform letters/\ndivine names most purely and efficiently. As we will see, the talismanic practices outlined in the text, discussed briefly below, further bear out this model,\nas al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 emphasizes the importance of the spiritual accomplishment of the\noperator in the efficacy of such tools.\nA S T R O L O G Y A N D LE T T R I S M I N P R AC T I C E\nHowever radical al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s re-envisioning of the forces at work in astrology,\nhe does not eschew the importance of traditional astrological actors such as\nthe planets and zodiacal signs. Notably, he particularly embraces them in\nconnection with issues and practices set squarely in the manifest world. Such\nis the case in his discussion of practices for healing the human body, where\nhe links the zodiacal signs to the parts of the body\u2014a move he justifies by]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=13\nPages: 13,14\nthe manifest world that is shaped by the letters radiating from the celestial\nspheres.46\n43. For a concise and accessible discussion of the cosmology and astrology of the\nEpistles, see Godefroid de Callatay\u0308, Ikhwan al-Safa\u0002: A Brotherhood of Idealists on the\nFringe of Orthodox Islam (Oxford: Oneworld, 2005), 17\u201358.\n44. Q 2:116\u201318, 3:46\u201348, 3:58\u201360, 6:72\u201374, 16:39\u201341, 19:34\u201336, 36:81\u201383,\n40:67\u201369.\n45. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304, Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t, fol. 13b.\n46. Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304\u2019s view of the relationship between the celestial spheres and the\nletters is similar. As Gril summarizes it: \u201cFar from being original or simple entities . . .\n51\n52\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft \u0002 Spring 2017\n\u201c[As for] the letters,\u201d al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 tell us, \u201cGod brought the world into existence by means of them, making them to be the signs of signs [a\u0003la\u0304m al-a\u0003la\u0304m]\nand the secrets of the judgements [asra\u0304r al-ah.ka\u0304m].\u201d The description of the\nletters as a\u0003la\u0304m al-a\u0003la\u0304m is polysemic; an \u0003alam can be a star or asterism as well]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=17\nPages: 17\nSpeaking\u201d (al-mutakallim), \u201cthe Knowing\u201d (al-\u0003al\u0131\u0304m), \u201cthe Hearing\u201d (al-sam\u0131\u0304\u0003),\n\u201cthe Seeing\u201d (al-bas.\u0131\u0304r), \u201cthe Willing\u201d (al-mur\u0131\u0304d), and \u201cthe Powerful\u201d (alqad\u0131\u0304r)\u2014were regarded by many theologians and Sufis as the principal divine\nnames from which all the others derive,53 and it is quite possible that al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\nhas these seven in mind with regard the seven luciform letters. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 deals\nextensively with the divine names in his aforementioned work \u0003Alam al-huda\u0304,\npaying particular attention to spiritual exercises through which the Sufi practitioner can identify with the names and draw on their power (takhalluq).54\nAs al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s discussion of the \u201cspiritual\u201d and \u201ccorporeal\u201d letters proceeds, it\nbecomes clear that he identifies the power attributed to the planets in conventional astrology with that of the divine names. This seems to be not a\nsimple, one-to-one correspondence between the planets and names, but]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=10\nPages: 10\nproduced by a quasi-Isma\u0003ili esotericist collective in tenth-century Iraq\nundoubtedly played a role in this process as well. Over the course of the\neleventh and twelfth centuries, the strain of lettrism that developed among\nwestern Sufis would come to emphasize the role of the names of God\u2014and\nthe letters of which they are composed\u2014in the creation and ongoing sustenance of the cosmos, and to position lettrism as a secret \u201cscience of the saints\u201d\n(\u0003ilm al-awliya\u0304\u0002) through which God\u2019s elite servants divined and helped guide\nthe order of the world.31\nConnections between esotericist scriptural hermeneutics and cosmological\nspeculation run deep in Islamic thought, as reflected in the Orientalist and\nphilosopher Henry Corbin\u2019s compelling axiom that an esotericist approach\nto scripture necessarily \u201cpresupposes the superimposition of worlds and interworlds, as the correlative basis for a plurality of meanings in the same text.\u201d32]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=14\nPages: 14\nletters as a\u0003la\u0304m al-a\u0003la\u0304m is polysemic; an \u0003alam can be a star or asterism as well\nas a sign or letter, such that the phrase can be the \u201csign of a sign,\u201d \u201cthe\nsign of a star,\u201d \u201cthe star of a letter,\u201d etc. The term \u201cjudgements\u201d (ah.ka\u0304m) is\nimmediately evocative of astrological divination, the art of astrology traditionally being known in Arabic as \u0003ilm ah.ka\u0304m al-nuju\u0304m, the science of the\njudgements of the stars. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 posits far greater powers for the letters than\nsimple prediction, however: \u201cThrough them God\u2019s greatest name is made\nknown, and through them is made known the speech of the people of paradise in the next world, and by means of them the speech of God the Highest\nis heard through the unveiling in the presence of the highest spirit of holiness.\u201d47 This refers to the process by which holy books and other wisdom are\nrevealed to prophets by the angel Gabriel (Jibr\u0131\u0304l), indicating that the letters]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=14\nPages: 14\nexistence, the rotation of the spheres combines physical qualities (heat, cold, dryness,\nand humidity) together in pairs. The letters are thus located on the edge of the physical world (t.ab\u0131\u0304\u0003ah), since these qualities or Original Elements (al-\u0003ana\u0304s.ir al-uwal) give\nbirth to the physical elements (fire, air, water, and earth) when they combine. . . .\nThe science of letters can thus not be looked at independently of the science of the\nheavenly bodies or of the cosmic cycles\u201d; Gril, \u201cThe Science of Letters,\u201d 108.\n47. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304, Lata\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t, fol. 17b; cf. Berlin or. Fol. 80, fol. 15a. Wa-bi-ha\u0304\nyaz.har sirr ism Alla\u0304h al-a\u0003z.am wa-bi-ha\u0304 yaz.har nut.q ahl al-jannah f\u0131\u0304 al-da\u0304r al-ukhraw\u0131\u0304yah\nwa-bi-ha\u0304 yusma\u0003 kala\u0304m Alla\u0304h ta\u0003a\u0304lla\u0304 \u0003ala\u0304 al-kashf f\u0131\u0304 h.ad.rat al-qudus al-a\u0003la\u0304.\n48. On Gabriel/Jibr\u0131\u0304l being the ru\u0304h. al-qudus mentioned in Q 2:87, 2:253, 5:110,\nand 16:102, see D.B. Macdonald, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, s.v.\n\u201cMala\u0304\u0002ika.\u201d]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=11\nPages: 11\nwhich the letters of the alphabet exist as angelic forces working continually\nto constitute the manifest world, which makes up in the fourth and final\nplane. The fourth plane is the \u201csecond world of origination\u201d (\u0003a\u0304lam al-ibda\u0304\u0003\nal-tha\u0304n\u0131\u0304), which corresponds to the heart (qalb) and bodily nature (fit.rah) of\nwas reading Plotinus, Porphyry, et al., or indeed that he considered himself a \u201cphilosopher\u201d in any strict sense. Rather it seems that he was developing a tradition of\nthought in which Neoplatonism had long since been naturalized.\n35. On the divine Throne, see Q 17:44, 40:15, 43:82, 81:20; also Cl. Huart and\nJ. Sadan, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition,\n. s.v. \u201cKurs\u0131\u0304.\u201d\n36. On the divine Pen see Q 68:1; also Irvin Schick, \u201cText,\u201d in Key Themes for the\nStudy of Islam, ed. Jamal Elias (Oxford: Oneworld, 2010), 327ff.\n37. Q 2:87, 2:253, 5:110, 16:102.]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=17\nPages: 17\nassertion that the luciform letters differ from the point of view of the receiver,\nbut not in their essence\u2014just as God is one in His essence but known to\nhumans through a multitude of names.\nThe attributes, which are names describing divine powers or properties\nsuch as \u201cthe Knowing\u201d (al-\u0003al\u0131\u0304m), \u201cthe Hearing\u201d (al-sam\u0131\u0304\u0003), etc., were a frequent point of controversy in Muslim theology in relation to debates about\nthe absolute unity of God, anthropomorphism, and other issues.52 For many\nSufi thinkers, the attributes (and the divine names generally) were considered\nvital links between divine and human realities, channels through which the\ndivine could manifest in the world, and through which adepts could attain\nhigher realities. Seven attributes in particular\u2014\u201cthe Living\u201d (al-h.ayy), \u201cthe\nSpeaking\u201d (al-mutakallim), \u201cthe Knowing\u201d (al-\u0003al\u0131\u0304m), \u201cthe Hearing\u201d (al-sam\u0131\u0304\u0003),]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=19\nPages: 19\nbetween astrology and Sufi notions of the individual capacity for receiving\nthe divine, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 might be seen as building on the importance of the individual human actor in horary astrology, each nativity being essentially unique.\nAs for the twenty-nine corporeal letters, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 explains that they are the\ntwenty-eight letters of the regular Arabic alphabet plus the ligature la\u0304m-alif\u2014\nthe latter is counted by some, including al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304, as a letter in its own right,\nthough it plays no obvious role in the elemental division of the letters he\noutlines. In a scheme reminiscent of Jabirian alchemical theory, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\ndivides the main twenty-eight letters into four groups corresponding to the\nelemental qualities: heat, moisture, dryness, and cold, such that there are\nseven \u201cdegrees\u201d for each quality marked by individual letters.58 All created\nthings are composed of these corporeal, elemental letters, which are the]"]}

{"result":["[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=21\nPages: 21\nreceiving the divine signal, would transmit the forces of the luciform letters/\ndivine names most purely and efficiently. As we will see, the talismanic practices outlined in the text, discussed briefly below, further bear out this model,\nas al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 emphasizes the importance of the spiritual accomplishment of the\noperator in the efficacy of such tools.\nA S T R O L O G Y A N D LE T T R I S M I N P R AC T I C E\nHowever radical al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s re-envisioning of the forces at work in astrology,\nhe does not eschew the importance of traditional astrological actors such as\nthe planets and zodiacal signs. Notably, he particularly embraces them in\nconnection with issues and practices set squarely in the manifest world. Such\nis the case in his discussion of practices for healing the human body, where\nhe links the zodiacal signs to the parts of the body\u2014a move he justifies by]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=26\nPages: 26\nagainst the grain of the mainstream exegetical tradition to \u201creveal\u201d layers of\ncosmological and astrological meaning that he claims as the inner meaning of\nscripture known only to the elite few, even going so far as to interpret ancient\nJewish ritual practices as a means of drawing down power from the heavens\na\u0300 la an astral talisman from Gha\u0304yat al-h.ak\u0131\u0304m.73Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 similarly locates the\nmetaphysical underpinnings of an astrologically-charged cosmos in the hidden meanings of the Qur\u0002a\u0304n, legitimating thereby the utilization of various\nelements of astrology while still vouchsafing the superiority of Islamic revelation.\nHalbertal also offers the view that the innovative exegetical efforts of Jewish esotericists were symptomatic of a crisis of dissatisfaction with traditional\nreligious thought, and of a shift toward causal explanations of reality that\nutilized \u201cnature as the central explanatory category.\u201d This was particularly]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=22\nPages: 22\nhuman bodies, while still proclaiming the text of the Qur\u0002a\u0304n to be the most\neffective tool for intervening on that reality, and thus supporting the superiority of Islamic revelation.\nAnother area where al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 explicitly engages with conventional astrology\nis with regard to the making of talismans, though it is also here that the\ntheory of the forty-eight letters can be seen in practical application. This is a\nprocess that, as one might expect from earlier works on astral magic such as\nGha\u0304yat al-h.ak\u0131\u0304m/Picatrix, often entails the crafting of talismans under certain\nastral conditions, which is to say while certain planets are in conjunction in\na certain sign, etc. However, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s theory and practice of talismans is\nadditionally intertwined with his teachings on the names of God, and he pays\nsignificant attention to the purification of the mind and body of the practitioner as the channel through which a talisman is charged with the forces\nthat render it efficacious.67]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=24\nPages: 24\nof the Sufi adept as the ideal conduit through which such forces can be\nchanneled. Much as with his \u201cspiritual medicine,\u201d however, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 nevertheless acknowledges a significant degree of technical legitimacy to conventional astrology, particularly with regard to the timing of operations. This\nagain suggests that he credits the pre-Islamic science as valid knowledge with\nregard to the \u201couter\u201d world and the observable aspects of the celestial spheres,\nwhile yet privileging the power of God\u2019s saints and the lettrist understanding\nof Islamic revelation as the true keys to understanding and manipulating the\nhidden secrets of the creation.\nCONCLUSION\nAl-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s approach to astrology is esotericist in that, like the Qur\u0002a\u0304n, the\n\u201cprofane\u201d astrology of the Hellenistic cum Ma\u0003shar\u0131\u0304 tradition is implied to\nhave hidden depths of meaning. What non-initiates assume to be the effects\nof the stars is understood by the lettrist adept as aspects of the manifold power\n69. Ibid., fol. 21b.]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=26\nPages: 26\nutilized \u201cnature as the central explanatory category.\u201d This was particularly\napparent, he argues, in a changing conception of prayer in which what long\nhad been viewed as humanity\u2019s means of appeasing a personal God came to\nbe articulated as methods by which humans could activate essentially impersonal forces in order to remake the world.74 Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s lettrist-talismanic practices seem largely to fit this pattern, particularly insofar as he \u201castrologizes\u201d\npling see Vahid Brown, \u201cAndalus\u0131\u0304 Mysticism: A Recontextualization,\u201d in Journal of\nIslamic Philosophy 2 (2006): 69\u2013101; Michael Ebstein and Tzahi Weiss, \u201cA Drama in\nHeaven: \u2018Emanation on the Left\u2019 in Kabbalah and a Parallel Cosmogonic Myth in\nIsma\u0304\u0003\u0131\u0304l\u0131\u0304 Literature,\u201d History of Religions 55 (2015): 148\u201371; Ronald Kiener, \u201cJewish\nMysticism in the Lands of the Ishmaelites: A Re-Orientation,\u201d in The Convergence of\nJudaism and Islam: Religious, Scientific, and Cultural Dimensions, ed. Michael M. Laskier]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=21\nPages: 21,22\nwill discuss this and other of al- Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s diagrams in a forthcoming paper.\n65. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304, Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t, fol. 28b.\n59\n60\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft \u0002 Spring 2017\nof the proper correspondences, the initiate can seek out verses of the Qur\u0002a\u0304n\nthat include all the letters appropriate to a given sign/part of the body and\nutilize them for healing, whether by praying with them, writing them on\npaper and then immersing it in water to be given to the sick person to drink,\netc.66 Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s utilization of the zodiacal signs in his .tibb ru\u0304h.a\u0304n\u0131\u0304 can be seen\nas a qualified acknowledgement of the validity and efficacy of the pre-Islamic\nastrological-medical thought to which it obviously hearkens back (melothesia,\niatromathematica, etc.), though the Qur\u0002a\u0304n is given pride of place as the therapeutic instrument par excellence. Thus he grants conventional astrology a substantial degree of legitimacy in the \u201couter\u201d world of everyday life and afflicted]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=21\nPages: 21\nhe links the zodiacal signs to the parts of the body\u2014a move he justifies by\nexplaining that the sun is linked to the human soul (al-shams hiya nisbat alnafs),65 such that the solar zodiac has dominion over the body. Aries (al-h.amal)\nhas dominion over the hair of the head, Taurus (al-thawr) over the forehead,\nGemini (al-jawza\u0304\u0002) over the eyes, and so on down to Pisces\u2019 (al-h.u\u0304t) dominion\nover the legs and feet. Each sign of the zodiac, he explains, is linked to an\nelement (fire, air, water, earth) that is a combination of two elemental qualities. Thus all seven of the \u201ccorporeal\u201d letters assigned to each of those qualities also correspond to the zodiacal sign they constitute, with the result that\nfourteen letters are attached to each sign. These letters are the keys to healing\nthe body through \u201cspiritual medicine\u201d (t.ibb ru\u0304h.a\u0304n\u0131\u0304). Armed with knowledge\nsive discussion of the saintly hierarchy see chapter 73 of his al-Futu\u0304h.a\u0304t al-Makk\u0131\u0304yah.]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=2\nPages: 2\nto dangerous misunderstandings.2 Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t, on the other hand,\nincludes no small amount of practical instruction in such matters, including\nmuch that could be described as \u201castrological magic,\u201d which is to say the use\nof talismans and prayers to harness the forces emanating from the planets and\nstars that were thought by many to shape life on earth in manifold ways.\nIndeed, some of its contents bear similarities to those of an earlier Arabic work\nof that nature, the Gha\u0304yat al-h.ak\u0131\u0304m (Goal of the Wise) of Maslamah b. Qa\u0304sim alQurt.ub\u0131\u0304 (d. 353/964), known in its influential Latin and Spanish translations as\nPicatrix.3 Unlike that work, however, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s text is pervaded by expressions\nof distinctly Sufi piety, as is the rest of al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s oeuvre, most of which does not\naddress explicitly occult-scientific matters.4]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=3\nPages: 3\nforty-eight letters, amounts to an esotericist unveiling of the hidden realities\nunderlying \u201cprofane\u201d astrology, one that identifies the world-shaping efflux\nof forces from the celestial spheres with the continuous flow of the letters of\nGod\u2019s creative speech. He furthermore implies a central role for Sufi adepts\n(muh.aqqiqu\u0304n) and saints (awliya\u0304\u0002) in mediating these astral-lettristic radiations,\nadding a uniquely occult-scientific twist to views deeply embedded in Sufi\ntradition\u2014and premodern Muslim culture generally\u2014of the saints as key\nexecutors of God\u2019s word and will on earth. In the conclusion, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s\napproach to astrology is discussed as part of a transconfessional wave of esotericism in the late medieval Mediterranean, one that heralded shifting ideas\nabout the order of nature and the relationship between divine and human\nagency.\nAH\n. M A D Al - B U\u0304N I\u0304\nWe have only a few glimpses of the life of Abu\u0304 al-\u0003Abba\u0304s Ah.mad b. \u0003Al\u0131\u0304 b.]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=12\nPages: 12,13\n\u201cAbu\u0304 Ma\u0003s\u030car, Al-Kind\u0131\u0304 and the Philosophical Defense of Astrology,\u201d 262. Certain\nprophetic h.ad\u0131\u0304ths seem to represent views against astrological belief and practice, e.g.\nSunan Ab\u0131\u0304 Dawu\u0304d nos. 3905 and 3906 (Kita\u0304b al-Kiha\u0304nah wa-al-tat.ayyar/Ba\u0304b f\u0131\u0304 alnuju\u0304m, nos. 2 and 3).\nGardiner \u0002 Stars and Saints\n(kalimah) was\u2014through the whole series of emanative planes and historical\ncycles\u2014translated into manifest events.43 As we will see, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 more fully\nfleshes out the notion that God\u2019s speech is manifested via astrological forces,\nparticularly in his unusual doctrine of the forty-eight letters. In doing so he\nbuilds on the notion of Adam as microcosm to grant Sufi adepts and saints an\nimportant place in that process.\nA L - B U\u0304N\u0131\u0304 \u2019S ESOTERICIST ASTROLOGY\nIt is stated at several points in the Qur\u0002a\u0304n that, in creating the things of the\ncosmos, God says \u201cBe!\u201d and \u201cit is\u201d (kun fa-yaku\u0304n).44 Creation, in short, is a]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=2\nPages: 2,3\nEarly Modern Occult Philosophy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), passim.\n4. On al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s bibliography see note 14 infra.\nGardiner \u0002 Stars and Saints\nmere magician in Sufi garb, someone who superficially \u201cIslamized\u201d popular\noccult practices to make them more culturally palatable.5 While the present\nauthor has neither the inclination nor qualifications to offer an opinion on\nthe strictly theological question of whether al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s teachings are compatible with Islam, in what follows it is argued that al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s engagement with\nastrology in Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t represents something altogether more complex\u2014\nand more interesting from an intellectual-historical perspective\u2014than popular occultism in pious drag. It is demonstrated that important elements of\nal-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s teachings in Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t, particularly his unusual doctrine of\nforty-eight letters, amounts to an esotericist unveiling of the hidden realities]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=12\nPages: 12\npre-Islamic Arabs, and astrology certainly had prominent proponents in the first few\ncenturies of Islamic thought, among the most notable of which were Abu Ya\u0003qu\u0304b alKind\u0131\u0304 (died mid-third/ninth century) and the aforementioned Abu\u0304 Ma\u0003shar alBalkh\u0131\u0304. Nonetheless, opposition to astrology was found among several prominent\nintellectuals as well, particularly from among the rationalist theologians known as the\nMu\u0003tazilites, e.g. Abu\u0304 al-Hudhayl al-\u0003Alla\u0304f (d. 227/842) and Abu\u0304 al-H\n. usayn al-Khayya\u0304t (d. 300/913); see Josef van Ess, Theology and Society in the Second and Third Centuries\nof the Hijra: A History of Religious Thought in Early Islam, Section One, The Near and\nMiddle East, trans. John O\u2019Kane (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2017), I/31; Radtke, \u201cThe\nAttitude of Islamic Theology and Philosophy to Astrology,\u201d 6, footnote 40; Adamson,\n\u201cAbu\u0304 Ma\u0003s\u030car, Al-Kind\u0131\u0304 and the Philosophical Defense of Astrology,\u201d 262. Certain]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=18\nPages: 18\nconfirmed by his explicit comparison of the movement of the planets\nthrough the zodiacal signs to the shifting influences of the luciform letters on\nthe faculties: \u201c[A]s the celestial spheres, in their track through the zodiacal\nsigns, are measured according to degree and minute and so on, so the effect\nmanifests sequentially. . . . Likewise these twelve spiritual-lettristic faculties\ntake from the lights of the luciform letters, stage after stage, in accordance\nwith the mystery of a gradated sequence.\u201d57\nAl-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 goes into no further detail about the faculties, except to note that\nthey are not evenly developed among humans, being perfected in some and\nlacking in others. That, however, is a key point, as a central tenet of Sufism\nis that humans are differentially disposed to receiving divine blessing and\n55. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304, Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t, fol 18b. Fa-qa\u0304mat ruh.a\u0304n\u0131\u0304yat kull falak bi-anwa\u0304r kull\nh.arf min al-h.uru\u0304f al-nu\u0304ra\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah.\n56. Ibid., fol. 18a.]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=16\nPages: 16\ncapacity of humans to receive God\u2019s word\u2014and thereby implying an important role for Sufi saints and adepts in the process of astrological causation\u2014\nand reimagining the sublunary world, which is to say manifest reality, as a\nfabric of letters in a constant flux driven by the movements of the celestial\nspheres. None of this is to say that al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 denounces or abandons astrology\u2019s\n\u201couter\u201d forms. Rather, particularly with regard to the material world, he\nengages to a considerable degree with conventional astrology.\nThe seven luciform letters, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 tells us, are not letters in the usual\nsense, but rather that name is a figure of speech (maja\u0304z) concealing a secret\nfor the initiated (li-sirr al-tabl\u0131\u0304gh). He is indeed less than straightforward about\nthe true nature of these so-called letters, resorting to actual code in describing\nthem.\nThey [the luciform letters] are different lights not with regard to their essences, but]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=25\nPages: 25\nAs mentioned at the outset of this paper, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 intended his written\nteachings only for a select audience of Sufi initiates, and communities of\nlearned Sufis in Egypt and environs indeed seem to have kept his writings\nlargely to themselves for a century or so after his death. This air of secrecy is\nbut one indication that al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 and his early readers were aware that his\nteachings might attract severe criticism from religious authorities. Thus, if\nLat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t can be taken as an attempt to reconcile astrology and Islam,\nthen this reconciliation was not one that al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 intended to be carried out\npublicly, but only among the networks of peers and followers that he and\nother members of his western Sufi cohort were building as they traveled east\naround the turn of the thirteenth century.\nThe historian of Jewish thought Moshe Halbertal has described the twelfth\nand thirteenth centuries CE as \u201cthe age of esotericism and its disclosure,\u201d70 a]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=19\nPages: 19\nbetween astrology and Sufi notions of the individual capacity for receiving\nthe divine, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 might be seen as building on the importance of the individual human actor in horary astrology, each nativity being essentially unique.\nAs for the twenty-nine corporeal letters, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 explains that they are the\ntwenty-eight letters of the regular Arabic alphabet plus the ligature la\u0304m-alif\u2014\nthe latter is counted by some, including al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304, as a letter in its own right,\nthough it plays no obvious role in the elemental division of the letters he\noutlines. In a scheme reminiscent of Jabirian alchemical theory, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\ndivides the main twenty-eight letters into four groups corresponding to the\nelemental qualities: heat, moisture, dryness, and cold, such that there are\nseven \u201cdegrees\u201d for each quality marked by individual letters.58 All created\nthings are composed of these corporeal, elemental letters, which are the]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=9\nPages: 9\n28. For a range of information on astrology in the premodern Muslim world, see\nGeorge Saliba, \u201cThe Role of the Astrologer in Medieval Islamic Society,\u201d in Bulletin\nd\u2019e\u0301tudes orientales 44 (1992): 45\u201367 (though Saliba\u2019s arguments regarding a premodern\ndistinction between astronomy and astrology should, in this author\u2019s opinion, be\ntaken with a large grain of salt); Bernd Radtke, \u201cThe Attitude of Islamic Theology\nand Philosophy to Astrology,\u201d Electronic Journal of Oriental Studies 8 (2004): 1\u201311;\nMatthew Melvin-Koushki, \u201cAstrology, Lettrism, Geomancy: The Occult-Scientific\nMethods of Post-Mongol Islamicate Imperialism,\u201d The Medieval History Journal 19,\nno. 1 (2016): 142\u201350.\n29. \u201cCompanion of the Prophet\u201d (s.a\u0304hib al-nab\u0131\u0304) is a technical term in Islamic historiography, meaning someone who knew the Prophet Muh.ammad personally and was\namong the earliest converts to Islam. Statements attributed to the Companions are\ngenerally regarded as especially trustworthy and meaningful.]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=12\nPages: 12\nheavens as the means through which God\u2019s \u201ccommand\u201d (amr) or \u201cword\u201d\n40. Q 85:22; also C.E. Bosworth and A.J. Wensinck, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second\nEdition, s.v. \u201cLawh..\u201d\n41. See Charles Burnett\u2019s discussion of Abu\u0304 Ma\u0003shar\u2019s refutation of skeptics of\nastrology in his Kita\u0304b al-mudhkal ila\u0304 \u0003ilm ah.kam al-nuju\u0304m (The Book of the Introduction to\nthe Science of Astrology); \u201cThe Certitude of Astrology: The Scientific Methodology of\nal-Qab\u0131\u0304s.\u0131\u0304 and abu\u0304 Ma\u0003shar,\u201d Early Science and Medicine 7, no. 3 (2002): 205ff. Cf.\nPeter Adamson, \u201cAbu\u0304 Ma\u0003s\u030car, Al-Kind\u0131\u0304 and the Philosophical Defense of Astrology,\u201d\nRecherches de the\u0301ologie et philosophie me\u0301die\u0301vales 69, no. 2 (2002): 245\u201370.\n42. Josef van Ess notes that ideas of astrological causation were present among\npre-Islamic Arabs, and astrology certainly had prominent proponents in the first few]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=12\nPages: 12\nearthly events is familiar from Hellenistic cosmology, and had been well\nknown in Islamic thought at least since the writings of the Baghdadi astrologer Abu\u0304 Ma\u0003shar al-Balkh\u0131\u0304 (Albumasar, d. 272/886),41 though it was never\nuniversally accepted by Muslim thinkers.42 What was novel in the current of\ncosmological thought from which al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s ideas stem was the fusing of that\nnotion to a Neoplatonic, emanative cosmology, such that the spheres of the\nplanets and elements were themselves emanations from the World Soul,\nincreasing in density as they descended the ladder of being until their forces\nculminated in the concretely material sublunary realm. This fusion of cosmological concepts was already found in the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity some\nthree centuries prior to al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304. It allowed the Brethren to mount a defense\nof astrology vis-a-vis Islamic teachings, by portraying the influences of the\nheavens as the means through which God\u2019s \u201ccommand\u201d (amr) or \u201cword\u201d]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=22\nPages: 22,23\nthrough spiritual exercises centered on God\u2019s attributes, and another of al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s\nworks, Mawa\u0304qif al-gha\u0304ya\u0304t f\u0131\u0304 asra\u0304r al-riya\u0304d.a\u0304t, is entirely dedicated to traditional Sufi practices, albeit with subtle lettrist inflections. In Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t, however, we see such\nspiritual exercises being directed especially at a higher capacity for disposing astrallettristic forces in the material world, particularly through the use of talismans.\nGardiner \u0002 Stars and Saints\nnurturing, and administrative qualities\u2014virtues commonly associated with\nJupiter in Hellenistic astrology.\nAl-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 discusses a number of talismans associated with this cluster of da\u0304lelements. One relatively simple set of instructions is as follows:\nHe who writes the shape of [the letter] da\u0304l on a piece of white silk thirty-five times\nwhile the Moon is in Cancer and aligned favorably with Jupiter, and places it in his\nsignet-ring during that time and wears it while in a state of ritual purity, fasting, and]"]}

{"result":["[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=17\nPages: 17\nSpeaking\u201d (al-mutakallim), \u201cthe Knowing\u201d (al-\u0003al\u0131\u0304m), \u201cthe Hearing\u201d (al-sam\u0131\u0304\u0003),\n\u201cthe Seeing\u201d (al-bas.\u0131\u0304r), \u201cthe Willing\u201d (al-mur\u0131\u0304d), and \u201cthe Powerful\u201d (alqad\u0131\u0304r)\u2014were regarded by many theologians and Sufis as the principal divine\nnames from which all the others derive,53 and it is quite possible that al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\nhas these seven in mind with regard the seven luciform letters. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 deals\nextensively with the divine names in his aforementioned work \u0003Alam al-huda\u0304,\npaying particular attention to spiritual exercises through which the Sufi practitioner can identify with the names and draw on their power (takhalluq).54\nAs al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s discussion of the \u201cspiritual\u201d and \u201ccorporeal\u201d letters proceeds, it\nbecomes clear that he identifies the power attributed to the planets in conventional astrology with that of the divine names. This seems to be not a\nsimple, one-to-one correspondence between the planets and names, but]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=24\nPages: 24\nAnother, more complex operation evoking the divine names and related\nforces associated with da\u0304l is the manufacturing of a talisman featuring a fourby-four mathematical \u201cmagic square,\u201d which is to say a four-by-four grid of\nnumbers\u2014or their equivalents in letters\u2014in which all the rows and columns\ntally to the same sum. For this procedure the adept must fast for two weeks,\neating nothing but bread, maintaining a state of ritual purity throughout, and\nregularly invoking God\u2019s name while meditating on a sheet of silver. On a\nThursday (traditionally the day of Jupiter), in the hour of Jupiter, on a day\nwhen the moon is favorably aligned with Jupiter and the sun, and when the\nascending lunar node is in Gemini (in which the ascending node is exalted),\nhe is to inscribe the square on the sheet of silver while facing the qiblah and\nburning mastic and white oud. He is then to wear the talisman on Thursdays,\nand God will make easy for him his religious obligations, provide him with]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=17\nPages: 17\nassertion that the luciform letters differ from the point of view of the receiver,\nbut not in their essence\u2014just as God is one in His essence but known to\nhumans through a multitude of names.\nThe attributes, which are names describing divine powers or properties\nsuch as \u201cthe Knowing\u201d (al-\u0003al\u0131\u0304m), \u201cthe Hearing\u201d (al-sam\u0131\u0304\u0003), etc., were a frequent point of controversy in Muslim theology in relation to debates about\nthe absolute unity of God, anthropomorphism, and other issues.52 For many\nSufi thinkers, the attributes (and the divine names generally) were considered\nvital links between divine and human realities, channels through which the\ndivine could manifest in the world, and through which adepts could attain\nhigher realities. Seven attributes in particular\u2014\u201cthe Living\u201d (al-h.ayy), \u201cthe\nSpeaking\u201d (al-mutakallim), \u201cthe Knowing\u201d (al-\u0003al\u0131\u0304m), \u201cthe Hearing\u201d (al-sam\u0131\u0304\u0003),]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=11\nPages: 11\nit with the divine Throne (\u0003arsh) and other symbols drawn from Muslim\nscriptures,35 and with the outermost celestial sphere (Primum Mobile). Next is\nthe \u201csecond world of invention\u201d (\u0003a\u0304lam al-ikhtira\u0304\u0003 al-tha\u0304n\u0131\u0304), which is linked to\nAdam\u2019s immortal spirit (ru\u0304h.), the divine Pen (qalam) mentioned in the\nQur\u0002a\u0304n,36 the spirit of holiness (ru\u0304h. al-qudus),37 and the rays of metaphysical\nlight that are understood to be the \u201cpre-existent\u201d essences of the saints and\nprophets.38 The third emanation is the \u201cfirst world of origination\u201d (\u0003a\u0304lam alibda\u0304\u0003 al-awwal), which is linked to the divine Footstool (kurs\u0131\u0304) of the Qur\u0002a\u0304n.39\nIt is equivalent to the World Soul of Neoplatonism and is mirrored by Adam\u2019s\nsoul or psyche (nafs). A mesocosmic or intermediary realm of images that\nlend form to material things potentiated by the divine word, it is a plane in\nwhich the letters of the alphabet exist as angelic forces working continually]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=22\nPages: 22\nthat render it efficacious.67\nAt various places in Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 addresses a cluster of topics\nthat includes the letter da\u0304l, its numerical value of four, and names of God that\ninclude da\u0304l such as the attributes \u201cthe Permanent\u201d (al-da\u0304\u0002im) and \u201cthe Loving\u201d (al-wadu\u0304d). Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 also assigns the letter da\u0304l to the sphere of Jupiter,\nand, although he does not make the point explicitly, his discussion of the\nPermanent and the Loving emphasizes their denotation of God\u2019s beneficent,\n66. Ibid., fol. 29b.\n67. Many of al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s works other than Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t are centrally concerned\nwith embodied \u201cspiritual practices\u201d (riya\u0304d.a\u0304t) familiar from the classical Sufi tradition,\ne.g. khalwah (ritual seclusion), supererogatory fasting, and dhikr and other forms of\nsupererogatory prayer. As mentioned above, a focus of \u0003Alam al-huda\u0304 is takhalluq\nthrough spiritual exercises centered on God\u2019s attributes, and another of al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=24\nPages: 24,23\nbody of the adept into the talisman. The effects of the talisman are fittingly\nconcordant with the Jovian divine qualities al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 associates with the da\u0304lnames.\n68. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304, Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t, fol. 76a. Man kataba shakl al-da\u0304l f\u0131\u0304 h.ar\u0131\u0304rat bayd.a\u0304\u0002 khamsah wa-thula\u0304th\u0131\u0304n marratan wa-al-qamr f\u0131\u0304 al-sarat.a\u0304n makhz.u\u0304z. min al-mushtar\u0131\u0304 wa-ja\u0003alahu f\u0131\u0304\nkha\u0304timihi f\u0131\u0304 mithla dha\u0304lika al-waqt wa-labasahu \u0003ala\u0304 .taha\u0304ra wa-s.awm wa-s.afa\u0304\u0002 ba\u0304t.in da\u0304\u0002im\nada\u0304ma Alla\u0304h ta\u0003a\u0304lla\u0304 \u0003alayhi al-ni\u0003mah alla\u0304ti huwa f\u0131\u0304-ha\u0304 wa-aqa\u0304mahu ila\u0304 kull h.araka z.a\u0304hira\nwa-wasa\u0003\u0003a Alla\u0304h \u0003alayhi rizqahu wa-man akthara min ismihi al-da\u0304\u0002im ka\u0304na la-hu dha\u0304lika\nwa-qad sharah.na\u0304hu jumlatan f\u0131\u0304 ismihi al-da\u0304\u0002im wa-al-da\u0304l min al-h.amd f\u0131\u0304 kita\u0304bna\u0304 \u0003Alam alhuda\u0304 . . . wa-ba\u0304t.inahu f\u0131\u0304 ismihi al-rah.ma\u0304n ta\u0003a\u0304lla\u0304.\n61\n62\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft \u0002 Spring 2017\nAnother, more complex operation evoking the divine names and related]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=10\nPages: 10\nproduced by a quasi-Isma\u0003ili esotericist collective in tenth-century Iraq\nundoubtedly played a role in this process as well. Over the course of the\neleventh and twelfth centuries, the strain of lettrism that developed among\nwestern Sufis would come to emphasize the role of the names of God\u2014and\nthe letters of which they are composed\u2014in the creation and ongoing sustenance of the cosmos, and to position lettrism as a secret \u201cscience of the saints\u201d\n(\u0003ilm al-awliya\u0304\u0002) through which God\u2019s elite servants divined and helped guide\nthe order of the world.31\nConnections between esotericist scriptural hermeneutics and cosmological\nspeculation run deep in Islamic thought, as reflected in the Orientalist and\nphilosopher Henry Corbin\u2019s compelling axiom that an esotericist approach\nto scripture necessarily \u201cpresupposes the superimposition of worlds and interworlds, as the correlative basis for a plurality of meanings in the same text.\u201d32]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=27\nPages: 27\nthe forces of the divine names.75 But does Halbertal succumb to too Yatesian\na narrative of the occult-fueled discovery of nature at the end of the medieval\nperiod? It is perhaps better that al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s ideas be considered one of the\nstreams contributing to the formation of \u201cthe Sufi-philosophical (or philosophical-Sufi) amalgam\u201d that Shahab Ahmed recently described as having\nemerged in the Muslim world during the transition from the late medieval\nto early modern periods, and that predominated in much of Muslim culture\nfor centuries.76 Best of all, we might recognize that the daring esotericism of\nal-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 and his fellow lettrists causes their ideas to cut across the borders\nmodern scholarship has sought to erect between the histories of theology,\nmysticism, philosophy, and science, and that to study their place in intellectual history requires a willingness to follow their lines of flight across such\ntraditional disciplinary categories.]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=11\nPages: 11\nwhich the letters of the alphabet exist as angelic forces working continually\nto constitute the manifest world, which makes up in the fourth and final\nplane. The fourth plane is the \u201csecond world of origination\u201d (\u0003a\u0304lam al-ibda\u0304\u0003\nal-tha\u0304n\u0131\u0304), which corresponds to the heart (qalb) and bodily nature (fit.rah) of\nwas reading Plotinus, Porphyry, et al., or indeed that he considered himself a \u201cphilosopher\u201d in any strict sense. Rather it seems that he was developing a tradition of\nthought in which Neoplatonism had long since been naturalized.\n35. On the divine Throne, see Q 17:44, 40:15, 43:82, 81:20; also Cl. Huart and\nJ. Sadan, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition,\n. s.v. \u201cKurs\u0131\u0304.\u201d\n36. On the divine Pen see Q 68:1; also Irvin Schick, \u201cText,\u201d in Key Themes for the\nStudy of Islam, ed. Jamal Elias (Oxford: Oneworld, 2010), 327ff.\n37. Q 2:87, 2:253, 5:110, 16:102.]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=4\nPages: 4\nthe Beautiful Names of God).9 This datum is especially noteworthy insofar as\nal-Mahdaw\u0131\u0304 also instructed the aforementioned Andalusian mystic Muh.y\u0131\u0304 alD\u0131\u0304n Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304, another of the most important Sufi writers on lettrism and\nindeed one of the most influential thinkers in the history of Islam. There is\nno definitive indication that Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304 and al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 met or were familiar\nwith each other\u2019s teachings,10 and it is unclear if al-Mahdaw\u0131\u0304 was the main\nsource of al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 and Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304\u2019s lettrism, as few details of al-Mahdaw\u0131\u0304\u2019s\nteachings survive. There is significant conceptual and terminological crossover between his two students\u2019 discussions of the topic, such that Ibn al\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304\u2019s plentiful writings can sometimes be used to shed light on al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s\nmore gnomic statements, though there are also considerable differences.11\nAt some point after his time in Tunis, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 migrated eastward to Egypt,]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=13\nPages: 13\nthe Primum Mobile, the next for the divine Footstool that is the World Soul\nand the firmament of fixed stars, the following seven for the spheres (afla\u0304k)\nof the classical planets (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon),\nand the final four for the elements of the sublunary realm (fire, air, water,\nearth).45 Each of these spheres is associated with two letters of the alphabet,\naccounting for twenty-six of the twenty-eight Arabic letters; the other two\nletters are associated with the Pen and Tablet, the former being the \u201csecond\nworld of origination\u201d and the spirit of holiness that moves throughout the\ncosmos, and the latter, as the \u201csecond world of origination,\u201d comprising all\nthe planetary and elementary rings. At the center of the figure is written \u201cthe\nworld as disposed by the letters\u201d (\u0003a\u0304lam al-tas.r\u0131\u0304f bi-al-h.uru\u0304f ), which is to say\nthe manifest world that is shaped by the letters radiating from the celestial\nspheres.46]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=24\nPages: 24\nand God will make easy for him his religious obligations, provide him with\nall his necessities, and grant him barakah \u201cin all that his hand attempts\u201d (f\u0131\u0304 kull\nma\u0304 tuh.a\u0304wiluhu yadihi).69\nThe operation would be entirely at home in Gha\u0304yat al-h.ak\u0131\u0304m or a similar\nwork, except that the astrological image that such a work would call for on\nthe talisman has been replaced with the grid of numbers and letters. The\ncharacter of the operation is further transformed by al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s commentary\non the names and forces associated with da\u0304l, and his extensive framing of the\n\u201cworlds and interworlds\u201d that underlie manifest reality, in which the letters\nand numbers exist as angelic entities in their own right. In addition, his focus\non the asceticism and ritual purity of the practitioner emphasizes the notion\nof the Sufi adept as the ideal conduit through which such forces can be]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=16\nPages: 16,17\nman yudrikha\u0304 wa hiya al-mu\u0003abbar \u0003anha\u0304 al-ithnayn wa-al-wa\u0304h.id wa-al-thula\u0304th\u0131\u0304n wa-al-sitt\u0131\u0304n\nwa-al-thama\u0304n\u0131\u0304n wa-al-wah.id wa-al-arba\u0003 mi\u0002ah fa-hiya nisbat al-h.uru\u0304f al-nu\u0304ra\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah wa-lawla\u0304 ha\u0304dhihi al-h.uru\u0304f al-nu\u0304ra\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah ma\u0304 \u0003urifa Alla\u0304h ta\u0003a\u0304lla\u0304 wa-la\u0304 tas.arrafat al-akwa\u0304n f\u0131\u0304 at.wa\u0304r altawh.\u0131\u0304d.\n51. Much like the Hebrew alphabet, the letters of the Arabic alphabet have\nnumerical values traditionally associated with them, sometimes referred to as their\nabjad numerals. There are two commonly used sets of values, the eastern (mashriq\u0131\u0304)\nGardiner \u0002 Stars and Saints\n2 \u2cf1 ba\u0304\u0002, 1 \u2cf1 alif, 30 \u2cf1 la\u0304m, 60 \u2cf1 .sa\u0304d, 80 \u2cf1 fa\u0304\u0002, 1 \u2cf1 alif, 400 \u2cf1 ta\u0304\u0002. This\nmust be taken as referring to the \u201cbeautiful names of God\u201d (al-asma\u0304\u0002 al-h.usna\u0304)\nfound in the Qur\u0002a\u0304n, notionally ninety-nine in number, an important subset\nof which are referred to by theologians as God\u2019s \u201cattributes\u201d (s.ifa\u0304t). The identification of the luciform letters with the attributes also fits well with al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=20\nPages: 20\nthe superior influences [i.e. those from the luciform letters] in the earthly\nsphere.\u201d60\nThus al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 seems to suggest not only that the powers attributed to the\nplanets are really those of the divine names, but also that humans are an\nindispensable element in the reception of the influence of the divine names\ninto the material world. The latter point is a significant departure from conventional models of astrological causation, in which celestial rays have no\nneed of human mediators. It is quite in keeping, however, with the central\ncosmological importance al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 assigns to Adam and the \u201chuman cosmos\u201d\n(al-\u0003a\u0304lam al-insa\u0304n\u0131\u0304), whereby, as he discusses in \u0003Alam al-huda\u0304, humans are the\nonly created beings capable of fully bridging the highest and lowest planes of\nexistence.61 And it is in further keeping with a Sufi ethos in which reigned\nthe notion that the very existence of the world was sustained by a concealed]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=23\nPages: 23\nsignet-ring during that time and wears it while in a state of ritual purity, fasting, and\ncontinuous internal quietude (s.afa\u0304\u0002 al-ba\u0304t.in), God will make lasting for him the state\nof grace he is in, and support him in every external undertaking. And God will extend\nHis sustenance generously to one who multiplies [i.e. performs dhikr of] His name the\nPermanent if he has that [talisman] with him. We have explained it [God\u2019s generosity]\nextensively regarding His name the Permanent and the da\u0304l in al-h.amd [i.e. in the\ncommon phrase of blessing al-h.amd li-lla\u0304h] in our book \u0003Alam al-huda\u0304 . . . and its inner\n(ba\u0304t.in) meaning in [the chapter] on His name the Merciful (al-rah.ma\u0304n).68\nThe thirty-five times reflects the abjad value of da\u0304l when spelled out: da\u0304l \u2cf1 4,\nalif \u2cf1 1, la\u0304m \u2cf1 30. The prescribed astrological conditions for the making of\nthe talisman harness the energies of both Jupiter and Cancer, the sign in]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=17\nPages: 17,18\nsimple, one-to-one correspondence between the planets and names, but\nand western (maghrib\u0131\u0304), in which the values of four of the letters (s\u0131\u0304n, sh\u0131\u0304n, .sa\u0304d, d.a\u0304d)\nvary. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 clearly employed the western values, as for example in Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t,\nfol. 14a-b.\n52. For an overview of these debates see Claude Gilliot, Encyclopaedia of Islam\nTHREE, s.v. \u201cAttributes of God\u201d; Samer Akkach, Encyclopaedia of Islam THREE, s.v.\n\u201cBeautiful Names of God.\u201d\n53. Samer Akkach, Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam (Albany: State\nUniversity of New York Press, 2005), 81.\n54. Regarding takhalluq in Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304\u2019s thought, which is close to al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s on\nthis matter, see Elmore, \u201cShaykh \u0003Abd Al-\u0003Az\u0131\u0304z Al-Mahdaw\u0131\u0304,\u201d 609; William Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-\u0003Arabi\u2019s Metaphysics of Imagination (Albany: State\nUniversity of New York Press, 1989), 21\u201322.\n55\n56\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft \u0002 Spring 2017]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=13\nPages: 13\ncosmos, God says \u201cBe!\u201d and \u201cit is\u201d (kun fa-yaku\u0304n).44 Creation, in short, is a\ndivine speech-act\u2014a relatively straightforward theological principle upon\nwhich the elaborate cosmologies of al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 and other lettrists are founded.\nFor al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304, the letters of God\u2019s speech pervade the cosmos, being integral\nto its various planes just as they are to the intellect, spirit, soul, and body of\nAdam and his progeny. One of the numerous striking diagrams that populate\nLat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t is a cosmograph of a type familiar from works of Ptolemaic\nastronomy from around the medieval Mediterranean: a series of concentric\nrings representing the firmament and the spheres of the planets with the earth\nat the center (see Figure). In al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s figure there are thirteen rings\u2014the\noutermost one for the divine Throne that is the Intellect and the sphere of\nthe Primum Mobile, the next for the divine Footstool that is the World Soul]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=21\nPages: 21\nreceiving the divine signal, would transmit the forces of the luciform letters/\ndivine names most purely and efficiently. As we will see, the talismanic practices outlined in the text, discussed briefly below, further bear out this model,\nas al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 emphasizes the importance of the spiritual accomplishment of the\noperator in the efficacy of such tools.\nA S T R O L O G Y A N D LE T T R I S M I N P R AC T I C E\nHowever radical al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s re-envisioning of the forces at work in astrology,\nhe does not eschew the importance of traditional astrological actors such as\nthe planets and zodiacal signs. Notably, he particularly embraces them in\nconnection with issues and practices set squarely in the manifest world. Such\nis the case in his discussion of practices for healing the human body, where\nhe links the zodiacal signs to the parts of the body\u2014a move he justifies by]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=22\nPages: 22,23\nthrough spiritual exercises centered on God\u2019s attributes, and another of al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s\nworks, Mawa\u0304qif al-gha\u0304ya\u0304t f\u0131\u0304 asra\u0304r al-riya\u0304d.a\u0304t, is entirely dedicated to traditional Sufi practices, albeit with subtle lettrist inflections. In Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t, however, we see such\nspiritual exercises being directed especially at a higher capacity for disposing astrallettristic forces in the material world, particularly through the use of talismans.\nGardiner \u0002 Stars and Saints\nnurturing, and administrative qualities\u2014virtues commonly associated with\nJupiter in Hellenistic astrology.\nAl-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 discusses a number of talismans associated with this cluster of da\u0304lelements. One relatively simple set of instructions is as follows:\nHe who writes the shape of [the letter] da\u0304l on a piece of white silk thirty-five times\nwhile the Moon is in Cancer and aligned favorably with Jupiter, and places it in his\nsignet-ring during that time and wears it while in a state of ritual purity, fasting, and]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=16\nPages: 16\nthem.\nThey [the luciform letters] are different lights not with regard to their essences, but\nrather with regard to one who perceives them. They are referred to as the two, the\none, the thirty, the sixty, the eighty, the one, and the four hundred; these [numbers]\nare a link [nisbah] to the luciform letters. Were it not for these luciform letters, God\n(Most High) would not be known, and the created beings would not be disposed\nupon the planes of unity.50\nThe most obvious solution to the numerical code is through abjad, the Arabic\nsystem of assigning numerical values to the letter. Applying the abjad values\nused in the Islamic West (a preference al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 makes clear elsewhere in the\ntext),51 the numbers yield the phrase bi-al-s.ifa\u0304t, \u201cby means of the attributes\u201d;\n50. Ibid., fol. 18a. Wa hiya anwa\u0304r mukhtalifa\u0304t la\u0304 min h.aythu dhawa\u0304tiha\u0304 bal min h.aythu\nman yudrikha\u0304 wa hiya al-mu\u0003abbar \u0003anha\u0304 al-ithnayn wa-al-wa\u0304h.id wa-al-thula\u0304th\u0131\u0304n wa-al-sitt\u0131\u0304n]"]}

{"result":["[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=17\nPages: 17\nSpeaking\u201d (al-mutakallim), \u201cthe Knowing\u201d (al-\u0003al\u0131\u0304m), \u201cthe Hearing\u201d (al-sam\u0131\u0304\u0003),\n\u201cthe Seeing\u201d (al-bas.\u0131\u0304r), \u201cthe Willing\u201d (al-mur\u0131\u0304d), and \u201cthe Powerful\u201d (alqad\u0131\u0304r)\u2014were regarded by many theologians and Sufis as the principal divine\nnames from which all the others derive,53 and it is quite possible that al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\nhas these seven in mind with regard the seven luciform letters. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 deals\nextensively with the divine names in his aforementioned work \u0003Alam al-huda\u0304,\npaying particular attention to spiritual exercises through which the Sufi practitioner can identify with the names and draw on their power (takhalluq).54\nAs al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s discussion of the \u201cspiritual\u201d and \u201ccorporeal\u201d letters proceeds, it\nbecomes clear that he identifies the power attributed to the planets in conventional astrology with that of the divine names. This seems to be not a\nsimple, one-to-one correspondence between the planets and names, but]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=10\nPages: 10\nproduced by a quasi-Isma\u0003ili esotericist collective in tenth-century Iraq\nundoubtedly played a role in this process as well. Over the course of the\neleventh and twelfth centuries, the strain of lettrism that developed among\nwestern Sufis would come to emphasize the role of the names of God\u2014and\nthe letters of which they are composed\u2014in the creation and ongoing sustenance of the cosmos, and to position lettrism as a secret \u201cscience of the saints\u201d\n(\u0003ilm al-awliya\u0304\u0002) through which God\u2019s elite servants divined and helped guide\nthe order of the world.31\nConnections between esotericist scriptural hermeneutics and cosmological\nspeculation run deep in Islamic thought, as reflected in the Orientalist and\nphilosopher Henry Corbin\u2019s compelling axiom that an esotericist approach\nto scripture necessarily \u201cpresupposes the superimposition of worlds and interworlds, as the correlative basis for a plurality of meanings in the same text.\u201d32]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=9\nPages: 9,10\ngenerally regarded as especially trustworthy and meaningful.\n30. On the history of lettrism prior to al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 see Denis Gril, \u201cThe Science of\nLetters,\u201d in The Meccan Revelations, ed. Michel Chodkiewicz (New York: Pir Press,\n2004), 103\u2013219; Pierre Lory\u2019s various essays on the topic collected in the volume La\nscience des lettres en islam (Paris: Editions Dervy, 2004); Michael Ebstein, \u201cThe Word\nof God and the Divine Will: Isma\u0304\u0003\u0131\u0304l\u0131\u0304 Traces in Andalus\u0131\u0304 Mysticism,\u201d in Jerusalem\nStudies in Arabic and Islam 39 (2012): 247\u2013302; idem, Mysticism and Philosophy in Al-\n47\n48\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft \u0002 Spring 2017\nfollowers helped translate lettrism to an esotericist Sunni-Sufi frame of reference. The circulation in the Islamic West of the Epistles of the Brethren of\nPurity (Rasa\u0304\u0002il Ikhwa\u0304n al-s.afa\u0304\u0002), an encyclopedic set of philosophical treatises\nproduced by a quasi-Isma\u0003ili esotericist collective in tenth-century Iraq]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=1\nPages: 1,2\n(forthcoming in 2017); cf. idem, \u201cForbidden Knowledge? Notes on the Production,\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft (Spring 2017)\nCopyright \u4277 2017 University of Pennsylvania Press. All rights reserved.\n40\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft \u0002 Spring 2017\nof letters and names\u201d (\u0003ilm al-h.uru\u0304f wa-al-asma\u0304\u0002)\u2014or \u201clettrism,\u201d as scholars\nrecently have come to call it. Similar in ways to Jewish Kabbalah, lettrism was\na cosmologically-oriented discourse on the powers of the Arabic alphabet and\nthe names of God that, in certain iterations, was linked to occult practices such\nas divination and the making of talismans. Some writers on lettrism, such as alBu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s famous Andalusian contemporary Muh.y\u0131\u0304 al-D\u0131\u0304n Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304 (d. 638/\n1240), confined their written discussions to theological and philosophical\naspects of the science, eschewing revelations of its occult-practical side as prone\nto dangerous misunderstandings.2 Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t, on the other hand,]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=17\nPages: 17,18\nUniversity of New York Press, 1989), 21\u201322.\n55\n56\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft \u0002 Spring 2017\nrather a situation in which all the luciform letters act on the planets; as he\nputs it, \u201c[t]he occult force (ruh.a\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah) of every heavenly sphere (falak) is\ndetermined by the lights of every one of the luciform letters.\u201d55\nThe twelve \u201cspiritual letters\u201d also are not letters in a conventional sense.\nRather, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 reveals, they represent the human faculties\u2014which is to say\nthe various modules of human consciousness through which divine and\nearthly realities are perceived and processed. These are twelve in number\naccording to al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s scheme: the faculty of hearing (quwwat al-sam\u0003), the\nfaculty of vision (quwwat al-bas.ar), the faculty of smell (quwwat al-shamm),\nthe faculty of taste (quwwat al-dhawq), the faculty of touch (quwwat al-lams),]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=10\nPages: 10\nLettrism might be said to carry that logic to its utmost conclusion, its central\nconceit being that the cosmos, with its many visible and invisible parts, and\nthe Qur\u0002a\u0304n, with all its apparent and hidden meanings, are coextensive manifestations of God\u2019s creative speech. This led lettrist thinkers to assert that\nplumbing the depths of the Qur\u0002a\u0304n could facilitate the acquisition of extraordinary knowledge and power over the created world. It also led to the startling supposition that the letters of the Arabic alphabet which constitute the\nQur\u0002a\u0304n are also the very prima materia of the creation, the \u201cprimordial building-blocks\u201d of the manifest world.33\nAl-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 was a full-throated participant in this discourse, such that much\nof Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t is dedicated to the framing of a quasi-Neoplatonic,34 emanationist cosmology in which the letters of the Arabic alphabet and the divine\nAndalus: Ibn Masarra, Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304 and Isma\u0304\u0003\u0131\u0304l\u0131\u0304 Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 2014); and the]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=24\nPages: 24,23\nbody of the adept into the talisman. The effects of the talisman are fittingly\nconcordant with the Jovian divine qualities al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 associates with the da\u0304lnames.\n68. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304, Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t, fol. 76a. Man kataba shakl al-da\u0304l f\u0131\u0304 h.ar\u0131\u0304rat bayd.a\u0304\u0002 khamsah wa-thula\u0304th\u0131\u0304n marratan wa-al-qamr f\u0131\u0304 al-sarat.a\u0304n makhz.u\u0304z. min al-mushtar\u0131\u0304 wa-ja\u0003alahu f\u0131\u0304\nkha\u0304timihi f\u0131\u0304 mithla dha\u0304lika al-waqt wa-labasahu \u0003ala\u0304 .taha\u0304ra wa-s.awm wa-s.afa\u0304\u0002 ba\u0304t.in da\u0304\u0002im\nada\u0304ma Alla\u0304h ta\u0003a\u0304lla\u0304 \u0003alayhi al-ni\u0003mah alla\u0304ti huwa f\u0131\u0304-ha\u0304 wa-aqa\u0304mahu ila\u0304 kull h.araka z.a\u0304hira\nwa-wasa\u0003\u0003a Alla\u0304h \u0003alayhi rizqahu wa-man akthara min ismihi al-da\u0304\u0002im ka\u0304na la-hu dha\u0304lika\nwa-qad sharah.na\u0304hu jumlatan f\u0131\u0304 ismihi al-da\u0304\u0002im wa-al-da\u0304l min al-h.amd f\u0131\u0304 kita\u0304bna\u0304 \u0003Alam alhuda\u0304 . . . wa-ba\u0304t.inahu f\u0131\u0304 ismihi al-rah.ma\u0304n ta\u0003a\u0304lla\u0304.\n61\n62\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft \u0002 Spring 2017\nAnother, more complex operation evoking the divine names and related]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=21\nPages: 21\nreceiving the divine signal, would transmit the forces of the luciform letters/\ndivine names most purely and efficiently. As we will see, the talismanic practices outlined in the text, discussed briefly below, further bear out this model,\nas al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 emphasizes the importance of the spiritual accomplishment of the\noperator in the efficacy of such tools.\nA S T R O L O G Y A N D LE T T R I S M I N P R AC T I C E\nHowever radical al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s re-envisioning of the forces at work in astrology,\nhe does not eschew the importance of traditional astrological actors such as\nthe planets and zodiacal signs. Notably, he particularly embraces them in\nconnection with issues and practices set squarely in the manifest world. Such\nis the case in his discussion of practices for healing the human body, where\nhe links the zodiacal signs to the parts of the body\u2014a move he justifies by]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=24\nPages: 24\nAnother, more complex operation evoking the divine names and related\nforces associated with da\u0304l is the manufacturing of a talisman featuring a fourby-four mathematical \u201cmagic square,\u201d which is to say a four-by-four grid of\nnumbers\u2014or their equivalents in letters\u2014in which all the rows and columns\ntally to the same sum. For this procedure the adept must fast for two weeks,\neating nothing but bread, maintaining a state of ritual purity throughout, and\nregularly invoking God\u2019s name while meditating on a sheet of silver. On a\nThursday (traditionally the day of Jupiter), in the hour of Jupiter, on a day\nwhen the moon is favorably aligned with Jupiter and the sun, and when the\nascending lunar node is in Gemini (in which the ascending node is exalted),\nhe is to inscribe the square on the sheet of silver while facing the qiblah and\nburning mastic and white oud. He is then to wear the talisman on Thursdays,\nand God will make easy for him his religious obligations, provide him with]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=19\nPages: 19,20\nletters, convene in the earth of the corporeal letters in order to manifest\n58. For similar assignments of the letters to the elemental qualities in the Jabirian\nart of the \u201cBalance of the Letters\u201d (m\u0131\u0304za\u0304n al-h.uru\u0304f ) see Haq, Names, Natures, and\nThings, 81\u2013108.\n59. Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304, Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t, fol. 18b. Wa-lamma ka\u0304nat al-afla\u0304k al-sab\u0003ah hiya mara\u0304kiz al-\u0003ulw\u0131\u0304ya\u0304t wa-biha\u0304 \u2018htada\u0304 ahl al-sufl\u0131\u0304ya\u0304t ka\u0304nat hiya [al-h.uru\u0304f al-ru\u0304h.a\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah] mustamaddatan min ha\u0304dhihi al-h.uru\u0304f al-nu\u0304ra\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah al-sab\u0003ah kull \u0003a\u0304lam [insa\u0304n\u0131\u0304] bi-ma\u0304 yal\u0131\u0304q bihi min\nshuhu\u0304d anwa\u0304r tilka al-h.uru\u0304f. That kull \u0003a\u0304lam should here be understood as kull \u0003a\u0304lam\ninsa\u0304n\u0131\u0304, i.e. \u201cevery human microcosm,\u201d is clear from the use of the term shortly prior,\nat the bottom of fol. 18a, as well as at several points earlier in the text.\n57\n58\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft \u0002 Spring 2017\nthe superior influences [i.e. those from the luciform letters] in the earthly\nsphere.\u201d60]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=16\nPages: 16\nthem.\nThey [the luciform letters] are different lights not with regard to their essences, but\nrather with regard to one who perceives them. They are referred to as the two, the\none, the thirty, the sixty, the eighty, the one, and the four hundred; these [numbers]\nare a link [nisbah] to the luciform letters. Were it not for these luciform letters, God\n(Most High) would not be known, and the created beings would not be disposed\nupon the planes of unity.50\nThe most obvious solution to the numerical code is through abjad, the Arabic\nsystem of assigning numerical values to the letter. Applying the abjad values\nused in the Islamic West (a preference al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 makes clear elsewhere in the\ntext),51 the numbers yield the phrase bi-al-s.ifa\u0304t, \u201cby means of the attributes\u201d;\n50. Ibid., fol. 18a. Wa hiya anwa\u0304r mukhtalifa\u0304t la\u0304 min h.aythu dhawa\u0304tiha\u0304 bal min h.aythu\nman yudrikha\u0304 wa hiya al-mu\u0003abbar \u0003anha\u0304 al-ithnayn wa-al-wa\u0304h.id wa-al-thula\u0304th\u0131\u0304n wa-al-sitt\u0131\u0304n]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=11\nPages: 11\nit with the divine Throne (\u0003arsh) and other symbols drawn from Muslim\nscriptures,35 and with the outermost celestial sphere (Primum Mobile). Next is\nthe \u201csecond world of invention\u201d (\u0003a\u0304lam al-ikhtira\u0304\u0003 al-tha\u0304n\u0131\u0304), which is linked to\nAdam\u2019s immortal spirit (ru\u0304h.), the divine Pen (qalam) mentioned in the\nQur\u0002a\u0304n,36 the spirit of holiness (ru\u0304h. al-qudus),37 and the rays of metaphysical\nlight that are understood to be the \u201cpre-existent\u201d essences of the saints and\nprophets.38 The third emanation is the \u201cfirst world of origination\u201d (\u0003a\u0304lam alibda\u0304\u0003 al-awwal), which is linked to the divine Footstool (kurs\u0131\u0304) of the Qur\u0002a\u0304n.39\nIt is equivalent to the World Soul of Neoplatonism and is mirrored by Adam\u2019s\nsoul or psyche (nafs). A mesocosmic or intermediary realm of images that\nlend form to material things potentiated by the divine word, it is a plane in\nwhich the letters of the alphabet exist as angelic forces working continually]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=4\nPages: 4\nthe Beautiful Names of God).9 This datum is especially noteworthy insofar as\nal-Mahdaw\u0131\u0304 also instructed the aforementioned Andalusian mystic Muh.y\u0131\u0304 alD\u0131\u0304n Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304, another of the most important Sufi writers on lettrism and\nindeed one of the most influential thinkers in the history of Islam. There is\nno definitive indication that Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304 and al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 met or were familiar\nwith each other\u2019s teachings,10 and it is unclear if al-Mahdaw\u0131\u0304 was the main\nsource of al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 and Ibn al-\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304\u2019s lettrism, as few details of al-Mahdaw\u0131\u0304\u2019s\nteachings survive. There is significant conceptual and terminological crossover between his two students\u2019 discussions of the topic, such that Ibn al\u0003Arab\u0131\u0304\u2019s plentiful writings can sometimes be used to shed light on al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s\nmore gnomic statements, though there are also considerable differences.11\nAt some point after his time in Tunis, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 migrated eastward to Egypt,]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=19\nPages: 19\nthings are composed of these corporeal, elemental letters, which are the\nbuilding blocks of manifest reality. He emphasizes, however, that the powers\nof the seven luciform letters do not act directly on the corporeal letters, but\nrather only through the mediation of the twelve spiritual letters that are the\nhuman faculties\u2014much as the powers of the planets are mediated by the\nsigns and houses in conventional astrology. As al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 puts it: \u201cAs the seven\n[heavenly] spheres are the stations of the superior forces and the people of\nthe inferior world [i.e. the earth] are guided by them, so [the spiritual letters]\ntake from the seven luciform letters, every human cosmos in accordance with\nhis worthiness to witness the lights of those letters.\u201d59 As for the corporeal\nletters, they are \u201clike the earth in relation to the spiritual letters\u201d (ka-al-ard. lial-h.uru\u0304f al-ru\u0304h.a\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah), in that \u201call of their forces, meaning those of the spiritual]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=11\nPages: 11\nwhich the letters of the alphabet exist as angelic forces working continually\nto constitute the manifest world, which makes up in the fourth and final\nplane. The fourth plane is the \u201csecond world of origination\u201d (\u0003a\u0304lam al-ibda\u0304\u0003\nal-tha\u0304n\u0131\u0304), which corresponds to the heart (qalb) and bodily nature (fit.rah) of\nwas reading Plotinus, Porphyry, et al., or indeed that he considered himself a \u201cphilosopher\u201d in any strict sense. Rather it seems that he was developing a tradition of\nthought in which Neoplatonism had long since been naturalized.\n35. On the divine Throne, see Q 17:44, 40:15, 43:82, 81:20; also Cl. Huart and\nJ. Sadan, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition,\n. s.v. \u201cKurs\u0131\u0304.\u201d\n36. On the divine Pen see Q 68:1; also Irvin Schick, \u201cText,\u201d in Key Themes for the\nStudy of Islam, ed. Jamal Elias (Oxford: Oneworld, 2010), 327ff.\n37. Q 2:87, 2:253, 5:110, 16:102.]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=16\nPages: 16\ncapacity of humans to receive God\u2019s word\u2014and thereby implying an important role for Sufi saints and adepts in the process of astrological causation\u2014\nand reimagining the sublunary world, which is to say manifest reality, as a\nfabric of letters in a constant flux driven by the movements of the celestial\nspheres. None of this is to say that al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 denounces or abandons astrology\u2019s\n\u201couter\u201d forms. Rather, particularly with regard to the material world, he\nengages to a considerable degree with conventional astrology.\nThe seven luciform letters, al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 tells us, are not letters in the usual\nsense, but rather that name is a figure of speech (maja\u0304z) concealing a secret\nfor the initiated (li-sirr al-tabl\u0131\u0304gh). He is indeed less than straightforward about\nthe true nature of these so-called letters, resorting to actual code in describing\nthem.\nThey [the luciform letters] are different lights not with regard to their essences, but]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=27\nPages: 27\nthe forces of the divine names.75 But does Halbertal succumb to too Yatesian\na narrative of the occult-fueled discovery of nature at the end of the medieval\nperiod? It is perhaps better that al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s ideas be considered one of the\nstreams contributing to the formation of \u201cthe Sufi-philosophical (or philosophical-Sufi) amalgam\u201d that Shahab Ahmed recently described as having\nemerged in the Muslim world during the transition from the late medieval\nto early modern periods, and that predominated in much of Muslim culture\nfor centuries.76 Best of all, we might recognize that the daring esotericism of\nal-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 and his fellow lettrists causes their ideas to cut across the borders\nmodern scholarship has sought to erect between the histories of theology,\nmysticism, philosophy, and science, and that to study their place in intellectual history requires a willingness to follow their lines of flight across such\ntraditional disciplinary categories.]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=16\nPages: 16,15\nand 16.\n16. \u201cThe world as disposed by the letters\u201d (\u0003a\u0304lam al-tas.r\u0131\u0304f bi-al-h.uru\u0304f ), i.e. the manifest world.\n53\n54\nMagic, Ritual, and Witchcraft \u0002 Spring 2017\nexpect based on the Arabic alphabet. These comprise seven \u201cluciform\u201d (nu\u0304ra\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah) letters, twelve \u201cspiritual\u201d (ru\u0304h.a\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah) letters, and twenty-nine \u201ccorporeal\u201d (jusma\u0304n\u0131\u0304yah) letters. The numbers seven and twelve, being the numbers\nof planets and zodiacal signs (or astrological houses) respectively, hint that\nreferences to astrology will be forthcoming, and al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 does not disappoint.\nIndeed, it is in al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s description of the forty-eight letters that we see the\nextent to which he seeks to reorient his readers to an esotericist understanding of astrology, revealing the apparent powers of the planets as the continuous action of God\u2019s names on the earth, linking the zodiac to the differential]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=17\nPages: 17\nassertion that the luciform letters differ from the point of view of the receiver,\nbut not in their essence\u2014just as God is one in His essence but known to\nhumans through a multitude of names.\nThe attributes, which are names describing divine powers or properties\nsuch as \u201cthe Knowing\u201d (al-\u0003al\u0131\u0304m), \u201cthe Hearing\u201d (al-sam\u0131\u0304\u0003), etc., were a frequent point of controversy in Muslim theology in relation to debates about\nthe absolute unity of God, anthropomorphism, and other issues.52 For many\nSufi thinkers, the attributes (and the divine names generally) were considered\nvital links between divine and human realities, channels through which the\ndivine could manifest in the world, and through which adepts could attain\nhigher realities. Seven attributes in particular\u2014\u201cthe Living\u201d (al-h.ayy), \u201cthe\nSpeaking\u201d (al-mutakallim), \u201cthe Knowing\u201d (al-\u0003al\u0131\u0304m), \u201cthe Hearing\u201d (al-sam\u0131\u0304\u0003),]","[url_for_citation: https://myaidrive.com/fuekht9qsbmn5WmyZUGaqR/Stars_and_Sa.pdf?pdfPage=22\nPages: 22\nthat render it efficacious.67\nAt various places in Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 addresses a cluster of topics\nthat includes the letter da\u0304l, its numerical value of four, and names of God that\ninclude da\u0304l such as the attributes \u201cthe Permanent\u201d (al-da\u0304\u0002im) and \u201cthe Loving\u201d (al-wadu\u0304d). Al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304 also assigns the letter da\u0304l to the sphere of Jupiter,\nand, although he does not make the point explicitly, his discussion of the\nPermanent and the Loving emphasizes their denotation of God\u2019s beneficent,\n66. Ibid., fol. 29b.\n67. Many of al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s works other than Lat.a\u0304\u0002if al-isha\u0304ra\u0304t are centrally concerned\nwith embodied \u201cspiritual practices\u201d (riya\u0304d.a\u0304t) familiar from the classical Sufi tradition,\ne.g. khalwah (ritual seclusion), supererogatory fasting, and dhikr and other forms of\nsupererogatory prayer. As mentioned above, a focus of \u0003Alam al-huda\u0304 is takhalluq\nthrough spiritual exercises centered on God\u2019s attributes, and another of al-Bu\u0304n\u0131\u0304\u2019s]"]}