A symbolic approach to the Qur'an (3/3): the Guarded Tablet and the signs of the world

By Eva de Vitray-Meyerovitch · June 2, 2021 · 10 min read

Contents

A living synthesis that overcomes the duality of world and consciousness, the symbol will allow the universe to be brought into unison. The Qur’an, in which God declares: ‘We shall show them Our signs in the universe and in themselves, until they see clearly that this is the Truth’ (XLI, 53), often presents nature as a book that is the macrocosmic counterpart of the Qur’an itself, and that must likewise be read and understood, then transcended¹.

A Sufi master, ’Aziz al-Nasafi (d. 1300), compares nature to the Qur’an in such a way that each genus corresponds to a sura, each species to a verse, and each particular being to a letter. ‘Every day’, he writes, ‘destiny and the passage of time place this Book before you, sura by sura, verse by verse, letter by letter, so that you may study the content of these lines and these letters […] But he who […] transcends the world of commandment obtains the knowledge of the entire Book in an instant; and he who has a complete knowledge of the whole Book, who frees his heart from this Book, closes the Book and sets it aside […] This is the meaning of the words: “That day, We shall roll up the heavens as one rolls up scrolls of writing” (Qur’an XXI, 104)’².

The Guarded Tablet

The thinkers and mystics of Islam have not always pushed the search for ‘correspondences’ that far. But they were constantly inclined to this vision of the world in which everything signifies, everything is connected, everything proceeds by series and by analogies; in a word, to the presence of the spiritual in the material universe, which is, in the end, only the mirror of the archetypes. Is not the Qur’an, the archetypal model of the cosmos, composed of verses that are themselves signs (ayat) allowing one to go from the sign to the thing signified, that is, to return (ta’wil) to the origin of the signs, since nature and the Qur’an alike have the same Author?

The symbolic reading of the Qur’an, among the Muslim mystics, will take place at two principal levels: it will apply now to an expression, now to a narrative, one that does or does not stage historical characters or events which thereby assume a transhistorical import. Here are a few examples.

We know all the importance of the symbolism of the pen (qalam) and of the Guarded Tablet (al-lawh al-mahfuz) on which the eternal Qur’an was ‘written’. For Ghazali, man is a microcosm who, by his original nature (fitra), is ‘capable’ of God:

The heart resembles a mirror in which forms and realities are reflected. Everything God has fixed by His decree from the beginning of the creation of the world to its end is recorded in an object created by God, which is designated in the Qur’an now as ‘the Tablet’, now as ‘the manifest Book’ […] It must be understood once and for all that the Tablet does not resemble the books of this world, any more than His essence and His attributes resemble the essence and attributes of creatures. But if you seek a comparison, remember that the presence of the decrees upon the Tablet resembles the presence of the words and letters of the Qur’an in the brain and memory of one who knows this book by heart. The Qur’an is represented there, so that when that man recites it, he has it as it were before his eyes. Yet if his brain were examined atom by atom, no letter would be found in it. So must one picture the Tablet where all the decrees of God are recorded, without any visible writing or letter.

The Tablet, for its part, likewise resembles a mirror in which forms appear. When a second mirror stands opposite it, its form is reflected in the other, provided there is no veil between the two. When the heart is free and pure, the veil between it and the well-guarded Tablet is lifted, so that something of what is in it falls into the heart as an image is reflected from one mirror into another³.

Mysticism and orthodoxy

The visible world being a means of reaching the invisible (or the world of the malakut), there exists nothing in the first that is not the symbol of realities of the second. Apropos of the ‘sacred valley’ (al-wadi al-muqaddas) spoken of in the Qur’an (XX, 12)⁴, Ghazali writes:

If the first station of the prophets is that in which they abandon the trouble of the senses and the imagination to rise to the sacred world, the image of that station is the ‘sacred valley’. One can only set foot in this sacred valley by abandoning the two existences (this world and the other) and directing oneself towards the One, the Reality. This world and the other face each other and both present themselves to the luminous substance of man, so that it is possible for him now to abandon them and now to draw near to them. The image of the abandonment of the two worlds corresponds to the action of taking on the ihram⁵ and that of ‘taking off one’s sandals’ is the action of directing oneself towards the holy Ka’ba.

Ghazali himself comments on this passage, pointing out the necessity of not opposing zahir and batin, temporality and spirituality:

It would be erroneous to conclude from examples of this symbolism that I declare the negation of the outward meaning of the Qur’an licit, or that I deny it by saying, for example, that Moses had no sandals and did not hear the command to take them off. May God protect me! […] Only he who combines the two manners, that is, who refrains from denying either the outward or the inward meaning, possesses the perfect method. […] Moses obeyed outwardly by taking off his sandals, and inwardly by rejecting the two worlds (this world and Paradise). Such is the right method of understanding symbolism, namely to take the outward indication as the symbol of the inner disposition⁶.

This passage illustrates Ghazali’s constant concern to conjoin mysticism and orthodoxy without ever opposing them. In a commentary on the ‘Verse of Light’⁷ (Qur’an XXIV, 35) in which he describes the structure of the psyche, Ghazali considers that the niche of light symbolises common sense, which centralises the sensory perceptions. The glass typifies the imagination, which must be made transparent to the light. The role of the glass is both to let through this light that shines in the lamp and at the same time to protect it by controlling intellectual knowledge. The lamp, which makes the light radiate, symbolises the intelligence, capable of recognising the attributes of God. The tree represents the function of meditation and reflection, capable of branching out into divers branches. It is an olive tree, whose oil symbolises the active Intellect, present in every man and able to illuminate without outside help, ‘without the fire having touched it’.

The Qur’anic symbols

Symbols concerning interiority, such as that of the heart, or cosmic symbols: water, whose importance is so great in the Qur’an (a symbol of life and of divine grace); the garden, whose image has so influenced architecture and poetry and which, according to the esoteric commentaries, composes Paradise under a fourfold aspect (garden of the soul, garden of the heart, garden of the spirit, and garden of the Essence); the tree, which the Qur’an itself proposes as the symbol of a good word bearing fruit⁸.

Another category of symbols is constituted by characters taking part in stories. These anecdotal narratives may appear strange, even shock the common man. Rumi opposes such an attitude. ‘Thus’, he says, ‘it is related that John the Baptist, in his mother’s womb, bowed down before Jesus. The imbecile objects that the whole story is impossible. But he who knows the hidden meaning understands it, not as one who has heard fables and remains attached to their literal sense.’ Likewise, the story of Moses and Pharaoh is not simply a story in the eyes of the man of experience; it is the description of a spiritual state:

The mention of Moses has become an obstacle in the thoughts of my readers, who suppose these are stories that happened long ago.

The mention of Moses serves as a mask; the Light of Moses is what concerns you, in truth, O man of good!

Moses and Pharaoh are within your own being: it is in yourself that you must seek these two adversaries⁹.

By way of conclusion, evoking the symbolism of the sea, Shabestari synthesises the human odyssey in a striking flash:

What is this sea of which speech is the shore?

What is this pearl found in its depths?

Being is the ocean, speech is the shore,

the shells are the letters, the pearls the knowledge of the heart.

The kernel is not found without breaking the shell,

yet the kernel does not ripen without it.

From exoteric knowledge is born the sweet knowledge of faith.

O soul of my brother, hear my counsel:

go purify the tablets of your heart, that an angel may come to dwell with you.

Acquire from him that knowledge which is your inheritance,

begin to till your field for the harvest of the hereafter.

Read the books of God: that of your soul, and that of the heavens¹⁰!

By Eva de Vitray-Meyerovitch. Extract from Universalité de l’islam*, Albin Michel, 2014.*

Calligraphy of the Arabic letters alif and ba’