Sufi Magic

The Sufi knew real magic!

I was listening to Songs of the Auvergne again, or was I? Anyway, I was having this epiphany of sorts. I was gazing at a picture I had painted of the Ratana Church near Raetihi on the central plateau of the North Island. Vanessa Mae chimed out Destiny on her electric violin and the Sufi whirling dervishes, complete with fez and moustaches, came to dance, to spin, to share in joy.

The idea was there. A neon light sculpture appeared in a magazine and was eventually torn free. I photographed the painting Ratana Church and then printed it and cut it to fit, complete with the crescent and star at the top of the cupola of each spire. I surfed the net and found that an order of Sufi-inspired whirling dervishes was touring the world energizing crowds with their amazing spins in honour of God. They reached their arms aloft as they had been taught in their mehlevis throughout the Middle East. Here they received from God the understanding that He implored to them in the spirit of true admiration:

I was a hidden treasure and I wished (literally 'loved') to be known, so I created the universe that I might be known.

The Sufis were cut from the cathode ray tube, spiralling into the background, with their fezes emblazoning the hillsides like an outburst of rata. They were applied to the board with the neon, an alabaster memorial to the Ratana's gentle faith in God, gold spray paint, oozings of soft green and bold red acrylic paint, all swirling, all swimming, all spinning... The Sufi begin to merge into the landscape and then are at one with their hosts. All a painting can reflect is the instant of light from it that hits your retina in a nanosecond. The rest is Sufi Magic.

acrylic, spray paint, collage on board (framed by the artist) 2009

inanga

Back to the Blog after a cup of Bushells Instant granulated coffee with a teaspoon of Milo in it - the poor man's cappuccino here in Aotearoa. It is OK.

I first came across the magic of the Sufi World when I went to Konya on the Anatolian Plateau in Turkey. I was co-writing Lonely Planet's istanbul to Cairo with English author Andrew Humphreys. I didn't know much about the Middle East or Islam but names such as Dun the Egyptian, Rumi, Ja'lalludin and Jabir ibn Hay'yan, kept creeping into my consciousness. I read more and more, obviously fascinated with the incredible wealth of wisdom and my conversations with Andrew in istanbul [deliberate use of lower case for the 'i'] centred on Islamic architecture, where on the journey from istanbul to Cairo we would meet, and the beautiful out over the Sultanahmet balcony to the Bosphorus and Asia.

I had chanced upon a poem from, undoubtedly a clever Sufi poet, Jasper Memory. It is called:

PHi - The Golden Ratio

William Blake said he could see
Vistas of infinity
In the smallest speck of sand
Held in the hollow of his hand
Models for this claim we've got
In the work of Mandelbrot:
Fractal diagrams partake
Of the essence sensed by Blake
Basic forms will still prevail
Independent of the scale;
Viewed from far or viewed from near
Special signatures are clear.
When you magnify a spot
What you had before you've got.
Smaller, smaller, smaller, yet,
Still the same details are set,
Finer than the finest hair
Blake's infinity is there,
Rich in structure all the way -
Just as the mystic poets say.

I read the poem to myself at Gallipoli and looked at the intricate albeit historical structure of that campaign in the poet's wisdom. In short, I found that Jasper jogged my Memory for this now being blogged. As planned, Andrew and I met in istanbul for starters, then Damascus, Amman and finally Cairo. We both vowed that we would get to Petra, the rose-coloured city sculpted out of the sands of Jordan. I wanted to see where T E Lawrence charged with the desert arabs at Aqaba, and to see the Seven Pillars of Wisdom that inspired his masterpiece of writing.

The book never went into a second edition because it didn't quite fit Lonely Planet's marketing style. It may well have been badly written but the LP 'wheels' didn't have the heart to tell us that. I saw a mint copy of it on sale - Amazon I think - for 135 pounds, and used copies were about 35 pounds. I had fun working with Andrew on this project and I particularly liked the pyramids on the cover. I wonder if the Sufis were involved with the magic of their building. Check out calcite microcrystals in an earlier Blog. The eye's the limit!

inanga