07.02.10
More on Shah and proto-sufism
Comment sequence on Issues of equality
Jim Buck said,
07.02.10 at 5:36 am
Interesting titbit about Luther:‘Martin Luther used the Rose, Cross and Ring (Sufic halka group) in his emblem. This must have been supplied to him by an initiate Sufi.’ (Idries Shah: The Sufis 1982 edition; p 390)
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nemo said,07.02.10 at 8:16 am
Shah made a lot of statements like that, and I find them dubious.
In broad strokes he has a point, one that conventional scholarship has not examined properly. For instance, the influence of Moslem culture, and its Sufis, via the Provencal poets, et al, injects a strain into developing European cultures. We see it in Chaucer. But Shah’s almost chauvinistic sufism has falsified the claim, and we would have to start from scratch trying to understand the issue.
Meanwhile, the sufis have monopoly on these issues. They are just as much the influenced (by unknown sources) as the influencers.
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Jim Buck said,07.02.10 at 8:40 am
I find it interesting that some accuse Shah of “chauvinistic sufism”; and others accuse him of: producing a secularised travesty stripped of all trace of Islam.
I found interesting corroboration of Shah’s claim, that “sufism” predated the rise of historic Islam, in a book by a Jewish scholar. The book is The Essene Oddysey: http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/rev_schonfield_essene.htm
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Jim Buck said,07.02.10 at 10:22 am
‘They are just as much the influenced (by unknown sources) as the influencers.’
Reminds me of Engels’ dictum (much quoted by Zizek):
The secrets of the Egyptians were also secrets for the Egyptians.
Permutations and combinations of ‘teachings’ make the subject look arcane, but the core is always the same.
Jesus is recognizable already as a brand of the ‘sufi’ type, as sufis have long claimed. We can’t quite put our finger on anything. But the world of Egypt leaves a lot of obscure hints, and the world of India is already ancient long before the Axial Age