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Esoteric Transfers and Constructions Judaism Christianity and Islam Mark Sedgwick Full Chapter
Esoteric Transfers and Constructions Judaism Christianity and Islam Mark Sedgwick Full Chapter
Esoteric Transfers
and Constructions
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
Edited by
Mark Sedgwick
Francesco Piraino
Palgrave Studies in New Religions
and Alternative Spiritualities
Series Editors
James R. Lewis
School of Philosophy
Wuhan University
Wuhan, China
Henrik Bogdan
University of Gothenburg
Gothenburg, Sweden
Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities is an
interdisciplinary monograph and edited collection series sponsored by
the International Society for the Study of New Religions. The series is
devoted to research on New Religious Movements. In addition to the
usual groups studied under the New Religions label, the series publishes
books on such phenomena as the New Age, communal & utopian groups,
Spiritualism, New Thought, Holistic Medicine, Western esotericism,
Contemporary Paganism, astrology, UFO groups, and new movements
within traditional religions. The Society considers submissions from
researchers in any discipline.
Esoteric Transfers
and Constructions
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
Editors
Mark Sedgwick Francesco Piraino
Arab and Islamic Studies IDEMEC-CNRS
Aarhus University Aix-en-Provence, France
Aarhus C, Denmark
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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Note on Transliteration
v
Acknowledgments
The editors would like to thank the Fondazione Giorgio Cini for co-
organizing the conference held in 2018 at Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore
(Venice), at which contributors to this book presented and discussed drafts
of many of its chapters. This was the inaugural conference of the European
Network for the Study of Islam and Esotericism (ENSIE), a thematic net-
work of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism
(ESSWE), established in 2016 to bridge the gap between the study of
Islamic esotericism and mysticism and the study of Western Esotericism.
vii
Contents
ix
x CONTENTS
Part III Constructions 247
Bibliography321
Index341
Notes on Contributors
xiii
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
the literary structure and cultural impact of kabbalistic reference tools and
their role in disseminating Jewish mystical concepts and ideas in the period
between 1550 and 1650.
Boaz Huss is Aron Bernstein Chair in Jewish History at the Goldstein-
Goren Department of Jewish Thought at the Ben-Gurion University. He
is the vice-president of the European Society for the Study of Western
Esotericism and a co-director of MEIDA Center (Israeli Information
Center on New Religious Movements). His research interests are his-
tory of Kabbalah, Western Esotericism, New Age Culture, and New
Religious Movements. His recent publications include Boaz Huss, Zohar:
Reception and Impact (2016); Julie Chajes and Boaz Huss (eds),
Theosophical Appropriation: Esotericism, Kabbalah and the Transformation
of Traditions (2016); and Boaz Huss, Mystifying Kabbalah: Academic
Scholarship, National Theology, and New Age Spirituality (2020).
Rasoul Namazi is an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at LMU Munich
(Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München). Laureate of Prix Raymond
Aron 2015 and specialized in the history of early modern political philoso-
phy and Islamic political thought, he has held teaching and research posi-
tions at Université Paris XIII and the University of Chicago. He is author
and editor of a number of papers on John Locke, Leo Strauss, Niccolò
Machiavelli, and Islamic political thought. He is writing a comprehensive
book-length study on Leo Strauss’s contribution to the study of Islamic
political philosophy.
Marco Pasi is Associate Professor of History of Hermetic Philosophy and
Related Currents in the University of Amsterdam. Pasi is best known for
his Aleister Crowley and the Temptation of Politics (2009). He has focused
his research mainly on the relationship between modern esotericism and
politics, modern esotericism and art, the history of the idea of magic, and
on methodological issues related to the study of Western esotericism.
Francesco Piraino obtained his PhD in Sociology in 2016 from the
Scuola Normale Superiore (Florence) and the École des Hautes Études en
Sciences Sociales (Paris), and he was Marie Curie Research Fellow at KU
Leuven. He is postdoctoral scholar at the IDEMEC-CNRS (Institut
d’ethnologie méditerranéenne, européenne et comparative), and he is
the director of the Center of Comparative Studies on Spiritualties
and Civilizations at the Cini Foundation in Venice. He has recently
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xv
xvii
CHAPTER 1
We would like to thank the authors of chapters in this book for their comments
on the draft of this introduction and also thank Egil Asprem for his comments.
M. Sedgwick (*)
Arab and Islamic Studies, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
F. Piraino
IDEMEC-CNRS, Aix-en-Provence, France
to the “unio mystica,” henō sis, the union with God that is (perhaps) known
in Hebrew as devekut (attachment) and in Arabic as ittiṣāl (contact),
ittihād (union), or fanāʾ (dissolution). The “perhaps” is important,
because the extent to which these terms mean the same thing, or indeed
quite what they mean anyhow, is much disputed.12 Part of the problem
may be that, as Gilya G. Schmidt has argued in the case of devekut, they
have actually meant different things in different places at different times.13
It is likely, however, that Colonna’s middle door, “Mater amoris,” has
something to do with mysticism; but what is mysticism? Is it an experi-
ence—the experiential and bodily knowledge of God—or a specific theo-
logical current?
During the twentieth century, the understanding of mysticism devel-
oped into a universal category of human experience,14 which implies all
the same problematic issues as all kinds of universalism, such as normativ-
ity, ethnocentrism, translatability, reductionism, and essentialism. This
development is reviewed in detail in Chap. 11, and so will not be explored
further here.
If the term “mystical” is understood not in its widest sense as human
religious experience and/or emotion but in a more narrow Neoplatonic
sense, the “esoteric” can be understood more widely as denoting that
which is hidden, either because it belongs to the world of the unseen (nis-
tar in Hebrew, ghayb in Arabic) or because it is somehow concealed (sod
in Hebrew, bāt ̣in in Arabic). In this sense, “esoteric” has something in
common with “occult,” a term which many scholars have abandoned
because of its negative associations, though other scholars favor its use to
describe a particular period in the history of esotericism.15 Occultism, in
turn, brings us to another topic much discussed at meetings of ASE and
ESSWE: magic. This is, once again, a contested term, if only because
Deuteronomy 18:11–12 condemns a long list of magical practices includ-
ing generic kishuf (sorcery), a prohibition generally endorsed by the medi-
eval Catholic Church, and repeated in Islam in the many ḥadı̄th (canonical
reports of the Prophet’s sayings) that condemn siḥr (magic). Practitioners
of magic, then, often had a strong incentive to maintain that what they
were doing was not, actually, magic. A further complication is that much
of what modern Westerners might classify as magic—for example, any-
thing to do with demons (Hebrew: shedim; Arabic: jinn)—is not, in Jewish
or Islamic terms, necessarily magical. One of the chapters of the Quran
that is most often used in daily prayer, for example, refers to the jinn
(Quran 114: 6), and the jinn are quite as mainstream in Islam as angels are
1 INTRODUCTION 7
in Christianity. Even though the jinn are not necessarily magical or eso-
teric, then, magic does refer to the unseen and the hidden, and so may be
classed as esoteric, certainly in terms of forms of thought.
Transfers, of course, also involve translation, transformation, and con-
struction. Although the illustrator of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
obtained an accurate translation into Arabic of the Latin labels on the
three doors, he forgot that Arabic and Latin are written in opposite direc-
tions. While the central door has the appropriate Arabic translation, the
door on the right has the translation of the Latin label for the door on the
left, so that the worldly becomes divine, and the door on the left has the
Arabic translation of the Latin label for the door on the right, so that the
divine becomes worldly. Fortunately for Poliphilo, the middle door is cor-
rectly labeled in all languages.
This is an unusually dramatic (and accidental) transformation, but
transformation is not always accidental. Sometimes it is a form of accul-
turation, as in the case of premodern magical texts that were transferred
between Hebrew, Arabic, and Latin, languages with different morpholo-
gies and conventions, and also languages with similar but differing bodies
of sacred scripture. Acculturation also takes place in the modern period
when psychology becomes Sufi.
Sometimes, transfer may also involve appropriation, a difficult issue,
and not only because appropriation implies the existence of exclusive cul-
tural property, which may again be seen as essentialist. The difference
between legitimate inspiration and re-use on the one hand, and illegiti-
mate appropriation on the other, is not always clear, which is one reason
why the topic is so sensitive. One important factor, as so often, is power
relations. For some, any transfer that takes place in a context of unequal
power relations is appropriation, which transforms most transfers into
appropriation, as power relations are rarely precisely equal, even (for
example) between Japan and the United States today.16 More importantly,
cultural transfer may not just take place in the context of unequal power
relations but may actually reinforce the dominance of one group over
another, for example when a school system replaces the language of the
conquered with the language of the conqueror. This is what Richard
A. Rogers would call “cultural dominance,”17 and it is immediately obvi-
ous what the problem is: the less powerful group loses something that is
central to its identity. It is also immediately obvious what the problem is
with another classic form of cultural transfer, when objects that are impor-
tant to the identity of less powerful groups are whisked across the world
8 M. SEDGWICK AND F. PIRAINO
Conclusion
We have seen, then, how religious identity boundaries have been blurred,
crossed, and sometimes reinforced. Boundaries were blurred in premod-
ern Jewish, Christian, and Sufi mystical poetry, where love was used in
very similar ways as a rhetorical tool for the mediation of theological ideals
and principles. Boundaries were crossed with relatively little modification
when mystical themes were transferred from Sufi to Jewish mystical poetry
in seventeenth-century Yemen, and with more modification when names
and other formulas were translated from one language to another within
the Solomonic corpus in the fifteenth century and when Jewish magical
1 INTRODUCTION 15
Notes
1. Rudolph Otto, West-östliche Mystik: Vergleich und Unterscheidung zur
Wesensdeutung (Gotha: Leopold Klotz, 1926); Toshihiko Izutsu, Sufism
and Taoism: A Comparative Study of Key Philosophical Concepts (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1984).
2. Hans Thomas Hakl, Eranos: An Alternative Intellectual History of the
Twentieth Century (Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2012);
Steven M Wasserstrom, Religion after Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea
Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2001).
3. Wouter J Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in
Western Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
4. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human
Nature: Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered at
Edinburgh in 1901–1902 (London: Longmans Green and Co., 1902).
5. Sidney Griffith, “Sharing the Faith of Abraham: The ‘Credo’ of Louis
Massignon,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 8, no. 2 (1997):
193–210; Manoël Pénicaud, Louis Massignon: Le “Catholique Musulman”
(Paris: Bayard, 2019).
6. Antoine Faivre, Accès de l’ésotérisme occidental (Paris: Gallimard, 1986)
7. Julian Strube, “Occultist Identity Formations Between Theosophy and
Socialism in fin-de-siècle France,” Numen 64 (2017): 568–95.
8. Marco Pasi, “Oriental Kabbalah and the Parting of East and West in the
Early Theosophical Society,” in Kabbalah and Modernity: Interpretations,
Transformations, Adaptations, edited by Boaz Huss, Marco Pasi, and
Kocku von Stuckrad (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 151–66; Kennet Granholm,
“Locating the West: Problematizing the Western in Western Esotericism
and Occultism,” in Occultism in Global Perspectives, edited by Henrik
Bogden and Gordan Djurdjevic (London: Acumen Publishing, 2013),
17–36; Egil Asprem, “Beyond the West: Towards a New Comparativism in
the Study of Esotericism,” Correspondences 2, no. 1 (2014): 3–33.
9. In Russia, the Assotsiatsiya Issledovateley Ezoterizma i Mistitsizm, and in
South America, the Centro de Estudios sobre el Esoterismo Occidental de
la Unión de Naciones Suramericanas.
10. Kocku von Stuckrad, “Western Esotericism: Towards an Integrative Model
of Interpretation,” Religion 35, no. 2 (2005): 78–97; Wouter J. Hanegraaff,
“Esotericism,” in Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, ed.
Hanegraaff et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2006): 336–40; Nicholas Goodrick-
Clarke, The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Michael Bergunder, “What is
Esotericism? Cultural Studies Approaches and the Problems of Definition
in Religious Studies,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 22
(2010): 9–36.
1 INTRODUCTION 17
11. Moshe Sluhovsky, Believe Not Every Spirit: Possession, Mysticism, &
Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2008). The publication is still delayed of Annette Wilke, ed.,
Constructions of Mysticism as a Universal: Roots and Interactions Across
Borders (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz), but this book will make an important
contribution. See also Eric Leigh Schmidt, “The Making of Modern
Mysticism,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 71 (2003):
273–302. Two classic studies are Michel de Certeau, “Mysticism,”
Diacritics 22 (1992): 11–25, and Louis Bouyer, “Mysticism: An Essay on
the History of the Word,” in Understanding Mysticism, ed. Richard Woods
(New York: Doubleday, 1980), 42–55.
12. Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York: Schocken,
1971), 203–27; Scholem, Kabbalah (Philadelphia: JPSA, 1974), 174–76;
Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1988), 35–58.
13. Gilya G. Schmidt, “‘Cleaving to God’ through the Ages: An Historical
Analysis of the Jewish Concept of ‘Devekut,’” Mystics Quarterly 21, no. 4
(1995): 103–20.
14. James, The Varieties of Religious Experience; Henri Bergson, Les Deux
Sources de La Morale et de La Religion (Flammarion, 2012).
15. Henrik Bogdan and Gordan Djurdjevic, Introduction, Occultism in a Global
Perspective, ed. Bogdan and Djurdjevic (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014), 1.
16. Richard A. Rogers, “From Cultural Exchange to Transculturation: A
Review and Reconceptualization of Cultural Appropriation,”
Communication Theory 16 (2006): 478–79.
17. Rogers, “From Cultural Exchange to Transculturation,” 480–81.
18. Erich Hatala Matthes, “Cultural Appropriation Without Cultural
Essentialism?” Social Theory and Practice 42, no. 2 (2016): 343–44.
19. Rogers, “From Cultural Exchange to Transculturation,” 486–87.
20. Wouter Hanegraaff, Western Esotericism: A Guide for the Perplexed
(London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 15.
21. Liana Saif, “What is Islamic Esotericism?” Correspondences 7, no. 1 (2019):
5; Saif, The Arabic Influences on Early Modern Occult Philosophy
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
22. Mark Sedgwick, “Islamic and Western Esotericism,” Correspondences 7,
no. 1 (2019): 295; Francesco Piraino, “Esotericisation and
De-Esotericisation of Sufism: The Aḥmadiyya-Idrı̄siyya Shādhiliyya in
Italy,” Correspondances 7, no. 1 (2019): 239–76.
23. Saif, “What is Islamic Esotericism?” 12.
24. Kocku von Stuckrad, Western Esoterisicm: A Brief History of Secret
Knowledge (London: Equinox, 2005).
25. Hugh Urban, “Elitism and Esotericism: Strategies of Secrecy and Power in
South Indian Tantra and French Freemasonry,” Numen 44, no. 1
(1997): 1–38.
PART I
Premodern Transfers
CHAPTER 2
Andrea Gondos
Over the past several decades, the study of emotion has become an impor-
tant area of scholarly inquiry in the humanities, the social sciences, and the
life sciences, spanning such diverse fields of research as anthropology, soci-
ology, history, political science, religion, literature, psychology, brain sci-
ences, and biology. As far back as the ancient Greek philosophers, we find
that Aristotle (385–323 B.C.) devotes significant discussions in his
A. Gondos (*)
Free University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Rhetoric to pathê tês psychês or affections of the soul (emotions). His inter-
est in the phenomenon of emotions is to highlight ways in which the
rhetorician can affect and manipulate the passions of the audience. Even
today, his acute observations regarding basic emotional states such as
anger, envy, shame, and pity have remained relevant.1
Empiricist philosophers such as John Locke (1632–1704) and David
Hume (1711–1776) tended to conflate emotions with external sensations
and emphasize that “since emotions arise from thoughts and perceptions,
they immediately move their subjects to actions.”2 William James
(1842–1910), by contrast, argued that emotions are generated by changes
in the body, are epiphenomenal, but do not cause any action. Sigmund
Freud (1856–1939) introduced several novel conceptualizations of emo-
tions modifying James’s position by stating that emotions indeed can con-
stitute causes that lead to actions; emotions are not identical with feelings
but get articulated by them; and finally, that feelings are not merely bodily
processes but are inherently capable of expressing the emotional states
associated with them.3 While psychoanalysts and philosophers have grap-
pled with and succeeded in offering useful theoretical models with which
to describe and analyze emotions, in areas of religion, religious thought,
and experience, the role of emotions is only now beginning to receive
sustained attention. With this chapter, I wish to contribute to the study of
the role of emotions in religion and more specifically as refracted through
the lens of mystical texts in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
My main argument rests on the premise that language deployed in mys-
tical texts provides a unique tool for deconstructing how emotions func-
tion as critical elements of the rhetoric aimed at producing affected states
of heightened spiritual awareness in readers. By focusing on the concept of
love drawn from select mystical sources in the three monotheistic tradi-
tions, I wish to examine embodied representations of love, deploying
sources that depict the body as the locus and center of transformation for
the attainment of mystical fulfillment. To be sure, I wish to challenge the
paradigm of Martha Nussbaum, who invokes Proust’s definition of emo-
tion as “geological upheavals of thought,”4 seeing them fundamentally as
derivatives of cognitive processes. Instead, my analysis is informed by the
conclusions of William James and James Hillman who regard emotions, at
their core, as a subterranean energy fields that connect in ways that are
subliminal and unbound by rational discourse, control, or reasoning.5
Thus, while theorists of emotions are engaged primarily in defining, ana-
lyzing, and describing emotions, mystical writers aim to also rouse feelings
both in themselves and in their audience.6 As Ronald de Sousa incisively
2 SEEKERS OF LOVE 23
God demands totality and complete devotion including the physical, the
cognitive, the psychological, and the spiritual aspects of the human being.11
Embodiment, the deployment of the body as a vessel for closeness to and
unification with God, in the mystical texts examined here intensifies the
mystical experience and renders it more complete.
Anders Nygren’s monumental work, Agape and Eros,12 developed a
definition of love, informed by Christological ideals and values, as consti-
tuted of binary forces that were fundamentally irreconcilable, one arising
from the flesh, “vulgar eros,” and another, detached from physicality and
animated by the spirit, “agape.”13 By locating eros in the human-centered
orientation of the Hellenic world while associating agape with a divine-
centered Christian theology, Nygren created an arbitrary stratification
between contrasting forms of love—one debased, arising from matter, and
another sublime, deriving from the spirit—that were epistemologically
mutually exclusive. This formulation of love forestalls the possibility of
exposing a more nuanced dialectic of human–divine and interhuman rela-
tionality.14 Furthermore, the sources discussed in this chapter reveal that
for many Jewish, Christian, and Sufi mystics the relationship between the
body and the soul or heart was much more imbricated, their boundaries
enmeshed, to the extent that any discussion of love involves in more com-
plicated and subtle ways the participation of various aspects of a human
being. These texts also expose a view that assigns high religious value to
the darker registers of human emotions, love through violence, pain, and
self-destruction. Particularly in Sufi conceptualizations, the divine can
only be approached through heating the fire of love in the follower’s heart.
As the heart dissolves in the flames of passion, it reunites with the finer
substance of divine light.
In this chapter, the concept of love will form the main pivot of analysis
and will engage related phenomena of desire, rapture, and physical expres-
sions of attachment (kiss), paying close attention to poetics or language
through which affection becomes articulated. I am particularly interested
in embodied and transgressive forms of love where carnal love functions
not merely as a vehicle abetting religious transformation but as the locus
of emerging possibilities for uniting with the divine. I argue further that
by interrogating the narrative elements of religious texts we are able to
gain a better understanding of how religious texts affect and shape emo-
tive states and how the noncognitive dimensions of the inscribed word
inspire pietism in and mystical ideals in various religious traditions.
2 SEEKERS OF LOVE 25
We have received a tradition that Malkuth also has three powers that look
like three pillars to carry her work and keep her servants about while turning
her throne in dread, trembling, and silence [moving] from one emanation
to the next all the way to the Beloved [Tiferet], who kisses and caresses her
with the mediation of Yesod, the foundation of the world. And from there,
forces of the Sefirot Hesed and Gevurah receive her in great, splendid, and
glorious awe, trembling, and silence. Hesed and Gevurah, the concealed
[upper] Sefirot receive her and from them the likeness of mighty rivers of
water burst forth that appear like sparks of fire, “the flames of God (Yah).”
And Malkuth is ensconced and hidden from all emanation inside them until
the Ruler of Binah arrives with its retinue and receives her in awe, trembling,
and silence, and raises her until the throne reaches the throne of glory asso-
ciated with repentance. From there its great forces appear presided over by
the Ruler of Hokhmah, who reigns over all of them. Then the chair is placed
in the burning sweat and great trembling that shake the bosom of primor-
dial Hokhmah and there she is received with the song, “come my bride,” and
the Sefirah of Hokhmah delights in her as a father delights in his daughter,
the unique one among the sons.16
The reason why David was crying more than Jonathan is that David, the
sweet singer of Israel, represents the mystery of the Shekhinah in exile. Both
David and Jonathan are symbolic representations of the love between the
Holy One and the Shekhinah, torn apart by their separation due to her exile.21
the breaths of both mingle, and as a result the spirits (ruach) of both
cleave together forming one.”29
In the Zohar, the kiss is often given by the mouth producing a unique
metaphysical dynamic in which love based on passionate attachment gets
expressed as spirit (ruach) cleaving to spirit (ruach):
When one kisses another, the breaths of both mingle, and as a result, the
spirits of both cleave together forming one. Their love therefore is one love.
The spiritual bond of love uniting the Holy One and His Shekhinah is lik-
ened to the merging of breaths which comes about in a human kiss of love,
which... produces four “spirits.”30
The bond that is formed between two human beings through the
agency of the physical act of kissing is transfigured into a theurgical act
that unifies the diverse manifestations of the divine being creating a strong
throne and protective structure for the Shekhinah’s unification with the
Holy One, the female and male aspects of the divinity. From a psychologi-
cal perspective, the breaths of the lovers that co-mingle multiply in the act
of kissing intensifying both desire and attachment: “the man has now two
breaths: his own, as well as that of his beloved. In the same way, the woman
also has two breaths, her own and his together. Their kiss has brought
about a merging of four breaths, and in the spiritual realm, these four
breaths correspond to the four spirits that the Zohar expounds.”31 To be
sure, the four breaths generated by the kiss at the physical level are trans-
figured into four spirits in the divine world that act in unison to infuse all
levels of existence—both the bodily and the non-material—with love and
joy. At the same time, they are also effective agents against negative emo-
tional states—depression, sadness, and anger—that in the theosophic sys-
tem of Kabbalah serve as vehicles for the forces of the demonic side, the
sitra ahra, that relentlessly strives to lure the created world away from
holiness and toward its own realm. In the divine pleroma, the four breaths
unify all the Sefirot or divine emanations into a strong bond creating a
throne for the Shekhinah where she can be unified with her consort with-
out the distraction and disruption of the husks (kelipot) or forces of evil.32
2 SEEKERS OF LOVE 29
and the ambiguous movement back and forth between the signifier and
the signified acts as a kind of hypnotic dance between the lover and the
beloved and conjures the mood of intense intimacy with the divine. In this
passage the word “love” becomes a rhetorical invocation to initiate the
mantric recitation that invites the partners into a trance-like meditative
state of mutual absorption and ecstasy: “O love, were I love, and with
love, love you, love, O love, for love, give that love which love may know
wholly as love.”37
In the Christian mystical poetics of the sixteenth-century Spanish mys-
tic, Teresa of Avila (1515–1582), we see the deployment of images of
theoeroticism through the evocation of the bodily senses that are over-
powered by the calling of the Divine for his beloved, the human soul:
I am very anxious sisters to make you understand this operation of love but
I know not how; for it seems a contradiction that the Beloved (though not
seen) should let the soul clearly perceive he is in her; and He seems to call
her by a sign so certain that it cannot be doubted, and with a whistle so
penetrating that she cannot help hearing it; for it seems that when the
Spouse thus speaks to her she is in the Seventh Mansion; and all the people
who are in the other mansions, viz. the senses, the imagination, and the
faculties dare not stir.38
This (whistle) operates so powerfully in the soul that she even consumes
herself with longing, yet knows not what to ask, because she is strongly
persuaded that her God is with her.40
At the next stage of the hieros gamos that ensues between the lover and
beloved, desire becomes more internalized as it undergoes transmutation
into suffering and pain that paradoxically reinvigorates and regenerates
32 A. GONDOS
She suffers and thus this pain pierces even into her very bowels, and that
when He who wounds her draws forth the dart, he seems therewith to tear
them away [the bowels], so powerful are the sentiments of love....
If a small spark should fly out from a pan of live coals (for such is my
God), and fall upon a soul in such a way as to make her feel the fire enkin-
dled, and yet be not sufficient to consume her, she continues in the pain
which is so delightful when the sparks touch her they cause this operation.41
FOOTNOTES:
Begharmi Vocabulary, taken from the mouth of the late Sultan’s son,
now a slave of the Sheikh of Bornou.
One, Keddy
Two, Sub
Three, Mattāh
Four, Soh
Five, Mee
Six, Meeka
Seven, Chilly
Eight, Marta
Nine, Doso
Ten, Dokemy
Eleven, Dokemy kar keddy
Twelve, Dokemy kar sub
Thirteen, Dokemy kar muttāh
Fourteen, Dokemy kar soh
Twenty, Doke sub
Twenty-one, Doke sub kar keddy
Twenty-two, Doke sub kar sub
Thirty, Doke muttah
Thirty-one, Doke muttah
Forty, Doke soh
Forty-one, Doke soh kar keddy
Fifty, Doke mee
Fifty-one, Doke mee kar keddy
Sixty, Doke muka
Sixty-one, Doke muka kar keddy
Seventy, Doke killy
Seventy-one, Doke killy kar keddy
Eighty, Doke marta
Ninety, Doke doso
One hundred, Arrou
One hundred and one, Arrou se keddy
Two hundred, Arrou sub
One thousand, Dooboo
Two thousand, Dooboo sub
Eyes, Kammo
Leaf of a plant, Kammo
Head, Geujo
Mouth, Tara
Door of a room, Tara be
Breast, Kājā
Sun, Kājā
Nose, Amo
Belly, Ngala
Thighs, Brinjee
Knees, Kejee
Legs, Kersha
Feet, Njanja
Flesh, Nja debe
Ox, Mungho
Flesh of an ox, Nja mungho
Sheep, Batta
Goat, Angha
Water, Mane
Flour, Jumo
Bread, Tabaka
No kinds of fruit known,
all plants different.
Onions, (Good, great.) Bussara
Honey, (Quantities Tejee,
eaten.)
Elephant, Keejee
Horse, Soudah
Mule, El Feddrah
Ass, (plenty), Krow
Dog, (many), Besee
Lion, (plenty), Tobio
Lioness, Tobiony
Leopard, Nugo
Gazelle, Ngria
Rabbit, Omo
Fowls, Kenja
Cock, Kla
Father, Babma
Mother, Konuma
Brother, Monnjema
Sister, Monnjum
Son, Wonma
Daughter, Wonum
Woman, Née
Man, Gaba
Wife, Neema
Favorite, Mandama
Noon, Dooro
Night, Njow
Sleep, Tonangy
Awake, Ingra
I am hungry, Bow
I am thirsty, Mane mukago
My friend, Kaffama
Your friend, Kaffaily
Bring supper, Du gesa
Come here, Da lullo
Go away, Abey
Hot, Kaisungoh
Cold, Kooloo
Fat, Booboo
Too hot, Kaigocho
Very cold, Koolo ognio
Wind, Leélee
Rain falls, Manet kudy
Boat, large, Toko
Small boat, Toko bassa
River, Bah
Great river, Bah nungolo
Near, Bony
Distant, Aouo
Very distant, Aouo killa hudder
Bad, Kussu
I have something, Congassa saikilly
I have nothing, Ngasskoto semki
Good man, Kab
Bad man, Kab-kussu
Young, N’bussa
Old, Kaddah
Handsome woman, Nein
Ugly woman, Nein kussu
Take that, Dibena magi
Merchant, Maly ocho
Slave, Baly
Woman slave, B’llow
White man, Kab n’jaffy
Slaves, Bakee
White woman, Nee njaffy
I will not, Gaily
To kill, Tolly qua
My house, Bema
Your house, Beay
To wound, Noyalee
Wheat, Gkal kumba
Gussub, Tenghoo
Dates, Depenow
Saddle, Serdee
Fire, Peddoo
Wood, Cheree
Bring some wood quick, Den cheree, keske,
keske
I am ill, Mungaly
Are you ill? Gegony
Do you wish physic? Talem kourgoonoo
Come with me, Dejab kow
I am your friend, Ma kafai
I am your servant, Ma manai
Always, Njan
All, Petta
After, Belti
Before, Dencha
Mid-day, Kaisung-oo
Gafooly, Wah
Meloheiœ, Gongonbelto
Bridle, Al jemmo
Halter, Kabboomoo
Grass straw, Moo
Teeth, Nganah
No. XIX.
One, Mtaque
Two, Sardah
Three, Kighah
Four, Fuddah
Five, Elibah
Six, N’quaha
Seven, Vouyah
Eight, Teesah
Nine, Musselman
Ten, Klaou
Twenty, Kulboa, kulla boa
Thirty, Kullo kegah
Forty, Kullo fuddah
Fifty, Kullo elibah
Sixty, Kullo N’quaha
Seventy, Kullo Vouga
Eighty, Kullo Teesa
Ninety, Kullo Musselman
One hundred, Drimka
Two hundred, Dibboo
Water, Yowah
Bring water, Sensa yowah
Meat, Souah
Gussub, Mudjuga
Man, Geela
Woman, Mug’sa
Girl, Gala
Handsome girl, Shugra
Ugly girl, Mowgwa
Good man, Zeeriah
Mother, Mama
Father, Dada
Brother, Malay
Sister, Koudray
Mountains, Ouvra
River, Gouah
Well, Souah
Spring, Pooshay
Great, Yeakay
Little, Chequah
Great mountains, Ouvre yeakay
Little sister, Koudray Chequah
Meal, breakfast, or Dafah
supper,
To eat, Zuzie
Bring to eat, Senga dafah
I will not, Wyanga
Sultan, Tsuksa
I am tired, Yaluffa luffa
Good bye, N’gea dha
Day, Vechea
Night, Véggea
I must go, Amindala
Come here, Souah sokena
My wife, Muksanga
Your wife, Muksarwa
Good road, Oungala shrugra
Bad road, Oungala mangoua
Rice, Acheiah
Butter, Wyay
Honey, Ammah
Eyes, Echey
Nose, Ukteray
Mouth, Okay
Ears, Shimmah
Head, Erey
Female slave, Quatana
Male slave, Affee
Handsome slave, Quatana mugray
Grass, Massah
My country, Uksarwa
Your country, Uksangra
I wish to sleep, Wenwyah yeksentia sah
I am your friend, Tukkatarwa
Horse, Bilsah
Ox, Tsah
Tiger-cat, Oobellah
Tiger’s skin, Ogzo oobellah
Ass, Anzouwah
Sheep, Keoay
Rich man, Tallowah
Poor man, Tszuah
No. XX.
Timbuctoo Vocabulary.
Come, Kaa
Go, Koey
Quickly, Tumba
Give me to eat, Kata mung-ha
Give me to drink, Katahary mungenee
I am thirsty, Hamai egowei
I, or me, Ei
You, Ee
Him, Wo
They, Oo
Good, Abooree
Bad, Affootoo
Man, Harree
Woman, Weey
Girl, Izowy
Boy, Ezahary
Handsome woman, Weey tienta
Bad man, Harree footoo
Two eyes, Moh inka
Mouth, Mey
Beard, Kabi
Head, Bong-o
Horse, Barree
Camel, Yeo
Ass, Furka
Dog, Hanshe
Sheep, Fagee
An ox, Hou foh
Oxen, Hou bobo
Meat, Hum
Sweet milk, Wah gana
Sour milk, Wah coutoo
Sultan, Gabee coin
Bread, Takoola
River, Issa
Boat, Hee
House, Hoo
Slave, Bunneea
Female slave, Kong-o
Fire, Jarree
Night, Keegee
Day, Noony
Wood, Togoolee
Elephant, Turcondu
Water, Hary
Blood, Koorie
Knife, Hoorie
Gold, Oorah
Silver, N’zurfa
Turban, Tabbai
Tobe, Tilleby-kai
Breeches, Seeby
Sandals, Tarno
Cap, Foolah
Clouds, Beenee
Earth, Gunda
Mountain, Foudee
Well, Bungo
A ghrazzie, Wongo
Spear, Yagy
Mat, Tangaree
The truth, Keemy
That man lies, Wahareeagoothangany
Eat, Ngha
Foot, Kay
Hand, Kambah
One, Affoo
Two, Nahinka
Three, Nahinza
Four, Attakee
Five, Aggoo
Six, Iddoo
Seven, Ea
Eight, Yaha
Nine, Yugga
Ten, Auwy
Eleven, Auwy kindofoo
Twelve, Auwy kindoohinka
Thirteen, Auwy kindohinza
Fourteen, Auwy kindotakee
Fifteen, Auwy kindaggoo
Sixteen, Auwy kindo iddoo
Seventeen, Auwy kindoea
Eighteen, Auwy kindo yaha
Nineteen, Auwy kindoyugga
Twenty, Warunka
Twenty-one, Warunka kindofoo
Thirty, Warunza
Thirty-one, Warunza kindofoo
Forty, Waytakkee
Forty-one, Waytakkee kindofoo
Fifty, Wayaggoo
Fifty-one, Wayaggoo kindofoo
ZOOLOGY.
No. XXI.
FENNECUS CERDO.
Published Feb. 1826, by John Murray, London.
After Bruce left Algiers, he met with two other Fennecs, one of
which had been brought by the caravan of Fezzan to the Island of
Gerba, from whence it was carried to Tunis, where Bruce saw it; the
other he bought at Sennaar, but where it came from he knew not;
though it seems probable that it was a native of the date villages in
the desert of Selima. These animals exactly resembled the one first
seen at Algiers, and were known by the name of Fennec, and by no
other.
The favourite food of Bruce’s Fennec was dates, or any sweet
fruit; but it was also very fond of eggs: when hungry it would eat
bread, especially with honey or sugar. His attention was immediately
attracted if a bird flew near him, and he would watch it with an
eagerness that could hardly be diverted from its object; but he was
dreadfully afraid of a cat, and endeavoured to hide himself the