Observations placeholder

Shaikh Ahmad Ahsa’i – Kitab Sharh al-Ziyara [translated by  Henry Corbin and Nancy Pearson]

This first sounding of Seraphiel’s trumpet is the one referred to as the fiery blast; it is an intake of breath and draws up the spirits in order to reabsorb them in Seraphiel’s Trumpet.  Each I-spirit goes back into its own matrix, symbolically represented as one of the holes perforated in the length of the trumpet; this is the place from which it was originally extracted, the place from which it came out in order to go down toward the bodies at the time of the preceding existence.  The matrix itself comprises six dwellings or habitations; into the first of these the Image or archetypal form of the I-spirit is breathed; its subtle consubstantial matter into the second; into the third, its luminous nature corresponding to the igneous Element; into the fourth, its soul corresponding to the fluid Element; into the fifth, its own pneuma, corresponding to the aerial Element; into the sixth, its consubstantial intellect................

When the divine will intends to renew Creation and to cause the seeds from the preceding existence to germinate, Seraphiel is commanded to blow into the Trumpet the breath of the great Awakening.  As opposed to the ‘blazing sound’, this is a propulsive breath.  Entering the sixth dwelling, it propels the intellect toward the pneuma in the fifth dwelling; next it propels intellect and pneuma together toward the soul in the fourth dwelling; then it propels all three together, intellect, pneuma and soul, towards the luminous nature of the third dwelling; then it propels all four together towards the subtle consubstantial matter in the second dwelling; finally it propels all five toward the Image or archetypal Form in the first dwelling.  Then the I-spirit finds again its composition and structure, its consciousness and capacity to feel......

The human being has descended from the suprasensory world from those archetypes or treasuries to which the following verse of the Book refers ‘Nothing exists but that its treasury is in our hands (15:21)’.  Thus the human being descends into this world, the sojourn of effort and struggle, and amasses something of his own in view of the Futurum Resurrection.  But as he descends from step to step, passing gradually from one plane of being to another in the course of his descent, at each step he acquires a certain mixture with the accidents corresponding to the step or plane..............

Because it [Higher Spirit] was sent down from the six Treasuries’, it returns to them [on death], its own cessation leads to their separation ; its archetypal Image returns to the Treasury from which it descended.  In the same way, its materia prima, its nature, its soul, its pneuma, its intellect, return each to the Treasury from which respectively they descended.  These are the Treasuries alluded to, as we said, in the verse in the Qur’an ‘Nothing exists but that its Treasury is in our Hands (15:21)’. 

Those are the Treasuries which in each case form a whole, which is the respective matrix of each I-Spirit, symbolically designated as the orifice or the hole which corresponds to that spirit on Seraphiel’s Trumpet