Al Junun Funun: Toward an Islamic

Transpersonal Psychotherapy.

Department of Anthropology,
University College London.

MSc Medical Anthropology

Dissertation.

Jamie Wood BSc.

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 ‫ﺑِ ْﺴ ِﻢ اﻟﻠّ ِﻪ اﻟ ﱠﺮ ْﺣﻤـَ ِﻦ اﻟ ﱠﺮِﺣ ِﻴﻢ‬

ِ ‫ﺎﻃ‬
‫ﲔ‬ ِ ‫ﻚ ِﻣﻦ َﳘﺰ‬
ِ ‫ات اﻟﺸﱠﻴ‬ ِ
َ ََ ْ َ ‫ب أَﻋُﻮذُ ﺑ‬
‫َوﻗُﻞ ﱠر ﱢ‬
Al-Junun Funun: Toward an Islamic
Transpersonal Psychotherapy.
A Medical Anthropological Exploration.

Abstract: In this paper we will consider the concept of mental illness from a historic Islamic
perspective. We will look at culturally specific historic concepts surrounding madness, and
how cultural diffusion affected its understanding and treatment. Continuing we will look at
the political dynamic currently existing in Islamic thought. We will reflect on whether it
manifests between contemporary orthodox Islam, and the modern paradigm of
neuropsychiatry and if so to what extent, and whether this was also true in the history of
medicine in an Islamic context; does this add to a potential dichotomy between Islam and
the current biomedical model as signifiers of the west and modernity? Revisiting what may
be categorised as the medieval model of Islamic psychiatry, and thus extant folk concepts of
illness and treatment, we will ponder whether it could provide any practical ontological
assistance to therapeutic treatment in the context of Muslim patients alongside the modern
regime of medication within neuropsychiatry. Symbols from the broad Abrahamic traditions
will be brought together in an Islamic context in an attempt to provide a semiotic synthesis
which could be used to place Muslims within a relevant ontological and cosmological
framework, within which fourth force psychotherapy could operate. In support of the
proposed symbolic cosmological and ontological framework, ethnographic interview from a
single informant and ethnographic materials concerning the Songhay of Niger will be
reviewed.

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 Acknowledgements.
Firstly the researcher wishes to thank his informant, with whom he experienced some
difficulties. These were mostly to do with their shared predicament of finding themselves
within the forensic system and the inescapable confinement of a prison cell, and the writer
would like to think nothing to do with the research subject.

The writer would first like to thank the members of staff at the department of anthropology
at UCL, both academic and professional. In particular the author wishes to thank Prof.
Littlewood for highlighting the student’s interests in psychiatry and Islam, and suggesting
their synthesis as a suitable area for dissertation research, which has resulted in this work;
he apologises if it is not precisely as the Professor envisaged. He would also like to thank
Professor Napier for the inspiration resulting from his fluency of delivered material during
the core medical anthropology module, the readings, and his irreverence in his book ‘The
Righting of Passage’ which played a considerable part in the writer gaining perspective on
ivory towers and surviving the academic year. In addition he would like to thanks Dr.
Reynolds for his guidance in the applied studies module, that has and will continue to
inform the students research, as well as Dr. Calabrese who read an early and more messy
(but only slightly) draught of this paper.

The writer would like to thanks Diana Goforth for her assistance and constant friendliness in
execution of her role as postgraduate coordinator, as well the other members of the
professional staff across the college and within the department.

The researcher wishes to thank Elizabeth Hebert, an anthropology graduate of the

University of Colorado at Boulder, who proof read the paper making sure the writer’s
wandering mind did not manifest too distinctly upon the written page.

Finally the writer would like to thank his wife and children for constant loyalty and support
in what turned out to be chaotic times.

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 Table of Contents

Title Page ......................................................................................... i

Semiotic Synthesis ...................................................................... ii
Abstract .......................................................................................... iii
Acknowledgements ................................................................... iv
Table of Contents ........................................................................ v
1. Introduction
1.1 Al Junun Funun .......................................................................... 1

2. Contextual Framework
2.1 Introduction ............................................................................... 5
2.2 Historical Context
2.2.1 Humoral Medicine............................................................... 6
2.2.2 Cultural Diffusion in Islamic Sciences. ............................... 10
2.2.3 Islamic Medieval Psychiatry .............................................. 13
2.3 Political Context
2.3.1 Islam and Modernity ......................................................... 17
2.3.2 …Should be Unseen and Unheard ..................................... 19
2.3.3 Islam and Orthodoxy ......................................................... 22
2.4 Neuropsychiatric Critique
2.4.1 Contra Neuropsychiatry. ................................................... 26
2.4.2 Neuropsychiatry as Social Contingency and Mental Illness
as Deviancy ................................................................................ 30
2.5 Conclusion ................................................................................ 35

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3. Towards an Islamic Transpersonal Psychotherapy
3.1 Introduction ............................................................................. 37
3.2 Traditional Contemporary Treatment
3.2.1 Islamic Cures, Islamic Healing ........................................... 38
3.2.2 The ‘Spirit Idiom’ ............................................................... 43
3.3 Transpersonal Perspectives
3.3.1 “May the [fourth] force be with you” ............................... 48
3.3.2 Islam as Transpersonal ...................................................... 52
3.4 Synthetic Semiotic Framework
3.4.1 “Modification through Fixation” ....................................... 59
3.4.2 Sign and Symbol ................................................................ 63
3.4.3 Innovation ......................................................................... 71
3.4.4 The Tree of Life ................................................................. 75
3.5 Conclusion: Beyond the Veils ................................................... 80
4. Ethnographic Support for the Proposition
4.1 Introduction ............................................................................. 88
4.2 Ethnographic Support
4.2.1 Research Methodology ..................................................... 89
4.2.2 Informant Interview .......................................................... 94
4.2.3 Songhay Traditions? ........................................................ 103
4.3 Conclusion .............................................................................. 112
5. Conclusions and Recommendations .......................... 114

References ................................................................................. 117

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 Chapter 1
Introduction.

“A beginning is a very delicate time”

Dune, 1984.

1.1 Al Junun Funun.

This paper is an exploration of the phenomena of madness in an Islamic context, and

specifically it looks at the diversity of treatments for such conditions as well as various

understandings of their causation, be they biomedical, social, religious and/or ‘spiritual’. The

writer proposes a cosmography which he feels would serve a therapist well in framing the

cultural understandings of madness, as well as broader cosmological, ontological, and

existential considerations concerning the nature of the created world. It departs with a

specific hypothesis; semiotics can frame a useful framework for the deployment of

psychotherapy. To this end the researcher feels it fulfils the criteria as hypothesis driven

research, although at this stage he has not yet devised a quantitative method to establish

correlation, the question of providing such a proof is raised in the text.

The first chapter sets out to consider the context within which Muslim patients

might find themselves, both within a native environment, but also as a result of the ‘glocal’

(Schäbler and Stenberg, 2004) effects at play in the early C21st, and emerging in the years

preceding this period. An account of what might be considered historic medicine, which

remains extant through the Muslim world, is deliberated as a potential complex bind that

might arise from external conflicts but also made manifest within an individual psyche, in as

much as these factors might pertain to a holistic approach to healing in an Islamic context.

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The extensive influences that have been brought to bear on Islam itself as well as the

practice of healing and cure are delineated, and are used as a basis to be expanded upon

concerning the writer’s proposed schema already graphically introduced. The actuality of

psychiatric practice within a medieval framework is touched upon, as indeed is the concept

of madness itself. The writer proceeds to examine political elements facing the macrocosm

of Islam, and by extension the microcosm of Muslims themselves; as perceived as existing

between Islam and modernity, or concerning matters of an occult and potentially heretical

nature, and thus as a dynamic between orthodoxy and designated alternative perspectives.

Finally a more conventional critique of biomedicine as manifest in the discipline of

neuropsychiatry is included, hopefully managing to avoid a style leading to accusations of

hyperbole which the writer has found himself accused of in discussion of the circumstances

of the psychiatric establishment.

Progressing chapter 2 develops the idea of psychotherapeutic treatment of those

insane, either temporarily or chronically, who are also categorised as Muslim. It looks to

Islamic ideas of curing and healing, as well as the ‘sprit idiom’ often found within Muslim

traditions, although often not being considered as Islamic themselves, more often as

syncretic echoes of an animist or pagan past. The development of fourth force psychology is

juxtaposed psychoanalysis as first force and also in contrast to the modern paradigm of

neuropsychiatry, with the recognition of Islam and associated worldviews as crucial factors

in the cognition of Muslim individuals, and thus within any treatment that might hope to

bring a party to improved and functional mental health. Having considered how the

transpersonal might pertain to Islam, Islam is then judged as transpersonal in and of itself.

The chapter is brought to a close by the bringing together of divers themes from the

extensive Abrahamic tradition, as synthesis rather than a new syncretism (Guénon. 2004). It

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looks at symbolism and attempts to bring contrasting, and some might say conflicting,

viewpoints together in the cosmography the writer has hypothetically proposed. The writer

recognises the implications of such an innovation, with a subtext of potential repercussions,

but moves on unashamedly to propose the use of the logocentric constructs of Adam as

representative of humankind, of the word made manifest, and both as signified by of the

tree of life.

Chapter 3 extends the dissertation beyond its planned dimension. The researcher

had planned for his work to be based around literature review for several reasons. Firstly on

attempting to conduct primary research with an Imam, his enquiries were in effect shot

down. Secondarily, access to Muslim informant with experience of mental illness could have

proved difficult to enact without the cooperation of relevant institutions; the writer would

have also consulted a control group had broad access to Muslim patients diagnosed with

conditions been achieved. Lastly the integrity of the data in a UK context might have been

influenced by precisely that factor; that said if the hypothesis was found have correlation

solely in a UK context this would itself have value, if only in a narrow nationally relevant

application. The pretext of a work based on secondary sources disappeared when the

researcher found himself with the confines of HM Prison Service, and was designated a cell

mate who was passing through the forensic psychiatric system. Not only did the informant

exhibit an interest in symbolism as explanatory of his experience, he began to delineate it

for the researcher with little prompt other than the shared experience of Islam. The

informant’s narrative lead the writer to reconsider and further research the Songhay of

Niger, who the researcher had been introduced to during early course readings for his

master’s course. With the informant being from Afghanistan, and the Songhay the more

westerly reaches of Islam, the writer was interested if there appeared anything constant,

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both within and between the heterogeneous cultures within Islam, but also reaching out

from humankind’s collective past and into the present; abstract thought manifest in

metaphysical symbol.

The writer feels that as his work has been extended, the ethnographic details go a

little way to support his hypothesis and its graphical representation, and as such stand as a

conclusion. There is of course the question how widely the framework might be relevant to

Muslims generally, and Muslim patients specifically, and the writer feels that such an

endeavour would require to be based in multiple locations and over extended periods of

time. It is certainly an enterprise which is beyond the remit of a master’s dissertation,

indeed even that of a more extended thesis. Then there is the issue of how such a work

might be employed in a clinical and thus applied setting, leading the writer to himself

consider training in psychotherapy to develop his understanding of the clinical reality of

practice.

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 Chapter 2
Contextual Considerations.

Bahlul, the wise fool happened to the meet the caliph Harun al-Rashid.
'Where are you coming from like this, Bahlul?' the ruler asked him. 'From
hell' was the prompt reply. 'What were you doing there?' Bahlul
explained, ' Fire was needed, Sire, so I thought of going to Hell to ask if
they could spare a little. But the fellow in charge there said, 'We have no
fire here.' Of course I asked him, ' How come? Isn’t Hell the place of fire?'
He answered, ' I tell you, there really is no fire down here. Everybody
brings his own fire with him when he comes.'
Fadiman and Frager, 1999, p.75

2.1 Introduction

This chapter will attempt to look at the factors that pertain to Muslims facing

experiences that may be delineated as having source within the psyche. It will consider the

tradition of psychiatry historically within Islam, as well as the divers influences upon Islam as

a multiethnic culture. A considerable review of humoural medicine is undertaken, as it later

forms the basis for the proposed transpersonal psychotherapy, as well as resonating with

the ethnographic interview conducted with an Afghani Muslim passing through the forensic

psychiatric system. The political situations and conflicts facing Muslims will be reflected

upon, both from the dominant western culture, be that of biomedicine or more widely, but

also presented by the internal dynamics within Islam itself. These factors will be analysed as

acting as psychological binds, possibly contributing to aetiology, potentially prohibitive in

the pursuit of healing of an individual. Lastly we will move on to more conventional critical

medical anthropological perspectives surrounding modern psychiatry, existential questions

on the nature of reality, deviancy and social control, as well as considering whether culture

and its reality are themselves constructions.

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2.2 Historical Context.

2.2.1 Humoral Medicine.

The historic background of medieval Islamic perspectives surrounding mental illness

seems to be firmly placed within what has been described as Galenic medicine and thus the

broad manifestation of humoral medicine existing cross culturally based around treatment

by opposites (Strathern and Stewart, 1999); inherent in this idea the concept of balance. As

a system of therapy Islamic medicine looked in part to the expansion of the system said to

be originally proposed by Hippocrates through Galen which developed the natural

philosophical concepts of the four cardinal humours of ‘blood, black bile, yellow bile, and

phlegm’ (Dols3, 1992, p.18) relating to ‘elements of nature, air, earth, fire and water’ (Al-

Issa3, 2000, p44) which were ‘developed by the philosopher Empedocles of

Agrigentum...who declared there were four “roots”’ (Strathern and Stewart, 1999, p.13).

While ‘the Hippocratic corpus was always highly esteemed in the Middle Ages, it was

overshadowed by Galen because of the extent and nature of his writings’ (Dols3, 1992, p.17)

although in regard to ‘mental disturbances...Galen did not discuss them systematically’

(Dols3, 1992, p.20). Galen believed that the psychological and/or emotional could affect a

change in the somatic which he expressed in terms of the balance of the humours (Schmidt,

2007). In what has been delineated as the Greek schema, ‘every part of nature possessed

such qualities in one degree or another’ (Dols1, 1984, p.16) with the humours correlated

with the axes of the solar year (marked by the cardinal signs of the zodiac within which the

solstices and equinoxes occur), phases of individuals’ lives, and people’s emotional

constitution (Brain, 1986).

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 Al-Majusi, a forerunner of Ibn Sina, in his ‘Royal Book’, Kitab Al Malaki, considers the

influence of psychological experience on health in his reflections upon the six non-naturals

(Glick et al., 2005), a basic idea of medieval Galenism, which included environmental,

psychological and neurochemical aetiology (Dols3, 1992). Al-Majusi’s treatments dealt with

the management of mental illness through complimentary nutrition comparable with

contemporary current alternative therapies as well as what might be considered early

Arabic pharmacology (Levey, 1973). While there can be no doubt on the significant role of

what is commonly referred to as Greek influence, wider influences such as India (Al-Issa3,

2000, p.45), Persia, and certainly not ignoring the role of Egypt (Dols1, 1984), must be

weighed when considering the cultural diffusion existing in the medieval medical model, but

also in the wider spheres of philosophy and sciences. As Hossein Nasr, professor of Islamic

studies at George Washington University, states in his introduction to Ibn Sina’s Al-Qanun,

‘Islamic civilisation was a lake into which flowed streams from many civilisations: Greek,

Roman, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Byzantine, Persian, Indian, and even Chinese’ (Ibn Sina,

1999, p.xxxix) which we will consider shortly. While it may be argued that the

‘predominance of the Greek tradition was largely due to Hellenized Christians, Jews, and

Persians’ (Dols1, 1984, p.3) in the Levant, the writer considers that Greek may have acted as

the lingua franca rather than a Hellenic cultural hegemony at all levels.

It is often put that the elemental schema had origin with Greek philosophy but the

proto-system is perhaps far older, as with the Hebrew kabbalistic system, which are both

thought to have Mesopotamic culture as an origin, specifically Assyrian (Parpola, 1993).

Mesopotamic society is thought to have had significant influence on Egypt in material

culture (Wenke, 1999), so it may not be unreasonable to extrapolate more philosophical

knowledge transfer also occurred. Jung in his last work ‘Man and his symbols’ (Jung, 1978)

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draws attention to what he believes is the immediate origin of the elemental creatures

(Eagle, Man, Bull, Lion), as represented in Ezekiel and Revelations and considered to

represent the fixed astrological signs

Fig.1, The elemental creatures as illustrated around

Christ, relief on Chartres cathedral, Jung, 1978, p.2.

Jung saw these Judeo-Christian symbols as having origin with an earlier system, finding their

way into the broader Abrahamic tradition by way of Egypt, specifically as sourced in the

Egyptian scheme as the four sons of Horus.

Fig.2, The four sons of Horus (c 1250 BC), ‘Animals and

groups of four are universal religious symbols’, Jung, 1978, p.5.

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 Abraham, as recounted in scripture, is thought to have travelled from Mesopotamian

Ur as far west as Egypt and this alone justifies, in the mind of the writer, sourcing of ideas

from within might be considered the broad Abrahamic traditions. It is not perhaps

coincidental that one of the main hubs of Greek medicine was the centre in post Ptolemaic

Egypt which came to be known as the Alexandrian school drawing on ‘the Alexandrian

canon of twelve Galenic works, which...existed before the sixth century A.D.’ and ‘from the

ninth century...the selection’ known as ‘Galen’s...“Sixteen Books”’ (Dols1, 1984, p.27). The

Greek medical system that emerged with the Islamic civilisation was largely transmitted via

the East Syrian Christian community as it was usually through the intermediary language of

Syriac that Galenic texts came to be translated into Arabic (Dols3, 1992). One might assume

that the Syrian and surrounding cultures acted as a reticule for numerous and varied

cultural traditions. The Galenic system was adopted by the emerging Islamic nation and

adapted from the Byzantine Romano-Greek civilisation that preceded it temporarily and

geographically, with perhaps the most influential and well known extant Islamic example

being the Canon of Ibn Sina, with what came to be known as Yunani medicine outliving the

middle ages, until the establishment of Western style biomedicine in the nineteenth

century, whereupon the practices were driven underground but have continued to be

practised (Magner, 1992) up until the present day. The writer is drawn to the concept of

humours not as a method for explaining the human biological system, but rather as an

symbolic schema for the human psyche and its understanding of ontology from a

multidimensional viewpoint, and as one which, as stated, may have deeper roots than

merely Greek civilisation; this system will be further touched upon when we discuss a

potential for development of an Islamically relevant therapy.

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 2.2.2 Cultural Diffusion in Islamic Sciences.

Emigration from the Byzantine Empire of Nestorian Christians to Gondeshapur, a city

founded as a Sasanian imperial city, as well as ‘Greek scholars...from Athens...when

Justinian closed the Neoplatonic academy in A.D. 529’ (Dols1, 1984, p.6) meant that when

the centre of power moved from Umayyad Damascus to Abbasid Bagdad, Gondeshapur was

equipped to become recognised as a centre of Islamic learning, especially medical science.

Both Alexandria and Gondeshapur became ‘wellsprings of Aristotelianism and

Neoplatonism’ (Netton, 1989, p.6) and subsequently had a deep effect on the philosophy

and cosmology proposed by the notable scholars of Islam beyond ‘excellence in the medical

field’, in particular regarding concepts of via negativa in relation to Islamic concepts of

divine unity (Netton, 1989, p.15).

It is reported that the first Islamic hospitals or bimaristan, literally ‘place of the sick’,

was founded by Harun ar-Rashid in Bagdad and was designed and staffed migrants from

Jundishapur (Gondeshapur), where there had been an academy teaching ‘astronomy,

theology and medicine’ and where ‘there was supposed to be a hospital at which

“treatment was based solely on scientific medicine”’ (Shapiro and Selin, 2003). While

medicine was often subject to religious authority in Christendom, ‘Muslim scholars

developed secular institutions in which a rational system of medicine was practiced without

religious interference’ (Dols3, 1992, p.67); Islamic medics were not bound to strict

observance while treating their patients. The influence of Christian and to some extent

Jewish doctors in the pre-Islamic period meant that ‘Galen’s system of humoral pathology

appears...in the early Islamic era...in a large body of scholastic medical texts’ (Dols3, 1992,

p.116). In later years the administration of hospitals would be handed over the sufic lodges

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where treatment would entail both therapy from doctors and sheikhs from the

brotherhoods, with the basic duty of care remaining with the family (Dols3, 1992).

The Islamic rule of Al-Andalus, which continued until the surrender of ‘the last

Muslim ruler’ (Watt, 1956, p.150) in 1492, is known by ‘Spanish historians’ as

‘convivencia…the word’ being ‘loosely defined as “coexistence”’ (Mann, et al., 1992, p.1).

Some refer to it as ‘The Golden Age’ (Mann, et al., 1992, p.xi), but this term does not have

its origin with Muslims, rather ‘the words “Golden Age” connoted a Jewish community living

in harmony with its neighbours and, therefore free to explore its creative potential in a wide

variety of fields’ (Mann, et al., 1992, p.xi), this being particularly true of the speciality of

medicine (Burnett, 2008). Indeed the seminal kabbalistic work of ‘The Zohar’ is ‘thought by

contemporary scholars to have originated in Spain sometime in the 13th century’ (Drob,

1999, p.104) and ‘down to the twentieth century, there has been in the Middle East an

interchange of religious healing between Muslims, Christians and Jews’ (Dols3, 1992, p.233).

While it is considered that a previous view that the kabbalah was a direct result of Islamic

science, regarded by some as sufficiently argued contra, ‘the theosophical doctors of Jewry

[at least] brushed arms with those of Islam, and to deny that there was any consequence of

such contact is to deny nature’ (Waite, 2003, p.80). A historic detail illustrating just such

proximity lies with the Jewish physician to Saladin’s court, Maimonides or Moses Ben

Maimon, ‘a highly prestigious philosopher, exegete, and physician’ (Meri, 2006).

Such intellectual, philosophical and thus cultural diffusion can be seen up

demonstrated until the late Andalusian period by the life of al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-

Wazzan, also known as Leo Africanus who was raised in Al-Andalus, training as a physician in

Fez, later being kidnapped by Sicilian corsairs who delivered him to the Vatican, where he

was converted to Christianity teaching medicine at Bologna (Dols3, 1992). While ‘the

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ancient world was ‘Islamized’ in the early Middle Ages...some aspects of Arab-Muslim

culture were also ‘Christianized’’ with Christianity having ‘provided a major impetus to

Islamic mysticism’ (Dols3, 1992, p.227). An example illustrating the two way street in regard

to knowledge of the broader medical sciences, the life of the prophet David and his cure of

Saul has been considered as prototypical music therapy which lead to the justification of

music as a treatment by Islamic physicians (Dols3, 1992). Music was studied ‘by Islamic

philosophers such as...Al Kindi’ who

Developed considerably the ancient concept of ethos; the four strings of

the lute and the rhythmic modes were linked in a comprehensive fashion
with the zodiac, the four elements, the four humours, the seasons, the
faculties of the soul, personal traits, colours, perfumes, the time of day,
and so forth.
Dols3, 1992, p.169

Such therapy was employed within the Islamic hospital (Al-Issa1, 2000), as well as being a

feature of Sufic ritual, demonstrating that Islamic medicine looked to previous revelations

and traditions, and in regard to the specific of music ‘its orthodox prohibition was ignored

by physicians’ as was the use of wine (Al-Issa1, 2000, p.59). To quote the Quran

They ask thee concerning wine and gambling. Say: "In them is great sin,
and some profit, for men; but the sin is greater than the profit." They ask
thee how much they are to spend; Say: "What is beyond your needs."
Thus doth Allah Make clear to you His Signs: In order that ye may
consider
The Holy Quran, 1992, 2:219

Again turning to the Quran, admittedly contextually usually thought to relate to piety

more than the practice of science, “Are those equal, those who know and those who do not

know? It is those who are endued with understanding that receive admonition” (The Holy

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Quran, 1992, 39:9). There is no reason to suspect that Muslims scholars of medicine were

any less devout than scholars of other disciplines or the common man. We shall come back

to ideas of orthodoxy and intellectual hegemony when we consider relevant political

framework, and as we progress the proposed transpersonal schema.

2.2.3 Islamic Medieval Psychiatry.

Strict Galenic dogma was repudiated in some quarters, as by Ibn Bakhtishu, who

‘anticipated the criticism of Galenic medicine...in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries A.D.’

and proposed a more ‘holistic view that psychic conditions caused bodily illnesses and vice

versa’ (Dols1, 1984, p.23) arguing ‘in favour of psychological causes of mental illness’ (Al-

Issa1, 2000, p.58) with ‘psychic disturbances’ coming to be seen ‘as diseases of the mind

during the medieval period’ (Dols3, 1992, p.4). Yet one must deliberate whether Galenic

medicine was analogous to contemporary biological reductionism, as the psychotherapist Al

Rizvi writes, ‘Galen transformed the humoral theory [of Hippocrates] into a theory of

personality. Galen apparently recognised that there were psychological aspects to

treatment...[which] could play a significant part...[to] recovery’ (Ali Rizvi, 1994, p.12). The

model of madness which became applicable under the Shariah was akin to the distinction

made under Roman law, that ‘what the “mentally ill” have lost is not their bodily health, nor

their virtue but their reason’ (Dols3, 1992, p.5). Bateman and colleagues state that for the

religious neurotic ‘it is as bad to sin in thought as in deed’ (Bateman et al, 2000, p.21) and

yet inversely the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad teach that ‘if somebody intended to

do a bad deed and he does not do it, then Allah will write a full good deed (in his account)

with Him’ (Al-Bukhari, 1994, 8:498).

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 In regard to possession and associated sin ‘exorcism was an important feature of the

teaching of Jesus’ yet ‘this practice assumed no such role in the life of Muhammad...nor was

there a Muslim priesthood empowered to perform religious cures’ (Dols3, 1992, p.8).

Regarding insanity specifically, orthodox Islam, as opposed to Sufism, did

not sanction exorcism in any way comparable to Christianity, so that
religious exorcism for Muslims was not an alternative to medical
treatment.
Dols3, 1992, p.115

However, as stated, in the preceding revelations (i.e. Judeo-Christian) the practice did

figure, with Islamic tradition being in accord with the Judaic historian Josephus who ‘refers

to the skill of Solomon...in casting out demons, leaving behind forms of exorcisms by which

demons are driven out of the possessed’ which ‘became a part of Jewish, Christian, and

Muslim legend’ (Dols3, 1992, p.178). Dols, in his seminal work on the medieval period,

writes that

At the heart of the matter, Islam, in its high tradition (as distinct from
sufism), did not promote the doctrine of supernatural healing
comparable to Christianity, nor did it possess a clergy empowered to
perform exorcisms. From a different point of view, theodicy has played a
very minor role in Islamic theology because of a quite different view from
Christianity about the nature of human suffering – true pathology. There
was always a presumption of sin, however, in the chink of the Christian's
baptismal armor, linking illness and sin.
Dols2, 1984, p.147

In ‘contrast to Christianity’ Islam does not promote ‘the view of illness and, ultimately,

death as a divine punishment for the believer’ (Dols2, 1984, p.246), and Ali Rizvi narrates

that ‘at the height of Muslim Arabian Culture, the mentally ill were studied, described and

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treated objectively’ with ‘Muslims...[anticipating] modern therapeutic methods which were

incorporated in the process of treatment of the mentally sick’ (Ali Rizvi, 1994, p.29).

Nevertheless, established ‘patterns of Christian belief and action formed the cultural matrix

in which Muslim attitudes would evolve’ (Dols3, 1992, p.204) and thus paradoxically

While Muslims were among the first to develop a systematic

understanding of mental illness, most of the Muslim world still consider
mental illness to be the fault of those who are ill: it is an expression of
their weak faith and lack of family support.
Kobeisy, 2006, p.59

Focussing on the medieval concepts surrounding madness may assist

contemporarily, and may solely be ‘justified because normal Muslim behaviour was

formulated and articulated during the classical Islamic period’ (Dols3, 1992, p.2). Thus

‘psychiatrists in Muslim countries have to deal with patients whose concepts of health and

illnesses are rooted in the past’ (Al-Issa1, 2000, p.68) with

Dramatic economic and political changes in our societies global

effects...often [intensifying]...day-to-day stress. While globalization
strengthens the western influence in many cultures, it also marginalizes
local cultural practices and belief systems.
Kobeisy, 2006, p.58

This may lead to further conflicts and binds in the complexes surrounding mental illness,

aetiology, and treatment in a present-day Islamic context.

The medieval Islamic perspective proposes that ‘insanity was generally explained

according to the two fundamental theories of the humors and the spirits’ (Dols2, 1984,

p.138). The writer of this paper sees no reason why a combination of the two may not now

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be approached, especially as the modern medical paradigm has freed humoural theory as an

explanation of biological aetiology. Moreover a therapy with the elements at its base,

viewed as a prototypical psychological schema (Jung, 1989), can recognise that ‘lightly veiled

folk healing for the mentally disordered [which] was probably one of the more successful

areas of pre-modern medicine because it often responded successfully to deep-seated

psychological needs’ (Dols3, 1992, p.11).

The modern postulations of modern transpersonal psychotherapy and

psychosynthesis can been seen, as we will consider, prototypically in the thought of writers

such as Ibn Arabi who drew on ‘the disciplines of ...[the] time – the traditional Islamic

sciences, mysticism, theology, philosophy, and even alchemy and magic’ (Ibn Arabi, 2007,

p.19) and it will be to these very schools of thought that the writer shall propose his own

synthesis for a cosmological and ontological model within which a ‘client’ could be placed.

The means by which the insane where treated in the medieval period of Islam ‘range widely

from the purely naturalistic to the blatantly supernatural...grouped for convenience into

three categories: medicine, religion and magic’ (Dols3, 1992, p.6). In the medieval period

There were a number of possible responses by a devout Muslim to illness

and insanity particularly. A Muslim might turn to a practitioner of Galenic
medicine. He might trust in God entirely and take no active measures to
ameliorate his condition, or he could adopt a more active religious life,
including prayer and sacrifice. He might resort to the saints or the
supernatural healing of the Christians and Jews. And one might turn to
Prophetic medicine or magic.
Dols3, 1992, p.10

The well known medieval writer ‘Ibn Khaldun called attention to the fact that what is

often considered Prophetic medicine was actually native Arab folk medicine’ with the hadith

maintaining ‘some of the indigenous practices and beliefs of western Arabia at the time of

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the prophet’ particularly ‘the folk medicine of the Arab Bedouin...was not part of the divine

revelation to Muhammad’ (Dols2, 1984, p.247).

Ibn Khaldun also contrasts ‘scientific medicine’ with ‘Prophetic medicine,

although Galenic medicine played a significant role in Prophetic medicine.
There was, however, an undeniable conflict between the principles of
professional medicine and religion...Prophetic medicine reveals the
blending of...three elements: the folk medicine of the Arabian Bedouin,
Galenic concepts...and the overarching principle of divine causation.
Dols2, 1984, p.247

Such conflicts still exists in the contemporary context, and an attempt at resolution of the

dynamic, especially when dealing with those experiencing an already conflict within the

psyche, presents as legitimate applied academic pursuit.

2.3 Political Context.

2.3.1. Islam and Modernity

As this dissertation will attempt to propose a schema to facilitate a transpersonal

form of psychotherapy relevant to the Islamic faith and thus Muslims, it seems appropriate

to consider political dynamics between Islam and modernity; in particular neuropsychiatry

as a manifestation of this supposed conflict, and thus the biomedical model. This dynamic is

not one imagined by the writer; rather it comes from his own anecdotal experiences,

observing the psychoses and treatment of his brother in law, and also the treatment of a

close family friend’s son. The author’s brother in law as well as the family friend, were

confronted with two opposing perspectives concerning their psychotic episodes (which

were almost certainly brought on by the consumption of cannabis and potentially other

illicit drugs); on the one hand they were advised of the standard aetiology of psychosis as an

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effect of chemical imbalance aggravated by the narcotics which were being consumed,

while on the other they were told that it was due to such processes as magic, the evil eye, or

elemental forces (i.e. jinn). In this respect the diagnoses received mirrored in the microcosm

of causation of psychosis the macrocosm of the dynamic between occident and orient,

modernity and tradition, rational and irrational, science and religion, with the western world

painted as progressive while the Islamic world drawn as backward; this is not a new

proposition, for as Churchill stated in 1899 regarding Islam, ‘no stronger retrograde force

exists in the world’ (Cappi, 2007, p.56). Such a view still seems commonplace at the time of

writing of this dissertation. As El-Islam states

The ease and abundance of communication through mass media, in

addition to wealth, has led the younger generation to acquire not only
western commodities, but also Western attitudes and methods of
thinking instead of those of their parents. This also provides fuel for
intergenerational conflict. Young individuals who introjected parental
attitudes and values during their development now find themselves
identifying with western nonparental values which foster new patterns of
relationships and behaviour. The associated guilt, often unconscious,
about abandoning parental values may impede the productivity of young
individuals in their intellectually accepted new activities, and they
vacillate between two worlds of values; one is felt to be dying, and the
other is not yet born.
El-Islam, 1982, p.8

These dichotomies, while having some substance in actuality in psychological

microcosm, are far less compelling than are portrayed in political macrocosm as with the so

often mentioned ‘Clash of Civilisations’ hypothesis (Huntington, 2002), demonstrating

‘hegemonic discourses of “progress,”’ (Asad, 1991, p.136). The writer believes there is often

(perhaps always?) a synthetic middle path to be negotiated between apparent conflicts as

will be proposed. However, whether or not this conflict manifests in the consciousness of

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potential patients, and to what degree it acts to the detriment of treatment and recovery, is

a valid and relevant field of investigation, and certainly suitable for brief discussion herein.

2.3.2 ...Should be unseen and not heard.

While conducting an exploration of the subject presented, the writer immediately

wished to conduct primary research into questions which had initially presented. The

prospect of interviewing health professionals and associated workers seemed to be a good

departure point, and contact was made with an Imam working as a chaplain with a south

London Primary Care Trust. An email was sent outlining the dynamic between Islamic

perspectives, what could be loosely described as historic and thus ‘orthodox’, and the

modern biomedical model of neuropsychiatry. The communiqué enquired as to the role that

the ‘unseen’ world, the elements thus elementals, and magic played in regard to mental

illness and to what extent, if any, was there to be found a conflict between Neuropsychiatry

and traditional Islamic thought. The Imam was kind enough to send a statement which

outlined his experience on the ground as a chaplain with the NHS which is reproduced

below

An essential Islamic belief is that the universe is comprised of two

contrasting aspects - one that encompasses all that is manifest (Alam al-
Shahadah) – and another all that is unseen (Alam al-Ghaib). The tangible
exist within the former, the intangible within the latter. Jinn, Angels,
Magic, the Evil Eye, and negative thoughts, although within Alam al-
Ghaib, may, uncommonly, be accessed by human beings. In the Qur’an
we are told that in the past Jinn sometimes communicated with humanity
to lead them astray, and vis-à-vis magic, that when confronted by
Pharaoh’s magicians Musa’s [Moses’] staff was transformed into a
serpent that consumed their work. It is recommended to recite Qur’an
10:81 to nullify the effects of magic and Qur’an 113 to counteract spells
that have been ‘blown into knots’. However, there is no link whatever
between the above and ‘orthodox’ Islamic interpretation.

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 It is thoroughly unhelpful for those, afflicted by ailments that have no
observable physical manifestation, to believe that their ills are the work
of ‘unseen’ beings, bad omens, haunted property or evil spirits, and not
to value their psychiatrist’s prescribed medication and advice.
Hegedus, 2008.

The researcher was hoping for a more extensive analysis of the conflict experienced by

Muslims facing disturbances in their psyche, and felt that the Imam’s reply was

unaccommodating in respect to the explicit enquiry, that being an enquiry into micro

political factors pertaining to a Muslim psychiatric client base. The Imam, despite frustrating

enquiry, is in good company in believing that such beliefs are ‘thoroughly unhelpful’

(Hegedus, 2008). Ibn Sina some centuries earlier ‘resisted the occult in his theoretical

explanation of diseases’ (Dols3, 1992, p.102) and did not believe that ‘the cause of these

related illnesses is demons or divine displeasure, sorcery, or the stars’ (Dols3, 1992, p.82),

and yet the cognitive processes of a mind are surely occult and ultimately always inferred?

In the Pakistani context traditional religious healers called Hakims ‘who practice

unani-tibb...based on medieval Islamic Galenism’ (Al-Issa3, 2000, p323), are bolstered by the

use of the Mulla, ‘a Muslim cleric’ who ‘does not use medication’ rather turning to ‘religious

procedures such as verses from the Quran for...amulets’ (Al-Issa3, 2000, p.324), with it being

quite common for traditional healers to possess a sufic background (Mubbashar, 2000,

p.191). Alongside these healers exist practitioners of occult arts, as dismissed by Ibn Sina,

including ‘practitioners of black magic...palmists and astrologers’ (Mubbashar, 2000, p.192)

with such arts, in the context of psychotherapy, being reported in other Islamic contexts, for

instance within the Palestinian community (Gorkin and Othman, 1994).

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 There is a certain irony surrounding what might be labelled as contemporary

traditional healing within Islamic communities in regard to mental illness; while the

aforementioned schools currently sit in compliment to each other, often overlapping,

historically the

Tension between professional medicine and Islam appears to have

increased markedly as Sufism or Islamic mysticism grew in popularity and
respectability. Sufism emphasized the view that all health and illness
depended on God alone.
Dols1, 1984, p.40

The mist of time seems to have today blurred the boundaries between such distinctions

with traditional therapy taking on myriad forms. Today modern biomedicine seems often to

be a final recourse, however where it is available (and affordable) it is not dismissed out of

hand, but as was noted in research by Hussain et al. (1998) ‘41.2 percent of community

members believed that traditional healers can help people physicians cannot’ (cited by

Mubbashar, 2000, p.193). The dynamic that once existed between Galenic medicine and

Sufism, can currently be seen between modern psychiatry and Sufism as demonstrated by

the work ‘Ultimate Fraud of Freudists’ (1999) which includes a paper by a Sufi sheikh, Syed

Mubarik Ali Shah Jilani, entitled ‘Quranic Psychiatry’ which juxtaposes the biomedical and

religious models. The sheikh opens his work by quoting the poet Rumi, ‘Air and earth and

water and fire are his slaves: With you and me they are dead, but with Allah they are alive.’

(Jilani citing Rumi, 1999, p.2,). It would seem that Rumi, and presumably now his devotees,

have accepted the basis of humoral medicine, perhaps with a little time they will become

more conversant with the ideas proposed by the current paradigm of neuropsychiatry, at

least where they serve use in treatment, and ultimately healing.

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 2.3.3 Islam and Orthodoxy
In the same way that Sufism has sometimes historically criticised medicine for

straying from the straight path, and in some instances continues to, so has Sufism been

accused of straying. For the last 100 years there has been a consolidation of a once diverse

pool of Islamic thought, ideologically spreading from a small area around the central

highlands of the Nejd (Lawrence, 1935, pp.32-33) in present day Saudi Arabia, fuelled in no

small part by petrodollars. To return to the Sufi Sheikh Jilani, he reports that when Saudi

scholars were called upon to prove the healing properties of the Quran to a group of

psychiatrists gathered for a WHO conference in Cairo, they ‘backed out and said only Sufia

can help the government’ which the Sheikh considered paradox given that ‘according to

official Wahhabee doctrine the Sufi are heretics, and misled people who talk and write

Kharafah (nonsense)’ (Jilani, 1999, p.ix).

In the ‘early centuries of Islam’ it appears that there was ‘an absence of tension

between the streams of philosophy, Sufism, and mainstream Islam’ (Lobel, 2007, p.41) and

‘mysticism became a respectable form of Muslim devotion from the eleventh century AD’

(Dols3, 1992, p.228). Indeed it has been considered that for Islam there are ‘three chief

domains of doctrine...metaphysics, cosmology, and spiritual psychology’ (Ali Rizvi, 1994,

p.25); the writer would only add that the doctrine of Islam also deals with regulation, i.e.

legislation, of the mundane in regard to the cited ‘three domains of doctrine’ (Ali Rizvi,

1994, p.25).

Claims exist, frequently put forth by people professing a ‘year-zero mindset’

(Guardian, 2008, citing Husain), that many forms of knowledge are innovations (Bidah)

within Islam. Such accusations can mask a desire for a homogeneity in doctrine, when some

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have proposed, ‘there was never one ‘traditional Islamic society’’ (Dols, 1992, p.3). A

variance is often thought to exist between forms and models of religion, and

A distinction can be made between High Islam, carried by urban scholars

and emphasising order, rule observance, sobriety and learning, and Folk
Islam, which may involve magic, ecstasy, and saint cults.
Hinde, R. A., 1999, p.64

As El-Zein summates it can seem all monographs on Islam to one degree or another, depart

from a position that

Religious ideology works at two social levels: the explicit ideology

articulated by intellectuals and the religious elite, and implicit ideology
which consists of local and popular interpretations of religious tradition.
Although they do share certain elements in common, these two
dimensions continually come into conflict.
El-Zein, 1977, p.240

Such dynamics are not only the arena of etic anthropological observations. The dichotomies

within dichotomies of the faith are succinctly delineated by Asad who posits

that Islam is simply what Muslims everywhere say it is – will not do, if
only because there are everywhere Muslims who say that what other
people take to be Islam is not Islam at all
Asad, 1996, p.382

Despite the rejection in some quarters, historic or contemporary, of an unseen world

as an aetiology for mental illness, in fact perhaps a practical denial to nullify any cause that

cannot be currently quantified, the word for madness in Arabic, al-junun, and its variations

are said to derive from the same root as the word jinn with the ‘literal meaning of the word

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Jinn’ coming ‘from the verb Janna, Yajunnu: “to cover, hide or conceal”’ (Philips, 1997, p.78).

As Al-Issa delineates, ‘for most Muslims, al-junun (being possessed by the jinni or spirit) is

madness’ (Al-Issa1, 2000, p.xv). As the famous Arabic saying states, ‘Al-junun funun

"madness is of many kinds"’ (Al-Ezabi, 1994, p.192); Ibn Imran writes that ‘diversity is

confusing in the eyes of the doctors, who do not have an exact knowledge of the illness

because of the variety in the symptoms of the soul [nafs]’ (Dols3, 1992, p.73). It is typical of

the Arabic language that the linguistic root of a word leads to words of many kinds, thus

also conveying knowledge of divers concepts and associations between them

The basic sense of the triliteral root "j-n-n" in Arabic is concealment

(istitar); hence, all its derivations retain aspects of this meaning. And so,
as al-Naysaburi illustrates, we say the night has janna, meaning night has
fallen, covering everything in its darkness. The janan is the heart, since
what occurs in it is concealed; it is also the tomb that shrouds and covers
up. Al-jinn are the invisible beings, concealed from the eyes of mortals.
Al-janna is the dense garden, with obscuring intertwined trees, as well as
the warrior's armour since it shields. Al-janin is the unborn child,
concealed in its mother's womb. Finally jinna is madness, and al-majnun
is he whose mind's workings are concealed from others, and from
himself.
Al-Ezabi, 1994, p.194

Thus al-majnun could also relate to myriad ‘‘altered states’ of consciousness...whether

possession...by evil-working spirits or by the minions of God’ (Dols3, 1992, p.216).

A common example of how the unseen is seen to effect the Muslim on an everyday

level would be the phenomena of ‘waswas, which literally refers to whispered promptings

of the devil’ during ritual aspects of ablution or prayer (Al-Issa2 citing Pfeiffer, 2000, p.14).

The devil, as well as devils in extension, is held in Islamic thought to be an elemental (Jinn,

Genie, Salamander) with the Quran delineating them as being created from fire (The Holy

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Quran, 1992, 15:27 and 38:76). It is held that not all jinn are satanic, and that each human

being has an invisible companion from within the jinn known as a ‘Qareen’ (Philips, 1997,

p.78). Thus, despite the Imam considering that such experiences may ‘uncommonly, be

accessed by human beings’ and that ‘in the past Jinn sometimes communicated with

humanity to lead them astray’ (Hegedus, 2008) it would appear that such phenomenon are

still reported as experienced by a good number of Muslims on a daily basis to one degree or

another, and not strictly as they pertain to a disruptive condition of health. Such beliefs in

the unseen, as touched upon here, have been described as ‘delusional cultural beliefs’ (El-

Islam citing Murphy, 1982, p.5), however this would not be a valid departure point for

transcultural psychiatry, medical anthropology, or the psychotherapeutic schema to be later

proposed by the writer.

The reluctance to consider things beyond human knowledge be they metaphysical,

philosophical, or theological, may be attributed to the dominant Asharite hegemony over

scholastic deliberation in Islam. As pointed out in relation to semiotics in the Islamic

tradition as presented in the Quran verses, ‘refusal to examine the mode of these

descriptions, resulted in an intellectual cul-de-sac in which acceptance triumphed over

analysis and incomprehension over reason’ (Netton, 1989, p.4). Too often there is

‘opposition to every innovation considered by the ulama to be unlawful (bid'ah)’ (Bligh,

1985, p.40) even when they are not innovations within Islam proper, but knowledge from

preceding traditions which Islam holds as prophetical, i.e. the Abrahamic religions.

Ironically, the Salafiyya/Wahhabi desire to return to the first generations of the Muslims in

an attempt to enable them to

Page | 25
 Disassociate contemporary Islam from its latter day tradition, both
scholarly and mystic, presenting it as the cause of the decline of Muslim
civilisation and as an impediment to the adoption of useful Western
innovation.
Weismann, 2001, p.206

Islamically the measure of innovations must surely be the Quran and hadith, but

should these remain intact and inform research, then to believe investigation endangers

Islam or the congregation of the faithful could be naught other than a further ‘intellectual

cul-de-sac’ (Netton, 1989, p.4) for useful innovation is not merely to be found within what

might be thought of as modern technology and science. A distinction is often proposed

‘between praiseworthy and objectionable bid’as’ (Labib, 1964, p.191), and the writer

proposes in the context of this paper that anything that assists a Muslim in coming to a

place where his health is improved, without requiring him to reject his faith or producing

additional psychological binds, is indeed praiseworthy as is enduring such a condition

because God wills it.

2.4 Neuropsychiatric Critique.

2.4.1 Contra Neuropsychiatry.

We have considered historic aspects to the practice of broad psychiatric medicine in

an Islamic milieu, socio-political factors as they pertain to Islam and modernity and as an

expression of dynamics that may exists both within the macro-political world, but also as

potentially manifest within the microcosm of an individual’s psyche. The current paradigm

of psychiatry, namely neuropsychiatry, posits that mental illness is a neurobiological reality,

which while accepting psychological contributory aetiology, places mental illness as a

disease found in psychopathology rather than as a reaction to the sociopsychological and/or

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psychosocial. It seems fair to now attempt a critique of modern neuropsychiatry from divers

viewpoints, which while diverging from purely socio-economic and political perspectives,

may be broadly considered critical medical anthropology.

While to categorise neuropsychiatry as biological determinism may be designated

misrepresentative, proposing that ‘medical professionals neglect the social experience

of...patients and the social construction of disease’ (Frankenburg, 1993, p.219, citing

Browner et al., 1988), there can be little doubt that the discipline might not escape the

charge of biological reductionism so easily. Such an ‘approach sees the diagnostic

categories...as being universally applicable to mankind...since they have a biological basis’

(Helman, 2001, p.174). Robert Spitzer, a key player in the development of the DSM III in the

1980s, relates that rather than having empirical basis, the responsible task force ‘were

making up...criteria because they seemed appropriate and useful’ (Orr citing Spitzer, 2006,

p.240) with it well observed that the DSM potentially relies ‘on unscientific and (possibly)

value-laden observations’ (Tausig et al., 1999, p.128). As Szasz delineates

Terms are often used as if they were descriptions of psychopathological

conditions from which individuals suffer – when, in fact, they function as
prescriptions for how individuals allegedly suffering from such conditions
should be treated by others...a simple, but officially forbidden, truth
about psychiatry...[is] that its practitioners often first decide what to do
about a person, and then discover the appropriate label with which to
justify their decision.
Szasz2, 1997, p.282

The most superficial analysis of the aetiology of mental illnesses and case studies

reveal the complexities of mental health conditions, and that the belief in a predominately

biological causation, whether or not its diversifies into genetic, neurodevelopmental,

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neurodegenerative, or neurochemical aetiology demonstrates a biological single cause

fallacy, which raises valid questions about the scientific basis of diagnosis as hypothesis and

the subsequent umbrella nature of diagnoses (Lesch, 2001); what is economically practical

may well fail the test for that which is ethically appropriate.

It could be put that psychiatry is broadly guilty of scientific positivism, with its view

of knowledge, be that the psychotic content of their patients or a consultant’s training,

adhering to Comte’s evolutionary law of three stages, religious, metaphysical, and onward

to the scientific (Dilthey and Betanzos, 2008). The discipline would no doubt place itself at

the pole of rationality and more often than not its ‘clients’ regressed from that position,

viewing the content of their illness from this ideological position; neurosis and psychosis as

a primitive state. This would seem particularly relevant in judging whether psychiatrists and

their ‘science’ are in an intellectually honest and/or ethical position to approach religious

groups generally and specifically mentally ill individuals from within such settings presenting

with religious ideation. As an aside, the same question might be moot more generally.

The writer would propose that of the natural sciences biology is, or rather will be,

the last to abandon a classical paradigm of observable and verifiable facts, with both physics

and chemistry having had adopted the quantum paradigm which inherently accepts

observer effect and thus the subjectivity over objectivity of reality (Battista, 1996). The

existential question of just what constitutes reality is of vital importance when considering

symptomatology of mental conditions such as reduced contact with reality, hallucinations,

disturbed thinking, delusions, and disturbed emotions (Goldberg, et al., 1994). The modern

paradigm of the natural sciences prefers falsifiable and reproducible phenomenon over

apparently static ‘established’ facts, especially when the process of arriving at such facts

loses more information that it records (Ruse, 1988); as the Nobel prize laureate in physics

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Wolfgang Pauli observed of a colleague’s paper in communiqué to Carl Jung ‘I would

suggest that he replace the word “positivist” with “phenomenological”’ (Meier, 2001, p.6).

Neuropsychiatry, and more broadly ‘biomedicine mystifies sickness through its participation

in the nature-culture dichotomy’ with ‘the effect...[being] to make the social invisible and to

place sickness, as a natural process or entity, inside the individual’ (Rhodes, 1990, p.167),

thereby bringing it within the sphere of biological intervention and control. The

Challenge to transcend the rather simpleminded quarrel between

scientific reductionism and superstitious religiosity and to develop a
profound, empirically supported model of (what have traditionally been
called) the mind and spirit.
Oliver and Ostrofsky, 2007, p.9

Consideration has already been given to the dichotomies between occident and orient,

modernity and tradition, rational and irrational, science and religion in a preceding section.

One might extend this dialectic in the specific context of the psyche to the sane and insane,

in the situation of the macro and micro political controlled and out of control, functional

and dysfunctional, conformity and deviance, and in the circumstances of diagnosis and

treatment form and content.

Broadly there is what has been designated a “religiosity gap” gap between mental

health professionals and the general public’ (Lukoff et al., 1996, p.232) which directly

pertains to the treatment of Muslim patients. Research on ‘psychiatric inpatients have

shown that 95% profess a strong belief in God’ (Lukoff, 1996, p.273) with a ‘study of

hospitalised bipolar patients found religious-spiritual delusions present in 25%’ (Lukoff et al.,

1996, p.243). While a ‘close relationship between religion and mental abnormality…[is]

found in psychiatric texts’ (Rogers and Pilgrim, 2005, p.31) research has suggested a strong

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correlation between religiosity and mental health (Al-Issa2, 2000) outside the boundaries of

that considered pathological. It has been observed that

Following western science, most psychiatrists reject belief in God, gods,

or spirits...if “spiritual entities” do not exist, experiences of God or gods
must be imaginary, and belief in them...immature or pathological. If such
beings [did] exist, psychiatry...[would have to] consider questions such as
whether “possession” by spirits actually occurs.
Chinen, 1996, p.217

2.4.2 Neuropsychiatry as Social Contingency and Mental

Illness as Deviancy

To develop the idea inferred in the previous section, that is psychiatry as a form of

social contingency and control, the perception exists that psychiatry exists in no small part

as a mode of control over deviancy in the modern context of capitalist production (Foucault,

1989 & 2001). It has been an evaluation that psychiatry operates within a ‘medical

hegemony, the process by which capitalist assumptions, concepts and values come to

permeate medical diagnosis and treatment’ (Baer, et al., 1997, p.14) with psychiatry’s ‘long

development under the powerful regimen of industrial capitalism’ (Kleinman, 1995, p.37)

clearly mapped. Capitalism and associated states are of course not alone in this use of

psychiatry; the Soviet Union was well known for employing hospitals for the control of social

and political deviancy (Fickenauer, 1996), and there is no reason to believe that it is not

employed in other contexts pertaining more directly with this paper. Of course, contra to

the argument, the hypothesis could be put forth concerning neuropsychiatry, that the

application of a diagnosis aids the patient, allowing ‘positive opportunity of access to

effective pharmacological and psychological treatments to ameliorate their problems’

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(Rogers and Pilgrim, 2005, p.33). In a previous unpublished piece of research the writer

(Wood, 2008) considered the psychological basis of mental illness, with psychosocial

pressures and stresses creating neurochemical alterations in the central nervous system by

way of a ‘nocebo’ effect (Hahn and Kleinman, 1983) resulting in bleed between the Freudian

levels of consciousness with delusion content resulting. It is known that ‘medieval

physicians...were also surely aware of what we would today call psychosomatic illnesses and

the effectiveness of placebos’ (Dols3, 1992, p.166) with mental illness thought of as a

‘madness in which ‘there were ‘too many thoughts’’ (Dols3, 1992, p.308). Thus in

considering the themes in this section, the writer does not deny what would seem to be

occurring at the neurobiological level, nor that medication can counter effect, rather he

questions causality and chronology.

The cross over between the professed curative and/or healing function of psychiatry

and its social function veils that ‘the recognition of mental illness by lay persons and

professionals alike is always a social transaction with moral and jural features’ (Edgerton,

1980, p.463). In the context of the UK the principle is thinly veiled as the system runs on

behalf of both the department of health, and the department of justice; safety of the public

is often cited, whether in the media or by mental health professionals, as the primary

reason d’être of the psychiatric system, forensic or otherwise. An interesting aside is the

executive’s attempt to secure a 90 day period of detention for suspected terrorists, which

has met with fierce opposition. Meanwhile an informal non forensic psychiatric patient who

may be a danger to himself or others may be detained for renewable periods of 168 days

under provisions of the Mental Health Act without recourse to the court system.

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 Thus straying from socially accepted norms, be that of a violent nature or other, is

treated in the English legal milieu more seriously than the suspected mass murder planned

by assumed terrorists. Such ‘deviance is socially constructed’ with ‘members of

society...[deciding] what they mean by the term’ (Freilich et al., 1991, p.20) where ‘social

groups create deviance’ then apply ‘those rules to particular people...labelling them as

‘outsiders’’ (Becker, 1963, p.9) or more correctly in the case of formal psychiatric patients

‘insiders’; secured inside. It is ‘the failure of the patient to adopt the attitude of the

“normal” social Other’ which can be regarded ‘as an important step in the dissolution and

negation of the individual’s social Self’ (Kapferer, 1979, p.118). This ‘overlap in the medical

and social functions’ of the system, is enacted by ‘psychiatrists who in diagnosing illness,

medicalize the self and its products (deviance), thereby attempting (but failing) to neutralize

its social and political aspects.’ (Fabrega, 1993, pp.180-181). It has been asked ‘who is

psychiatry’s client?’ (Rogers and Pilgrim, 2005, p.153) and the writer of this paper cannot

help but feel that in very many circumstances

By reducing human problems of the social, economic, and political

structure of the society to symptoms of illness to be treated with drugs
and other physical measures...psychiatry is said to regulate and control
deviance in the service of the establishment: namely the state and its
representatives.
Fabrega, 1993, p.185

To revist the DSM, and the specific criteria and its view on psychosis as including

‘persistent delusions that are culturally inappropriate’ (Goldberg et al., 1994, p.178), and in

light of the criteria being considered ‘culture dependent and specific’ (Kleinman and

Seeman in Albrecht et al, 2003, p.233) the questions arises, what exactly constitutes a

cultural norm, what exactly is culturally appropriate? As post modern critique within

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anthropology has proposed ‘how can one possibly know the true nature of the other (any

other) cultural reality?’ (Anderson, 1996, p.29). Indeed, it has been put that ‘the idea that

some of the recognised contexts in a culture are “basic” or “primary” or represent the

“innate” or that their properties are somehow essentially objective or real...[revealed as] a

cultural illusion’ (Wagner, 1981, p.41), and that

Culture is not securely “there,” a point of adaptive reference to which all

can turn...culture is “really” more a product of fantasy, wish, anxiety, and
defense, one that humans create and then clutch in darkness.
Stein, 1990, p.73

Thus modern psychiatry attempts

to protect the integrity of an excessively heterogeneous and pluralistic

society and its dominant ethic’ sacrificing ‘the “one” for the “many”…by
the use of…force – enmity toward a symbolic offender to whom the
impending disintegration of the social order is attributed.
Szasz1, 1997, p.59

The somewhat unfashionable, some might say discredited, labelling theory proposes

that ‘once deviant behaviour is labelled the deviant, however slight or temporary his

symptoms, is stereotyped and stigmatised’ (Foster and Anderson, 1978, p.84). Some

proponents of labelling theory have suggested

that mental illness is a “myth,” a sociological phenomenon, the product

of the “straight” members of the group who feel they need a device to
explain, sanction, and control aberrant or dangerous behaviour on the
part of their fellows, behaviour sometimes simply “different” from their
own.
Foster and Anderson, 1978, p.84

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The psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, labelled antipsychiatry despite the years he spent as a

practicing psychiatrist and subsequently as a professor, has argued mental illness is a social

construct (Szasz1, 1997). Szasz delineates the difference between two linguistic modes, the

descriptive and the prescriptive; psychiatric diagnosis and ‘mental illness appears to refer to

a condition, but typically refers to a strategy’ (Szasz2, 1997, p.282).

Rehabilitation often translates to ‘the mentally ill person learns how to be sick in a

way his particular society understands’ (Helman, 2001, p.175). Diagnosis is employed on

behalf of society, via its representative the psychiatrist, for ‘liminal personae’ (Turner, 2002,

p.359) reintegrated and endorsed by the sick role (Parsons, 1951) granted by ‘the

physician…medicalizing social distress’ (Baer, et al., 1997, p.31). Progress and positive

prognosis relies upon

The existence of a social consensus for recovery and the willingness and
capacity of the community to reintegrate the psychotic person are, no
doubt, strongly influenced by whether he or she can serve a useful social
role.
Warner, R., 1996, p.61

Such processes of psychiatric diagnoses can be seen as ideological and ethnocentric

(Estroff, 1993, & Kleinman, 1995) in the broadest sense of ethnicity, with symptomatology

able to be analysed from a critical anthropological perspective as demonstrating social

hegemony, manifest within the clinical setting. It is proposed that ‘in industrialized societies

biomedicine along with the mental health, disability, and welfare systems that closely relate

to it arguably have become the major form of social control’ (Kleinman, 1995, p.38) with

‘Foucauldian analyses of conflict discourse (Lindstrom, 1992) and medical discourse (Kuipers

1989)’ locating ‘the workings of power inscribed into the very structure of the “discourse”’

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(Wilce, 1997, p.359). The ‘sociocultural construction and experience of disability and

chronicity among persons who have schizophrenia and other severe, persistent psychiatric

disorders’ (Estroff, 1993, p.249) is more than the writings of a small band of academics, and

more often than not the testimony of persons having experienced the psychiatric system; it

is surely a hegemonic facility that such ‘informants…are’ largely considered ‘unable to

report accurately’ (Estroff, 1993, p.248).

2.5 Conclusion

There can be no doubt that the application of antipsychotic and anti-depression

medications can stabilise diagnosed conditions, but medications counter symptoms of

mental illnesses rather than heal their cause; psychiatric drugs and ‘their iatrogenic effects’

(Rogers and Pilgrim, 2005, p.143) can often be as unpleasant as the index condition.

Neuropsychiatry may be seen to significantly reduce symptomatology, yet subtle changes,

perhaps invisible externally, may make the crucial difference to quality of life. While it may

be economically expedient to apply medication, psychotherapy provides respite and ‘it is in

the margin of disability that therapeutic change may make a small difference that becomes

all the difference in a person’s life’ (Kleinman, 1995, p.3). Taking into consideration the

stated accusations levelled against psychiatry ‘Islamic society...conceived a broader concept

of madness, had shown less separation between sanity and madness, and was more

tolerant of deviant behaviour’ (Dols1, 1984, p.50). Indeed in medieval Islamic society ‘the

neighbourhood loony probably served as a frequent, poignant reminder of another realm of

reality’ (Dols3, 1992, p.6) furthermore ‘madness was also perceived by some people in

Islamic society as a condition that did not need to be treated, healed, or exorcised’ (Dols3,

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1992, p.12). As the psychiatrist ‘Laing wrote...“Madness need not be all breakdown...it can

also be breakthrough” (Keutzer citing Laing, 1984, p.872). As Plato himself writes ‘the great

error of our day in the treatment of human beings is that some physicians separate

treatment of the soul from treatment of body’ (Dols3 citing Plato, 1992, p.157).

Medical professionals neglect the social experience of the patients and

the social construction of disease...cultural and social anthropologists are
insufficiently aware of the clinical realities of the framework that
constrains them, and that biological anthropologists exaggerate the
natural at the expense of the cultural.
Frankenburg, 1993, p.219, citing Browner et al., 1988.

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 Chapter 3
Towards an Islamic Transpersonal Psychotherapy.

And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred
bread for God's sacred feast. All these things shall love do unto you that
you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a
fragment of Life's heart. But if in your fear you would seek only love's
peace and love's pleasure, then it is better for you that you cover your
nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor. Into the seasonless
world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but
not all of your tears. Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but
from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is
sufficient unto love. When you love you should not say, "God is in my
heart," but rather, I am in the heart of God."
Gibran, 1997, pp.5-6

3.1 Introduction

In this chapter the writer will consider the features of Islam specifically relating to

the practice of healing, as well as traditions extant within the beliefs of people able to be

classified as Islamic which might be categorised as external to the faith. He has adopted a

position that anything that Muslims practice has an important relationship to Islam, while

leaving the matter of what is, and what isn’t Islam to people more interested in discussions

of fundamentals; this dissertation is an attempt to formulate an applied medical

anthropology able to be used across broad groups of Muslims as a heterogeneous ethnic

and within a wide geographical area. To this end the writer briefly considers ‘the spirit

idiom’ in an Islamic frame of reference. The subject matter moves on to broach a general

discussion of fourth force psychology, and how it pertains to psychotherapy, in contrast to

first force psychoanalytical theory, and of course as opposed to the previously visited

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neuropsychiatry. Ideas deriving from alchemy as metaphor, especially the humoural and

elemental schema, are examined as suitable symbols for a cosmography. In addition to this

Islam is considered as transpersonal in and of itself, with the long history of existential

reflection presented by scholarly endeavour within the corpus of Islamic thought. Synthesis

rather than syncretism (Guénon, 2004) is attempted, presented under the caption

‘Modification through Fixation’ paralleling the undertaking of the writer in this paper with

that alchemical process. Sign and symbol are considered as the writer builds a framework

with he believes resonates with the broader Abrahamic tradition, and unifies divers aspects

found across the Muslim world, be they accepted as orthodoxy or heresy. Indeed the

researcher sets out his precise innovation drawing on the prevalent cultural motif of a tree,

drawing to a close with thoughts on the seen and unseen worlds, their relationship to a

creator, and thus how humankind as created figures within that creation. The chapter closes

with the synthetic symbolic framework/cosmography the reader was introduced to before

he began his appraisal of this paper, hopefully allowing the person who reads a greater

understanding of the worldview it hopes to represent.

3.2 Traditional Contemporary Treatment.

3.2.1 Islamic cures, Islamic healing.

It is put that ‘in many Arab countries such as Iraq, Kuwait and Tunisia, the practice of

traditional therapy is illegal’ but this is more to do with surrounding ideas of science,

secularity and modernity with traditional practices considered as indicators of

‘underdevelopment and [a need]...for modernisation’ (Al-Issa4, 1990, p.232) than as a result

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of being prohibited by Islamic law. In the Algerian environment, which one might extend

through inference, there are three main sources of traditional therapy; “the ‘Taleb’, who is

both ‘a religious teacher and healer’, the ‘Marabout’ akin to ‘to the sorcerer in Black Africa’

regarded as ‘a saint, exorcist and healer’ and the clairvoyant who’s practice is considered

‘more...related to magic than to the Muslim religion” (Al-Issa4, 1990, p.232). Writing of the

Songhay tradition Stoller draws the same distinction, that ‘there are both Islamic

(marabouts) and non-Islamic healers in Songhay society’ (Stoller, 1980, p.121). The historic

‘medical literature, along with the astrological and alchemical, formed an early and

significant part of...translations’ (Dols1, 1984, p.8) from Greek into Arabic, thus it is

unsurprising to find an interrelation of the three disciplines within folk tradition. It is

prudent to note that Dols proposes that ‘psychotherapy did not occupy an important place

in Hippocratic medicine’ (Dols3, 1992, p.36) and thus also within the later Galenic tradition,

although as pointed out previously Ibn Bakhtishu put forward a more ‘holistic view that

psychic conditions caused bodily illnesses and vice versa’ (Dols1, 1984, p.23) with ‘psychic

disturbances’ (Dols3, 1992, p.4) cited as the aetiology of mental illness. As Jung put forward

‘Body and spirit are to me mere aspects of reality of the psyche. Psychic experience is the

only immediate experience. Body is as metaphysical as Spirit’ (Ali Rizvi citing Jung, 1994,

p.129).

Modern physicians are sometimes referred to as ‘hakim, which could mean a wise

man or philosopher’, thus the pursuit of knowledge, historically as well as contemporarily,

can be seen allegorically as part of the alchemical process with the ancient quest for the

acquisition of the philosopher’s stone applicable in the circumstance of the traditional

healer (Dols1, 1984, p.37); to turn lead to gold, illness to health. In regard to what exactly

constitutes Islamic therapy, such an enquiry may be confounded as

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 The definition of religiosity among Muslims is relational. While some
describe themselves as religious, they may not be seen as such by others
and vice versa. Also often Muslims view their own cultural traditions as
part of Islam even though those practices would be unrecognizable to
Muslims from other parts of the world...it is not enough to simply be
familiar with Islam as an abstraction in order to treat Muslims. Socio-
cultural factors such as age, class, education, and citizenship status shape
Muslims experience of Islam and their understandings of mental health
as much as their cultural views might.
Kobeisy, 2006, p.59

The words of the Quran are widely considered as having healing properties cross culturally

(if Islam is to be considered culturally heterogeneous), and it indeed calls itself healing

We send down (stage by stage) in the Qur'an that which is a healing and a
mercy to those who believe: to the unjust it causes nothing but loss after
loss.
The Holy Quran, 1992, 17:82.

There seems to have been ‘a common belief, which Ibn Sina and others expressed, that one

could literally beat sense into the violently insane’ (Dols3, 1992, p.126) especially ‘with a

pomegranate stick because the pomegranate tree was believed never to be inhabited by

jinn’ (Dols3, 1992, p.240); the kabbalistic association with the pomegranate is well

documented with it being said to adorn the two pillars of Solomon’s temple (KJV, 1 Kings

7:13-22) with ‘pomegranate seeds...said to number 613 - one for each of the Bible's 613

commandments’ (Langley, 2000, p.1154). However

Historical descriptions of magical operations, especially exorcisms, are

relatively rare...detailed studies by modern ethnographers and
anthropologists of Islamic societies afford considerable data about the
understanding of insanity and the patterns of healing, especially of the
jinn by magicians that is largely inaccessible for the medieval period
Dols3, 1992, p.12

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 Ibn Quayyim relates accounts of ‘Muslim exorcism’ which ‘appears to have been

quite acceptable to late medieval jurists’ (Dols3, 1992, p.253), and beating accompanied by

the recital of Quranic verse seems to have been the prescription. In regard to the unseen he

‘argues that the best treatment for magic are divine medicines because the source of

affliction was the jinn’ (Dols3, 1992, p.256) adding that ‘all intelligent people acknowledge

the evil eye’ which some believed is caused by ‘an ethereal, unwholesome substance’ (Dols3,

1992, p.256) projected from man or jinn. As is recounted ‘Ibn 'Abbas reported Allah's

Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: The influence of an evil eye is a fact; if

anything would precede the destiny it would be the influence of an evil eye’ (Sahih Muslim,

2005, 26: 5427). Ayat Al Kursi was indeed recommended by Ibn Qayyim Al Jawaziya in his

work ‘Prophetic Medicine’ (Al-Issa1, 2000, p.65) with such comprising ‘instruction on

matters of health and illness based on the exemplary life of Muhammad; as the prophet of

God, Muhammad had access to the ultimate source of all human wellbeing and healing’

(Dols3, 1992, p.10). The Quran’s existence as the foundation of Islam and as a healing

appears throughout the revelation

Had We sent this as a Qur'an (in the language) other than Arabic, they
would have said: "Why are not its verses explained in detail? What! (a
Book) not in Arabic and (a Messenger) an Arab?" Say: "It is a Guide and a
Healing to those who believe; and for those who believe not, there is a
deafness in their ears, and it is blindness in their (eyes): They are (as it
were) being called from a place far distant!"
The Holy Quran, 1992, 41:44.

Such verses lead to a literal interpretation leading ‘the Quran or its verses’ to be ‘often used

in curative incantations, invocations, and prayers’ (Dols3, 1992, p.212). Nonetheless ‘the

learned tradition of humoural pathology’ entered ‘popular culture, which can be seen most

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clearly in the formulation of Arab folk medicine using the theory of the humours, i.e.

Prophetic medicine’ (Dols3, 1992, p.116). There can be no doubt that ‘certain passages of

the Quran (ayat ash-shifa’) were considered particularly efficacious in restoring health and

were used on amulets, in incantations, and magical remedies’ (Dols3, 1992, p.235).

The repetition of God’s names (dhikr), as well as recital of the Quran, is considered

to bring remembrance of Allah to the mind of the supplicant, and it is recorded in a hadith

qudsi

Those that remember Me in their heart, I remember them in My heart;

and those that remember Me in a gathering (i.e. that make mention of
Me), I remember them (i.e. make mention of them) in a gathering better
than theirs.
Kabbani, 2004, p.101

With a further version of the hadith relating

Allah says: I am to my servant as he expects of Me, I am with him when

he remembers Me. If he remembers Me in his heart, I remember him to
Myself, and if he remembers me in an assembly, I mention him in an
assembly better than his...
Kabbani, 1998, p.12

As Hamsa Yusuf, the renowned revert scholar, writes in his commentary on his translation of

Imam al-Mawlud’s Matharat al Qulub (Purification of the hearts)

Imam Mawlud speaks next of the importance of dhikr, the remembrance

of God, which is vital to the cure of each disease of the heart (and
society). He mentions the exceptional excellence of reciting the Quran.
For example, reciting Surat al-Ikhlas (the 112th sura of the Quran) along
with the closing suras of the Quran (together known as the al-
mu’awwadhatan, the “two suras of refuge”.
Al-Mawlud, 2004, p.163

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Some believe that while ‘the Quran was inadequate as a guide to...healing, the rich fund of

hadith, or pious traditions’ fill ‘this need’ with the hadith ‘[commending] professional

medicine in general’ (Dols3, 1992, pp.243-244) and

Regarding Galenic medicine, it is seen as a divine gift and as a part of

God’s unknowable plan for mankind...one tradition claims that there is
medicine for every sickness. In other words, God has mercifully provided
cures for all illnesses though all the remedies have not yet been
discovered by men.
Dols3, 1992, p.244

Thus ‘according to Islamic tradition, actual knowledge of the self and its sources of

happiness or illnesses can be trusted only to the revelation that comes from God, the

Creator’ (Kobeisy, 2006, p.61). Yet it may be posed (especially in regard to knowledge and

learning), what in the creation proceeds from elsewhere than the authority of God? Dols

recounts a famous hadith of the prophet Muhammad in his consideration of Ibn Qayyim’s

Medicine of the Prophet (1998) and the treatment of illness

Ibn ‘Abbas said: ‘Shall I not show you a woman who is one of the people
of paradise?’ ‘Yes indeed,’ I said. So he replied, ‘This black woman came
to the Prophet and said: “I am an epileptic, and when I have a seizure, I
am uncovered. So will you supplicate God on my behalf?” He answered,
“If you wish, you may bear the affliction patiently and be assured of
paradise, or I can beseech God to heal you.” She declared, “I shall be
patient. But will you pray to God that I will not be uncovered?” So he
prayed for her.
Dols, 1992, p.251.

3.2.2 The ‘Spirit Idiom’.

It seems appropriate to consider the broader context of the broad practices drawn

together in what has been called the ‘spirit idiom’ (Eliade, 1987) given that such causation is

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widely attributed to illness in a Muslim context, whether that be the internal inhabitation by

elementals and or spirits, or the theft and/or flight of a soul by the same. The renowned

scholar Al-Ghazali, whom we will later return to, experienced well documented crises which

could certainly be compared to ‘soul loss’ which while ‘already described in the Latin

experience’ would seem to be ‘common across the world’ (Littlewood3, 2000, p.44)

historically and contemporarily. Treatment of such a condition is frustrated as ‘there is no

possibility of a lost soul in psychiatry’ (Kleinman, 1995, p.36) with altered states of

consciousness associated with possession states often attributed to mental illness (Lewis,

2003), the dissociative experience thought to be of neurobiological causation (Seligman and

Kirmayer, 2008). Yet where traditional methods differ from the reductionism of

neuropsychiatry is that they work with the concept of spiritual cause which has resonance

with many people beyond the narrow contexts of Islam.

The idea of such ‘soul-loss’ and the surrounding concepts of trance and possession

are comprehensively covered by Lewis in his definitive book ‘Ecstatic Religion’ (2003). The

idea of the dissolving self is powerfully delineated thus, that

The Self of a patient, in the context of demonic illness, can be seen as

going through a process of dissolution or negation. The degree to which
this Self is dissolved is, I believe, one of the important factors that can
lead others to define a patient's illness as severe and to require the
performance of a large-scale exorcism. This dissolution of self, which is in
effect the loss of a “self-consciousness” on the part of a patient and is
understood as such by others, can be caused by real physical pain and
discomfort, somewhat akin to what we recognize in our own culture
when we refer to someone as being “beside himself with pain”
Kapferer, 1979, p.116

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There can be little dispute that ‘spirit possession...occupies a central position in comparative

religion and theology, in religious phenomenology, in the sociology of religion, and in

psychology’ (Lewis, 1966, p.308). Boddy identifies in her study of the Hofriyati of Sudan that

‘villagers stipulate that all humans are composed of three vital essences’ the first being

delineated as ‘ruh, or breath, identified as the soul’ (Boddy, 1988, p.5) which is consistent

with the creation account within Islam (The Holy Quran, 1992, 15:26-29). The idea of breath,

as representative of Spirit, is common cross culturally for many eastern belief systems, as

with Japanese and Chinese ideas of Chi/Ki, and as demonstrated in the practice of Yoga,

most notably with breath control Pranayama (Lubeck et al., 2001)

The anthropological data on possession proposes, in regard to the Sar/Zar of north

east Africa, that ‘observers of such cults...typify that line of interpretation which views the

prominent role of women in spirit possession as a compensation for their exclusion and lack

of authority in other spheres’ (Lewis, 1966, p.310). The ideas of marginality and

empowerment as a key factor to spirit possession is also considered as demonstrated in the

Greek context of the fire walking rite of St. Constantine and ‘throughout the world women

figure prominently in rituals involving spirit possession and religious healing like the

Anastenaria’ (Danforth, 1989, p.96). The scope of literature seems to emphasise the utility

of the spirit idiom for women, while also recognising that it also may benefit disempowered

men. Indeed, when speaking of the specific of the Zar in the Sudanese context, Boddy,

states ‘numerous women-and very few men-are diagnosed to be suffering at some point in

their lives from illness attributed to zar, a type of spirit possession’ (Boddy, 1988, p.4).

Considering Ortner’s question, ‘Is female to male as nature is to culture?’ (Ortner, 1974)

within the context of the Zar, it seems that a slight deviation is manifest; the female does

indeed correspond to the natural created world, or dunya including the universal ghayb

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(unseen) and elemental forces, while men are associated with the sacred domain and

considerations of the akhira (hereafter), the world of culture, and specifically of Islam as the

prescribed way of life with ‘the relation between male and female...[echoing] that between

Islam and zar’ (Boddy, 1989, p.242). Yet Crapanzano’s study of the Hamadsha gives us a

model where men could be considered foremost through the associated brotherhoods, with

women are playing a subsidiary role during the public performances or hadra, which may be

considered similar to the Songhay magical tradition and spirit idiom, which will be

considered later in this paper (Stoller, 1997). It has been argued that the dynamic is

between orthodoxy : folk, and scholarly : il/semi-literate, with the ceremonies of the

Hamadsha being a demonstration of heterodoxy within Islam (Crapanzano, 1973), verging

on syncretism between pre and post Islamic beliefs in the African milieu (Walter and

Fridman, 2004). The work of Lewis differentiates

central possession cults, where possession is a positive experience

involving spirits who uphold the moral order (ancestors, culture heroes),
and typically speaking through men, from peripheral ones, where
possession by amoral spirits is locally considered as a form of illness that
typically afflicts women and other individuals of marginal or subordinate
status.
Boddy, 1994, p.410, citing Lewis

With possession serving functionally as ‘a powerful medium for unchaining thought from

the fetters of hegemonic cultural constructs’ (Boddy, 1988, p.23)

While conventional western neuropsychiatry and first force psychotherapy might shy

away from such religious, metaphysical, and transpersonal considerations (one might rightly

say occult), it has been proposed that

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 No systematic theory in psychology can be formulated without assuming
a definite posture towards metaphysics. Every psychotherapy has
metaphysics, although modern methodologists do not like to refer to it,
for fear of being branded reactionary.
Ali Rizvi, 1994, p.25

Despite the quoted response from the Imam, proclaiming such beliefs unhelpful, the

phenomenon and experience of the spirit idiom is a very real part of many people around

the world, a good proportion of them happening to be Muslims. Regarding the broader

‘spirit idiom’, the how of its occurrence, the intricate detail of ontology and cosmology, is of

less relevance than the experiential. The individual’s

Relationship to the possessing entity? Crapanzano (1980) speaks of

“introjection,” whereas Stoller (1989) prefers “fusion.” Kramer (1993) and
Taussig (1993) speak of mimesis, Csordas (1994) of “embodied imagery,”
in a “intersubjective milieu,” and Stephen (1989) of the “autonomous
imagination.” Obyesekere (1981) speaks of personal symbols and their
therapeutic functions.
Bourguignon, 2004, p.571

The cognitive function of the experience, beyond a functional social explanation, requires

one

To take the transpersonal material ontologically at face value...it does not

conform to the patterns of delusion and of Freudian dream-symbols. Its
emergence appears to be largely dependent on resolution of any typical
psychoneurotic systems. And its emergence, and especially the
experience of cosmic unity, appears to be of great therapeutic value. Grof
does not offer a genetic model here, as he does with the perinatal level.
What he does, over and above the reporting of the phenomena, is to
make a useful taxonomic separation of this more Jungian material from
the Freudian and Rankian and to show its close connection with
psychiatric healing, rather than disease.
Crownfield, 1975, p.311

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3.3 Transpersonal Perspectives.

3.3.1 “May the [Fourth] Force be with You”

Transpersonal psychotherapy attempts to move beyond the confines of the

psychoanalytical model where ‘consciousness is seen to open up into ranges of experience

which go far beyond Freud’s initial formulations...Consciousness is seen to be a vast,

multidimensional existence’ with ‘collective religious wisdom’ speaking ‘of all existence as

one vast spiritual reality’ (Cortright, 1997, p.9). Transpersonal psychology is considered a

‘“higher” Fourth Force’ (Keutzer, 1984, p.868) compared with ‘first force (classical

psychoanalytical theory, second force (positivistic or behaviourist theory) and third force

(humanistic psychology)’ (Gordon-Brown and Somers, 1990, p.226). Thus ‘transpersonal

psychology can be understood as the melding of the wisdom of the world’s spiritual

traditions with the learning of modern psychology’ (Cortright, 1997, p.8). In an explanatory

statement the president ‘of the International Transpersonal Association...Stanislav Grof

wrote of ‘the increasing convergence of western physics and eastern metaphysics, of

modern consciousness research and eastern spiritual systems’’ (Gordon-Brown and Somers

citing Grof, 1990, p.225). Indeed the origin of the word psychology means the word of the

soul, ‘logos of psyche’ (Hillman, 1983, p.28), so it is suitable it should compliment any

existential, ontological and/or cosmological considerations.

While transpersonal psychotherapy and/or psychology is not limited to one world

view or system, what is proposed herein is to use the symbolic maps of the Abrahamic

traditions to provide a ‘framework within which to organize...experience’ as we might need

‘a map when embarking on a journey in unfamiliar territory’ (Bateman et al., 2000, p.43) to

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assist putting in order ‘the experience of reality’ while realising ‘it is not that reality itself’

(Cortright, 1997, p.12). The allegories of faith

Whether fully elaborated into a great cultural myth or still in the raw
form of an organizing motif for the life of a single individual, myths
address the broad concerns of identity.
Feinstein, 1997, p.509.

In regard, specifically, to what could and/or would be delineated as symptomatology using

the DSM-IV, it should be noted that that publication has been considered as relying ‘on

unscientific and (possibly) value-laden observations’ (Tausig et al., 1999, p.128). It is the

contention of this writer that altered states of consciousness cannot be merely written off

as delusion; for ‘what is the meaning of the symptom, what does it symbolize? Until

symptoms are explored and understood in this way we cannot know whether they

represent healing or disturbance’ (Gordon-Brown and Somers, 1990, p.225). As Al-Issa

states ‘in psychiatric practice, there is a tendency to treat hallucinations without

consideration of their functional significance’ (Al-Issa5, 1995, p.371); in relation to delusion,

and as Gramsci states, in view of ‘base’ and ‘superstructure’

“spontaneous philosophy”…is proper to everybody. This philosophy is

contained in: 1. language itself, which is a totality of determined notions
and concepts and not just of words grammatically devoid of content; 2.
“common sense” [conventional wisdom] and “good sense” [empirical
knowledge]; 3. popular religion and, therefore, also in the entire system
of beliefs, superstitions, opinions, ways of seeing things and of acting,
which are collectively bundled together under the name of “folklore”.
Jackson Lears citing Gramsci, 1985, p.570

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Too often ‘personality theorists, from Freud onward, have often associated spirituality with

psychopathology’ (Feinstein, 1997, p.511).

As Lears further proposes ‘people indeed create their own symbolic universes

(Gramsci’s spontaneous philosophy) to make life understandable and tolerable, and those

symbolic universes do come to have an apparently “objective” validity’ (Jackson Lears, 1985,

p.573). As is the situation

In many non-Western cultures, ‘reality’ is used to describe hallucinations,

imagery and altered states of consciousness, and people react to these
experiences not ‘as if’ they are real but ‘as’ real
Al-Issa5, 1995, p.369.

Indeed the possibility exists that ‘hallucinatory behaviour such as visions was accepted in

medieval Islamic society and may not have been considered as mental illness’ (Al-Issa1,

2000, p.66) being considered more a gift; a sign of inspiration. As the scholar and mystic Al

Ghazali writes

Illness itself is one of the forms of experience by which man arrives at

knowledge of God, as He says by the mouth of His Prophet, “Sicknesses
themselves are my servants, and are attached to My chosen.”
Al-Ghazali, 2005, p.17

Toil in the pursuit of such knowledge ‘has rightly been called “spiritual psychology” (Al-

Ghazali, 1998, p.xii). Writing of the great Indian intellectual Shah Wali Allah, Ali Rizvi speaks

of the four mundane elements animated by ‘the subtle vapur which is responsible for

life...spirit’ (Ali Rizvi, 1994, p.101). The dynamic between the elements, fire, water, air, and

earth (Assagioli, 2000) as composite parts of a person can be seen to correlate to the

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aspects of the individual; spirit, soul, mind, and body (Cortright, 1997). Jung observed the

powerful symbolism of ‘alchemy [which] provides another map of this journey, in its four

stages of calcinatio (burning), solutio (washing), coagulatio (cohering), and sublimatio

(transcendence)’ (Gordon-Brown and Somers, 1990, p.230).

The writer cannot fail at this point to posit emotional conflict as leading to, perhaps

even being a genesis to, this process of calcinatio analogous with the passions, with

catharsis (Ali Rizvi, 1994) being literally synonymous with the concept of solutio, i.e.

cleansing/washing. Both ‘Al-Razi and Al-Ghazali stressed most on the emotion of anger

which according to them is the most harmful, and the most disruptive emotion leading to

mental disequilibrium’ (Ali Rizvi, 1994, p.31); while not disputing such observations, the

writer holds out that the passion in anger could provide the oil for the fire in the

transmutation of the psyche. As an Interesting aside, and in relation to this process and the

following proposed cosmological symbolic schema, within the writing of Al Ghazali we come

across the Arabic phrase Tahdhib al-Akhlaq, which infers a meaning of ‘cleansing’ and

‘pruning’ with the word Hadhab, again favoured by the scholar, meaning ‘cut off, lopped,

pruned,’ and thus ‘cleansed’ (Ali Rizvi, 1994, p.69); the analogy to the growth of a tree is

immediately apparent.

As a ‘pious legend’ delineates ‘said al-Harith al-Majasi: “Affliction is for trouble-

makers a punishment, for those turning to God a penance, and for the pure in heart a mark

of honour’ (Dols2, 1984, p.246). Al-Abdul-Jabbar and Al-Issa speak of the need for a

culturally and theologically relevant form of psychotherapy with ‘a need for a theoretical

framework to guide and direct psychotherapeutic endeavours to enable an Islamic

psychotherapy to develop its full potential’ (Al-Abdul-Jabbar and Al-Issa, 2000, p.292). It is

frequently stated ‘that psychotherapy is essentially culture-bound, if not to the Jewish

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community, then at least to the western bourgeois milieu in which it developed’

(Littlewood2, 2000, p.8). Perhaps, despite current political trends, psychotherapy’s origin in

what may be categorised as Semitic thought might be exactly why it is relevant to the

Islamic milieu. The western origin of psychotherapy is contested by Ali Rizvi who feels that

This is an extreme point of view, a one sided story of psychotherapy.

Psychotherapy is not an invention, nor is it a product of the Western
Civilisation. It is a long continuous evolutionary process of man’s fight
against spiritual/mental sickness, maladjustment, or any other similar
disorder.
Ali Rizvi, 1994, p.1

3.3.2 Islam as Transpersonal

It seems appropriate to consider Islam as a transpersonal form of psychology in and

of itself. We will shortly come to the proposed synthesis, drawing on ‘the approach and

philosophy of Muslim psychotherapy [which] is holistic – regarding the individual as a

complete transcendental, comprehensive, dynamic human being. A microcosm in the

macrocosm’ (Ali Rizvi, 1994, p.2). Thus ‘God, man and the universe manifest a unitary

process. Man is a gestalt, society is a gestalt, and God is the highest Gestalt’ (Ali Rizvi, 1994,

p.21), and in reality, at least Islamically speaking, ‘man is the model of the universe because

he is himself the reflection of these possibilities in the principal domain which manifest

themselves as the world’ (Ali Rizvi, 1994, p.201). The idea of unity/gestalt here suggested

may be considered synonymous with the Islamic concept of Tawheed/Unity (Philips, 1997),

whether at micro, macro, or transcendent levels. Islamic scholars such as ‘Ghazali, Razi, Ibn

Sina and Ibn Miskwayh lay great stress on the demand of the whole man’ (Ali Rizvi, 1994,

p.29), and while not believing that Adam is an image of God, in relation to the macrocosm of

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the universe and the microcosm of the body of man, the hermetic axiom surely holds true;

‘As above so below’.

Islam has remained a stabilising influence despite the fact that “modern
life has deprived man from seeing a real meaning or cause for which to
live...the will to meaning is then a basic human characteristic and its
frustration leads to an existential vacuum, to an encounter with
nothingness
Al-Radi and Al-Mahdy, 1989, p275

Al Ghazali in his millennium old treatment upon the 99 names of God speaks of An-Nur (The

Light) thus

In the measure that existence is opposed to non-existence, what is visible

cannot but be linked to existence, for no darkness is darker than non-
existence. What is free from the darkness of non-existence, who draws
everything from the darkness of non-existence to the manifestation of
existence is worthy of being named light.
Al-Ghazali, 1997, p.145

The idea of Allah as The Reality (Al-Haqq) manifest through his name The Light (An-

Nur) as synonymous with the kabbalistic concept of Limitless Light (Ain Soph Aur), will be

returned to shortly as we consider the proposed symbolic synthesis. In speaking of

transpersonal issues becoming present in the clinical environment and/or therapeutic

relationship, Crownfield raises the ‘Jungian archetypes of the Mother, the Outcast, the Fool,

and others, and mythic and fairy-tale material. A culminating experience of this level is that

of cosmic unity, and, beyond it, the void’ (Crownfield, 1976, p.311). He delineates how

‘pragmatically, transpersonal experiences of the One and the Abyss have decisive healing

and reconciling power’ (Crownfield, 1976, p.314).

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 The writer of this paper feels it opportune to again raise the eleventh century A.D.

scholar Imam Al Ghazali for several functional motives; later as we will deal with

consideration of a semiotic schema that allows a therapist to work within a culturally

relevant and sensitive schema, but here as a person who himself experienced psychological

crises. Al Ghazali describes his first ‘illness’ (Watt, 2002, p.50) thus

This malady was mysterious and it lasted for nearly two months. During
that time I was a sceptic in fact, but not in utterance and doctrine. At
length God Most High cured me of that sickness. My soul regained its
health and equilibrium...it was the effect of a light which God Most High
cast into my breast. And that light is the key to most knowledge.
Al Ghazali, 2000, p.23

Al Ghazali went on to suffer a further crisis later in his life initiated by an inability to teach as

a result of a loss of voice

This impediment in speech produced grief in my heart; my digestion was

affected, and I could hardly swallow anything. My general health
declined, and the physicians, realizing that the source of the trouble was
in the heart, despaired of successful treatment, unless the anxiety of the
heart could be relieved.
Watt citing Al Ghazali, 2002, p.137

Al Ghazali, himself, states

In the heart of the enlightened man there is a window opening on the

realities of the spiritual world, so that he knows, not by hearsay or
traditional belief, but by actual experience...that knowledge of God and
worship are medicinal, and that ignorance and sin are deadly poisons for
the soul.
Al-Ghazali, 2005, p.29.

And in what may be read as a criticism still relevant near a thousand years after its writing

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 If a man ceases to take any interest in worldly matters, conceives a
distaste for common pleasure, and appears sunk in depression, the
doctor will say, “This is a case of melancholy, and requires such and such
a prescription.” The physicist will say, “This is a dryness of the brain
caused by hot weather and cannot be relieved till the air becomes moist.”
The astrologer will attribute it to some particular conjunction or
opposition of planets. “Thus far their wisdom reaches,” says the Koran. It
does not occur to them that what has really happened is this: that the
Almighty has a concern for the welfare of that man, and has therefore
commanded His servants, the planets or the elements to produce such a
condition in him that he may turn away from the world to his maker.
Al-Ghazali, 2005, p.16

While it may be considered that ‘Galenism and medical theories of medieval Muslim

physicians are not compatible with modern scientific thinking’ (Al-Issa1, 2000, p.68) it cannot

be ignored that Jung himself uses the archetypal system of the elements in his works

including in ‘Psychology and Alchemy’ (Jung, 1989) and this would ‘later...[give] rise to a

theory of personality types’ (Strathern and Stewart, 1999, p.13) as with his work

‘Psychological Types’ (Jung, 1990) which was later developed by Isabel Myers and her

mother Katheryn Briggs into the often used schema for occupational and organisational

psychology (Case, 2004). Al Ghazali in his work Kimiya-ye sa’adah (The Alchemy of

Happiness) states that ‘the spiritual alchemy...like that which transmutes base metals into

gold, is not easily discovered’ (Al-Ghazali, 2005, p.xv) adding that ‘“He who knows himself

knows God” and as it is written in the Koran, “We shall show them our signs in the world

and in themselves, that the truth be manifest to them”’ (Al-Ghazali, 2005, p.1). In the

documentary of Al-Ghazali’s life we hear narrated

It is in the practice of dhikr, or remembrance, that God is said to be

mysteriously present in his name, and by this constant recollection, we
are able to draw nearer to the divine. This is the philosopher’s stone with
which Ghazali sought to purify his heart, and transform himself.
Salazar, 2004.

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 The writer feels there is no reason that an Islamic transpersonal form of therapy,

accepting a shared Islamic cosmological and ontological premise could not be engaged, and

again to quote Al Rizvi, such a therapy would be ‘more evolutionary than revolutionary,

more synthesis than thesis’ (Ali Rizvi, 1994, p.1); it will be to the idea of synthesis that we

will presently return. Littlewood delineates that psychotherapy is now attempting to use

‘personal psychology’ and ‘client’s own explanatory models’ (Littlewood2, 2000, p.9) to

develop relevant therapies. In recounting his work at the Nafsiyat Intercultural Therapy

Centre Jaffar Kareem puts forth that ‘for intercultural therapy it is necessary to understand

how the patient, him- or herself, first experiences their illness or problem, in effect, to allow

them authenticity as a person’ (Kareem, 2000, p.34). Again as delineated by Littlewood

The study of the relationship between social values and illness experience
in medical anthropology, once characterized by a psychoanalytical
approach, is now largely descriptive, closer to traditional anthropological
concern with informants’ own accounts of their experience and with their
folk models of illness
Littlewood1, 1989, p.5

El-Islam states, in the context of Arab patients, that any therapist must possess an

understanding of ‘Arabic culture and characteristic ways of perceiving the social

environment’ as ‘patients will...not disclose beliefs that might seem strange’ (El-Islam, 1982,

p.17) to the professional. Nevertheless, beyond the personal insights of the first force

Psychotherapy, aspiring to the status of science but authorized to deal

with values and with strongly held traditional and personal symbols, is
well positioned to respond to such concerns, embracing and applying
new modes of spirituality within a framework that is partly scientific but
partly traditional and religious in origin.
Oliver and Ostrofsky, 2007, p.10

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The theories employed by Western practitioners have to be adjusted to fit the framework of

the specific culture, and indeed acquiring some knowledge of the religious psychotherapy

provided by sheiks or by traditional folk healers (El-Islam, 1982) would help the therapist

develop a supportive humanist model as opposed to the ‘scratch and sniff’ psychoanalytical

approach. The postulated symbolic synthetic schema does not require the therapist to

declare Islamic faith, more so it recognises that ‘the first requirement for symbolic healing is

that the culture establish a general model of the mythic world believed in by healers and

potential patients’ (Dow, 1986, p.60) and contra the proposal for ‘an ontological shift for the

patient into a particularized mythic world’ rather the suggestion herein is that the therapist

adopt an Islamic cosmological and ontological schema, at least for the duration of the

consultation (Dow, 1986, p.66). As delineated by Jung ‘the thought of the patient must be

taken seriously…they adapt only as far as they can grasp the situation intellectually’

(Giegerich et al, 2005, p. xvi citing Jung, 1907)

Al Issa, in his discussion of mental illness in the Algerian milieu, points out that ‘the

sources of madness are regarded as exterior to the person and often considered as a result

of persecution and sorcery’ (Al-Issa4, 1990, p.231) thus while in the Western biomedical

model ‘a psychotic’s recovery is usually attended by a loss of delusion and the acquisition of

insight’ (El-Islam, 1982, p.15) in a Muslim/Arabic context ‘exploration and expressions of

insights have lead to an extreme anxiety reaction rather than the expected positive

therapeutic outcome’ (Al-Abdul-Jabbar and Al-Issa, 2000, p.281). It has been proposed that

‘most research studies have identified that Muslims have a negative stereotypical image of

mental health issues, including counselling and therapy’ (Kobeisy, 2006, p.59). In a study

surrounding Muslim attitudes toward counselling services and alternative therapies in the

North American experience it was found that 68.2% found solace in prayer, while a further

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44.9% felt that the reading of the Quran provided comfort (Khan, 2006, p.32). Thus ‘faith is

considered by...Muslim therapists as an essential pre-requisite for the treatment of

disorder’ with the ‘therapeutic value of faith...agreed upon by all...Muslim thinkers (Ali Rizvi,

1994, p.33). It has been proposed that

All of the patient's compensatory needs are reducible to, and merge,
essentially, into the one most basic compensatory need which is to affirm
oneself as being absolutely something, which serves as the compensatory
opposite and defense that attempts to help consciousness avoid that one
most painful experiential reality and fearful realization—that one is
essentially no-thing (i.e., no labeled thing), which is equated with
nothingness or psychological extinction.
Hammer, 1974, pp.205-206

The revert scholar, Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, himself a qualified nurse, during his commentary in

the documentary ‘Al-Ghazali: The Alchemist of Happiness’ seems to allude to such a

transpersonal perspective

There is an inherent nature of God that God has given human beings.
That nature has been imprinted in us, and one of the things about this
nature, I think Imam Al Ghazali’s life is a reflection of that, is that there is
a gnawing pain in the soul, and it does not go away. And one of the tragic
aspects of human existence is that when we remove God from our
search, whatever we call God, if the Buddhists talk about ultimate reality,
ultimate concern, this is still approximating our understanding of God.
God is ultimate concern, if we remove ultimate concern, from our lives,
we have to find substitutes. This is human nature, we will find
substitutes. To fill that hollow space within man, because man is
essentially a hollow being.
Salazar, 2004.

As Ali Rizvi writes, the ‘tendency is that man seeks the spiritual realm and transcends his

animal nature’ in this reaching to the ‘realm of archetypes he comes into contact with the

spiritual domain’ (Ali Rizvi, 1994, p.28).

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3.4 Synthetic Semiotic Framework.

3.4.1. “Modification through Fixation”.

As has been seen ‘Islamic beliefs were fertilised by ideas, myths, folklore, and values

from the newly expanded territories’ and while ‘many ideas reported...on Islamic psychiatry

may have nothing to do with basic Islamic dogma’ (Al-Issa1, 2000, p.44) it is important to

realise that Islam is not a closed alembic; as the well known, but disputed hadith delineates,

‘Seek knowledge even as far as China’. So if one may seek knowledge from a culture as

potentially diverse as the Chinese, then it seems fair to draw upon the wider Abrahamic

tradition. Relating the Arabic tradition to that of the Hebrew, it has been put that

‘Sufism...[is] more and experience than study’ (Ali Rizvi, 1994, p.43), thus given that this is

an academic paper the writer has looked to fill in experiential gaps using presumed

synonymy between Hebrew and Arabic traditions. The closeness of the languages of Arabic

and Hebrew deriving from the shared ancestor of proto-Semitic is a well documented by

linguistic theory with linguistic analogy present between the two languages (Kaplan, 1995).

The hypothesis proposed herein is that not only is there a shared linguistic root, manifest in

both the ‘deep structure’ and ‘surface structure’ (Chomsky, 1965, 1980) of the languages,

but that certain symbolism exists as shared archetype as marked in the imagery of the

mystic traditions. The writer having had contact with Prof. Chomsky put this idea to him via

email, and was heartened that it was not met with immediate dismissal, rather eliciting the

response

There may be something to what you suggest, but I don't know of any
evidence for it, and it's not clear to me how one could search for
evidence.
Chomsky, 2008.

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As the writer pointed out in reply to the specific, psychotherapy seems to function without

positivist verification of the neurobiological processes concerned and at which level of

consciousness they occur. The communication did however raise the prospect of putting

together a computer administered psychometric test to look for correlation in regard to the

data put forward in this chapter; could such an association be demonstrated by quantitative

research?

To return to synonymy, it might has often pointed out that that from an Islamic

perspective that the Muslim tradition did not start with Muhammad; thus as such what are

now known as Judaism and Islam do not run concurrent, rather as consecutive upon a

continuum. The Quran itself states in regard to the revelation to Muhammad specifically

Those who reject Faith say: "Why is not the Qur'an revealed to him all at
once? Thus (is it revealed), that We may strengthen thy heart thereby,
and We have rehearsed it to thee in slow, well-arranged stages,
gradually.
The Holy Quran, 1992, 25:32

and also relating to revelation more generally

When We substitute one revelation for another,- and Allah knows best
what He reveals (in stages),- they say, "Thou art but a forger": but most of
them understand not.
The Holy Quran, 1992, 16:101

While upon the followers of Muhammad the book enjoins

Say: "We believe in God, and in that which has been bestowed from on
high upon us, and that which has been bestowed upon Abraham and
Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and their descendants, and that which has

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 been vouchsafed to Moses and Jesus, and that which has been
vouchsafed to all the [other] prophets by their Sustainer; we make no
distinction between any of them. And it is unto Him that we surrender
ourselves."
The Holy Quran, 1992, 2:136

With the biblical tracing the roots of the mystic tradition of the Hebrews back to

Mesopotamia through Abraham, it is put that the earliest recorded kabbalistic documents

date from the tenth century C.E. though is arguably far older having been ‘reliably traced’ to

the first century CE (Parpola, 1993), with ‘the entire doctrinal structure of Kabbala’

symbolised by the ‘sefirotic Tree of Life’ (Parpola, 1993, p.171). Moreover the tree

Gives an account of the creation of the world, accompanied in three

successive stages by the Sefirot emanating from the transcendent God. It
also charts the cosmic harmony of the universe upheld by the Sefirot
under the constraining influence of the polar system of opposites…it is a
model of the divine world order, and in manifesting the invisible God
through His attributes, it is also, in a way, an image of God…On the other
hand, the Sefirotic Tree…can refer to man as a microcosm…it becomes a
way of salvation for the mystic seeking deliverance from the bonds of
flesh through the soul’s union with God…marks the path which he has to
follow in order to attain the ultimate goal, the crown of heaven
represented by sefirah number one, Keter.
Parpola, 1993, pp.172-173

During the Islamic period in Al Andalus Jewish writers such as Bahya Ibn Paquda ‘stood

outside the strictures of formal Muslim schools and, as outsiders, were free to adapt and

reshape elements from many streams of thought’ (Lobel, 2007, p.36), and as such not only

benefitting the metaphysical and mystic traditions, but also in the practice of the medical

sciences (Burnett, 2008). Thus the writer of this paper feels no reluctance in considering the

broad schools of thought which comprise the Abrahamic tradition and affiliated practices, in

fact he see them as existing within a continuum of the same wider tradition.

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 This is best illustrated by a self indulgent aside in the form of a reflexive anecdote.

When the writer first became Muslim, he was taught to declare faith thus ‘There is nothing

worthy of worship other than Allah, and Muhammad was the messenger of God’. In light of

his own path he would add to the declaration ‘and Jesus was the messenger of God, and

Moses was the messenger of God’. Despite the Quran, in the mind of the writer, justifying

this stance as illustrated in the previous stated Quranic quote (2:136), his version of the

declaration was ill met. It was some years later during a trip to Cairo and while at ‘the

mosque university of al-Azhar, inaugurated in AD 972 by the...Fatimids’ (Netton, 1989, p.7),

that he was required to officially make the declaration of faith to an Alim (scholar) of the

university. The scholar had the writer repeat the normal declaration of faith, then to the

surprise and delight of the declarant the scholar continued with the very same addition as

he had himself done, wishing the writer to repeat the sentiment. The writer thus not only

felt justified in his position, but feels almost compelled to adhere to that perspective in this

paper.

Before departing on what really constitutes a gathering together of sign and symbol,

the writer of this paper is minded that

Our lives are full of symbols and symbolic events, both inner and outer.
The power of the living symbol comes from its spiritual roots. Events and
relationships; visual images; feelings and emotions; body language and
body energy; illness and accident; ‘chance’ encounters; can all carry the
magic of archetypal imprint...We have largely lost the art of reading
symbols...symbolic work...has a central place in transpersonal
psychotherapy.
Gordon-Brown and Somers, 1990, p.236

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And so the author turns his attention to some culturally specific symbols and hopes to bring

them together in a way that has pertinent meaning; as Bourdieu writes ‘symbolic power is a

power of constructing reality, and one which tends to establish a gnoseological order’

(Bourdieu, 1991, p.166).

3.4.2 Sign and Symbol.

Charms and amulets which use symbols related to the number 5, i.e. the hand of

Fatima (Fig.X), have long been used to protect against the evil eye and/or sorcery (El-Islam,

1982). Protective amulets using the hand are also found in the Hebrew tradition (Fig.5) with

‘the hand [playing] and important role in popular medicine throughout the Orient’ (Canaan,

2004, p.173) often known as ‘Hamsa’ again having a correlation to the number 5. The letter

‘ha’ in Arabic, being the 5th letter in the ABJAD system (order of the letters), as opposed to

the more traditional and contemporary ordering of the letters according to letter shape, has

an immediate correlation (Canaan, 2004). The letter may be written in a numbers of forms,

depending where they appear in a word; initial, medial, final and isolated (Fig.3)

Fig.3, Forms of the letter Ha’ (Schulz et al., 2000, p.5)

The isolated form of the letter is semiotically identical to the Indian numeral for 5 as used by

the Arabs, that being a circle, the circle being a cross culturally common symbol held by

many traditions to have symbolic power, a factor that will be touched upon again when we

consider the symbolic synthesis. As the mystic Ibn Arabi writes

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 When our father Adam, the first human being Allah created, opened his
eyes – when Allah blew into him his soul from His own soul – he looked at
the rest of existence, and he saw it as a circle. Everything was evolving
around the circle of Becoming and Being.
Ibn Arabi, 2005, pp.92-93

The number 5 in the Hebrew system is also correlated to the equivalent letter, He, ‘‫’ה‬, with

the hamsa symbol, i.e. the hand, having been adopted by peace activists in the Middle East

as a symbol shared by both Arabic and Hebrew traditions. The one used as illustration bears

the Hebrew letter ‘shin’ which by Hebrew numerology (Gematria) is short hand for ‘The

spirit of God/Ruach Elohim’, ‫( רוח אלוהים‬KJV, Genesis, 1:2), with both the phrase and the

letter numerically equalling 300, and thus considered to have synonimity.

Fig.4, Hand of Fatima (Alternative Religions, 2008)

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 Fig.5, Hamsa B’Yado (Strauss-Rosen, 2008).

Whether the ‘Spirit’ is in the opening verses of Genesis, at Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan, or at

Pentecost, the semiotic correlation of the dove to the Hebrew letter ‫( ש‬Shin), is not

unapparent.

Fig.6, The Dove as Shin (The Bible Wheel, 1995)

And the Quran speaks of Jesus being a word which proceeds from the spirit of the

Elohim/Eloah/Allah

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 O People of the Book! Commit no excesses in your religion: Nor say of
Allah aught but the truth. Christ Jesus the son of Mary was (no more
than) an apostle of Allah, and His Word, which He bestowed on Mary,
and a spirit proceeding from Him: so believe in Allah and His apostles. Say
not "Trinity" : desist: it will be better for you: for Allah is one Allah. Glory
be to Him: (far exalted is He) above having a son. To Him belong all things
in the heavens and on earth. And enough is Allah as a Disposer of affairs.
The Holy Quran, 1992, 4:171

The prominent concept of the word/logos can be considered in microcosm as Adam

Kadmon, symbolised by the image known as the ‘keterim’ mapped onto the kabbalistic tree

of life as macrocosm, where ‘the head is I [Yod], the arms and shoulders are like H [Ha], the

body is V [Vau], and the legs are represented by the H [Ha] final’ (MacGregor-Mathers,

2005, p.34). It has been noted that

Sufi psychology does not separate the soul either from the metaphysical
or from the cosmic order. It may thus be said that man, who is
microcosm, and the universe, which is macrocosm, are like two mirrors
each reflecting the other.
Ali Rizvi, 1994, p.22

The imagery of the tree of life and its paths are said to have come via Abraham, and appears

within the kabbalistic tradition in the work ‘Sefer Yetzirah’ or the Book of creation (Kaplan,

1991). As Jung describes Adam, ‘he is the anthropos, the first man, symbolized by the four

elements...also symbolised by the cross, whose ends correspond to the four cardinal points’

(Jung, 1989, p.368). It has even been proposed that the name ‘Allah...is composed of four

letters corresponding to the four elements, 4 cardinal points of the compass, 4 seasons, 4

archangels, etc.’ (Canaan, 2004, p.135). The writer, and Islam generally, rejects the premise

of comparison of Allah with his creation and will later present a contrary, and more

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orthodox, explanation of the name Allah in his symbolic schema. It is frequently put that

Allah and Jahweh are not the same concepts of God (Chick Publications, 2000), usually as an

evangelical Christian counter to Allah being the God of the descendants of Abraham; the

writer would concur delineating that Jahweh is better understood as the word/logos

manifest as will be delineated. As MacGregor Mathers considers

The whole ten sephiroth represent the Heavenly Man...Adam Auilah.

Under this sephira are classed the angelic order of Chioth Ha-Qadesh,
holy living creatures, the kerubim or sphinxes of Ezekiel’s vision and of
the apocalypse of St. John. These are represented in the Zodiac by the
four signs, Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius – the Bull, Lion, Eagle, and
Man.
MacGregor-Mathers, 2005, p.24

Fig.7 The Tree of Life and Adam Kadmon as Keterim

(Maybe Quarterly, 2005)

Accordingly ‘the kerubim are the living forms of the letters’ (MacGregor-Mathers, 2005,

p.28). Again MacGregor-Mathers speaks of Adam in regard to the tree of life, ‘the ten

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Sephiroth represent the archetypal man, Adam Qadmon’ (MacGregor-Mathers, 2005, p.28).

As the Victorian mystic Arthur Edward Waite writes in regard to ‘the cosmology of Sepher

Yetzirah’ which is its ‘primary concern’, the second objective of the book is to demonstrate

‘the work of God in the universe and in the body of man’ as the book ‘introduces...a

doctrine of the Logos. The Universe was created by “three forms of expression – Numbers,

Letters, and words” (Stenring, 1970, p.5). Ideas surrounding emanation also prominently

appear in the Neoplatonic influenced writings of Islamic scholars such Al Farabi, Ibn Sina,

and the Medieval Ismaili school associated with Shi’ism (Netton, 1994). The Quran is known

as the ‘Book of Signs’ as a result of its ‘verses’ being known as ‘ayat which means also signs

or symbols’ and ‘the ayat are the Divine Words and Letters which compromise at once the

elements of the Divine Book, the macrocosmic world, and the inner being of man’ (Nasr,

1989, p.192). Netton cites ‘the father of modern semiotics, Charles S. Pierce...in his

voluminous oeuvre, [that] ideas are to be regarded as signs as well’ (Netton, 1994, p.71).

The Quran states ‘For to anything which We have willed, We but say the word, "Be", and it

is.’ (The Holy Quran, 1992, 16:40). As Ibn Arabi writes

Creation is manifest through the names of Allah, and the names are
comprised of the 29 letters of the Arabic alphabet...if you are looking for
basic building blocks of matter...you will find them in the letters. The
letters are the Imams of phrases.
Abd Ar-Rahman At-Tarjumana citing Ibn Arabi, 1980, p.9

The power in letters and words, and the numbers related to them, play a fundamental role

in the construction of Talismans, be they Hebrew or Arabic. Phrases may be used wholesale,

or broken down to component parts employed in magic squares; one such square used

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explicitly for healing is known as ‘the square of Al Ghazali’ (Zwemer, 2008, p.165) but is

considered of much more ancient origin (Canaan, 2004). The New Testament communicates

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were
made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. In
him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in
darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
KJV, John 1:1-5

As an aside the writer cannot help but propose that the opening verse should be rendered

‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with Eloah, and the Word was Jahweh’

(KJV, John 1:1). Surely if these were the words of Jesus, lost as it were in translation, the

differences between the Abrahamic faiths would surely recede.

Fig.8, Adam Kadmon as synonymous with the tree of life.

(Jewish Encyclopedia, 2002)

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Occult writers of the 19th century considered the Hebrew letter ‫( ש‬Shin), to be

representative of the fifth element descending upon the cross of the Tetragrammaton ‫יהוה‬

(Jah’weh) and as shin descends upon the cross, indeed as the cross of matter proceeds from

‘The spirit of God/Ruach Elohim’, ‫רוח אלוהים‬, thus is created the formula of the reconciling

pentagram ‫( יהשוה‬Jeheshuah, Gk. Jesus), and here again we can see a deeply symbolic

meaning placed on the number 5, this time in the form of the pentagram as a

representation of sacred geometry.

Fig.9, Jeheshuah (Gk. Jesus), The Reconciling Pentagram.

It has been put to the writer that his use of the idea of sacred geometry betrays the writer’s

origins within British Victorian Occultism, which the author does not deny. However anyone

who has closely examined the arabesque and geometric designs adorning Islamic art,

calligraphy, and architecture can be left in no doubt that the British certainly do not have,

nor could temporily have, a monopoly of the idea.

Ibn Sina in his writing on Galenic medicine considers that when the humours are

unbalanced ‘they deprive the brain of the substance of the natural spirit (ruh) that preserves

the reason’ (Dols3, 1992, p.77). As Jesus is reported to have said 'Verily, verily, I say unto

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thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of

God.’ (KJV, John, 3:5) thus the idea of baptism in water and by the spirit have deep

significance in the faith of the Christ. The episode of the time spent in the desert by Jesus,

the forty days and forty nights, speaks of a transmutation of the soul, where the prophet

meets Satan and conquers him.

The therapeutic power of the death-rebirth experience, Grof indicates, is

tremendous He does not present here the quantitative results, but he
asserts that this experience has a profound releasing power for many
deep psychiatric difficulties.
Crownfield, 1976, p.313

The dynamic between the external and internal Christ considered by Jung in his book

considering psychology as related to alchemy (Jung, 1953) and the subsequent

transmutation of the psyche, seems to echo the Sufi saying ‘Die before you die’ (Morris,

1988, p.66). The scholar ‘Ibn Khladun’ speaking of Alchemy believed it ‘to be a psychic

phenomenon like magic’ (Dols3, 1992, p.256).

3.4.3 Innovation

It has been put that ‘the kabbalah is divided into three categories, the theoretical,

the meditative, and the magical’ (Kaplan, 1991, p.ix). The alchemical process, with its strong

symbolic connection with the kabbalah (Drob, 1999), was seen as a bridge between Semitic

and occidental philosophies by Jung (Drob, 2003, p.77). However for strict observants of

Islamic tradition, the practice of such knowledge employed as talisman could be considered

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at least as bid’ah (innovation) if not as a form of shirk, the sin of association, in toto.

Comparable to contemporary Salafi intellectual thought

The most famous medieval fundamentalist...Ibn Taymiya, a Hanbali

theologian and jurist...strongly advocated a return to the Quran and the
practice of Muhammad, as Ibn Taymiya interpreted them; all else was
innovation (bid’a), which he equated with heresy.
Dols3, 1992, p.230

As Bilal Philips states in regard to protective talisman, to wear them believing them able to

protect in place of Allah is to commit a sin (Philips, 1997). Yet despite such protestations we

have seen that such practices do occur in the Muslim world. Even Al Ghazali, who is cited as

justifying mysticism allowing it to become ‘a conventional aspect of Islamic culture’ (Dols3,

1992, p.228), writes,

And do you not think that reliance is as well placed on the words of all
the prophets, saints, and holy men, convinced as they were of a future
life, as on the promise of a charm-writer or an astrologer?
Al-Ghazali, 2005, p.39.

Ibn Taymiya wrote a long work which ‘attests to the Christian influence on Islam’ which he

‘considered to be a malignant one’

Only God knows how much Muslim groups have suffered...A Muslim
should not utter something whose meaning he does not know. It is for
this reason that non-Arabic – such as Syriac, Hebrew, etc. – incantations
and amulets are detestable, because they may contain words which it is
not permissible to utter.
Dols3 citing Ibn Taymiya, 1992, p.231.

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Alongside such customs, the reverence toward saints and belief in their healing powers even

in absentia, i.e. after death, is believed by some, historically and contemporarily, to be a form of

idolatry (Dols3, 1992). Accordingly ‘the veneration of Muslim saints was a ‘cover under which

surviving remnants of conquered religions continue to exist in Islam’ (Dols3, 1992, p.232) as

with ‘the Asklepios cult’ which would have already been ‘greatly attenuated by Christian

beliefs before the advent of Islam’ (Dols3, 1992, p.242). Additionally it is known that there

were ‘temples devoted to Asclepius...on the island of Cos’ with that location being

‘important because it was here that the first major figure of classical medicine, Hippocrates,

taught his pupils’ with the canon of his work being ‘in turn revised by the Roman author

Galen’ (Ali Rizvi, 1994, pp.11-12) and thenceforth onward to its Muslim inheritors.

While the writer does not propose the promotion of frowned upon practices, he

does not see why the knowledge from which they are derived cannot be used by a therapist

to place the client within an ontological and cosmological schema. Dols writes that during

the medieval period

Related to Prophetic medicine was the widespread practice of magic...In

theory Islam did not prohibit the use of appropriate methods, i.e. those
consistent with Muslim belief, by devout Muslims for benevolent
purposes’
Dols3, 1992, p.11

According to Dols, the application of magic was not completely forbidden, and ‘there was no

harm in magical incantations that were employed for healing so long as they were not

polytheistic’ (Dols3, 1992, p.261), in fact ‘the Arabic word for medicine, tibb, often signified

magic in the medieval period’ (Dols3, 1992, p.262).

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 It is believed by the writer that Islamic cosmology and ontology are received by

processes correlating to Bourdieu’s notion of habitus; ‘a system of durable, transposable

dispositions, structured structures predisposed towards acting as structuring structures.’

(Glendhill, 2000, p.139, citing Bourdieu, 1977, p.72) rather than by any direct instruction.

Thus herein is a schema that the client need not be aware of, though it is hoped such

knowledge has been filtered sufficiently herein to preclude diversion from faith should any

of it become known to the client. Rather the proposed ‘transpersonal therapy...may include

the provision of an adequate conceptual framework for handling transpersonal experiences’

(Keutzer, 1984, p.874); a ‘framework wherein pain can be released and wounds healed’

(Gordon-Brown and Somers, 1990, p.225). The system/synthesis could be arguably reduced

to dialectic oppositions and as such ‘allowing communication in words’ with symbol

encouraging ‘understanding and integration of previously unacknowledged aspects of the

self’ (Bateman et al., 2000, p.67); sinister : dexter, left : right, higher: lower, ruh: nafs,

persona : shadow, or gold : lead. A desired end and ‘a central concept in Jungian

psychotherapy is balance’ (Keutzer, 1984, p.879) with the need for ‘the provision of an

adequate conceptual framework for handling transpersonal experiences’ (Keutzer, 1984,

p.874). To the writer of this paper the placement of a person within a culturally relevant

schema is not comparable to the seeking of amulets and talismans from occult practitioners.

As we have considered Adam may be seen as a manifestation of God’s word, simultaneously

as a manifestation in microcosm of macrocosm, both within the tree of life, and with the

tree of life within. Shaykh Ahmad al-Ahsa'i ‘in an essay on cosmology...elaborates upon the

two ancient, powerful symbols of the world-tree and the world as written text’ (Cole, 1994,

p.146). As the Quran states

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 Seest thou not how Allah sets forth a parable? - A goodly word like a
goodly tree, whose root is firmly fixed, and its branches (reach) to the
heavens,- of its Lord. So Allah sets forth parables for men, in order that
they may receive admonition.
The Holy Quran, 1992, 14:24.

3.4.4. The Tree of Life.

The symbolism of the tree is touched upon by the famous Sufi writer Ibn Arabi, who

is both known as ‘ash-shaykh al-akbar (the greatest of spiritual guides)’ contrasted with

‘ash-shaykh al-akfar (the greatest of heretics)’ (Ibn Arabi, 2005, p.33). In regard to

Macrocosm he writes

Now I look upon the universe that surrounds us and think how each and
everything came to be and try to solve its coded mysteries, and lo! I see
that the whole universe is but a tree.
Ibn Arabi, 2005, p.90.

And again Ibn Arabi uses the image of the created world as a tree in his work ‘The Universal

Tree and the Four Birds’ (Ibn Arabi, 2007, p.37) which refers to his ‘treatise [on] “cosmic

unification in the presence of essential witnessing through the assembling of the Human

Tree’ (Ibn Arabi, 2007, p.25) and thus we may see the tree is also microcosm. The renowned

poet Rumi uses symbolism of a cosmic tree, and also man symbolised as a tree (Schimmel,

1982, p.111), with

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 the tree, known since ancient days as "the tree of life," is a central
image...the green tree...[is] a symbol of the pious one who thrives on the
water of life...as the prophetic tradition says "The faithful engaged in
God's recollection, dhikr, is like a green tree in the midst of dried up trees
Schimmel, 1982, p.142

The symbolism of the ‘world as constituted by divine letters...which one postmodern

philosopher has castigated as "logocentrism”’ (Cole, 1994, p.145, citing Derrida), is shown

with

The connection between the two cosmological symbols, of world as text

and world as tree...made through a homonym. As in English, the Arabic
word for leaf (waraq) can refer either to the leaf of a book or the leaf of a
tree.
Cole, 1994, p.149

Ibn Khaldun in writing against the ‘magical sciences’ says that they ‘were...forbidden by

Islamic law’, however he adds that

Letter magic is a kind of magic that is legal...the use of Arabic letters and
numerals, the names of God, and Quranic phrases were...essential parts
of Islamic magic, especially in healing and exorcisms
Dols3, 1992, p.268

And Leo Africanus writing upon the cabbalists in North Africa and their ‘letter magic,

astrology and occult sciences...confesses their marvellous ability’ (Dols3, 1992, p.284)

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 Fig.10, The Tree of Life (Thelemapedia, 2005)

The Tree of life is said to consist of three pillars, the left, the middle, and the right,

with them corresponding to severity, mildness, and mercy respectively (MacGregor-

Mathers, 2005), which could provide a prototypical dialectical framework ‘to combat the

bad feelings in human beings that have much of their genesis in conflicts between aspects of

personality’ (Oliver and Ostrofsky, 2007, p.7). The inherent conflict within man has been

described as ‘a battle for the...heart’ with the heart being ‘the point of inter-action of the

vertical ray, which is Ar Ruh [spirit], with the horizontal plane, that is an-nafs [instinct]’ (Ali

Rizvi citing Burchardt, 1994, p.28). The great ‘physicians of the Islamic era like al-Razi, al-

Majusi, and Ibn-Sina’ have put that ‘all spiritual diseases are due to the ascendancy of

matter over spirit, in the war between matter and spirit’ (Ali Rizvi, 1994, p.32). In parallel to

this conflict Ali Rizvi continues

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 It can be said that Islam [also] has two dimensions, the ‘horizontal’
dimension of the will, and the ‘vertical’ dimension of the intelligence: the
former we shall term ‘equilibrium’ and the latter ‘union’. Islam is in
essence equilibrium and union. In the life of a people there are, as it
were, two halves; one constitutes the play of its earthly existence, the
other its relationship with the absolute...On the plane of the ‘Whole Man’
two dimensions can be distinguished, ‘Heaven’ and ‘Earth’ or height (tul)
and breadth (ard); height links earth to heaven.
Ali Rizvi citing Schuon, 1994, pp.41-42

Beyond this, the schema of the tree, particularly as manifest by Adam Kadmon, provides

what can be seen as a Semitic version of the chakra system to synthesise internal

psychological conflicts and dynamics, as ‘when two opposing forces come in contact, they

result...[in] synthesis’ (Ali Rizvi, 1994, p.68). Such a system is cited as

Particularly useful for identifying and working with: energy imbalance

within the psyche, early warnings of health difficulties of psychological
origin, impending transitions/transformations, the need to take up some
spiritual discipline or path, [and] the centre where the self can be most
fully experienced.
Gordon-Brown and Somer, 1990, p.240

As Ali Rizvi writes in regard to ‘psychotherapy...[that] the Muslim tradition...takes its origin

from study of the psychology of...Adam’ (Ali Rizvi, 1994, p.2). In regard to how a dialectic

system could assist the treatment of an individual, the writer is drawn to Al-Ghazali’s

therapy of opposites which infers ‘a humoural therapy...in conjunction with...the treatment

of disease by opposites’ (Strathern and Stewart, 1999, pp.20-21)

Which is used for the treatment of the mentally disordered

persons...Human nature strives towards constant struggle between

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 opposite and potentialities...opposites develop in our unconscious.
According to this therapy much emphasis is laid on imagination. We have
to imaginatively act as if the other opposite is there...The action and
thinking will go side by side making the personality balanced.
Ali Rizvi, 1994, p.67

How exactly the tree of life as the body of Adam and thus kabbalistic correspondence could

be incorporated into such a dialectic system is beyond the remit of this paper, but it is not a

new idea and has been touched upon in previous research in direct relation to the kabbalah

and psychotherapy (Hoffman, 1996); it could ‘help people explore the inner structures and

dynamics of their psyche’ using ‘mythological and archetypal themes...[which] have the

power...to throw strong light on what is moving beneath the surface of our lives’ (Gordon-

Brown and Somer, 1990, p.239).

Freud himself made use of the idea of dynamics ‘from nineteenth century physics to

convey the idea of two conflicting forces producing a resultant third force acting in another

direction’ (Bateman et al., 2000, p.9). Thus allowing an ontological framework in the clinical

situation for where a ‘dialectical interplay between the individual subjective realities of the

psychotherapist and patient, and the intersubjective reality created in their interaction’

(Marlo and Kline, 1998, p.13, citing Stolorow, Brandchaft, & Atwood, 1987) therapy may

easily be facilitated. Regarding dialectics the influence of the Kabbalah on Hegel directly is

well made (Tiryakian, 1972, p.506). Speaking of the three pillars it has been said

While the excess of Mercy is not an evil tendency, but rather conveys a
certain idea of weakness and want of force, too great an excess of
Severity calls forth the executioner of judgment, the evil and oppressive
force which is symbolized by Leviathan.
MacGregor-Mathers, 2005, p.41

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As the writer of this paper has been known to quip in regards to the pillars of the tree, ‘two

out of three ain’t bad’. The Quran also puts forth the idea of ‘three shoots [which] grew

from the sacred seed of that Tree’ (Ibn Arabi, 2000, p.100) with Surah Waqi’ah enquiring

‘those on the right hand; how happy are those on the right hand!’ and ‘those on the left

hand; how wretched are those on the left hand’ while ‘the foremost are the foremost, these

are drawn nigh to Allah’ (Ibn Arabi citing The Quran Surah 56:8-11, 2000, p.100). Indeed

Islam itself is known alternatively as the ‘straight path’ (Al-Ghazali citing the Holy Quran, 1:6,

1998, p.27) or ‘middle path’ (Saleh citing Peters, 2001, p.57) with the Quran itself stating

Wherewith Allah guideth all who seek His good pleasure to ways of peace
and safety, and leadeth them out of darkness, by His will, unto the light,
guideth them to a path that is straight.
The Holy Quran, 1992, 5:16

Ibn Ridwan considered the ‘sympathy of one’s constitution with the environment and the

needs to attune one’s body to it in order to preserve health’ (Dols1, 1984, p.16). In this

respect the metaphor and symbol of a tree in relation to the elements is useful; it grows in

earth, respires air, is watered by the rain, while nourished by the fire of the sun.

3.5 Conclusion: Beyond the veils

Returning the idea of the unseen world, and thus symbol as representative, Dr.

Winter of Cambridge University, a well known and oft’ criticised scholar, relates that

The whole point of his [Al-Ghazali] story for Muslims, is precisely that he
returns to orthodoxy, but with a new vision. His vision is that the proof of
Islam is in experience...tasting the realities that lie behind the veils of
physical existence.
Salazar, 2004.

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In fact the ‘‘rending of the veils’ is a Sufi expression designating spiritual progression’ whose

route into Hebrew thought is well accepted by academics concerned with Judeo-Arabic

culture (Hary and Ben-Shammi, 2006, p.40).

Fig.11, The Veils, MacGregor-Mathers, 2005, facing p.20.

Regarding symbol as allegory, Levi- Strauss cites Arthur ‘Rimbaud's intuition that metaphor

can change the world' (Levi- Strauss, 1949, p.175) as ‘metaphor is frequently a more potent

agent for change than is ordinary descriptive or didactic language’ (Keutzer, 1984, p.876)

especially where ‘words develop as symbols representing such things as ideas, shades of

feeling, and moral attitudes (Bateman et al., 2000, p.70). One must remember the

'tremendous psycho-therapeutic power magic has’, as metaphor ‘it is a kind of psychological

safety valve where too strong psychic pressure can be released’ (Ackerknecht, 1943, p.138).

While the teaching of occult arts is not proposed, the symbolic representation of the

unseen, what might be called occult, concludes this chapter drawing on the various

traditions alluded to in this paper.

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 Ayat An Nur is considered ‘one of the most mystically beautiful of all the passages of

the Quran’ (Netton, 1989, p.157) which as well as inspiring Ibn Sina, Ibn al-Haytham and Al

Suhrawardi, also lead Al-Ghazali to write an entire treatise on the ayat. In his work Miskat

Al-Anwar, Al Ghazali cites a hadith of the prophet ‘God has seventy veils of light and

darkness; were He to lift them, the august glories of His face would burn up everyone whose

eyesight perceived him’ (Al-Ghazali, 1998, p.44) with narrations varying as to the number

from seventy thousand to merely one (Morris, 1988, p.69). Ayat an-Nur (sign of the light)

states

Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The Parable of His Light is
as if there were a Niche and within it a Lamp: the Lamp enclosed in Glass:
the glass as it were a brilliant star: Lit from a blessed Tree, an Olive,
neither of the east nor of the west, whose oil is well-nigh luminous,
though fire scarce touched it: Light upon Light! Allah doth guide whom He
will to His Light: Allah doth set forth Parables for men: and Allah doth
know all things.
The Holy Quran, 1992, 24:35.

Ayat Al-Kursi, sometimes called the ‘Verse of the Throne’ (the ‘Kursi’ has been

compared to a footstool/chair when compared to the ‘Arsh’ (Throne) over which Allah is

said to be established) illustrates the deeply transcendental nature of the Quran;

Allah! There is no god but He, The Living, The Self-subsisting, Supporter of all,
No slumber can seize Him nor Sleep. His are all the things in the heavens and
on earth. Who is thee can intercede in His presence except as He permitteth?
He knoweth what (appeareth to his creatures as) before or after or behind
them. Nor shall they compass aught of his knowledge except as He willeth.
His Throne doth extend over the heavens and the earth, and he feeleth no
fatigue in guarding and preserving them for He is Most High, The Supreme (in
glory).
The Holy Quran, 1992, 2:255

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Thus when these ayat/signs are considered in light of modern scientific cosmology, it is

taken that signify that the Footstool/Throne extends over the heavens. The ‘heavens’, may

indeed be taken to mean our own created universe. The names of Allah in Ayat al Kursi, Al

Hayy (The Living) and Al Qayyum (The Self-subsisting), have been related to ideas proposed

by quantum theory (Abd Ar-Rahman At-Tarjumana, 1980). These specific names have been

correlated to energy (Al Hayy) as relating to a quantum field (Al Qayyum) at the birth of and

during the life of the universe as related by the contemporary paradigm (Narlikar, 1992). If

the universe exists, as posited by some scientists, as spherical, then the Kursi that extends

over it must encompass it. ‘Al-Arsh’ or ‘The Throne’ is considered to lie at an unperceivable

distance beyond ‘Al-Kursi’, beyond what is referred to as a sea. Just as the Kursi extends

over the creation, so does the Arsh extend over all the heavens. Despite being unable to

objectively verify the cosmology;

It is confirmed from Abu Dharr that the Prophet said; “The seven heavens are
to the Kursi but like a ring thrown in a desert land. And the superiority of the
Arsh compared to that of the Kursi is like the superiority of that desert
compared to the ring.
Al-Sa‘di, 2003, p.274, note 147

With the Quran stating that Allah, ‘The Most Gracious is firmly established on the throne.’

(The Holy Quran, 1992, 20:5). As the Quran states ‘Ah indeed! Are they in doubt concerning

the Meeting with their Lord? Ah indeed! It is He that doth encompass all things!’ (The

Quran, 1992, Fussilat, 41:54).

Referring to first emanation, the crown (kether), ‘the Kabbalists call Keter the level of

Nothingness (Ayin). It is on this level that the laws of nature cease to exist’ (Kaplan, 1991,

p.11). Ibn al-Husayn al-Sulami writing of the crown and Adam states

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 Adam, whose name is fixed in the Will of Allah, whose being lives in the
House of Majesty. Who is supported by the Holy Light and Purity, and
who has been crowned by the Crown of Munificence.
Ibn al-Husayn al-Sulami, 1991, p.33

And the name of the sphere ‘Keter also comes from the root Katar, meaning to “surround”.

It is through the attribute of Keter or Kedem (eternity) that God encompasses all time and

space’ (Kaplan, 1991, p.207), and ‘transpersonal psychology’ which comprises a synthesis

between ‘Western science and Eastern wisdom’ includes ‘states of consciousness beyond

the usual ego boundaries and beyond the space-time limitations’ (Keutzer, 1984, p.868).

Thus may we consider An Nur/Ain Soph Aur; a metaphysical equivalent of the geometric

squaring of the circle. As “Ibn al-'Arabi said, "The non-existence of non-existence is

existence." (Abd Ar-Rahman At-Tarjumana citing Ibn Arabi, 1980, p.7).

The Alif at the beginning of the name Allah is considered, as with the aleph in

Hebrew, to be silent apart from the accompanying vowels under whose influence it may

become a long vowel (Schulz et al., 2000), thus it is representative of that which may not be

spoken, an archetype of via negativa. Such ‘neoplatonic...terms and doctrines’ are a well

accepted component in the philosophies of ‘al-Farabi and Ibn Sina’ and their followers

featuring ‘an unknowable God or One’ (Netton, 1989, p.11). In his book on God’s unity,

Kitab al-Alif, ‘it becomes very clear that the alif is a metaphor for God’ (Netton, 1989,

p.271); again in the ABJAD system, the alif indeed represents the number 1, but as

metaphor, not one from a sequence rather one as absolute. As the Quran states, ‘Say: He is

Allah, the One and Only. Allah, the Eternal, Absolute. He begetteth not, nor is He begotten,

and there is none like unto Him.’ (The Holy Quran, 1992, 112). Thus the silent alif is indeed a

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useful motif for that which is beyond the comprehension of man, absolute, infinite, and is

used as such in the following calligraphy. Again as the Quran delineates

Say: "If the ocean were ink (wherewith to write out) the words of my
Lord, sooner would the ocean be exhausted than would the words of my
Lord, even if we added another ocean like it, for its aid."
(The Holy Quran, 1992, 18:109)

Thus ‘was the creation in Islam of a deity approached, but hardly encountered, by a via

negativa...whose...epitome, perhaps paradoxically, was light itself’ (Netton, 1989, p.21). The

invocation of Allah by his name An-Nur, a light veiled, seems not only appropriate, but sage.

As Imam Malik records the instruction of the prophet Muhammad, concerning protection

from the unseen world, to say

I seek the protection of Allah the Great; He, than whom there is nothing
greater. And I seek the protection of the perfect words of Allah which no
man, virtuous or evil, can even transcend; and I seek the protection of all
the beautiful names of Allah, those of them which I know and those
which I do not know, from the evil of everything He (Allah) created, to
which He has given existence, and which He has spread (over the earth or
universe).
Ibn Adam al-Kawthari, 2005,
citing Imam Malik’s al-Muwatta

Thus all these factors are presented as a symbolic representation in the following

figure, (fig.12); The name of God in Arabic Allah commencing with a silent alif and ending in

the letter Ha with its symbolic association with the number 5, Ayat An Nur (The sign of the

light), The ayat concerning Allah as established over the throne (Al Arsh), Ayat Al Kursi (the

sign of the footstool), The kabbalistic veils (Ain, Ain Soph, Ain Soph Aur) as again symbolic of

the cipher of the circle, the star inferred by the circle and thus the number 5, and the tree of

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life representing Adam Auilah and Adam Kadmon as the manifestation of the logos. To bring

this chapter to an end it seems appropriate to again revisit Ibn Arabi

The Tree of Being is protected within a wall that surrounds it on its right
and on its left, in front of it and in back of it, above it and beneath
it...Around this blessed Tree, as far as the eye can see, are the stars in the
heavens, the things around us, the names by which they are called, the
ways they behave, and what they do to each other. The seven heavens
are like its leaves, which give shade; the stars are like its flowers.
Ibn Arabi, 2005, p.101

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Fig.12, The proposed synthesis as symbolic schema.

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 Chapter 4
Ethnographic Support for the Proposition

‘If Christians have the sign of the cross, Muslims have the doctrine of it’
Guénon, 2004, p.17

4.1 Introduction.

The writer had intended that this dissertation be based on secondary research

sourced from literature review, and had expected his paper to draw to a close after the last

chapter. Early in the project the researcher had contacted the quoted Imam, but given the

response he thought that confining his investigation to previously collected data would

serve the purpose of the paper, and the temporal restrictions related to the associated

programme of studies. It was an unintended consequence of the writer’s actions that he

found himself detained for a month in a London prison, and as coincidence had it, he found

himself a cell mate with an Afghani Muslim prisoner passing through the forensic psychiatric

system. The last thing on the mind of the writer was research, but within hours of the two

cell mates meeting, a discussion arose concerning cosmological and ontological symbolism;

the researcher could not believe that the fellow prisoner was fixated on the symbol of the

cross and the deep meanings that it held for him. Thus consideration of the informant

interview, which was carried out during the time that the two were locked in their cell,

seems appropriate.

Alongside this the author had been assigned course readings concerning the Songhay

of Niger. The essayist began to see, rather began to infer, associations between the

cosmology of the informant, the writer’s own hypothesised schema, and the cosmology of

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the Songhay. To this end he expanded his reading to include the original ethnographic

monograph written by the anthropologist Paul Stoller. To his disappointment while he

continued to infer a cosmology, he found that little reference was made to the humoural

schema, the cardinal points, or the number 4 which seemed to him to play a crucial factor in

his inference. To this end he obtained a copy of the 1949 visual ethnography by Jean Rouch,

‘les Magiciens de Wanzerbé’. To his relief he found the film peppered with the exact

references he was hoping to find, thus inference began to be able to be solidified in

objective space, however as has been observed “in the social sciences there is only

interpretation’, nothing speaks for itself’(Brewer, 2000, p.122, citing Denzin 1988). The

informant interview is examined here as primary research, along with analysis of the

secondary data, with inferences the writer found he harboured and a discussion in regard to

time, space and thus concepts of dimensionality.

4.2 Ethnographic Support.

4.2.1 Research Methodology.

The writer feels that with such limited data, drawing on the report of solely one

informant, a broad discussion of methodology does not present as imperative. However,

despite the coincidental nature of the data collection, it contained some structure. The

selection of the informant was of course random, in so much as the researcher played

absolutely no part in assigning himself a cell. That said, the researcher is both a Muslim and

diagnosed with a mental health condition, so while the writer can claim no part in the

choice of cell mate, his categorised identities may have gone some way to inform the prison

officers’ decisions.

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 The authenticity of the researcher’s ethnography as participant observer could be

considered as mitigated by the factors that he is a Muslim, diagnosed with a psychiatric

condition, and was at the time of interview within the same forensic setting as the

informant. There was no ethical consideration about deception; the researcher was not

pretending to be a prisoner, he was one. This in itself raised certain ethical considerations,

for instance with the informant and the researcher spending hours and hours in each

other’s company they did not always get on. Was the researcher bound by professional

etiquette, or was he entitled to act in the same way as any other prisoner? There can be no

doubt that had the researcher proposed going undercover in prison to garner information,

the college would not have allowed it on grounds of safety. Yet between surviving a prison

environment and having an informant delivered by the fates, there was a middle path that

the ethnographer could negotiate where no harm was done to informant nor accepted by

the researcher, especially by the research itself, which is ultimately the case to be

considered. However the writer accepts that ‘being researched can sometimes create

anxiety or worsen it, and where people are already in stressful situations research may be

judged to be unethical on these grounds alone’ (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1995, p.268).

Having had no further contact with the informant the researcher cannot know the outcome

of his interaction with a fellow prisoner, he does feel he may say that his conduct as a

researcher has not impacted upon the informant.

The informant was notified of the writer’s academic status, the nature of the study,

and was given informed consent which he signed to verify. Beyond this the discourse gained

was not a mere one way street. While some might think that the revealing of a hypothesis

to an informant might colour his responses, and ‘may influence the “validity” or “reliability”

of informants’ statements’ (Ellen, 2003, p.235), the writer feels that the questions put to the

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subject followed the subject’s own narrative. The researcher not only wanted to find out the

informant’s beliefs, but at such an early and superficial stage of the research process, he

was as interested in how his own schema fitted with the subject’s, hoping in a short period

and with limited resources to highlight the broader push of his hypothesis, ‘to get at the

whole through one or more of its parts’ (Clifford, 2002, p.31), accepting ‘the cooperative

and collaborative nature of the ethnographic situation’ (Tyler, 1986, p.126). To this end the

writer accepts that the data is completely contaminated by his proposition; he does not

however believe that the data is unusable as a result, especially if such preliminary research

goes on to inform more extensive primary data collection.

The informant was questioned using what might be broadly described as a non-

scheduled standardised interview (Denzin, 1978) given that the researcher had a researched

hypothesis to drive his enquiries. The writer does not profess that the primary informant

data and secondary literature proves his hypothesis, more that the created ‘[text]…should

provide the reader with the information necessary to assess the validity of the data and

their relevance and plausibility…’ (Brewer 2000, p.141) and establish whether it provides a

workable basis for further research.

The informant was a 39 year old male Afghani fluent in Pashtu, Persian, Urdu,

Russian with basic but adequate English to express his ideas. As the informant had been in

the prison for a longer period than the researcher he identified him as ‘the guest’. The line

of questioning on the first night the two shared a cell actually saw the roles reversed with

the informant asking the researcher questions about his faith. In fact the informant later

admitted that he had been actively probing the researcher ‘to work out what kind of man

you are’. The broad discussion concerned the traditions of the Abrahamic faith, and as the

discourse continued, the informant brought up a particular focus, that being the symbol of

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the cross. While the researcher was aware that the cross is a symbol that ‘is one of the most

universal of all symbols and is far from belonging to Christianity alone’ (Guénon, 2004,

p.xiv), he was still intrigued that a Muslim would demonstrate what could be considered to

be at least a fixation, and while not fulfilling the criteria to the mind of the writer of

confirmation of inappropriate cultural content of ideation, it along with other factors had

lead to his categorisation and processing through the forensic psychiatric system.

The informant seemed very interested in the researcher beliefs surrounding ‘The

People of the Book’, and the writer explained that he saw the tradition in terms of one

continuum, rather in the segmented fashion of fundamentalists from varying

denominations. This seemed to please the informant, who confirmed that this was also the

way he viewed the situation, which for a general basis of peace in the cell was probably a

good outcome. The informant returned to the symbol of the cross often, and the researcher

offered some of his own insights into what the cross has meant to people. At this point the

semi structured interview had not occurred; rather this was the content of the initial

conversation between the two. The informant also demonstrated that he had a strong belief

in the power of numbers and letters, which as has been delineated in previous sections is a

common cultural aspect within the broader religions of the Abrahamic traditions. The

researcher outlined some of the content which has been presented in this paper, and much

of it was known to the informant, with him adding anecdotes as the discussion progressed.

The informant obviously identified with both the general push of the researcher’s work, as

well as much of its content. While the two cells mates talked the television schedule,

televisions now featuring in near all of the cells of British prisons, arrived at a news bulletin.

The informant stopped, and signalling to the news, asked if the researcher knew what the

words ‘news’ meant. The researcher was not sure what the informant was asking, and gave

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a stock response about reportage. The informant took a pen, and drawing a cross then

further marked it as the points of a compass.

Fig. 13, The cardinal points of the compass.

The informant pointed out that the word NEWS was a combination of these four letters, and

he believed that this phenomena was important, that the news reported events from

around the world, and that the word NEWS itself, in the context of the compass, meant that

it conveyed knowledge about the entire world. The researcher added that while he had not

thought of this attribution of the compass, he himself also saw the cross as representative

of the world, albeit from a different perspective, that of the cardinal points as astrological

and thus elemental.

The discussion turned to the proposed crucifixion of Jesus at Golgotha with the

subject of Jesus’ spiritual crucifixion (KJV, 11:7), and thus the Islamic Judas hypothesis (The

three Judases of the NT). The subject turned to jinn and the unseen (as Islamic

conversations often can) and the researcher recounted the opinion of the Imam about the

unseen world, whereupon the informant told a story of his own experiences in Afghanistan

as a young man, where he had witnessed the possession of an acquaintance by a Jinn, who

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had proceeded to tell the collected group of friends all manner of divers and occult

knowledge. The researcher could not help but see how mental health professionals might

view the content of the informant’s reports, and was not surprised when the next day the

informant was visited by a mental health professional, establishing the detail that the

prisoner was passing through the forensic psychiatric system. As much of the content of the

initial conversation pertained to the secondary research the writer had undertaken, the

researcher proposed that the semi structured interview be scheduled, so as to ascertain

what significance the cross had and what meaning could be extrapolated from it; the

informant agreed.

4.2.2 Informant Interview.

The interview began with the symbol of the cross that the informant as outlined and

the meanings he attributed to it, namely the compass points. The researcher guided the

interview by placing a plain cross upon a piece of paper, which would during the course of

the interview become covered in divers symbolism, which will be recreated for this

document.

Fig. 14, Plain Cruciform.

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The researcher asked what significance the symbol had for the informant, who repeated the

idea of it representing the world as per the compass (Fig. 13), i.e. North, East, South and

West. The researcher asked if the cross had any further implications for the subject,

however the informant seemed unclear about what the researcher was asking. The

researcher said that it was common that symbols could have multiple meanings, and that

they rarely only referred to one known and apparent meaning (in which case they would be

a sign...but...digression!). The informant still did not fully understand what the researcher

was trying to get him to say, and so the researcher tried to employ a neutral application of

the cross; as axes in graphing. The informant was not sure what the researcher was trying to

explain, so several quick diagrams of graphs were drawn showing imaginary quantitative

data.

Fig. 15, X & Y Axes.

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The informant, while not being conversant with the concept of graphs, broadly understood

how and why they were used, and fully understood how the symbol of the cross signified

axes in this instance.

Moving on from this example the researcher asked the informant whether he

believed it fair to say that the cross had further signification, i.e. up, down, left and right. To

emphasis his point the researcher drew a further image.

Fig. 16, Cruciform as Representative of

Two Dimensional Space.

The informant confirmed that this schema resonated with him, and coincided with his

perception of dimensionality. His reply implied that such a use of the cross was a given,

rather than a revelation, in fact the informant implied that the example was so obvious it

did not require illustrating. The researcher then advanced his question, inferring an Islamic

attribution to the symbol, where left : right corresponded to haram (unlawful) and halal

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(lawful), drawing on the division of hands to cleaning and eating, with up : down relating to

the intellectual (ruh) and the instinctual (nafs).

Fig. 17, Islamic Attributions to

The Cruciform.

The informant again affirmed that this schema seemed fair, and that the Islamic concepts

outlined could be mapped as the researcher had proposed. The researcher wished to find

out to what extent the image of the cross figured as an explanation of dimensionality, so on

the initial image of the cross asked how far the lines extended, i.e. indefinately, whether

they terminated, and whether they created a further image. The Informant stated initially

that for him, the lines terminated, creating ‘a box’

Fig. 18, Cruciform in a Square,

a ‘Box’.

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The informant brought up an image as a result of the ‘box’ that the pair had discussed, and

the researcher had drawn, that being a pyramid viewed from above, with associated

alchemical symbols and Hebrew letters (the accuracy of the attributions could be debated

ad nauseum!).

Fig. 19, The Alchemical Cruciform.

The informant asked the researcher to again explain the attributions of the above image,

with the researcher happily obliging. As the researcher drew to an end, the informant

turned his attention back to the image of the ‘box’. He decided that it did not necessarily

imply a box, saying that the lines could extend further, adding that there could be a larger

‘box’, beyond the first. The researcher added the extended lines.

Fig. 20, Extended ‘Box’

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The researcher was pleased, as while he was guiding the interview, the informant was

making associations, albeit it ones that were obvious to him (i.e. the informant), which

broadly adhered to the schema the researcher had within his own mind. The researcher

asked how far the lines could be extended, and whether there was a limit to how far they

could be expanded. The informant replied, which the writer will succinctly report as ‘the

lines extend indefinitely, but not infinitely’. The researcher asked if we could map the cross

showing left : right, onto the box adding an attribution of the middle; the informant

affirmed that he considered this a fair attribution.

Fig. 21, Cruciform (Box), Left,

Middle and Right.

The informant had immediate identification with this description which, as has been

delineated in previous chapters, had resonance with the verses of the Quran. Returning to

the image of the extended boxes, the researcher asked whether the two boxes had any

relationship to each other, which initially evoked no response. The informant did not seem

to understand the idea of relationship, so the researcher gave some examples, husband and

wife, father and son. The informant facially demonstrated recognition of the two boxes

having a relationship as if they were father and son, adding verbally that this was resonant.

The researcher then asked a particularly mischievous question, enquiring which of the boxes

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was the father, and which the son; this was impish as there was an inherent paradox in the

symbol.

Fig. 22, Extended ‘Box’

The way the pair had constructed the boxes, the smaller had been initial with the larger

appearing as secondary. The dichotomy of which square represented which partner in the

father : son relationship visibly caused mild dissonance, which the researcher quickly

resolved by adding diagonals to the boxes

Fig. 23, Extended ‘Box’ with

Diagonals

Thus suggesting a 3 dimensional cube,

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 Fig. 24, 3 dimensional cube

Solving the father : son dichotomy. The Researcher returned to the image of the cross, the

attributions of left : middle : right, and asked the informant is he felt that they in anyway

corresponded to the tree of life which the researcher had outlined during their conversation

on the first night they had shared a cell

Fig. 25, Tree of Life

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The informant stated that the association seemed fair, and that while not being a cross it

shared properties. The French mathematician and symbolist René Guénon in his work ‘The

Symbolism of the Cross’ concurs entitling a chapter in his work ‘Universal Man’ and directly

referring to the concept of Adam Qadmon correlated to the Islamic concept of ‘al-Insan al-

kamil’ (Guénon, 2004, p.12) as per the previous discussion citing Ibn Arabi, and as related to

microcosm : macrocosm.

Indeed in the interview the concept of microcosm : macrocosm was brought up by

the researcher to further resolve the paradox of the extended box resolved as a cube, with

Adam Qadmon as containing the tree of life, yet also the tree of life containing Adam

Kadmon; as the hermetic axiom recounts ‘as above, so below’. The informant was

interested in the image of the Keterim previously touched upon and its alchemical

implications. As previously stated he was interested in numbers, and he particularly brought

up the numbers 4 and 13, which have certain correlations. Not only does the childlike maths

of 1 + 3 = 4, but in regard to keterim/Adam Kadmon/Logos and by gematria (Hebrew

numerology) it is put that Jahweh is Love and Unity, as the number for Jahweh resolves to

26, with both Love and Unity equating with the number 13. The informant appeared to have

a strong resonance with the symbol, and some time later was found to be drawing it

himself, and when asked if the image of the tree and the keterim provided a powerful

schema for existential, ontological, and cosmological consideration, he strongly affirmed.

The researcher put the data concerning the number 5, the idea of a circle, the pentagram,

with the informant confirming he believed it to be an important number within Islam, not

only in arabesque and architecture, but in the number of compulsory obligations. While the

information from one informant can in no way substantiate a hypothesis, in this instance

neither does it provide enough grounds to reject.

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 4.2.3 Songhay Traditions?

During the course that the writer has been engaged upon, culminating with this

dissertation, he was introduced to a tribe inhabiting sub Saharan West Africa, namely the

Songhay, in the geopolitical region currently known as Niger. He was initially drawn to the

core reader by Paul Stoller, ‘Stranger in the Village of the sick’ (2004), which told of how the

anthropologist used the wisdom he had gained as an apprenticed sorcerer with the Songhay

to help him combat the illness of cancer. The writer of this paper was deeply touched both

by the personal account of Stoller’s experience of a life threatening disease, but also the

knowledge of the Songhay he practically employed, from a tribe which may be considered

to constitute a westerly example of Islam. The writer could not help but feel that there was

some correspondence with a specific cosmology, which he found himself inferring during his

reading of the assigned book. In an attempt to garner further information the researcher

looked to Stoller’s original monograph ‘In Sorcery’s Shadow’ which told the tale of some of

his first experiences with the Songhay. The essayist was looking for some discussion of

symbol, visual symbol, beyond the symbolic in the everyday, that would support his

proposition. He found little by Stoller on the use of graphical symbol, yet some of the

readings certainly resulted in the researcher inferring a cosmological perception of the

universe, which suggested a schema; in their use of divination, their link with the spirits and

ancestors, the writer felt he determined a suggestion of fourth dimensionality as cyclical

rather than linear.

The researcher found himself playing both mentally and diagrammatically with

concepts of dimensionality, as he read and reread the Stoller literature, minded that ‘the

Songhay lived in awe of the universe...how could they think otherwise, when each night

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they look up to see the boundless heavens glittering above them?’ (Stoller, 1989, p.132).

Slowly and surely he began to construct a diagrammatic schema which he felt represented

what he was reading of Songhay culture and their perception of time and space. Stoller

reports that the Songhay concept of time was not as with the European west

I thought not only about my experiences as an apprentice to Songhay

sorcerers, but also about how differently Americans and Songhay people
experience the world. One great difference is how Americans and
Songhay reckon time.
Stoller, 2004, p.63

And indeed if one considers divination exemplified in the Songhay context by the throwing

of divinatory cowry shells (Stoller, 2004, 1989), as a rational way of viewing the world, this

may well give a clue to the way in which the Songhay, and indeed wider traditions, perceive

the world within which they live. Time cannot, the writer proposes, be perceived by the

Songhay as linear, as the progression of time through a chronology, leaving the past and

travelling onward into the future, for if it was divination could not work; points in time must

happen cyclically, passing through the same space, time and time again, an indefinite

number of times. Certainly within a western ‘positivist’ scientific context, the belief in the

power of divination is thought widely to lie in the realms of the irrational, the primitive,

even the pathological, however modern anthropology generally would shy away from such

categorisation. As Stoller himself writes ‘true to my training, I believed that my task was to

uncover a rational explanation for such “apparently irrational beliefs”’ (Stoller, 2004, p.90).

The Songhay also, one might propose in keeping with the same rationality, with which they

approach divination, believe that the source of sorcerous power also lies within the fabric of

time. As Stoller writes (admittedly within a linear intellectual framework)

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 Power comes from the distant past in the Songhay world. The spirits, who
inhabited the earth long before social beings, have great power over the
forces of the universe. They shared this power with ancestors. They gave
some power to the original inhabitants of the Songhay bush – the
“owners” of the land.
Stoller, 1997, p.143.

Indeed such cosmology is perceivable in some of the incantations taught Stoller, and

brought to his mind during his experience of cancer as he hears the voice of his long dead

master Adamu Jenitongo beseeching him “Remember the path, remember the path”

leading him to recite the ‘haro guso...an incantation...to reinforce your power during

difficult times’ (Stoller, 2004, p.66)

Haro Gusu

I must speak to N’debbi, and my words must travel until they are heard.
N’debbi was before human beings. He showed human beings the path.
Now human beings are on the path. My path came from the ancestors.
Now my path is beyond theirs...
Stoller, 2004, p.66

And yet another incantation taught to Stoller draws on the knowledge, and by implication

the powers, of the ancestors with his master telling that ‘the genji how is very powerful; it

balances the forces of the bush’ (Stoller, 2004, p.87). The text of the incantation was the

first evidence of the cardinal schema in the writings read by the researcher on the Songhay

In the name of the High God, In the name of the High God. I speak to the
east. I speak to the west. I speak to the north. I speak to the south. I
speak to the seven heavens. I speak to the seven hells. I am speaking to
N’debbi and my words must travel until, until, until they are known.
N’debbi lived before human beings. He gave to human beings the path.
He gave it to Soumana, and it was good for him. Soumana gave it to
Niandou. Niandou gave it to Seyni. Seyni gave it to Jenitongo. Jenitongo
gave it to Adamu, and Adamu gave it to me. What was in their lips is in

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 my lips, what was in their minds, is in my mind, What was in their hearts
is in my heart. Today I am infused with N’debbi and it is good for me.
N’debbi has seven hatchets and seven picks. He gave the big rock,
Wanzam, to dongo. He gave power to the kings. He evades capture of the
blind. He evades capture of the ancestors. The force – the force of
heaven – protects all.
Stoller, 2004, p.88

In ‘Songhay philosophy, internal and external harmony enables a person to see life more

clearly’ (Stoller, 2004, p.130), macrocosm reflected in microcosm, universe and man, with

‘the Songhay healer...above all else a philosopher who is continually seeking to unravel the

mysteries of the cosmos’ (Stoller, 1980, p.119).

The writer departed from a position akin to black box analysis working on a premise

that the Songhay has been observing the cosmic black box, or at least the blackness of the

night sky, for as long as modern western scientists, thus it might be fair to assume that they

may have observed and gained insights which endure within their culture and worldview.

The researcher began a childlike consideration (his own) of dimensionality, beginning with a

western schema. Within that schema 3 dimensions may be represented via two dimensional

medium. First one starts from a singularity, a point, having no dimensions, corresponding to

zero, coincidentally the cipher for zero used in Arabic is a single point (the circle as touched

upon being representative of 5). Next we have a line drawn within two points, an image

signifying one dimension, and thus attributed the numeral 2 assigned by the ‘two’ points.

Progressing we have four points, and four lines, thus the number 4. Here, and moving on we

come to three dimensionality, and we would conventionally have a cube, but here the

writer felt that a cube was not parsimonious, rather he felt that the most simple

reproduction of a square in three dimensions would be three squares arranged through the

planes.

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 Fig.26, 3 planes, 3 dimensions

This consideration lead to discussions with physicists, which are too long winded to

be included in an already bloated dissertation, but were informative and acted as a catalyst

to the writer’s ideas. He found himself working the schema, trying to find a pattern that

would fit with his ponderings.

Singularity Two Points/Line Four Points/Square 12 Points/Axes/Planes

(No Dimension) (1 Dimension) (2 Dimensions) (3 Dimensions)

(1) 2 4 12

While obviously open to dispute, the writer felt strong resonance with the progression, and

working on a basic progression tried to extrapolate, how he might progress forward into

fourth dimensionality. This was facilitated by his young children having maths homework

consisting of ‘find the next number in the progression’. He applied the basic premise to his

progression.

(1d) (2d) (3d) (4d)

2x2 4x3 ∴ 12x4

2 4 12 48

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Could it be that 4th dimensionality was able to be represented in two dimensional space as

simply as a fractal resolved someway from the number 48 (whether points within the

writers schema or edges by the more conventional)? Naive art demonstrates that the three

dimensional representations we now take for granted were not always common sense,

could the same hold true of fourth dimensionality? The writer tried his best to produce such

geometrics, but found that when it came time to rotate his 3 plane image (Fig. 26), through

3 further phases from the initial he encountered substantial problems in his wire framing

abilities. He thus ran two parallel progressions, one through his image of the planes, the

other through the more conventional cube.

Fig. 27, Inferred Concept of Dimensionality.

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This seemed again resonant with the researcher, certainly with what the readings

surrounding the Songhay had evoked within him. But it also raised the question about

perception of time as a fourth dimension, akin to precisely the alternate view of temporality

Stoller had alluded to. Conventional western thought premises that space occurs within

time; that the two began at the beginnings of the universe, and the expansion of space

subsequently occurred through time. Contrary to this idea modern paradigm physicists have

proposed that time may, in a form unperceivable to us, have existed before the universe

(Gasperini, 2008). And if indeed we change the cube, the cube 4 compound, and the

associated images for the simplified schema of a sphere

Fig. 28, The three dimensions within a sphere, BCS, 2007.

Could it be that what we call time, at least one of the phenomena we categorise as time

occurs within space? That the rotation of the universe itself is fourth dimensionality, at least

what might normally be perceived as linear time? Later reading by the researcher confirmed

the consideration of cruciform symbolism with concepts of space and time. The physicist

Pauli, writing to Jung, posits

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 As you told me you were very preoccupied at the moment with the
rotation symbolism of mandalas, I am taking the liberty of sending you
the exact text of one of my dreams – one that occurred about 2 years ago
– in which rotation, and hence the concept of space, was the central
feature. It may be useful to you in dealing with these questions that are
on your mind at the moment. Of course, it is about the relativity of the
concept of space in relation to the psyche, and if the problem were not
important here and now, this dream would not have had such an
overwhelming effect on me at the time.
Meier citing Pauli, 2001, p.34.

Could primitive and naive cosmology (the writer’s own, his informant’s and numerous

extinct and extant peoples around the world) have actually proposed a feasible modern

paradigm hypothesis?

Was this merely inference and imagination, naught really to do with how the

Songhay perceived the world within which they lived? With limited information of anything

to do with the number 4, quaternities, the elements, the humours, or much which has been

considered by the author in either his literature review, or his solitary interview, the writer

turned to the visual ethnographer, Jean Rouch, and his film ‘Les magiciens de Wanzerbé’

(1949). The writer was strongly struck by Rouch’s film; not only did the symbol of the cross

saturate the film, but the significance within the culture was conspicuous.

Fig. 29, A magician draws a cruciform in the sand invoking

the cardinal points (Les Magiciens de Wanzerbé, 1949).

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Indeed the film showed the genji how carried out in the bush, the full text of which we were

party to via Stoller’s accounts, with the ritual captured in its entirety by Rouch practised

outside of the confines of the village. The magician is seen ‘Harmonizing the Bush’ (Stoller,

2004, p.69) invoking the cardinal points. Such invocation has broad association in magical

ritual with the angels and their elemental associations. This may be seen in more

conventional Arabic magic in various talismans naming the archangels around the symbol of

the cross.

Fig. 30, Angelic Cruciform

(Canaan, 2004, p.159)

The researcher felt more than a little satisfaction after his quest for verification of his

schema in a Songay context, to see the genji how performed around the symbol, indeed in

actuality, of a tree.

Fig. 31, A magician performs the genji how, invoking the cardinal
points around a tree. (Les Magiciens de Wanzerbé, 1949)

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4.3 Conclusion
Such considerations of a metaphysical and existential nature are not confined to the

writer, his informant, or the Songhay. The cited French mathematician and symbolist

Guénon, dedicates a whole chapter of his work on the symbolism of the cross to ‘The

Directions of Space’ (Guénon, 2004, pp.21-29). In keeping with a theme present in

transpersonal psychology, the idea that ancient philosophies somehow correspond to

abstract ideas in modern physics with

The classical interpretation of quantum physics emphasizes a separate

and transcendant reality that is “beyond” ordinary, observed reality and
is used to “explain” it. This theme is paralleled in transpersonal
psychiatry.
Battista, 1996, p.204

This is a current of thought the writer is happy to explore and has actively borne in mind

during this dissertation; that the structure of the cosmos is mirrored in the psyche of man,

and more broadly as his cognition manifests as collective culture. As Stoller muses

Anthropologists...believed that they could discover the universal

principles that governed social behaviour. Many anthropologists thought
that if they carefully examined the structures of societies, they would
uncover “deep” rules that would explain the inner working of social life.
Other scholars, following the lead of...Claude Levi-Strauss, believed that
the comparative study of art, myth and kinship would reveal universal
principles of cognition. These, in turn, would unlock the mystery of how
people think. Focussing on ritual life, a school of anthropologists
concentrated their efforts on how people use symbols to construct their
cultures.
Stoller, 2004, pp.197-198.

The researcher proposes that the structures of the cosmography recognized in some

cultures have a deep effect upon individuals within that culture, whether known explicitly,

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or at subtler levels. The writer of this paper, especially having herein considered questions

pertaining to the existence of space and time, cannot help group modern paradigm

physicists, anthropologists, and even the very first hominin who drew the sign of the cross

on a cave wall, together in the history of the cosmos; viewers of a cosmic black box, perhaps

within a box looking out, within what might well be considered as existing as a single

moment in time during the history and evolution of the universe. He finds himself

unashamedly, as David Napier considers, a 'resurrected structuralist' (Napier, 2004, p.64).

How such a proposition might come to play on both the social and natural sciences is

of course not a question arising solely in the mind of the writer, nor able to be considered in

a limited piece of research. The letters between the Nobel Prize winning physicist Wolfgang

Pauli and the psychologist Carl Jung are well documented, with discussion on the specifics of

cosmology and psychology, physics and psyche, and the dynamics between them with ‘Pauli

[gaining]...a deeper understanding of himself and how the whole course of physics

seemed...guided by the “archetype of the quaternity”’ (Miller, 2009, p.225). Indeed directly

relating to the ‘appearance of quaternity symbolism’ Pauli writes, in an essay unpublished

during his life

A quaternity would certainly be assigned to the wholeness made up of

physics and psychology insofar as the complementary pair of opposites of
physics reappears reflected in the psychic sphere. It would be
conceivable, and in fact seems to me plausible, that there might be
phenomena in which the whole quaternity plays a crucial role, and not
just the physical and psychic pairs of opposites. With such phenomena, it
would not be possible to give a meaningful definition to conceptual
distinctions such as that between “physical” and “psychic” (as is also the
case with atomic phenomena, where the distinction between “physical”
and “chemical” frequently loses its meaning).
Meier citing Pauli, 2001, p.192.

Page | 113
 Chapter 5
Conclusions and Recommendations

But the righteous live for evermore; their reward also is with the Lord,
and the care of them is with the most High. Therefore shall they receive a
glorious kingdom, and a beautiful crown from the Lord’s hand: for with
his right hand shall he cover them, and with his arm shall he protect
them.
KJV, The Wisdom of Solomon, 5:15-16.

The writer set out on this anthropological journey hoping that he may be able to tie

together apparently disparate threads. Such untangled threads have manifest within his

own psyche during his crossing of, or perhaps fall into, the abyss, and he might propose the

psyches of others. The concepts presented herein were formulated through existential

ponderings during periods of lucidity and episodes of madness, often reflected back by the

individuals who acted as mirrors, many of them struggling with mental health, several of

them Muslims, some contained by both categories.

The research presented here is speculative to say the least, and yet the writer feels

that the limited research he has been able to undertake, be that the secondary review, or

through his sole primary informant, has begun to beat a path which he feels would justify

further research. It leaves him with one question specific to the study; how far could this

schema be taken, would deeper research substantiate the premise, or render it void? The

question of how the suggestions herein might be ‘proved’ as relevant, as proposed by

Professor Chomsky, added to the writer’s own strong belief in the demonstrative power of

statistics, raises questions as to how a survey could be conducted; could the material

discussed in this paper be reduced to a computer based visual survey? If such a survey could

Page | 114
be devised could it be implemented in diverse research environments from the Nigerien

bush, to the Afghan hills, or within the local context of the cities and towns of Britain?

He still maintains that the cosmography could enable the placement of a patient

within a framework that would allow a form of therapy which might not require the

recipient to experience insight, which has been shown to have potential adverse reaction

with Muslims demonstrating ‘extreme anxiety reaction rather than the expected positive

therapeutic outcome’ (Al-Abdul-Jabbar and Al-Issa, 2000, p.281). Yet how could such

knowledge could be used beyond an apprenticeship in occult sciences which would almost

certainly not assist a person manifesting psychosis, hallucination, ASC, and most importantly

degrees of distress. Many questions arise of how the schema could be implemented,

especially a version of transpersonal bodywork (Cortright, 1997) which might preclude

touch as culturally inappropriate. The writer certainly would not presume as to tell people

how to practice, but if he projects himself into a clinical and/or therapeutic environment, he

can see how the schema could be inferred during sessions by the use of movement and

body language during therapy; touch without touch.

The paper has further developed questions about the interrelationship of semiotics

and modern paradigm cosmology, with associated ideas of recursion. The writer feels that

separate research into the evolution of the knowledge of the human species, and how

humankind has used visual representation to represent mental abstractions would be a

monumental but academically rewarding endeavour. It has been the experience of the

researcher that the progression of the knowledge of humankind is seen as evolutionary, and

a commonsense stance has it that some of that knowledge remains extant and viable, while

sections of it are irrational and thus extinct; the writer would propose that knowledge is

recursive; it inherently contains that which preceded it. It was indeed this idea of recursion

Page | 115
that lead to his cosmological ponderings on the Songhay perception of reality, and how the

researcher attempted to comprehend them within his own framework of understanding.

Should such an undertaking be seriously approached it would require the researcher to

undertake a course in modern paradigm cosmology, or attempt to elicit the cooperation of a

sympathetic physicist.

In closing the writer finds himself once again having more questions at the end of a

piece of research, than he began with, more avenues of enquiry opened. Yet in relation to

the specific he feels he has grown in his knowledge of the subject, and has developed a

more specific hypothesis to pursue. Whether within the confines of an academic institution

or as a personal pursuit, the researcher feels it is a subject that could have applied

outcomes. He believes that should the research reach a point and the writer develop

stylistically, it might allow for peer review perhaps leading to its application. It has certainly

deepened the writers desire to himself continue psychotherapy as a recipient, but also

further developed an aspiration to pursue formal training himself. It remains incumbent on

the anthropologist to keep the book open, to see the narrative through until completion.

Page | 116
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