by miramaze
@ Thursday, 10. Jul, 2008 - 11:40:50
In his introduction The Sufis, a book Robert Graves co-wrote with Idries Shah, Graves translates a poem of the Sufi mystic Ibn Arabi (1165-1240) which illustrates a triple goddess as a theme among medieval Sufis:
- I follow the religion of Love,
- Now I am sometimes called
- A Shepherd of gazelles
- And now a Christian monk,
- And now a Persian sage.
- My beloved is three-
- Three yet only one;
- Many things appear as three,
- Which are no more than one.
- Give Her no name,
- As if to limit one
- At sight of Whom
- All limitation is confounded.
In this book, Robert Graves and Idries Shah explore the influences that medieval Kabbalah and pre-Islamic Sufi beliefs had on surviving pre-Christian folk-traditions in Europe.
10/07/08 @ 12:05