Presence
This image is from the project Symmetrical River Songs click on image to enlarge
Presence
Samer Akkach Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam
The notion of presence refers to the complex web of physical, mental, and spiritual relationships a being spawns by its very existence and the influences it exerts through this web of connectedness. A thing is perceived to have a presence insofar as it impacts other presences, influences their course of existence, and becomes part of their world. In other words, it is not the mere existence of the thing that matters but rather its level of impact and domain of influence. This is what what makes it effectively present.
The Divine Presence
Samer Akkach Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam
The divine presence [as distinct from the primordial presence] is the presence wherein God is known through his names and attributes. It is the state in which the unity of the Essence becomes associated with the multiplicity of the names and attributes. The Sufis teach that in his primordial presence God desired to be known, to reveal the mysteries of his inner treasure, so he descended from his incomprehensible supremacy, the state of Transcendent Unity, through the state of Solitude, to the state of Uniqueness. Therein he revealed his names and attributes as a mean whereby he may become knowable.
Human Presence
Samer Akkach Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam
The human presence is but the other side of the divine presence. The logic of this hinges on the religious concept, which is not peculiar to Islam, that God created man in his image. Adam was at once the "lens" through which God viewed all beings and the "mirror" in which he viewed his own Being. The human presence becomes the outer face of divinity, while the divine presence becomes the inner face of humanity. In brief, the Sufi concept of the "human presence" is based on three principles. First, man as an idea, was the first to be conceived by God in the creative process; second, man, as an embodied form, was the last creature to be brought into existence; and third, man, in both the ideal and embodied form, constitutes the comprehensive epitome of all manifest states of Being and the sum total of all divine and cosmic realities.Samer Akkach Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam
The divine presence [as distinct from the primordial presence] is the presence wherein God is known through his names and attributes. It is the state in which the unity of the Essence becomes associated with the multiplicity of the names and attributes. The Sufis teach that in his primordial presence God desired to be known, to reveal the mysteries of his inner treasure, so he descended from his incomprehensible supremacy, the state of Transcendent Unity, through the state of Solitude, to the state of Uniqueness. Therein he revealed his names and attributes as a mean whereby he may become knowable.
Human Presence
Samer Akkach Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam
The Seen and the Unseen
Samer Akkach Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam
Samer Akkach Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam
Religious world views hinge on an axiomatic premise that the world is made up of physical and spiritual realities, of visible and invisible entities. This premise underlies the fundamental beliefs in God, prophets, and holy scriptures that presuppose a kind of unseen, supranatural presence. The Quran stresses this polarity, describing God as "the Knower of the unseen and the seen" (13:9) and to him "belongs the unseen of the heavens and the earth" (16:77). Yet aspects of the unseen can be revealed. The Quran demands that Muslims believe in the unseen and strive to gain knowledge of it my means of the seen . . . the world of the outward that is readily accessible to everyone.
Ibn 'Arabi [a Great Sufi mystic] says God alludes to his symbolic presences in all created things. These symbols are available to humans in their daily experience of sensible things, be they "within themselves" or "on the horizons," that is, in the outside world. Their function is to give clues to direct the mind toward that which lies beyond the immediate attractions of the sensible and the visible.
Shadows of the Immutable
Samer Akkach Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam
Samer Akkach Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam
If we are to think of the creative process in terms of shadow projection, then the "object" can be taken to represent absolute Being, the "ground" on which the shadow falls to represent the archetypal essences of all possible beings, and the "light" that projects the shadow to represent the divine outward presence. In the same vein of thinking Ibn 'Arabi views the world as the exact shadow of the Absolute . . . When the shadows of the immutable essences come into existence in the form of heaven, earth, sun, moon, stars, mountains, trees, beasts, and every other being, he says, they naturally reflect the tendency of their archetypes.
*
EmptinessTitus Burckhardt: Sacred Art in East and West
The Kaaba itself does not represent a sacramental center comparable to the Christian altar, nor does it contain any symbol which could be an immediate support to worship, for it is empty. Its emptiness reveals an essential feature of the spiritual attitude of Islam: awareness of the Divine Presence is based on a feeling of limitlessness . . . limitless space.
*
The Eternal, The Infinite
Frithjof Schuon Language of the Self
What is the sacred in relation to the world? It is the interference of the uncreate in the created, of the eternal in time, of the infinite in space, of the Supra-formal in forms; it is the mysterious introduction into one realm of existence of a presence which in reality contains and transcends that realm and could cause it to burst asunder in a sort of divine explosion. The sacred is the incommensurable, the transcendent, hidden within a fragile form belonging to this world.
*
Form and Transformation
Seyyed Hossein Nasr Knowledge and the Sacred
Seyyed Hossein Nasr Knowledge and the Sacred
Form is the reality of an object on the material level of existence. But it is also, as the reflection of an archetypal reality, the gate which opens inwardly and "upwardly" unto the formless Essence. As far as sacred art is concerned, this content is always the sacred or a sacred presence placed in particular forms by revelation which sanctifies certain symbols, forms, and images to enable them to become "containers" of this sacred presence and transforms them into vehicles for the journey across the stream of becoming. Thanks to those sacred forms man is able to penetrate into the inner dimension of his own being and, by virtue of that process, gain a vision of the inner dimension of all forms. Only the sacred forms invested with the transforming power of the sacred through revelation and the Logos which is its instrument can enable man to see God everywhere.
According to a well-known Hermetic (alchemical) saying, "that which is lowest symbolizes that which is highest," material existence which is lowest symbolizes and reflects the Intellect or the archetypal essences which represent the highest level. This is why an icon or a canvas [or photograph, etc.] can become the locus of Divine Presence and support for the contemplation of the formless.
Tradition
Seyyed Hossein Nasr Knowledge and the Sacred
Seyyed Hossein Nasr Knowledge and the Sacred
Tradition, like religion, is at once truth and presence. It concerns the subject which knows and the object which is known. It comes from the Source from which everything originates and to which everything returns.
Traditional art is at once based upon and is a channel for both knowledge and grace, or that sciential sacra which is both knowledge of a sacred character. Sacred art is at once truth and presence.
*
Calligraphy
Laleh Bakhtiar Sufi Expressions of the Mystic Quest
Calligraphy, the most sacred of art forms, recalls the Word by which God calls Himelf. In architecture this is most often found on the band between the base of a mosque and its dome. This transitional space is the way of the return through the Word of God, the Qur'an as revealed to Muhammad.
Calligraphy is thus the visual body of the Divine revelation, sacred in both form and content. Corresponding to the iconographic image of Christ in Christianity, the calligraphic form symbolizes the world Itself, and its very presence obviates the use of any imagery.
The Structure of calligraphy, composed of horizontal and vertical strokes woven into a rich fabric, is potent with symbolism. The verticals, like the warp of a carpet, provide an ontological relationship and a structure for the design, while the horizontals, like the weft, correspond to the creation that develops the balance and flow of the basic conception. It is through the harmonious weavings of the horizontal and the vertical that unity is achieved.
* * *
Also visit this related link:
* * *
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.
.
