A Complaint To G_d By Ayyna, Teacher Of Rbi3a Al3adawiyya, From 3uqal2 Almajnn (The Rationally Insane)

A complaint to G_d by Ḥayyūna, teacher of Rābi3a al3adawiyya, from 3uqalā2 almajānīn (The Rationally Insane) by alḤasan ibn Muḥammad anNīsābūrī. Translation by @apostlewithapomegranate.

- Seyyed Hossein Nasr in The Study Quran

"naan bread is a redundancy" is the "pineapple on pizza is gross" of linguistics

Disrobe your thoughts.

Let them shimmer under

The twilight rain

Before the moon rises

Redressing them.

Without colour

Of the self or the ego.

Without the heat of your cheek

Or the cold of your shoulder.

Without logic or purpose,

Let them rise like unknowns

Gathered at the point of a Planck

Where all knowledge is broken

Yet still is existence.

So there must be rebirth;

So there must be reknown;

So there must be rebeing.

Meet me there and be known.

Western alchemical texts often resembled mystical riddles. Now, we all love some mystical books of alchemical riddles, it’s half the fun of early alchemy, but Arabic alchemical works are written more like teaching materials. This is because they were often used as teaching materials. Where earlier alchemists needed to encode their works as a form of proto-copyright, Islamic alchemists were trying to efficiently collect and distribute information. Though be warned, “easier to read” by the standards of medieval alchemists is still pretty dense. Hope you like neoplatonism, because in terms of density, Islamic alchemy is a neoplatonic pound cake, with nuts. (The nuts are hermeticism in this metaphor.)

“But who cares?” I hear you ask “Isn’t this supposed to be a book about magic? Why are we talking about these dead Arab philosophers?” Remember, dear reader, that some of the first esotericists in western history were Plato and Aristotle, but their ideas didn’t mesh all that well. 

Many a wizard-philosopher tried and failed to glue them together. Most failed. Some resorted to pretending to be Aristotle, publishing books under his name. For the Byzantines, the idea of reconciling Plato and Aristotle was almost laughable. The neoplatonists said they could do it, but few took them seriously.

By the time the Baghdad House of Wisdom, neoplatonism had time to mature. For the Muslims, it was damn near philosophy 101. The idea that Plato and Aristotle conflicted at all was laughable. “What do you mean Plato and Aristotle don’t fit together? Everyone knows they fit together.” And thus, one of the greatest roadblocks to early magic was smoothed over. The twin cities of early magic were separated by a river, the neoplatonists would cross it, and the Baghdad House of Wisdom would build a bridge. 

Islamic Alchemy, today on da Patreon

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