Magic captivates. Spells and occult lore from cultures worldwide share universal fascination for altered states and extraordinary abilities. Behind the fantasy, genuine transcendent potential awaits activation. One book more than any other in the medieval period channeled this allure into Arabic alphabets and Islamic symbols—the massive compendium on practical esotericism known as The Great Sun of Knowledge or Shams al-Ma‘arif al-Kubra. Attributed to the 13th century Sufi Ahmad al-Buni, its fame stems not just from promises of supernatural powers but also warnings of misuse and faith-shaking theories. Yet beyond controversy lies profound guidance encoded within the text for those properly prepared. By journeying through the origins, teachings, and influence of the Shams we discover living streams of mysticism and metaphysics that shaped Islamic intellectual history.
The Grimoire Tradition
Grimoires, or magical texts promising access to occult forces through rigorous rituals, flourished at certain moments in Europe such as the Renaissance leading into the Enlightenment era. Figures like Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Marsilio Ficino, Giordano Bruno, John Dee and famed magus Aleister Crowley explored their theoretical foundations and practical techniques. Yet the Islamic world enjoyed its own rich tradition epitomized in medieval works like Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm composed in 11th century Spain and the Picatrix circulating in the 1200s which synthesized Islamic theories on astral magic and astrological image magic with Hermeticism.
The Shams al-Ma‘arif emerges from this creatively vibrant context. Ahmed al-Buni drew upon earlier mystical streams running beneath popular Islam in the Middle East and North Africa. Occult ideas fused as far as India, meeting influences like Neo-Platonism, Hermeticism, and Pythagorean sacred geometry suffusing the Mediterranean worlds. The text‘s title hints at how the author viewed such esoteric mastery as cosmic illumination, unveiling secret blessings from Divine Names, Quranic verses, and alphanumeric codes woven into reality‘s fabric.
Unlike common European grimoires focused on demons, curses, and dark pacts, the Shams centers firmly on angels and the creative cosmological hierarchy. By consecrating spiritual practice, embracing virtues, and refining faults, one attracts celestial assistance in life‘s trials rather than accruing dire karmic consequence. Properly understood, the metaphysical science matrixed Arabic letters and Divine qualities promised magical feats enroute to enlightenment.
Entering the Inner Sanctum
Before assessing specific contents, we must grasp the operative worldview that empowered their functionality. As Cartesian mind-matter assumptions now dominate intellectual discourse, moderns struggle conceiving a soul-saturated cosmos interconnecting Creator, revelations, prophets and angels, celestial spheres, elements and substances, occult sympathies across natural kingdoms, and the human microcosm with its drives and faculties. Everything nested, alive, intelligent.
This participatory paradigm oriented the sacred sciences cultivated by Sufis, sages, and wonderworkers across cultures. Attunement through spiritual practice aligned the adept to receive the flowing blessings of Heaven. Discerned through signs and synchronous archetypes, theP Pole of create potential and raining down of Providence operated irrespective of mental belief. Training opened the inner eye. Prayer, consecration, flowers, incense, starry alignments and, yes, recited litanies all channeled subtle substance down-cycling the Absolute toward crystallization. Skill lay in discerning the language of cosmic hymns and rightly aligning micro to Macrocosm.
Seen in this light, the Shams emerges as technical manual mapping occult hierarchies and energy topologies, backed by vast metaphysical machinery woven into reality’s fabric. From realm of Divine Unity various angelic agencies stepped down creative tension until sparks enlivened dull clay. Prophets and saints accessed these channels directly in states beyond body and localized mind. The gnostic adept likewise traversed inner sanctuary through consecration and the alchemy of symbol. By precision manipulations the matrix may be persuaded, destiny opened to new possibility. Power arose naturally to one properly plugged in.
With the worldview established, we enter the text itself…
Analyzing the Arcane Contents
The Shams al-Ma’arif weaves several streams into twin volumes totaling over 1000 pages of dense instructions, formulas and arcane theories. The first section introduces foundational concepts like metaphysical anatomy, orders of spirits, astrology and divine names before launching into formulas for crafting charms and talismans using special combinations of letters and numerology along with corresponding metals, minerals, plants and animal ingredients.
We find cryptic incantations indexing the 99 names of God to various prophets and angels who administrate specific realms of activity. Magic squares integrate letters and numerals adding up equally along all vertical, horizontal or diagonal axes for concentrating occult forces. Rings, pendants and amulets amplify spells and gain assistance from aerial, terrestrial or celestial powers depending on intricate symbols etched upon them. Solomon appears frequently as the archetypal patron dispelling jinn while sanctified priests invoke angels controlling winds, rains, plagues or other phenomena.
Recipes promise more worldly goals too like healing sickness, winning judgments, obtaining mercy, achieving victory in rivalry. One spell produces invisibility, useful for spying on enemies. Various formulas coerce jinn or sylphs into manifesting treasures out of thin air or transporting the magician mystically to far off lands. Perhaps most notoriously we find codes for erotic stimulation and enchanting objects to compel desired lovers—echoes of traditions like the Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm compendium steeped in aphrodisiac formulas.
Cryptic passages suggest hints of alchemic transmutation, a legacy of Egypt and Alexandria’s fusion of Greek, Egyptian and Jewish mystical sciences which later entered the Arabic/Islamicate sphere through figures like Jabir ibn Hayyan. Indeed metallic compounds and mineral blends feature in amulets and fumigations for concentrating specific energies astrologically. But at the heart of any genuine spiritual alchemy remains transforming the moral and psychological self through purifications of motive and virtue.
Beyond worldly petitions, advanced sections propound theoretical dimensions of the Shams cosmology. Descent of the Divine Names through cosmological hierarchy. Angelic numerological codes built into time cycles. Esoteric physiognomy of prophets and saints. States of the self and stations of mystical ascent towards inner perfection as Divine Vicegerent. The true potency harnessed by the illuminated sage works upon the inner world with profound outer ripples. Wisdom distills that transmutes base elements into golden light.
Having glimpsed the main contours, we shift to historical questions…
Tracing Origins and Development Over Time
Attributing any layered text comfortably to a single author proves difficult. The Shams al-Ma‘arif shows signs of gradual accretion over subsequent generations as successive editors introduced new material. Nevertheless tradition assigns the work to Ahmed al-Buni who lived in the 1200s Common Era. Details about his biography remain sketchy, but esoteric currents clearly dominated in his Maghreb region during that period.
The seventh Islamic century in North Africa, anticipating Ibn Arabi in Andalusia, teemed with speculative mystics and Neoplatonic philosophers advancing esoteric sciences. Braiding Pythagorean numerology, Jewish Kabbalah and Arabic alphabets, cosmic maps emerged locating occult sympathies uniting humanity and heavens. Creative tensions between rational theology and mystical introspection catalyzed figures like Sahl al-Tustari who compiled an early Tafsir describing inward-oriented dimensions of the Quran.
Martyrdom of Hallaj in 922CE for controversial ecstatic utterances presaged coming conflicts in Islamicate civilization between cold orthodoxy and intoxicated love. Persia’s treasure trove of Hermetic, Gnostic and Neoplatonic teachings continued fermenting mystical philosophy as epitomized by Suhrawardi’s Illuminationist school in the coming centuries. Andalusia soon birthed giants like Ibn Arabi, Ibn Sabin and Ibn al-Farid exploring creative interplay between exoteric and esoteric religion. This cauldron no doubt impacted the North African al-Buni. Whether or not he actually composed the Shams al-Ma‘arif, the text implicitly bears his influence.
Despite condemnation from theologians, the assimilation of magical content putatively rooted in jinn continued across Muslim lands well past the medieval period. Ottoman records as late as the 1700s contain court cases brought against practitioners of ritual magic using suspect talismanic arts. Renewed interest blossomed through European engagement with Egypt’s rich heritage of alchemy, divination and occultism during the 1800s. French occupation of Algeria likewise sparked fascination with texts like the Shams orbiting al-Buni’s legacy which had continued through North African lineages.
Today juxtaposition of rationalist skepticism against literal embrace of these esoteric currents remains unresolved in the Islamic world. Navigating such complex tensions regarding authority requires sincere scholarship and patience. Justice exhorts understanding phenomena in context before reactionary judgment. Responsible academic analysis of the Shams continues unfolding even as pop internet perpetuates questionable assumptions about the text. Discernment and empathy serves all best in this delicate terrain.
Having traced the book’s history, we now analyze underlying worldviews…
Cosmology and Metaphysics of Magic
Seekers asking how astonishing feats manifest through mastering cryptic arcana like the Shams discover profound philosophical dimensions. Apparent supernatural abilities marked the lives of prophetic and saintly figures revered across traditions. Scriptures told of Solomon commanding jinn for construction marvels or various miracles performed by Luqman the Sage. Jesus revived corpses while Muhammad split the moon and journeyed bodily through heavens guided by Archangel Gabriel. Saints like Abu Yazid Bistami and Bayazid Bestami described metaphysical ascent through celestial spheres beyond confines of physical form.
The cosmology framing such wonders appears utterly foreign to modern materialism. Yet through an participatory paradigm viewing consciousness and matter as expressions of Being‘s ceaselessly creative unfoldment, awe emerges as the sensible attitude. Birth and death mark not absolute beginning or endings but modalities of one Life essence crystallizing temporarily into manifold forms. Behind each unique creation shines the Single Light.
Attunement practices in schools like Sufism resonate human souls into harmony with cosmic sy mphonies. Prophets and saints model the perfection of qualities allowing seamless translation into rarefied states transcending polarized existence. Settling the dust of personal fixations opens inner space where wisdom‘s brilliance shines unobstructed like a mirror polished to total clarity. This gnostic perfection grants gifts of divine insight and marvelous abilities like healing, projection to audiences globally or walking unseen through ordinary sight.
Yet for the Shams author al-Buni and those inheriting his legacy, intricate interrelating patterns undergirds reality beyond its obvious surfaces. Precise manipulations of sound, script, geometry and symbolism such as practiced by adepts of abjad science tug these threads of cosmic fabric toward beautiful realignments. Rhythms measured and intelligences rightly invoked, angels heed the summons channeled through consecrated materia. Spells and charms focus attention and belief, accelerating currents of causal relatedness so conditions ripening in one field swiftly emerge in prospering another. Accords strum resonating heartstrings of the celestial orrery.
Seen in this light, the Shams opens possibility beyond fulfilling selfish whims or destroying perceived enemies. Traditions worldwide hold that genu ine awaken ing manifests compassion amidst the sorrows of human existence. Powers gained for spiritual liberation unlock prisoners of ignorance too. Properly implemented sciences like this burn off veils shrouding unity beneath diversity’s manifold expressions. The heavens pour benedictions upon practitioners aligned to higher ethics. Keys turn in destiny’s doors. Evolution’s currents shift when wisdom wields benevolence’s sharp sword as the mystic’s craft transcends reaction into revolutionary modes of being.
Closing Thoughts on Shams al-Ma‘arif’s Living Legacy
Beyond tracing historical origins or analyzing specific contents, we have explored profound underpinnings of the occult cosmology permeating this multidimensional text. By no means relegated as merely medieval relics, operative grimoires like the Shams reveal sophistication of the esoteric sciences cultivated by mystics and sages worldwide across millennia. Techniques may evolve but principles remain startlingly consistent.
Yet can such ritual magic find coherent adaptions aligned to modern life? If oriented ethically and shorn of egoistic motives, why not engage these psycho-spiritual technologies acknowledging but transcending corporealism? Sincere practitioners today report powerful impacts from mindfully working with encrypted formulas and consecrated materia. Perhaps dormant human faculties await reactivation as we consciously reconnect through meaningful practices.
Ultimately the Shams lives as provocation awakening slumbering intuitions of infinitude‘s playful potential. All phenomena dance in shadow and light cast by one Ever-radiant Source. We suffer only when forgetting our true home. But the burning flames of divine remembrance ignite through loving surrender. Prophetic paths model walking barefoot on hot coals unscorched as attachment‘s veils turn to ashes. What remains of limitation when the ocean floods in? For those struck by metaphysical lightning, mystic poetry cascades revealing life‘s meaning.
The game grandly continues. Will you play?