‘Arabic is language in which the Holy Qur’an (the Book of Islam) was revealed. Twenty-nine of the 114 chapters of the Qur’an begin with the recitation of two, three or five letters. The study of the significance of these letters is known as Huroof-al-Muqatta'at (literal translation: abbreviated words). Upon closer inspection of the 14 letters (reduced to 12 phonetic sounds), one interpretation of their significance is that they each represent a constellation or house within the elliptical path of the Sun. XSITE seeks to revisit this mystic analysis by comparing it to other archetypes associated with the 12 houses of the ecliptic (also known as the Zodiac, which is Latin for cycle of animals).
For the purposes of this version of the book, my focus will be on the Qur’anic verses that were associated with astrological signs according to the 13th century Sufi scholar, Haydar Amuli. A disciple of the great Sufi Ibn-al-Arabi, I recently found several of Amuli’s diagrams in a book by Henry Corbin, one of the renowned translators of mystic traditional texts. In Temple and Contemplation, Corbin breaks down the elements of four charts by Haydar Amuli. which are remarkably detailed accounts connecting Divine Names, Verses of Qur’an, visible planets and even the Prophets and Imams through the archetypes of 7, 12, 14, 19 and 28. Below is a scanned image of the chart that I focused my research on for XSITE:
Archetype of 12:
The largest set of circles, divided into four groups of three, have an outer and inner ring. The outer ring is the Arabic names of the constellations that appear along the Sun’s ecliptic while the inner ring capture the key word from the Qur’anic verses that Amuli has associated with each astrological sign (each verse has only two words, many of them the same word used twice). The sections between these rings are the names of the months according to the Islamic lunar calendar. Each of these groups is given a Divine Attribute, starting from the top left and going counter-clockwise: Huwa al-awwal “He is the First”; wa’l-aakhir “and the Last”; wa’l-zahir “He is the Manifested”; wa’l-batin “and the Hidden”
Archetype of 7:
The inner ring, composed of seven circles, also has an inner and outer aspect. The outer portion of the ring contain the names of the seven visible planets, and the inner areas have the corresponding “principles” of creation:
[The Sun - Shams] the Intelligence - ‘acl,
[Jupiter - Mustari] the Soul - nafs
[Venus - Zuhrah] Nature - tabi’ah
[Mercury - ‘Utarid] the Material Prima - hayuli
[Moon - Qamar] the body - jism
[Mars - Mirrikh] - the Throne - ‘Arsh
[Saturn - Zuhal] - the firmament - kursi
The center circle bears the title of the diagram: al-’alaam al-suri which means “the manifested World”.
The corners of the ideal square in which the diagram is drawn contain four more circles, each with two inscriptions. Top right include Intelligence (‘aql) and Man (insaan); top left include Soul (nafs) and Angle (malak); bottom left is Nature (tabi’ah) and Genie (jinn); and bottom right is Body (jism) and Animal (hayawan).