Sirr
The spiritual secret: deposited in the guide's heart, it is what makes the path effective and transforms the disciple.
Sirr means ‘secret’. In Sufism the word has two joined senses. First, a subtle centre of the being, deeper still than the heart and the spirit: the point where man is directly exposed to the divine gaze. Then, and this is the concrete use in the paths, the secret of the path itself: the spiritual deposit handed from master to master in the silsila, which makes a teaching not an item of information but an efficacy.
The classical difference is then clear between the paths of the sirr, which proceed by a living transmission transforming the disciple from within, and the so-called paths of blessing (tabarruk), which offer an affiliation and virtues without that charge. In the Boutchichiya line, the sirr lost after Sidi Ali was restored to the family by Sidi Abu Madyan Shu’ayb, Sidi Hamza’s uncle, before coming back to it: the episode is told in the initiatic chain.
The sirr is not divulged because it is not a piece of knowledge: it is what makes the guide, and only the one who holds it can transmit it, by authorisation.