AL-KHIDIR: ANOTHER SUCH ARCHETYPE REPRESENTING AND EXEMPLIFY THE ANCIENT ALCHEMY - THE WATER OF ETERNAL LIFE: Al-Khidr, the Green and Artistic Spiritual Guide (excerpt) by H. Talat Halman In 1925, on the third night of his first retreat, 29-year old Samuel Lewis suddenly felt a presence. Before him came the Sufi sage Khwaja Khidr, the Green Master. Khidr offered Murshid Sam the choice between the gifts of poetry and music. Murshid chose poetry. Decades later, through the Dances of Universal Peace, he also received the gift of music. After three consecutive nights of Khidr’s visits, Murshid “began writing incessantly” (Lewis 1986: 29-30). And Murshid Sam, whose vigor and vitality in later years challenged his much-younger disciples, wrote that the “proof of the validity” of a visit from Khidr “comes first in the physical and mental vigour of the person blessed by Khwaja Khidr, exactly in accordance with the traditions” (Lewis 1975: 12). The great 14th-century Persian poet Hafiz also received the gift of poetry from Khidr after a forty-night vigil. In Muslim tradition, Khidr is widely known as the guide of Moses and Alexander the Great, a wali (saint), a prophet, and one of four immortals along with Enoch (Idris), Jesus, and Elijah. Murshid Sam described Khidr and Elijah as “the two ‘guardian spirits’ of this world and the next” (Lewis 1986: 298). Like the Qur’an’s description of Khidr’s gift of mercy (rahma) and direct inner knowing (‘ilm al-ladunni), Elijah heard God’s intimate “still small voice” (I Kg. 19:12). Murshid also wrote that, according to Qabbalah, Khidr is Jethro — the biblical father-in-law of Moses who taught Moses the Name of God in the form “I am that I am” (Lewis 1975: 207). Hazrat Inayat Khan called Khidr “the guiding angel of all seeking souls” (Inayat Khan: 1927, 105). Meher Baba reported that on the night St. Francis received his stigmata at Alvernia, Khidr visited him and gave him the “touch of grace” that made him a perfect master (Kalchuri: 14, 5011). Khidr’s story stands at the center of the Qur’an. The Prophet Muhammad expanded on the story, further detailing Moses’ journey with Khidr. In the Persian Alexander Romances (Iskandarnama), Khidr appears as Alexander’s deputy and cook who gained immortality by drinking the water of eternal life. His name, however spelled and pronounced — al-Khadir, al-Khidr, al-Khizr (Arabic), al-Khezr (Farsi), H1z1r (Turkish), or Khidlir and Khizir (Indonesian) — means literally, “the Green.” Asked by his companions about Khidr, the Prophet Muhammad explained that after al-Khidr sat on barren land, the ground turned green with vegetation. Khidr’s transmission is “green,” and alive. John Matthews describes the archetype of the Green Man as “the spirit of nature … an ancient symbol of nature and fertility,” expressed in the Norse World Tree Yggdrasil, Attis and Adonis, Odin, Osiris, the King of the Wood, and the May King and Harvest King. Al-Khadir (right) and companion Zul-Qarnain (al-Sikandar) marvel at the sight of a salted fish that comes back to life when touched by the Water of Life. When Alexander sought he did not find what Khizr found unsought (Sikandar Nāma LXIX.75). Al-Khadir (r) and companion Zul-Qarnain (Alexander the Great) marvel at the sight of a salted fish that comes back to life when touched by the Water of Life. Public domain. Khidr brings a gift that Sufis realize as the treasure of gnosis within the heart. Some Sufis teach that we will all meet Khidr at least once in our lifetime, that you will recognize him when you shake hands with a white bearded man with no bone in his thumb. In the lore of Sufi saints, Khidr sometimes bestows a mantle (khirqa), a primary symbol of Sufi initiation. Nizamuddin ‘Awliya received from Khidr a special litany. Rumi’s son Sultan Veled compared Rumi’s transforming relationship with Shams-i Tabrizi to that between Moses and al-Khidr. Khidr rescues and protects people in times of danger and distress. He saves the pure in heart from theft, drowning, snakes, and scorpions. In Indian miniatures, Khidr travels on top of a large fish, intimating the image of Vishnu’s first avatar, Matsya: the fish that saved the first man, Manu. In a Turkish story, an old white-bearded man hailed a tourist bus and asked the driver to wait while he went to bring his sick grandchild. Minutes passed and the old man did not return. When a passenger came forward, he discovered the driver had died. Everyone realized that the old man was Khidr and had saved their lives. Al-Khidr, the Universal Green Man How does Khidr exemplify the universal archetype of the Green Man? Numerous are the stone images of the Green Man that grace household gardens, homes, and churches. Medieval cathedrals feature Green Man faces framed with foliage. Mayday celebrations include Jack-in-the-Green and the green May King and May Queen. (Anderson) St. George and St. Michael’s color is green. The Hindu avatar Rama is green. The Tibetan yogi Milarepa turned green by eating mostly nettles. Sir Gawain was initiated by the Green Knight. As described by Brian Stone, the character and actions of the Green Knight remind us of Khidr: This on his first appearance he is described successively as a terrifying giant (ll. 137-40), a handsome and well-built knight (ll. 141-6), a weirdly green — and hence, implicitly supernatural — person (ll. 147-50). And on his last appearance, besides all these, he appears as a warm and sympathetic human being (ll. 2333-6), an omniscient confessor who judges with accuracy and compassion, and above all with authority (ll. 2338-99), and finally as a human, subtly diminished by the termination of his supernatural function Like the Green Knight, Khidr is vitriolic in the alchemical sense of being a transforming agent. For example, the green sage Yoda trains Luke Skywalker. Just as Khidr challenged Moses, Yoda initially challenged Luke’s aptitude and preparedness for Jedi training (Star Wars V). In a martial arts film co-written by Bruce Lee, The Silent Flute (Circle of Iron), the story of Moses’ journey with al-Khidr appears in a martial arts setting. The Moses figure, Cord the Seeker, seeks training from a blind kung-fu master (played by David Carradine). Their journey exactly parallels Khidr’s story in the Qur’an. William Anderson compares an assortment of “Green Men,” including Osiris, Attis, Adonis, Dionysis, and Robin Hood. Like Osiris and Utnapishtim, Gilgamesh’s guide Khidr stands where waters grant eternal life. Utnapishtim who dwelt “at the two rivers” instructed Gilgamesh to dive for the plant of immortality, “Never-grows-old” at the bottom of the sea. Like Khidr, Utnapishtim’s name means “He who saw life.” After the Flood, the god Enlil blessed him and his wife and placed them “in the distance at the mouth of two rivers. Al-Khidr, Alchemy, and Psychology In the Alexander Romance, Khidr found the elixir of life in the land of darkness. This land is the alchemical nigredo. Green is also the color of Hermes Trismegistus, who imparted the secret of immortality in both the Emerald Tablet and the Grail Cup (Krater) in the Corpus Hermeticum. Jung in his main essay on al-Khidr writes: Anyone who gets into that cave [the cave of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, a story also related in the Qur’an’s 18th chapter], that is to say into that cave which everyone has within himself, or into the darkness that lies behind consciousness, will find himself involved in an — at first — unconscious process of transformation. By penetrating into the unconscious he makes a connection with his unconscious contents. This may result in a momentous change in personality in the positive or negative sense. The transformation is often interpreted as a prolongation of the natural span of life or as an earnest of immortality. The former is the case with many alchemists, notably Paracelcus (in his treatise De vita longa), and the latter is exemplified in the Eleusinian mysteries. Thus the story teaches us to find the elixir of life and the gems of wisdom in our shadow. The places that we initially cannot see in our inner journey, can impart creative, volatile, and valuable energy that we can transmute and thereby bear spiritual fruit. Jung explains that Moses is the ego and Khidr is the unconscious, a vast ocean into which the “fish” (Moses’ consciousness) disappeared and reappeared again at that rock — the lapis. In that transformation, Moses had new access to what Semnani called the “al-Khidr of your being.” Because Khidr’s knowledge is symbolized by “water,” we learn that this flowing reality cannot be set in stone. Immortality and eternal youth cannot be rigid like rocks. What Khidr transmitted gave immortality to Moses and Alexander. Through Khidr we receive a gift of immortality — not physically perhaps — but truly collectively, culturally, and spiritually. The Sufi master Sherif Baba described Moses’ journey with Khidr as our own journey. Our unconscious, symbolized by the cooked fish, awakens through the revivifying waters of divine love and is transformed into a higher consciousness. Khidr is the God-friend who recreates people by intensive relationship and connection and so brings out of us the child of our being, a verdant soul. khidr.org/talat.halman.htm
Posted on: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 15:23:56 +0000
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