The Fatimiya Sufi Order

In the Name of the Godhead the Glorified, the Holy!

Praised be the Godhead who by the Uncreated Light of the Morning-Dawn of Pre-Eternity upraised the firmaments of existence from the illuminative horizons of transcendental resplendence and spread them upon the watery expanses of being and Self-Disclosed the Theophany of Its Mercy to the empyrean realms of beautific magnificence and majestic scintillance clothed with the garment of Compassion with the two letters, ha' & waw, which flowered forth the name Fatima, the Creatrix. Glory be upon the celestial Fatima, the Mother of the Kosmos and the Womb of Contingency: She who is both the conjunction as well as the progenitor of the Twin Divine Lights and all creation. Blessed be Fatima the Kosmocrator, the Logos-Self and Face of divinity, the Mother of Her Father, the origin and the return. And the Splendor of the Godhead be upon the Best of Its Creation, the Foremost of Its Kosmocration and the Pinnacle of Its Emanation, He Who is the One Who stands as the eternal christophany of Adam; then upon the Lion of the Godhead and Gate to the City of All-Knowledge; and, then, upon the Righteous House of Their Progeny and Excellence be infinite peace, blessings and glory - constantly, absolutely! The consummation of laudation within the Luminous Divine Radiance of Eternal Peace be upon the First Unity in every moment, before every moment and after every moment! Blessings be upon all the True Messenger Apostles of the Light of lights, and upon the true saints and gnostics as well; and praised be the Godhead, the Lord of all the Worlds!

The Fátimíya Súfí

Order

For orientation, see

Fatima as the Celestial Earth

by Henry Corbin

and Louis Massignon's

The Gnostic Cultus of Fátima in Shi'ite Islam

The Fátimíya Súfí Order is an Iranian post-Islamic and Neo-Bayânî universalist-perennialist and syncretic initiatic mystery school that weds the central currents of High Shi'ite Islamicate gnosis, Kabbalah, Shamanism and Hermetic High Paganism within the central experiential grounding of the divine sacrament of Haoma. In the Fátimíya Súfí Order the qutb (pole) and Imám of Imáms is the Feminine Holy Spirit, the Theophany of Fátima Zahrá. This animating Feminine Divine Consciousness is considered by us to be the celestial Imám of the Age Fátima. She is both a Divine hypostasis as well as Theophany as Angelophany of the Sophia Aeternae (i.e. Shekina/Sakina) – i.e. that Divine Being whose historical and terrestial apparition (mazhar) manifested in the form of the daughter of the Prophet of Islam Fátima Zahrá (d. 632), viz. Fátima Zahrá (the radiant) who in esoteric Shi’ite gnosis stands as the conjunction of the two lights (majma’ al-nurayn) of prophecy (nubuwwa) and providential guidance (wiláya). Being gnostic docetists and Platonic Illuminationists, it is, however, the principle celestial Fátima - the primordial divine prototype of the terrestrial Who is the Supercelestial Earth of the Divine Realm – we venerate. She appears to us in the Visionary state as an Angelic Theophany and we hold Her to be the same as the Chief Archangel Metatron (malak al-nún), the First Intellect (‘aql awwal) and Primal Pen (qalam a’lá), thus Creatrix and Kosmocrator (i.e. fátimá fátir). Classical Gnosticism has referred to Her as the Sophia; the Kabbalah as the Shekinah; Zoroastrians as the Archangel Daena; Tantric Shaivism as the Para- or Maha-Sakti; traditional Amerindian ayahuasqueros as the Sachamama; others with other names; we refer to Her as Fátima.

Therefore ours is the Way into the mysteries of the celestial Fátima beyond the empty shell and prison of mindless exoteric shari'a (the religious law divorced from its spirit), ideology or pietistic dogma (‘aqída.) We are Súfí oriented esotericists and gnostics transformed by the baraka (blessing, grace) of the Shekinah through the vehicle of the Haoma, which we believe to be none other than the Soma of the Rg Vedas and the Manna of the Children of Israel in the Sina'i. While we do not shun ritual as such, our qalandarí (antinomian) path is the Path (taríqat) of pure esotericism (‘irfán) seeking pure gnostic realization (haqíqat) and vision (ruyá) of the interior realities (bátin) and the infinite multiversal worlds through the marriage of Haoma with dhikr (mantra). Our shari'a, therefore, is the shari'a of the tariqa. Just as the Bektáshí Súfí Order of Turkey utilize wine together with psychoactive plants to attain altered states of noetic realization and illumination, the Fátimíya utilize Haoma to the same end. As such we are not orthodox Muslims but rather esoteric initiates of the Ahl al-Bayt (People of the House) and hence Fátimiyyun (Fátimis).

Given this, the Fátimíya Súfí Order is in no way, shape or manner an exoteric, orthodox Islamic sect clinging to normative Islamic praxis. While we deeply cherish the sublimity of the Qur’án (indeed consider it to be a scriptural-narrative of one of the inexhaustible Revelations sent from the Godhead); and as Islamic mystical and Súfí oriented devotional texts are central to what we do, we do not hold to the dogma of the finality of the Islamic Revelation in its exoteric sense. Rather we are an Islamicate expression of an intrinsically universal Indo-Iranian phenomenon of gnosis – with roots deep inside Mazdaeanism, the esoteric teachings of the Shi'ite Imams, Ismá’ílism, Illuminationist Platonism, Shakta Tantrism and the Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabí (d. 1240) -, but transformed within the matrix of a universalist-perennialist esoteric based shamanic spirituality. We believe the Holy Sacrament of Fátima opens the celestial doorways to what, in his writings, Henry Corbin (d. 1978) delineated as the Imaginal World (mundus imaginalis, ‘alam al-mithál), i.e. the spiritual world of the eighth clime or hurqalyá, where bodies are spiritualized and spirits corporealized: the world where our master and Imám Fátima is theophanically situated and to which we seek to spiritually orient ourselves in order to break through the cosmic crypt of illusion, undergo the alchemical process of angelomorphosis by uniting with our own heavenly celestial prototype-twin (syzygy) and so thus return to our original nature as homo angelicus. We are in essence disciples of Khidr (the green one), who is the Hidden Imám, and whom we hold to be one of the countless epiphanic manifestations of the celestial Fátima.

Flowing from such hyper-radical post-normative Islamicate esoteric formulations, the Fátimíya Súfí Order also maintains the Alamútí doctrine of the Imám-of-ones-being (i.e. the messianic secret) – albeit augmented beyond its originary Ismá’ílí considerations - and as such invites its initiates to explore the multifaceted reality of this Truth through their meditations and personal lives, but, above all, within the sacrament - that is the Celestial Wine (mey) - of Haoma, Her Holy Sacrament. We believe this doctrine is firmly grounded within the esoteric teachings of the Shi'ite Imams themselves and cite the following hadith (tradition) of HH Imam Ja'far as-Sadiq (pbuh) (from Kulayni's kitab al-kafi) as proof:

H 12, Ch. 1, h 12

"O Hisham, the Godhead (allah) has placed two kinds of authority over humans. The apparent and manifest (zahir) authority and the internal and hidden (batin) authority. The prophets and messengers are the apparent and manifest authorities and Hiero-Intelligence ('aql = nous/atman) is the hidden (batin) and internal authority."

While ultimate divine authority in our Order is vested in and flows unimpeded from the celestial Fatima, the horizontal, or spatiotemporal, hierophantic authority of the Fátimíya Súfí Order is presently vested in its founder and Grand Shaykh Imám 'AHWA Wahdat'alishah together with the Order's other twenty-seven member High Executive Council known as the Letters of the Face of the One (huruf al-wajh al-ahad).

As stated, the vertical (atemporal) line of our initiatic transmission resides with the Imam Fatima Herself directly. The horizontal and historical trajectory of our Order's lineage does, however, go back to several authentic lines of initiatic transmission within the Islamic world itself. Within the Islamicate context these lines of transmission include the Qadiri Order; a sub-branch of the Iranian N'imatullahi Order not associated with Javad Nurbakhsh or his school; the Turkish Mevlevi Order and the trans-institutional initiatic mantle of Ibn 'Arabi (i.e. the khirqa akbariyya). Other unconventional - and somewhat more important lines of transmission - also include the Nusayri-Alawiyya; the Illuminationists (ishraqiyyun); the Hurúfîya; the Shaykhi school and the Bayani gnostic faith. But, above all, it is the esoteric transmission from the Shi'ite Imams themselves, which function for us as an authentic line of initiatic transmission vertically and from Above. The tools to such end also include the mastery of the occult science of the letters in all its facets (i.e. abjad/jafr or gematria). The Fatimiya Sufi Order also holds to its own internal, esoteric calendar of 13 months and 28 days, known as the N.U.R. calendar; a calendar which inaugurated on the 21st of March 2006 as Year 1 of the N.U.R. era. Gatherings (known as the majlis al-dhikr) occur once every fourteen days, usually on the first and fourteenth days of each N.U.R. month.

Verily we are from the Godhead and to It shall we return!