The Esoteric World of Robert Graves

get ready to explore the mystical world of Robert Graves the poet and novelist who was not only a member of several Masonic lodges but also had a deep connection to Sufism initiated into the craft in 1934 and a member of the order of bards ovates and Druids a modern druidic order Graves believed in the close relationship between Sufism and the mystical traditions of the West he saw himself as a bridge between the two and sought to bring these Traditions together in both his work and life so sit back relax and get ready to explore this rare Glimpse inside the connected worlds of Sufism and Freemasonry the sufis are an ancient spiritual Freemasonry whose Origins have never been traced or dated nor do they themselves take much interest in such researches being content to point out the occurrence of their own way of thought in different regions and periods though commonly mistaken for a Muslim sect the sufis are at home in all religions just as the free and accepted masons lay before them in their Lodge whatever sacred book where the Bible Quran or Torah is accepted by the temporal state if they call Islam the shell of Sufism this is because they believe Sufism to be the secret teaching within all religions yet according to Ali al-hajjiri an early authoritative Sufi writer the prophet Muhammad himself said he who hears the voice of the Sufi people and does not say Amen is recorded in God's presence as one of the heedless numerous other Traditions link him with the sufis and it was in Sufi style that he ordered his followers to respect all people of a book meaning those who respected their own Sacred Scriptures a term later Taken to include zoroastrians nor are the sufis a sect being bound by no religious Dogma however tenuous and using no regular place of worship they have no Sacred City no monastic Organization no religious instruments they even dislike being given any inclusive name which might force them into doctrinal Conformity Sufi is no more than a nickname like Quaker which they accept good humanly we friends or people like us is how they refer to themselves and they recognize one another by certain natural gifts habits qualities of thought Sufi schools have indeed gathered around particular teachers but there is no graduation and they exist only for the convenience of those who work to perfect their Studies by close association with fellow sufis the characteristic suffix signature is found in widely dispersed literature from at least the second millennium BC and although their most obvious impact on civilization was made between the 8th and 18th centuries A.D sufis are still active as ever they number some 50 million what makes them so difficult to discuss is that their Mutual recognition cannot be explained in ordinary moral or psychological terms whoever understands it is himself a Sufi though awareness of this secret quality or Instinct can be sharpened by close contact with sufis of experience there are no hierarchical degrees among them only a general Undisputed recognition of greater or lesser capacity Sufism has gained an oriental flavor from having been so long protected by Islam but the natural Sufi may be as common in the west as in the East and may come dressed as a general a peasant a merchant a lawyer a Schoolmaster a housewife anything to be in the world but not of it free from ambition greed intellectual Pride blind obedience to custom or ore of persons higher in rank that is the sufi's ideal sufis respect the rituals of religion insofar as these further social harmony but broaden religion's doctrinal basis wherever possible and Define its myths in a higher sense for instance explaining angels as representations of man's higher faculties the individual devotee is offered a secret garden for the growth of his understanding but never required to become a monk nun or hermit like the more conventional Mystics and he thereafter claims to be enlightened by actual experience Thai who tastes knows not by philosophic argument the earliest known theory of conscious evolution is of Sufi origin but though much quoted by darwinians in the great 19th century controversy it applies to the individual rather than to the race the child's slow progress into manhood or Womanhood figures as only a stage in his development of more spectacular powers for which the dynamic force is love not either asceticism or the intellect Enlightenment comes with love love in the poetic sense of perfect Devotion to amuse who whatever apparent cruelties she may commit or however seemingly irrational her behavior knows what she is doing she seldom rewards her poet with any Express sign of her favor but confirms his devotion by its revivifying effect on him thus ibnel Arabi 1165-1240 a Spanish Arab from Mercia whom the sufis call their Master poet wrote in his taruman elashwak interpreter of desires if I bow to her as is my duty and if she never returns my salutation have I just cause for complaint lovely women feel no obligation This Love Theme was later used in an ecstatic Cult of the Virgin Mary who until the Crusades had occupied an unimportant position in the Christian religion her greatest veneration today is precisely in those parts of Europe that fell strongly under Suffic influence ibnel Arabi says of himself I follow the religion of love now I am sometimes called a shepherd of gazelle's Divine wisdom and now a Christian Monk and now a Persian Sage my beloved is three three yet only one many things appear as three which are no more than one give her no name as if to limit one at sight of whom all limitation is confounded The Poets were the chief disseminators of Sufi thought earned the same reverence as did the olms or Master Poets of early medieval Island and used a similar secret language of metaphorical reference and verbal Cipher nizami the Persian Sufi writes under the poet's tongue lies the key of the treasury this language was a protection both against the vulgarizing or institutionalizing of a habit of thought only proper to those that understand it and against accusations of heresy or Civil Disobedience ibnel Arabi summoned before an Islamic Inquisition at Aleppo to defend himself against charges of non-conformity pleaded that his poems were metaphorical the basic message being God's Perfection of man through Divine love for president the incorporation in the Jewish scriptures of the erotic Song of Solomon which was officially interpreted by the Pharisee sages as a metaphor of God's love for Israel and by the Catholic authorities as a metaphor of God's love for his church in its most advanced form the secret language uses Semitic consonantal roots to conceal and reveal meanings and Western Scholars seem unaware that even the popular Thousand and One Nights is Suffic in content land that its Arabic title Alf Layla were Layla is a code phrase indicating its main content and intention mother of Records yet what seems at first sign Oriental occultism is an ancient and familiar Western habit of thought most English and French school children begin history lessons with a picture of their druidic ancestors lopping mistletoe from a sacred Oak although The Druids are credited by Caesar with ancestral Mysteries and a secret language the lopping seems so simple a ceremony mistletoe being still used in Christmas decorations that few readers pause to consider what it means now all other sacred trees plants and herbs have peculiar properties the oldest Timber is waterproof and its leaves yield a royal red dye Birch is the host of the hallucinogenic flycap mushroom okanash attract lightning for a holy fire the Mandrake route is anti-spasmodic the Fox Glove yields digitalis which accelerates the beat of the heart poppies are opiates Ivy has toxic leaves and its flowers provide bees with the last honey of the year but the berries of the mistletoe widely known in folklore as an all heel have no medicinal properties though greedily eaten by wood pigeons and other non-migratory birds in winter the leaves are equally valueless and the timber though tough can be put to a few uses why then was the mistletoe singled out as the most sacred and Curative of plant the only answer can be that The Druids used it as an emblem of their own peculiar way of thought here is a tree that is no tree but fastens itself a like on Oak Apple Poplar Beach Thorn even Pine grows green nourishing itself on the topmost branches when the rest of the forest seems and the fruit of which is credited with curing all spiritual disorders lopped sprigs of it are tied to the lintel of a door and invite sudden and surprising kisses the symbolism is exact if we can equate druidic with sufic thought which is not planted like a tree as religions are planted but self-enrafted on a tree already in existence it keeps green though the tree itself is asleep in the sense that religions go dead by formalism and the main Motive Power of its growth is love not ordinary animal passion or domestic affection but a sudden surprising recognition of love so rare and high that the heart seems to sprout wings strangely enough the burning bush from which God appeared to Moses in the desert is now thought by biblical Scholars to have been an acacia glorified by the red leaves of a heart thus the Eastern equivalent of mistletoe the Irish Muse goddess Bridget was threefold like the Muse celebrated by ibnel Arabi and not threefold merely in the sense of being at once Maiden nymph and Crone but in that of presiding over three spiritual Realms poetry healing and handicraft it need not greatly concern us whether this concept is native to Ireland or whether it came from the East along with the complicated arabesques of medieval Irish illumination art and the curiously Persian or Arabian forms of 9th century Irish poems certainly a well-known 9th century Celtic cross is distinguished by bearing the Arabic formula bismillahim in the name of Allah the compassionate the merciful as proof that Sufism is consistent with both religions it should perhaps matter more that all the noblest Islamic art and architecture is sufic and that healing especially of psychosomatic disorders is everyday practiced by sufis today as a natural love Duty though not until they have studied for at least 12 years the olams were also healers and studied 12 years in their Woodland schools the Sufi physician must not accept any payment more valuable than a handful of Bali nor impose his own will on the patient as most modem psychiatrists do but having put him into deep hypnosis he must make him diagnose his own disorder and prescribe The Cure The Physician then gives advice on how to prevent a recurrence of the symptoms though the demand for a cure must come directly from the patient not from his family or well-wishers the great Sufi poet Rumi wrote in Winter the bear bows that seemed to sleep work covertly preparing for their spring though he did not mention the mistletoe this is the visible emblem of the secret process of thought to which his lines refer after their conquest by the saracens beginning in the 8th Century A.D Spain and Sicily became centers of Muslim civilization renowned for religious austerity the northern Scholars who flocked there to buy Arabic works for translation into Latin did not however demand Orthodox Islamic Doctrine but only Sufi literature and occasional scientific treatises the songs of the Troubadours the word is unconnected with trobar to find slash but represents the Arabic root trb meaning luteinist are now authoritatively established as of saracen origin yet Professor Guillaume points out in the legacy of Islam that poetry romances Music and Dance all Sufi Specialties were no more welcomed by the Orthodox authorities of Islam than by Christian Bishops Arabic in fact although a carrier both for the Muslim religion and for Sufi thought remained independent of either in 1229 the island of Majorca where I have lived since 1929 was captured by King James of Aragon from the saracens who had held it for five centuries he thereupon chose as his emblem a bat which still appears above the arms of Palmer our Capital This Bat emblem had long puzzled me and the local tradition that it stood for vigilance did not seem a sufficient explanation because the bat in Christian usage is an ill Omen creature associated with witchcraft but I remembered that James the first stormed Palmer with the help of the Knights Templars and of two or three dissident Moorish noblemen living elsewhere in the island that the Knights Templars had educated James in Lebon serba or wisdom and that during the Crusades the Knights Templars were accused of collaboration with saris and sufis it therefore occurred to me that bat might have another meaning in Arabic and be a signal to James's local Moorish allies presumably sufis of his schooling in their own wisdom I wrote to Idris Charles who replied the Arabic forbat is kufas from the three consonant root khfsh a second meaning of this route is to overthrow ruin trampled down probably because bats haunt ruined buildings James's emblem was thus a simple Rebus proclaiming himself the Conqueror as in Spanish he was known as El Rey Jamie El Conquistador but this is not the whole story in Sufi literature especially the love poetry of IBN L Arabi of Mercia which was current throughout Spain ruin stands for the Mind ruined by unregenerate thought and awaiting re-edification the only other meaning of this route is weak eyes seeing only by night this can convey much more than to be blind as a bat Sufi speak of the unregenerate as blind to true reality but also of themselves as blind to things which are important to the unregenerate like the bat the Sufi is asleep to things of the day the familiar struggle for existence which the ordinary man finds all important and Vigilant While others are asleep in other words he keeps awake the spiritual attention dormant in others that mankind sleeps in a nightmare of unfulfillment is a common place of Sufi literature your Palmer tradition of vigilance as a meaning of bat need not therefore be discounted thus the Palmer emblem combines King James's overt boast that he has broken the power of the fanatical Muslims who ruled Majorca with a covert use of metaphor reassuring his allies that he is one of their fraternity it may be questioned whether King James spoke Arabic fluently but for most of his advisors it will have been their second language if not their first moreover many thousands of writers have made play with the associated meanings of Arabic Roots even in countries where the language itself is not spoken Urdu and Persian poets whose languages are Indo-European and not Semitic treat the roots somewhat as if they were algebraic formula a coronation robe worn by Roger II king of Sicily 1093-1154 and later also used by Frederick II of hohenstaufen Holy Roman Emperor 1194-1250 is on display at the velcher schatzkamu Vienna idiri's Shah Sayed has explained its symbolism to me in the center stanza palm tree containing the nine elements of the magic square of 15. a complicated diagram attributed to jabir the Sufi and reverenced alike by the Latin Alchemists and the chineza taoists the palm tree nark HL is chosen because the tri-continental route nkhl also means a fine Essence descending almost impalpably such as the Divine element hardker or blessedness words from the same root include sifted flower and a gentle drizzle of rain since the Palm is a holy tree associated with birth among the Arabs its appearance on a coronation robe means source of blessedness moreover the word for palm tree is tariqat which is the Sufi technical term for being on the path that is to say Sufism on either side of the Palm a tiger is shown dragging down a camel NMR is the Arabic root for tiger and jml for Camel thus the NMR overcomes the jml but NMR also stands for Woolen garment and for unimpaired honor since Sufi can mean clad in wool and since unimpaired honor is with love one of the two main pillars of Sufism Sufi can be substituted for Tiger thus the Sufi overcomes jml jml2 means not only camel but also Elegance as an indication that both the tiger and the camel are human they wear similar Stripes but the camel has fewer meaning that unimpaired honor is not altogether inelegant thus under this Divine source of sufic blessedness the unimpaired honor of the wool clad overcomes mere Elegance that absorption with the theme of Love leads to ecstasy all sufis know but whereas Christian Mystics regard ecstasy as a union with God and therefore the height of religious attainment sufis admit its value only if the devotee can afterward return to the world and live in a manner consonant with his experience Western literature has been profoundly affected by the theme of man's spiritual tempering through love spread mainly by such Spanish Arabs as the 10th Century IBN masara of also dopa ibnbar Rajan of Seville Abu Bakr of Granada a majorcon by birth and IBN Cassie of a garibis in Portugal the best known Sufi scholar was the 12th century of Eros IBN rushed who transformed Christian Scholastic thought sufis have always insisted on the practicality of their viewpoint metaphysics for them are useless without practical illustrations of prudent human behavior supplied both by popular Legends and Fables since the popes had excommunicated the donatist Heretics for denying that a blessing conferred by an evil living priest was equal to that conferred by a saint the attitude don't do as I do but do as I tell you had become a common place in Catholic churches gospel Authority was found in Matthew where Jesus tells his disciples to obey the pharisaic teaching in every detail but not to model themselves on the more formalistic Pharisees Christians are content to use Jesus as the perfect and final Exemplar of human behavior the sufis however while admitting him as a divinely inspired Prophet quote the text from the fourth gospel is it not written in your law I said ye are gods which means that judges and Prophets are entitled to interpret God's law and hold that this quasi Divinity should suffice any man or woman there being no God but God they have similarly refused to accept the laminism of Tibet and Indian theories of divine Incarnation and though charged by Orthodox Muslims with being influenced by Christianity they accept the Nativity only as a parable of the powers latent in man which can set him apart from his unilluminated brothers likewise they interpret the supernatural traditions of the Quran as metaphorical and to be literally believed in by the unenlightened alone Paradise for example has not they say been experienced by any living man its worries creatures of light offer no analogy to any human beings and should be given no physical attributes as in vulgar fable instances abound in all European literature of the debt to the sufis The Legend of Wilhelm tell is found in atar's Parliament of the birds 12th century long before its appearance in Switzerland and that the Germanic Archer guilds if we can trust the Melius maleficaram a witch-hunting manual of 1460 shot in the devil's name at Apples similarly placed suggests saracen influence although Don Quixote pronounced kishotti by the aragonese and provencals seems the most Spanish of all Spaniards Cervantes himself acknowledges his indebtedness to an Arabic Source this attribution has been dismissed as a quixotic joke by Scholars but cervantes's story is often closely follow those of sidikisha a legendary Sufi teacher sometimes equated with nazruden including the famous incident of his mistaking Mills water Mills however not windmills for Giants the Spanish word quihada Quixote's real name according to Cervantes derives from the same Arabic root kshr as Kisha and retains its sense of threatening grimaces the Blessed Raymond lulli a majorcan Mystic and Martyr admits to having written his famous poem The Book of the lover and his beloved 1283 on the sufic model and brother Anselm of turmaida a Catalan Christian Mystic was well known also as the illuminated Sufi Sage Abdullah El taruman The Interpreter thank you for joining us on this journey with the Sufi connected freemasonic Druid Robert Graves we hope you've gained some valuable insights into his unique perspective on spirituality and mysticism as Graves once said the act of writing is an act of magic in the final part of our series we will be connecting two more renowned figures Francis Bacon and Robert Burns bacon known for his contributions to science and philosophy once said if a man will begin with certainties he shall end in doubts but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties Burns the Beloved Scottish poet wrote the world is a room and the room is a world the world is a world and the world is a room so be sure to join us for another enlightening Adventure into the mystical world of bacon Burns and Graves all in our next episode [Music]

Channel: SpiritualRelief

Views: 141,318

Keywords: freemasons, freemasonry, sufism, secret society, secret knowledge, hidden knowledge, occult, spiritual, esoteric, sufi, occult practices, rare books, hermeticism, rosicrucianism, rosicrucian, philosophy, spirituality, self initiation, documentary, rise of the freemasons, poetry, robert graves, theories of freemasons, who are the freemasons, druid, druidism, druids, druidism for beginners, sufism explained, what is sufism

Id: yiK0LREAdzs

Length: 22min 20sec (1340 seconds)

Published: Tue May 02 2023