Pamela Colman Smith - A Savant With a Child's Heart

Anyone with even the slightest familiarity with the tarocci or “tarot” cards will be acquainted with the work of Miss Pamela Colman Smith, although they may be excused for not knowing her name. In the early years of the XXth century Miss Smith – an Anglo-American illustrator – was commissioned by the Masonic occultist Mr Arthur Waite to design a complete set of all seventy-eight cards of the traditional tarot deck. She completed this work in a remarkably short period of time between April and October 1909 and some time after this the cards were published by William Rider & Sons of London under the title ‘A Pictorial Key to the Tarot’. They have thereafter been known as the ‘Rider-Waite’ tarot and the name of the illustrator was not included in the title or on the box. This omission was then duplicated in 1971 when the American company US Games Inc. purchased the copyright to the cards and reissued them to the American market, making them the most well-known and popular tarot cards of the modern era. Today, the ‘Rider-Waite’ cards have become infused into popular culture to the extent that they may be regarded as prototypal; there are countless new sets on the market today, each with new illustrations on new themes, but the Rider-Waite cards are, as it were, a standard. It is a great pity then that the illustrator, the person most responsible for the indelible images of the cards, is not better known. It was an injustice she suffered in her own lifetime. Mr. Waite paid her only a token fee for her work and she received no royalties from sales. Born in 1878, she died penniless, debt-ridden and forgotten in 1951. 

By virtue of the ‘Rider-Waite’ tarot, however, Miss Smith – she was generally known as “Pixie” – must be credited as having had a profound impact upon the visual imagination of the modern West. Her tarot cards, rendered in her simple, linear style with Art Nouveau influence, are her masterpiece. The remarkable thing is that she was able to translate the instructions of the verbose and tedious Mr. Waite into compelling images that arrest the imagination and, most importantly, impose themselves upon the memory. No other design of the tarot comes near to Miss Smith’s in this respect. Others are more beautiful and yet others are more symbolically exact, perhaps, but Miss Smith made the tarot her own. She entered into the spirit of the cards and conjured images of a strongly mnemonic concrete lyricism that truly captured something of the zeitgeist of the modern occult revival, a defining counter-modernist trend that shaped early XXth century. 

They bear comparison and contrst to the cards made by Lady Frieda Harris under the instruction of the sinister Aleister Crowley. Superficially, those of Lady Harris have a deeper artistic merit, and Mr. Crowley has packed the designs with Qabbalistic allusions, but finally, compared to the charming directness of the Pixie Smith designs, they are turgid and pretentious. Miss Smith understood one of the keys to the tarot: the images on the cards are essentially caricatures. This is so in the medieval designs and she has retained that medieval flavor. The Crowley or ‘Thoth’ deck is, in contrast, a modernist mess. The same can be said of other more recent designs. They are contrived by comparison. No one quite captures the spirit of the tarot, and renders it modern yet integral, like Miss Smith.

The actual processes by which the Waite-Smith collaboration took place are not certain, but it seems likely that Mr. Waite’s input was largely restricted to the twenty-two Major Arcana. Of the fifty-six pip cards – the Minor Arcana – it is likely that Miss Smith had a very free hand. They, therefore, are her creation, and it is there that we see her genius. Mr. Waite’s Major Trumps display elements of his eclectic and sometimes misleading mash of symbols. Miss Smith’s Minor Arcana is a playhouse of little dramas and quaint allegories that bring the much-neglected minor cards new vitality. The chief inspiration for the Major Arcana seems to have been the XVIIIth century Tarot of Marseilles, while for the Minor Marcana Miss Smith appears to have looked to the Sola Busca Tarot of the XVth century for her model. The illustrator has successfully retained the essence of those earlier decks and recreated them in a new pictorial vocabulary. This is no small achievement. It is an achievement that is too often underestimated by those who like to criticize this tarot and sing the virtues of newer designs that are full of reckless innovations and artistic egoism. Miss Smith’s designs are not technically accomplished, but at least she shows faultless judgment as to how and when to depart from her medieval models and there is no egoism to be seen in the least.

The present writer, in any case, is an outspoken enthusiast for what should rightly be called the ‘Pixie Smith’ Tarot, and more broadly for Miss Smith’s art in general. Her tarot – even where Arthur Waite imposed his cranky symbolism upon the Major cards - is simply unsurpassed. She made the form her own. Her designs define the tarot in this epoch. She was not, admittedly, a great artist by the usual standards, and she was certainly not a successful one in monetary terms or in terms of wide recognition. Had she not made tarot cards for Mr. Waites she might have disappeared into obscurity entirely. But her work is beautiful and distinctive by other standards, with a unique charm, a delightful sense of decorative whimsy, a lovely innocence, an enchanting sense of the fay. Stuart Kaplan, director of US Games Inc., once remarked that had she lived in his day he could have made her a millionaire.

Miss Smith designed bookplates, made illustrations for numerous books and at one stage edited and illustrated her own magazine, the ‘Green Sheath’ which claimed its own ‘school’ of fellow artists. She came into contact with Mr. Waites through the poet W. B. Yeats who employed her as an illustrator for his poems and who inducted her into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Despite this dalliance with the occult, however, she later converted to Catholicism and throughout her later years ran a boarding house for old priests in Cornwall. 

Her real qualifications for illustrating the tarot was her passion for folklore; wrote or co-wrote and illustrated several books on the subject, including one of Jamaican folklore entitled Annancy Stories. It sold poorly but it was the work that first attracted the attention of the Yeats family who were, at the time, looking for an artist to illustrate Gaelic tales. The father of W. B. Yeats, John, once described her work in an extant letter as follows: “Pamela,” he said…

“…is bringing out a book of Jamaica folklore. Her work, whether a drawing or telling of a piece of folklore, is very direct and sincere and therefore original - its originality being its naïveté. I should feel safe in getting her to illustrate anything. She does not draw well, but has the right feeling for line and expression and colour.”

Then he adds in summary:

“I don't think there is anything great or profound in her, or very emotional or practical. She has the simplicity and naïveté of an old dry-as-dust savant - a savant with a child's heart.”

This is a blunt assessment but also a very accurate account of her character and work - nothing great or profound but a savant with a child’s heart. This is the quality that Mr. Yeats recognized in her and that she brought to Mr. Waite’s tarot cards. It is the quality that makes her one of the most endearing of the supposedly lesser female artists of her time. We see this quality in all her work, samples of which are given below. It is her folkish lack of sophistication and her naïveté that made her the perfect vehicle for the spirit of the modern tarot. In the estimation of the present author, at least, Pamela Colman Smith – Pixie Smith – deserves far greater appreciation than she received in her lifetime or since and should be counted as an important artist in her own right. It is fashionable in some circles to disparage the ‘Rider-Waite’ tarot because it is now deemed ‘old fashioned’ or lacking in a contemporary aesthetic. This is a miscalculation of its worth. It is still the best tarot. The inspired naïveté of Pixie Smith lives still. The simplicity of the 'Rider-Waite' designs – the simplisticity of their illustrator – is an original and honest simplicity that taps deep into the medieval roots of the tarot and speaks directly to the modern Western consciousness. Her other work has the same charm and deserves to be celebrated in wider circles today. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Chariots of the Moon

The Moon Chariots of Udupi

The most unique feature of the Hindoo cultus to be found at the sacred town of Udupi on the west coast of the Indian sub-continent are elaborate rites in which cult objects – statues of deities – are placed in massive “chariots” and dragged by devotees around a fixed circuit. The present author was privileged to watch the entire procession from start to finish a few nights ago and has since been pondering the symbolism of the event. 

As always in India there are centuries and even millennia of overlays obscuring the original cultus – Hindooism is especially organic and relinquishes nothing to time – but the essentials of the rites have not changed and can be made out with careful observation and a discerning sense of the symbolic. There are always keys with which even the strangest and most opaque mysteries can be unlocked. Even if those who maintain the rites today have lost sight of their origins, they will usually preserve and guard the essentials – at least in an integral and living tradition such as Hindooism. 

In the case of the rites at Udupi there is a single and somewhat obvious key to what otherwise are peculiar but spectacular events. There are three temples at the site, each of a different age and a different layer of history. It is an ancient site, but it was expanded as recently as the XIIth century when it became one of the foremost centres for the veneration of the avatar Lord Krishna in all the lands of Hindoostan. Each evening – or at least on certain evenings, and certainly at festivals – the image of Lord Krishna, along with an image of Lord Shiva, is removed from its home in the temple and placed in massive four-wheeled wooden constructions which are designated as “chariots”. 

These vehicles are highly decorated, most notably with horse figurines, and function, in fact, as types of temples on wheels. Then they are lit up, blessed and dragged by thick ropes around an elongated pathway. The route is marked by two large guardians, namely men in over-sized costumes with each wielding a sword and a shield, who spin around in circles as they lead the procession. There are starts and stops and fireworks and candles along the way. When the chariots have completed the circumabulation the cult statues are removed and put back into their respective temples in the usual place having gone, it seems, for their nightly jaunt around the track. The photographs on this page illustrate the rites. 

The key? Clearly, the entire event is an enactment of the movement of celestial bodies around the circuit of the heavens. All the details of the rites become explicable in light of this fact. Specifically, one “chariot” – painted gold, as it happens – represents the Sun, and another – balloon-like - represents the Moon. The circuit, which is oriented exactly east-west, represents the ecliptic. The array of torches, fireworks and candles around the pathway represent the background of the stars. The whirling guardians armed with swords and shields represent the nodes that define the limits of the ecliptic. We can be sure of this key since the very name of the town, Udupi, means “Lord of the Stars” and the myths and legends concerning the founding of the site are all cosmological in nature. Moreover, as the present author noted in a previous post, the town is a veritable centre of the astrological sciences; the Hindoo religion takes a particular astrological form here. The entire history of the place has to do with the stars and stellar religion. 

The thing that obscures this key to the symbolism of the Udupi complex is the association of Krishna with the site. Udupi is now known as a centre of devotion to Lord Krishna, and in this sense there is no obvious and direct stellar dimension to that cultus. Indeed, the usual explanation given for the nightly rounds of the chariot is that Krishna was a charioteer, most famously in the Bhagavad Gita. Why is the cult statue of Krishna taken from its temple, placed in a chariot and dragged around its circuit every night? There is a mythological reason: it enacts the scenes of the Gita in which Krishna rides in his chariot. 

But, in fact, this is the most recent layer of symbolism – an overlay on top of the older rites. Before Krishna, the site was sacred to Shiva, and specifically to Shiva as a Moon god. This is plain if one ventures into the sanctuary of the oldest Shiva temple on the site, the Chandramauleshvara Temple. There Shiva is represented, not by the usual lingam, but by an image consisting of a bright round silver face. Chandramauleshvara means, literally, Moon-crowned, or Moon-faced. Shiva, then, was the original passenger in the celestial chariot, the chariot of the Moon. The Krishna cult is a late arrival. Krishna has been added to the temple complex in the XIIth century on the basis of the simple association of chariots. Since this was already a place featuring sacred chariots, the cult of Lord Krishna, the charioteer, found a ready home here. But one needs to look beyond the associations with Krishna to the earlier Shaivite layer of rites in order to understand them correctly. 

Many other strange details of the rites become clear once one applies the key. The whole complex, in fact, its history and its rituals, deserves a thorough study – more thorough and comprehensive than can be offered here. In each of the temples in the complex there are further stellar motifs. The more time one spends there, the more the cosmological character of the cultus becomes clear. 

* * *

As an aside, the structure, purpose and symbolism of the lunar chariots of Udupi invite comparison with the Chariot Trump in the Tarot cards of western esotericism. The resemblance is striking. The present author has long noted that while most occidental literary references to celestial chariots have a solar symbolism - Phaethon's chariot in Greek mythology, for instance - the Chariot Trump of the Tarot is, even in the earliest designs, lunar. The author has had the problem of explaining this lunar chariot symbolism. The problem is resolved in Udupi. Here we have lunar chariots, and they take a form that is strongly reminiscent of the Tarot Trump. 

See the design of the A.E. Waite deck below. Ignoring the pseudo-Egyptian sphinx motif, note the lunar and celestial symbolism throughout. It is exactly this chariot that one encounters in the great temple of Udupi in western India. Most remarkable is the winged (phallic) device in the centre of the card. In the large lunar chariots used in the sacred parades in Udupi, exactly this motif is displayed during the period that the chariot is on the move. Thus, not only is there a general similarity, there is a consonance of details. Note also, if readers care to look closely, how the chariot-riders belt is the celestial ecliptic. The conclusion is inescapable: this Tarot design refers to the very same traditions that are given expression in the rites of Udupi. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Udupi - Notes on the Symbolism of the Number 108

Vast and variegated, the great lands of Hindoostan are a rich patchwork of local traditions even though, together, they accumulate into a single edifice of belief and practice that may reasonably be designated by the term ‘Hindooism’, especially as seen from the outside (things being less clear when standing in its midst.) From north to south, east to west, local traditions, flavours and colourings vary, yet somehow they converge into a single stream, a unified tradition. Do not expect consistency or system, though. There is no Pope of the Hindoos to bring the swarming variations into a coherent orthodoxy. Very wisely, the Hindoo cherishes variation and tolerates a very wide range of religious expression. This fact has become very noticeable to the present writer in his current sojourn across the Indian sub-continent. Any expectation of consistency or system is foiled at every turn. Just when he thinks he has a handle on some aspect of Hindoo religious life, he moves on to a new town, a new location, and there different traditions and ways prevail, even though they are in some way entirely apiece with the whole. Reflecting on Hindooism is an object lesson on the problem of the one and the many.

The western coast of India is very different to the north and one encounters there, sure enough, a different assembly of myths and legends and accompanying practices. The author arrived in the temple town of Udupi several days ago and since then has been observing the local religious life, especially as it is centred on the great Krishna temple complex that makes the town a centre of pilgrimage. A full description of the rites and mysteries of this temple will have to be postponed until a later post: they are very complex and very profound and would require a long and detailed exposition.

Instead, the purpose of this current post is simply to record an observation concerning the symbolic powers of the celebrated number one hundred and eight (108). The meaning of the number – or at least something of its essential symbolism – has become obvious to this writer since arriving in Udupi and becoming immersed in the local traditions of the place. A group of connections have come together. A particular order of symbolism has become plain. The purpose of this post is just to make note of that symbolism. How it fits into the greater symbolism evident in Udupi and its surrounds is another matter and must wait for another time.

* * *

The author has long observed the special character of the number 108 in certain religious contexts. It is an important number with symbolic import. Most notably, there is the fact that the rosary beads – or japa beads (japa mala) – commonly employed by both Hindoos and Boodhists consist of 108 stones or seeds or peas strung on a string which are then counted with the fingers. Thus, in any cycle of prayer the Hindoo or Boodhist makes 108 utterances or mantras of some sacred name or phrase. The author, indeed, has purchased a set of the said beads at the store in the Udupi temple where they hang on wracks in great profusion. Everywhere about, one can see Hindoos fingering their beads and muttering their mantras – one of the most common and easiest forms of devotion. There are no Boodhists to be seen in Udupi but elsewhere they use the rosary of 108 beads as well. (The Mahometan tesbe is different since it consists of 99 beads – a decimal rosary, as it were – being based on the literal – and quite mistaken – reading of a certain hadeeth in which the Prophet declares that God has ninety-nine names. This is just an instance of semitic hyperbole and it means that God has a large or indefinite number of names, but Mahometans, stupidly, draw up a litany of ninety-nine names, even though there are clearly more than that number given in the Holy Koran.)

Nor, however, is 108 only a preferred number in oriental symbolism. The author, being a student of the Greeks, knows also that in Homeric myth the number of suitors of Penelope is very specifically 108. And it is found in many other contexts besides. It is a auspicious number which occurs in certain symbolically significant contexts in traditions east and west.

But why 108? Why this particular number? What particular symbolism is attached to this number? What are its traditional powers?

The answer to this presents itself in Udupi. The name of the town is said to come from two roots signifying the idea “Lord + Stars” = “Lord of the Stars”. A local myth relates that, once upon a time, the “twenty-seven stars” were dimmed by decree of a certain king. Thereupon, the “Lord of the Stars” – that is, the Moon – appealed to Lord Shiva to restore their brightness, and Lord Shiva looked favourably upon this request and did so. Consequently, Shiva came to be worshipped locally and the place became known as Udupi – the land of the Lord of Stars, which is to say a land of the Moon. Shiva, of course, is himself a lunar deity and wears the lunar crescent as a crown. It is one of his chief emblems. He is essentially a time god, and the Moon, in this context, is the marker of time. Thus, in the Udupi temple complex the oldest temple, called ‘Chandramauleshvara’ belongs to the Moon-crowned Shiva (Chandra = Moon). The restoration of the twenty-seven stars for the Lord of the Stars is celebrated in this temple in this town.

Moreover, a second myth told in this same region concerns the axe-wielding avatar Parashurama who, it is said, severed the land from the sea. The whole coast of western India – Goa, Konkan, Karnataka, Kerela – is collectively known as the Land of Parashurama. He split the land from the sea with his axe, and then – it is said – he established 108 statues of Shiva throughout the land. Indeed, these 108 statues or linga – Shiva shrines - still exist today, distributed along the coastal lands with the shrines in Udupi being prominent among them. Now, the axe of Parashurama is without question itself a symbol of the crescent Moon – the crescent shaped axe is lunar wherever it is found - and so once again in this myth we have a lunar motif associated with Udupi and with the lunar deity Shiva, and the number 108 is explicitly given in this context.

Furthermore, as this present writer notes in a casual observation that turns out to be relevant, Udupi is a thriving centre for Hindoo astrology, particularly in its lunar mode. There are astrologers on every street corner, and many astrologers have set up practice in the confines of the temple complex itself. It might seem that there are more astrologers in Udupi than in the rest of India combined. The signs and shops throughout make it clear that it is nothing less than an astrological centre. Pilgrims who come to Udupi to make observances at the temple also take the opportunity to have an astrological reading since here, as elsewhere in India, astrology is indeed regarded as a sacred art and an important feature of the Hindoo religion. As it is practiced, it is based upon the twenty-seven lunar mansions (nakshatra) and the sub-division of those mansions into astral regions known as pada. Typically, the Hindoo takes a name from the pada in which he was born. (Typically, also, astrologers inform inquirers that this was done in error and that the error can only be corrected by prayers and generous donations to the temple – such being the way of seers.)

* * *

Let us now string all of these factors together. Udupi is a charming town and the temple is a place of remarkable fascination. There is much that can be said but, again, it will need to wait for another post. What is important at this time is that in Udupi, and its local myths, the nature and import of the number 108 becomes obvious. Even in this there is much to say, but for now it suffices to point to what is plain.

Most crucially, let us note that 27 x 4 = 108. That is, there are 27 lunar mansions each divided into four parts. This is essential to Hindoo astrology. This makes the number 108 symbolic of the lunar zodiac. It is a number that represents the whole cosmic cycle considered by its lunar delineations. It is a lunar, not a solar number. Many numbers measure time (cycles) by solar measures – the number 360, for example. But the number 108 is resoundingly lunar in its essential meanings. In the foundation myth of Udupi, the “twenty-seven stars” dimmed by the evil king and restored by “Moon-crowned” Shiva are the twenty-seven lunar mansions. When, in the other myth, the axe-wielding Parashurama separates the land and the sea and establishes the 108 Shiva shrines, we have the finer division of the pada. The rosary of 108 beads, then, represents the year, and by extension the cosmic cycle (since an annual year is a reflection of the Great Year.) The Moon, in this scheme, is the measurer of time – a function of Lord Shiva – and so it is with lunar time reckonings, great and small, that we are concerned. The beads (japa mala) is a device symbolic of the full lunar cycle. To prayer the japa is to be united with and contextualized by that cycle.

The same significance prevails, surely, in Homer. Penelope’s weaving and unweaving as she awaits the return of Odysseus in the epic poem is, surely, itself a lunar motif. This has been widely observed from ancient times to modern. Just as the moon waxes and wanes, so Penelope weaves and unweaves. But now we can understand why there are 108 suitors seeking her hand. The number is the number of the lunar cycle (and it is furthermore no accident that the total journey of Odysseus is nineteen years, the number of the metonic or lunar eclipse cycle.) Penelope will not submit to any particular division of the small cycle. Odysseus himself, and his journey, signifies the greater cycle. Let us also note, in a Greek context, that 108 is a number relevant to the Platonic Nuptial Number, the calculation of the Great Year given in the Republic: the figures are 12,960,000 = 108 x 120,000.

In any case, 108 is the number of the lunar cycle. Wherever it is found it is likely to have this significance. It features in Udupi because Udupi is the land of the “Lord of Stars” i.e. the Moon. This is an old layer of symbolism in the Udupi temple. The associations of the temple with Krishna are much more recent – medieval rather than ancient. The oldest layers of the Udupi cultus go back beyond this association to Shiva as “Moon-crowned” or “Moon-faced”. It is a cultus that is particularly cosmological and in which an ancient cosmological symbolism has been well preserved. A more detailed description will be given some other time. For now, it is enough to note that 108 is a lunar number – the number of the cosmic cycle in its lunar mode.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

The Zimmerman Who Fell in Love with Iron

A zimmerman, by definition, is a woodworker, a carpenter, but Robert Zimmerman – who masquerades as a fictitious character known as ‘Bob Dylan’, a song and dance man – is having none of that. He is a life-long lover of iron and devotes his spare time to collecting old iron objects and welding them into new and pleasing arrangements. He has a large garage full of old tools, broken machinery, plough shares, engine parts and other found objects, all of iron, and he dons his welding gear every chance he gets, because in his heart of hearts he is an ironworker, not a zimmerman at all. He explains that he has always loved iron and that iron has been a big part of his life. 

He grew up, he explains further, in Hibbing Minnesotta, just a stone’s throw from one of the biggest iron ore deposits in the world. During the Second World War and after the Hibbing mines provided the iron ore needed for the war effort and for industrialization: these were the mines from which modern America was built. And Mr. Zimmerman – always an American patriot - is proud of this fact. The mines of Hibbing formed the background to some of the early songs of his alter ego, Bob Dylan, such as the haunting heart-felt lament ‘North Country Blues’ – a tale of what becomes of mining families when mines are closed:

Come gather 'round friends and I'll tell you a tale
Of when the red iron pits ran a-plenty
But the cardboard-filled windows and old men on the benches
Tell you now that the whole town is empty...

But otherwise this passion for things ferric has remained a little known fact. Only in recent times has he decided to exhibit his ironwork, in particular various gates made from found objects, such as the following: 

* * *

What is one to make of a zimmerman who falls in love with iron, who disguises himself as the affable folk persona ‘Bob Dylan’? It might seem inexplicable, counterfactual and out of character, but only because Mr. Zimmerman has never been very straightforward with his public. Indeed, most of his public are not even aware that ‘Bob Dylan’ is merely a character he plays. He’s a self-declared trickster, a jokerman, who conned an entire generation into thinking he was a spokesman for progressive causes when in fact he was, and is, a religious conservative whose primary literary inspiration throughout his life has been the King James Bible.

Searching for clues, the present writer decided to investigate his horoscope. Several posts ago, this writer made a fuss about the virtues of the traditional horoscope as opposed to its modern deviation, and about the evil obscurities of the modern planets as used by contemporary astrologers. As evidence of his traditional approach he offers the horoscope of the devious Mr. Zimmerman. 

What do we find? Lo and behold! When we cast away the modern trans-Saturnian planets and plot only the ancient seven, and render them clearly in the spatial organization of the traditional square chart, we see, as plain as day, the peculiar disconnectedness of the planet of iron, Mars, adrift in Pisces in the Second House. Mr. Zimmerman, as is well known, is a Gemini, and his ruling planet, the mercurial Mercury, is perfectly at home there – the configuration of the trickster poet. This is in the context of a large crowded grouping of planets in the Sixth and Fifth Houses: a stellarium, the configuration of the famous. 

But Mars, the planet of the metal iron, is not part of this stellarium at all. You’d never see this in a modern round horoscope littered with trans-Saturnians and asteroids. Mars is the odd planet out. Mars is the peculiar and unusual feature of this chart. In Pisces it gives the native the will to realize his dreams, but unconnected as it is here, it forms a secret source of strength and in this particular case it leads Mr. Zimmerman to his garage, to put on his welding gear, and to escape from the crowded life of the so-called ‘Bob Dylan’ and into the seemingly incongruous world of rusty ironwork. Only Mars acting as a singleton in a horoscope like this could make a zimmerman into an ironworker.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Rumi in Reverse

Some people seem to confuse the great Mahometan sage, Mevlana Jalalal al-Din Rumi, with Jonathon Livingston Seagull. It is an easy mistake to make. There are hundreds of best-selling volumes of paraphrases and ‘versions’ of Rumi that render his Persian quatrains into a vacuous, mushy New Age pseudo-wisdom every bit as deep as the once well-known Seagull classic. Throughout the contemporary West, and notably affluent middle America, the Soofi Master has been turned into an agent of sentimental pap, a champion of fuzzy social inclusion and an avowed enemy of every aspect of organized religion. In some versions of the contemporary Rumi you’d swear that John and Yoko were channeling him on ‘Imagine’.

It is a very strange phenomenon; an old, bearded XIIIth century poet – a Muslim divine, no less – has been completely reshaped into the most quote-worthy hero of coffee-table spirituality for literally millions of sago-brained babyboomers. The man is an industry. It is a fact that takes some explaining. In large measure it is a result of the publishing success of such ‘versionizers’ as Coleman Barks, as well as the marketing of Rumi in spiritual supermarkets by such people as Camille and Kabir Helminski who have brought the Mevlevi Soofi Order (Rumi Soofism) into an American form. A small army of other writers and Rumi enthusiasts have followed such pioneers and, over several decades, have together made the sage a household name.

First, however, he had to be thoroughly reconstructed. Much – or in some instances all – of his Mahometan identity had to be stripped away and his teachings had to be recast into the language and shapes of a pop psychology. That is the American Rumi – pop psychology in an exotic turban. His entire message – originally found in the voluminous Mathnawi, some odes and several other texts – has been remade for the modern American psyche. The ‘versions’ and the ‘paraphrases’ (often passed off to the public as ‘translations’) are carefully crafted reconstructions of Rumi’s original works into an American idiom, often very loose, where, indeed, they are not so loose as to be complete fabrications. In fact, it must be said, fabricating Rumi has itself become an art form, especially since the advent of the Internet meme. ‘Yesterday I was clever and wanted to change the world. Today I am wise so I am changing myself.’ Did Rumi really say it? (Or was it Jonathon Livingston Seagull?) ‘My religion is love. Every heart is my temple.’ Where did Rumi say that, if indeed it was not John and Oko?

Along with this reconstruction comes a certain mythology that explains who and what Rumi was and is. It usually goes roughly as follows:

Rumi was a great mystic who rose above the puritanical strictures of conventional religion. After his death, however, he was (wrongfully) reclaimed by the Mahometan tradition and an organization – a Soofi Order – was constructed around his reputation. In this way he was incorporated back into mainstream Islam. He is, though, far greater than that. There is nothing really ‘Muslim’ about him. He transcends any particular religion and belonged to none. There are no Muslim elements in the genuine Rumi – it was all added later by pious followers. We can therefore divorce Rumi and his teachings from Islam, and the traditional Mevlevi Order – an organ of the Ottoman Empire - is blameworthy for trying to keep him in a box, like a beautiful bird long kept in a cage. Only today are we discovering the true Rumi, freed at last from religious dogmatism.

It is a myth promoted as much by many new-style Mevlevis as by casual admirers. 

Against this, reading Rumi’s Mathnawi in a reliable translation, such as Nicholson’s, is truly eye-opening. The New Age Rumi of the above myth and the best-selling ‘versions’ of his wisdom is nowhere to be found. One goes looking for such gems as “Out beyond ideas of right and wrong there is a field. I’II meet you there!” and try as you may you cannot find it. Even more so you cannot find such a statement as the following which floats around the Internet bearing Rumi’s name:

“Without demolishing religious schools (madrassahs) and minarets and without abandoning the beliefs and ideas of the medieval age, restriction in thoughts and pains in conscience will not end. Without understanding that unbelief is a kind of religion, and that conservative religious belief a kind of disbelief, and without showing tolerance to opposite ideas, one cannot succeed. Those who look for the truth will accomplish the mission.”

Rumi said this? According to many, he did. But not in the Mathnawi he didn’t, nor anything remotely like it. On the contrary. The truly striking thing about the Mathnawi on any sober assessment is just how extraordinarily orthodox it is. The imagery and story-telling is vivacious but it is always in the service of a very orthodox exposition of the Koran and the hadeeth (traditions) of the Prophet Mahomet. Overall, in fact, the Mathnawi is nothing but a poetic commentary on these sources, and the poet’s viewpoint is resoundingly that of conventional Sooni Islam. Certainly, he offers a deeper interpretation of Sooni Islam than might the average jurist but on the whole it is very, very orthodox. Given Rumi’s modern reputation one comes to the Mathnawi expecting daring flights of mystic iconoclasm. But there is none of that. It is – dare it be said – ordinary. Surprisingly so. There is much that is lovely, and more than a little that is crude, but there is nothing heterodox or in the least bit deviationist. Rumi was a conventional Sooni Muslim through and through.

His biography reinforces this fact. A mystic? Perhaps. But by profession he was a respected member of the Mahometan Ulama in Konya in Seljuq Turkey, a member of the scholarly establishment, and he taught at a conservative Madrassa (theological school). Everything in this biography matches the tone and substance of the Mathnawi.

It is an extraordinary feat of selective quotation and creative misrepresentation, therefore, to reshape such a figure into the character today revered by Western New Agers. The real Rumi and the reconstructed Rumi bear very little resemblance. He has been remade into a caricature that in many ways is diametrically opposite to the actual man. 

In particular, two aspects of Rumi have been added or at least vastly exaggerated: the ecumenical and the erotic. The New Age Rumi is opposed to all religious particularism. His only religion is love. And this love, moreover, is sensual, open and permissive – all forms of “boiling passion” are approved in the ‘Religion of Love’. The real Rumi is very different. He has a standard Mahometan view of religion. Islam is God’s perfect religion, but the ‘People of the Book’ are tolerated. And the love of which he writes is a chaste Platonic love and the passions of the flesh are routinely described as diabolical spiritual hazards. ‘Tear away the cotton from the sore of lust!’ he urges his readers. His views on the subject of love are both conventional and conservative. Often, his treatment of this subject is quite shocking. Has no one read his story, in the fourth volume of Mathnawi, where a lustful woman is sodomized to death by a donkey? 

The present writer – who is known to harbor errant views on many historical subjects – has a different view of the place of Rumi in Mevlevi Soofism. His view is the reverse of the New Age mythical Rumi. In his view, it was more as follows:

Rumi was a very orthodox Sooni jurist and teacher at a Madrassa. His poetry is entirely grounded in the Koran and the Soona of the Prophet Mahomet. Although he explicates the deeper meanings of the Muslim tradition in eloquent metaphors, there is nothing remotely heterodox in his teachings. The genuine Rumi is completely Muslim and cannot be separated from the Mahometan tradition. After his death, he was adopted by a certain body of Soofi mysticism in order to lend Sooni orthodox legitimacy to it. It is not that an unorthodox Rumi was claimed by orthodoxy. It is the other way around. This revered and highly orthodox Sooni sage was claimed by a (somewhat unorthodox) strand of Soofism and by that means they were brought into the Islamic mainstream. They adopted Rumi in order to secure for themselves a place in Muslim orthodoxy.

It is remarkable that nowhere in the Mathnawi do we encounter any material concerning the central and most conspicuous feature of the Mevlevi Order, their famous whirling dance. The present writer supposes that this dance was a pre-Rumi ritual – indeed pre-Islamic – and was absorbed into Islam when the Seljuqs invaded Anatolia. Rumi’s name – the name, that is, of an eminent orthodox sage, was attached to this dance in order to give it orthodox legitimacy. We know that the Order and its rituals were formalized after Rumi’s time. The stories of Rumi inventing the whirling dance and of breaking out into spontaneous bursts of whirling ecstasy are, in this view, of the nature of foundation myths and part of the post-humus appropriation of Rumi into this mode of spiritual path. Most likely, the grafting of Shams of Tabriz to this tradition was also a form of foundation mythology as well. 

It is strange, to say the least, that one finds an elaborate sacred dance so deeply woven into orthodox Islam, since Mahometan conservatism is inherently suspicious of dance and frowns upon it. How did the whirling ecstatic dance of the Mevlevis find acceptance in Turkish Islam? The question is not, how did such a radical thinker as Rumi become attached to Islamic conservatism? Rumi is not a radical thinker. The question is the reverse: how did such a conventional theology as Rumi’s become attached to such a radical practice as the whirling dance? The present writer supposes that, in part – in the period of reorganization and adjustment following the Seljuq invasions - the advocates of the dance achieved this by attaching themselves to the good name and orthodox reputation of Rumi and by attributing the origins of the dance to him.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black