Cross, Point, Void

The Point of Origin 
The Void 
The Cross 
The Crystallization of  form

           

  From the Abstract Symmetrical Photographs project
             
   Click on image to enlarge


The Point of Origin, The Void

At the heart of Islamic Sacred Art, which for the most part is non-figurative geometrical abstract forms and repeating leafy arabesques, there is the mystery of the Origin of the Point.  From the Point comes the line, from the line the circle (with the Point of Origin at its center), and from the circle comes the crystallization of all geometrical forms and their repeating, rhythmical patterns.  The point of origin is at the very center not only of the circle but all Islamic Sacred Visual Art.  The origin of the point is sometimes referred to as the Void, Nothing, Emptiness, the place of Divine Presence. 

Following is a collection of quotes regarding these many themes: The Point, The Void, The Cross, The Crystallization of Form

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Keith Critchlow, writes in his book Islamic Patterns:  Islam’s concentration on geometric patterns [which are based upon mathematical laws of repetition] draws attention away from the representational world to one of pure forms, poised tensions and dynamic equilibrium, giving structural insight into the workings of the inner self and their reflection in the universe.  

The circle is the archetypal governing basis for all the geometric shapes that unfold within it . . . reflecting the unity of its original source, the point, the simple, self-evident origin of geometry and a subject grounded in mystery.  

The circle has always been regarded as a symbol of eternity, without beginning and without end,  just being. . .  In the effort to trace origins in creation, the direction is not backwards but inwards.  

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Islamic scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr writes in his book Islamic Art and Spirituality: The Islamic doctrine of Unity places emphasis on the "otherness" of that which is Ultimate Reality, that is, emphasis upon the truth that God is completely beyond all that the ordinary mind and the senses can conceive as reality in the usual meaning of the term.  If we consider God as the Ultimate Substance or Pure Being, then there is an aspect of nothingness or void which lies in the very nature of the whole created order.  God and His revelation are not identified with any particular place, time or object.  Hence His presence is ubiquitous.  He is everywhere, in whichever direction one turns.   

Many calligraphic designs are justly famous as much for the patterns created from empty spaces as for the lines traced by the script itself.  Through calligraphy as well as the arabesque and the geometric patterns, an awareness of the relation between the void and the Divine Presence is achieved in Islamic art; an awareness which is also closely related to the spiritual attitude of poverty (faqr).

The void symbolizes the sacred and the gate through which the Divine Presence enters into the material order which encompasses man in his terrestrial journey.  The void is the symbol of both the transcendence of God and His presence in all things. . . Whenever and wherever the veil of matter is removed, the Divine Light of Unity shines through. . .  Hence "Whithersoever ye turn, there is the Face of God" (Qur'an, 11:115).    

The use of the void in Islamic art became, along with the use of geometric and other forms of abstract symbolism, the only way to indicate the Unity which is at once everywhere and beyond all things.  Emptiness in Islamic art becomes synonymous with the manifestation of the sacred.   

Together, the void and the "positive" material form, color and so forth, depict the full reality of an object, chiselling away its unreality and illuminating its essential reality as a positive symbol and harmonious whole.  The combining of these two aspects is seen clearly in the arabesque, so characteristic of Islamic art, where both the negative space and the positive "form" play an equally central role.  The arabesque enables the void to enter into the very heart of matter, to remove its opacity and to make it transparent before the Divine Light.  Through its extension and repetition of forms interlaced with the void, the arabesque removes from the eye the possibility of fixing itself in one place, and from the mind the possibility of become imprisoned in any particular solidification and crystallization of matter.  This refusal to identify, even symbolically, any concrete form with the Divinity stems as much from the Islamic insistence upon Divine Unity as it does upon the absence of an icon which would symbolize the God-man or the incarnation found in other traditions.

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The conjunction point at the very center of the four-fold symmetrical photographs, where the lines of mirroring vertical and horizontal images cross, where the four repeated images intersect and become a unity, where the Crystallization of form emerges and expands outwardly from that point into a vast appearance of unfolding pictorial space . . . is the Point of Origin, the Void.

The Cross 

From Rene Guenon's book The Symbolism of the Cross, the chapter entitled "The Tree in the Midst":  The "Tree in the Midst' is one of the numerous symbols of the 'World Axis'.  It is therefore the vertical line of the cross, which represents the axis, that we must consider here.  This line forms the trunk of the tree, whereas the horizontal line forms its branches.  The tree stands at the center of the world, or rather of a world, that is, of a domain in which a state of existence, such as the human state, is developed.  In biblical symbolism, for example, the 'Tree of Life', planted in the midst of the Terrestrial Paradise, represents the center of our world.  

There was another tree which plays a no less important role, namely the 'Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil' which is characterized by duality.  . . . once it is transcended there can no longer be any question of good or evil.  The same cannot be said of the 'Tree of Life' which in its function as the 'World Axis' essentially implies unity.  The 'Tree of Knowledge' appears to Adam only at the very moment of the 'Fall', since it is then that he becomes 'knowing of good and evil'.  It is then that he finds himself driven from the center which is the place of the primal unity to which the Tree of Life corresponds.  . . . This center has become inaccessible to fallen man, who has lost the 'sense of eternity,' which is also the 'sense of unity';  to return to the center by the restoration of the primordial state, and to reach the 'Tree of Life', is to regain the 'sense of eternity'.

Moreover, we know that the cross of Christ [central of three crosses] is itself symbolically identified with the 'Tree of Life'.  

In Chinese symbolism sometimes we find a single tree with its branches dividing and rejoining, or there may be two trees having the same root and likewise joined by their branches.  they depict the process of universal manifestation: everything starts from unity and returns to unity.

To return to the representation of the 'Terrestrial Paradise': from its center, that is, from the very food of the 'Tree of Life', spring four rivers flowing toward the four cardinal points and thus tracing the horizontal cross on the surface of the terrestrial world, that is to say on the plane that corresponds to the domain of the human state.  These four rivers which issue from a single source corresponding to primordial either, divide into four parts (corresponding to the  four phases of a cyclic development) the circular precinct of the 'Terrestrial Paradise', which can be regarded as the horizontal section of the spherical form representing the Universe.  

It is noteworthy that in the symbolism of the Apocalypse this tree bears twelve fruits . . . twelve forms of the sun which will appear simultaneously at the end of the cycle, thus re-entering into the essential unity of their common nature, for they are som many manifestations of one single indivisible essence which corresponds to the one essence of the 'Tree of Life' itself.  Moreover, in various traditions, an image of the sun is often linked with that of a tree, as though the sun were the fruit of the 'World Tree'; it leaves the tree at the beginning of the cycle and comes back to alight on it again at the end.  . . . this is related to the twelve signs of the zodiac or the twelve months of the year.  

Also, from Rene Guenon's book The Symbolism of the Cross, the chapter entitled "The Symbolism of Weaving", regarding the crossing of the vertical and horizontal threads, he writes: "Every stitch in the fabric, being thus the meeting-point, is thereby the center of such a cross."  And then he goes further:  "The horizontal direction may be taken as depicting the human state, and the vertical direction, that which is transcendent in relation to that state."  

He goes on to say that weaving is used as a symbol to represent the world, or the aggregate of the indefinite multitude of the states or degrees that constitute universal Existence.  He writes: "In the Upanishads, the supreme Brahma is called 'That upon which the worlds are woven, as warp and weft.'"  According to the Taoist doctrine, all beings are subject to the continual alternation of the two states of life and death. . . The commentators call this alternation 'the to-and-fro motion of the shuttle upon the cosmic loom.'"

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From Titus Burkhardt, his book Art of Islam: Language and Meaning, here is a related quote:    Let us conclude by mentioning the significance of the carpet in the esoteric symbolism of Islam.  It is the image of a state of existence or simply of existence as such; all forms or happenings are woven into it and appear unified in one and the same continuity.  Meanwhile, what really unifies the carpet, namely the warp, appears only on the borders.  The threads of the warp are like the Divine Qualities underling all existence; to pull them out from the carpet would mean the dissolution of all its forms.

                              

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From Samer Akkach, in his book Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam -

An Architectural Reading of Mystical Ideas  (2005)  he writes the following about the Three Dimensional Cross and the Center Point in relation to the "The Tree of Being" :  Kun (Be!) was God's first uttered word, and kawn (the world) was the immediate outcome of this utterence.  [The great Sufi mystic] Ibn 'Arabi 's treatise 'The Tree of Being' is a fascinating exposition on his mystical reflections on the relationship between the command and the outcome, the word and the world.  Among the poetic imageries he constructs is the correspondence between the spatial structure of the human presence (the three dimensional cross) and the "tree" of realities that grows from the "seed" of the divine word kun.  In Sufi terminology "tree" is defined as "the Universal Man who governs the structure of the Universal Body."  The Sufis identify the tree with the Universal Man because both embody the pattern of the three-dimensional cross, which expresses notions of both verticality and opposition.  The seed whence the seed grows corresponds to the center, the heart of Universal Man, which is the place where all complements are untied and all opposites are reconciled.  Ibn'Arabi writes:  "I have looked at the universe and its design, at what was concealed and its inscription, and I saw that the whole universe (kawn) was a tree, the root of whose light is from the seed 'Be!' (kun)."

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Titus Burckhardt: Moorish Culture in Spain

Paradise is created from divine light, and the Alhambra is made up of light.  For the forms of Moorish architecture -- the frieze of the arabesques, the trelliswork etched into the walls, the sparkling stalactites of the arches -- are all used not so much for their own sakes, but to display the nature of light.  The innermost secret of this art is an alchemy of light, for just as true alchemy aims at "transforming the body into spirit, and the spirit into body," so does the art of Granada dissolve the solid bodies of the structure into a mass of shimmering light by transforming the light into immobilized crystal.

This picture of paradise is composed not merely of murmuring water, the scent of flowers, and the song of birds, but also of the enchanting contrast between the luxuriant vegetation and the cyrstalline architecture.  The true paradise possesses both these qualities in equal measure -- the fullness of life and the immutable nature of crystal.  

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Islamic scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr writes in his book Islamic Art and Spirituality:

Together, the void and the "positive" material form, color and so forth, depict the full reality of an object, chiselling away its unreality and illuminating its essential reality as a positive symbol and harmonious whole.  The combining of these two aspects is seen clearly in the arabesque, so characteristic of Islamic art, where both the negative space and the positive "form" play an equally central role.  The arabesque enables the void to enter into the very heart of matter, to remove its opacity and to make it transparent before the Divine Light.  Through its extension and repetition of forms interlaced with the void, the arabesque removes from the eye the possibility of fixing itself in one place, and from the mind the possibility of become imprisoned in any particular solidification and crystallization of matter.  This refusal to identify, even symbolically, any concrete form with the Divinity stems as much from the Islamic insistence upon Divine Unity as it does upon the absence of an icon which would symbolize the God-man or the incarnation found in other traditions.  

Keith Critchlow  Islamic Patterns: An Analytical and Cosmological Approach

Islamic art is predominantly a balance between pure geometric form and what can be called fundamental biomorphic form . . .  The one aspect reflects the facets of a jewel, the purity of the snowflake and the frozen flowers of radial symmetry; the other the glistening flank of a perspiring horse, the silent motion of fish winding their way through the water, the unfolding and unfurling of the leaves of the vine and rose.  The Islamic art of geometric form can be considered the crystallization stage both of the intelligence inherent in manifest form and as a moment of suspended animation of the effusion of content through form. 

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Related Material: 

 The Void  Essays by Titus Burckhardt

"An Imaginary Book" : The Complete Collection of Projects

Sacred Art - Sacred Knowledge  which is a work in progress consisting primarily of a collection of quotes by Islamic Scholars on the traditions of the sacred in art and all aspects of Islamic culture. 

Welcome Page  to The Departing Landscape website which includes the complete hyperlinked listing of my online photography projects dating back to the 1960's, my resume, contact information, and more.

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