The Prayer of the Forty Idrīsid Names (arbaʿūn al-asmāʾ al-idrīsīya)
Introduction, Provisional Translation, Transcription, MS, Printed Text and Notes
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Introduction After introductory comments here we will be offering our translation and text of the famed Idrīsid Prayer of the Forty (divine) Names below. In the sources it has been variously attributed to Shihābuddīn Yaḥyā Suhrawardī (d. 1191),1 the Illuminationist, as well to the Sufis Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar Suhrawardī (d. 1234)2 and his calligrapher-mystic descendant Aḥmad Suhrawardī (d. 1301-2). While a certain consensus from the Ottoman period holds it to be a composition of Abū Ḥafṣ, it is also usually claimed to be that prayer of the Quranic Prophet Idrīs who has often been identified in the sources with the Old Testament figure of Enoch as well as the Egyptian/Greco-Hellenistic mystagogue Hermes Trismegistus.3 In Imāmī Shīʿī sources authorship has also been attributed to the Prophet Muḥammad himself (d. 632 CE) as well as to the early Sufi figure Ḥasan al-Basrī (d. 728 CE). It is the Safavīd traditionist Muḥammad Bāqir al-Majlisī (d. 1698) –- compiler of the most comprehensive Shīʿī collection of ḥadīth, the Oceans of the Lights (biḥār alanwār) –- who attributes authorial transmission to Ḥasan al-Basrī.4 Majlisī’s source for this attribution is, of course, Ibn Ṭāwwūs (d. 1266 CE) and his The Spirit-Heart of Invocations and the Path of Worship (muhaj al-daʿwāt wa minhaj al-ʿibāda).5 But contrary
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to more recent assertions made in Western academic print, Ibn Ṭāwwūs does not provide any further explicit sources regarding this transmission from Ḥasan alBasrī.6 Two centuries earlier than even Ibn Ṭāwwūs, a longer variant text of The Idrīsid Prayer of the Forty Names can be found in Shaykh al-Ṭāʾifa Muḥammad ibn alḤasan al-Ṭūsī’s7 The Lamp of the Prayerful Petitioner of the Night and Weapon of the Worshiper (miṣbāḥ al-mutahajjid wa silāḥ al-mutaʿabbid), which then obviously invalidates any possible attribution of original authorship to Shihābuddīn Yaḥyā, Abū Ḥafṣ or Aḥmad Suhrawardī.8 Presuming a text of Saʿd ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ashʿarī al-Qummī’s faḍl al-duʿā wa al-dhikr has actually survived -- and if, as Walbridge implies, this prayer is included in it -- then this would strongly suggest that any original recension (with its circulation) would have originated from within specifically Imāmī Shiʿi circles only after which time it entered into the milieu of ṭarīqa Sufism.9 Per the introduction to the prayer in both muhaj al-daʿwāt and biḥār al-anwār, Ḥasan al-Basrī is held to have claimed that God first revealed and taught the specific names associated with the prayer to the Prophet Idrīs when he initially sent him to his people, instructing Idrīs to silently repeat them to himself and to not disclose them but to secretly call his people to God by these names (i.e. a form of missionary or prophetic “mass” theurgy, as it were). From these names, claims al-Basrī, our prayer was composed, which God later revealed to the Prophet Muḥammad as well. Al-Basrī states that once when he had disguised himself while on the pilgrimage (presumably to Mecca) he had invoked God specifically by these names whereupon six women had entered into his presence (apparently who knew him) and God had completely concealed al-Basrī from their gaze (or, made him invisible to them). The reason for the number forty, it is maintained, is because it is the number associated with the number of repentance (tawba) and its days. Al-Basrī recommends the
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efficacy of this prayer for purposes of penitence from all sins and the affairs in both the material world and the hereafter whereby God will grant the penitent who recites it their request.10 Within the white occult tradition of Sunnī Sufism (i.e. rūḥānīya) –- and particularly beginning from the thirteen century CE forward -- commentaries on this prayer abound, many offering assorted instructions regarding the precise application of each of the forty names to a particular matter, predicament, ailment, or even a whole range of them.11 Practice with these names has also been recommended for the term of a traditional forty-day retreat, i.e. the khalwa. We have also seen commentaries where various angelic names as well as names of spirit guardians (muwakkilūn) and their celestial hosts and concourses are invoked after each verse.12 Over the past two decades Arabic language cyberspace has become littered with literally thousands of versions of this prayer with its online commentaries, the majority of which unfortunately cannot be relied upon for scholarly purposes. That said, while many sources continue to attribute this piece to the Illuminationist Shihābuddīn Yaḥyā Suhrawardī, beyond issues of textual transmission and provenance; an originally pre-Islamic and possibly pagan provenance, to our knowledge, has never been adequately addressed or detailed anywhere. Here we wish to offer one working hypothesis based on the formulated locution of its second name, i.e. ilāha al-āliha, the God of gods (ﻟﻬﺔ
)ا.
This
construct, while not altogether absent in other sources, is a somewhat unusual and idiosyncratic one for any orthodox Muslim (Sunnī Sufi, Shiʿi or otherwise) to be making because it sounds distinctly pagan. Most versions of the prayer we have seen, whether in printed editions or MSS, contain it. It is also a form of expression quite consistent with similar doxologies found in the Arabic Hermetica as well as in
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Ibn Waḥshīya’s Nabataean Agriculture (filāḥa al-nabatīya).13 It is also a locution distinctly employed repeatedly by the shaykh al-ishrāq Shihābuddīn Yaḥyā Suhrawardī himself, which may explain the reasons for the widespread belief that he may have authored it.14 The popularity of this prayer and its names among assorted mystical and esoteric oriented circles throughout the Islamic world, whether Sunnī or Shīʿī, cannot be underestimated. Within its specifically occult milieu this prayer and its names sometimes stand alongside (and even on par) with the jaljalūtīya poem (minora and majora) and the birhatīya conjuration oath.15 Like the other two, this is the case because it is considered to be among the mujarrabāt, i.e. those prayers, invocations, supplications and doxologies whose efficacy has been attested by numerous practitioners throughout the ages; but also especially because of its attribution to the Prophet Idrīs and his association in Islamicate hierohistoriography and occulture with both Enoch and the Thrice Great Hermes. However, as far as we are aware, it is not broached or cited anywhere in the known works of the North African occult encyclopedist Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī al-Būnī (d. 1225 CE), which, on its own, would tend to further bolster the case for the Forty Idrīsid Names being in all probability produced somewhere originally in the eastern Islamic lands before entering into the sources within the maghrib. Readings of the text vary from source to source as do the chronological placement of its names or verses. Additions and subtractions of phrases and entire clauses from reading to reading are the norm. Below we offer a translation of one of its current standard readings, based on the text offered by Ibn Ṭāwwūs in his muhaj al-daʿwāt, together with a transcription of the Arabic text and scans of the Iranian Majlis MS 942/26: 621-4 (as well as the printed edition version following that). A concluding entreaty that is sometimes found as a final addendum in many versions
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(in a long version in al-Ṭūsī and a shorter one in Ibn Tawwūs and Majlisī, but which also appears in different versions and with completely different wording among various other recensions and commentaries) has not been included in the main body of our translation and its Arabic transcription because this, to us, clearly appears to be a later addition -- a paratextual amendment, as it were -- made by others and so is not, in our opinion, integral to the main body of the prayer itself with the iteration of its actual forty names. The two standard versions of this amendment to the prayer (in transcription) have instead been endnoted and translated within the note. In fact, everything following the end of our text here, which is found in all the assorted versions, is extrinsic to the actual delineation of these forty names themselves. A parallel Arabic text and English translation of the prayer of the Forty Idrīsid Names is available online based on the text offered in miṣbāḥ al-mutahajjid.16 However, we find this translation inelegant as well as imprecise. It is also an altogether different arrangement of the prayer -- nor is it iterative of forty names -– than either the standard popular versions or that of Ibn Ṭāwwūs/Majlisī. The verses constituting each of the names have been numbered here from (1) to (40) in the English translation (and .1 to .40 for the Arabic transcription of the text). Transliteration of the initial divine names have been placed within round brackets () with expanded readings placed inside square brackets []. Alternative translations for the names have been placed between a slash (/). As has been our practice elsewhere, we have opted for a moderate King Jamesian style and diction in the translation here. As such the pronouns, names, attributes and epithets for the divinity have been capitalized. Like poetry, prayer constitutes a genre of textual performance; and given this, we believe our method here for translating an item like this in such fashion is justified.
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Translation
(1) Glorified art Thou (subḥānaka), no other god is there besides Thee, O Lord of all-things and their Inheritor! (2) O God of gods (yā ilāha al-āliha), whose Majesty is elevated! (3) O Compassionate (yā raḥmān) [towards] all things and their Mercifier! (4) O God (yā allāh), the One Praised in all of His activities! (5) O Alive (yā ḥayy) in the moment before all life within the durationlessness of His Sovereignty and His [eternal] Subsistence! (6) O Peerless Self-Subsistent (yā qayyūm), for nothing shall extinguish His knowledge nor shall weariness overcome Him! (7) O Single/One (yā wāḥid), the [eternally] Subsistent, the First among all things and the Last! (8) O Perpetual (yā dāʾim) without annihilation nor ephemerality [occurring] to His Sovereignty! (9) O Everlasting (yā ṣamad) without a similar/familiar, for nothing is like unto Him! (10) O Originator [of being/existence] (yā bārīʾ), for nothing is His equal and no locus can describe Him! (11) O Great One (yā kabīr), Thou art the One Who does not guide the hearts by ascriptions of His Mightiness! (12) O Fashioner of the souls without exemplar (yā bārīʾ al-nufūs bi-lā mithāl) who are free from [all] other than Him! (13) O the Unsulliedly Pure (yā zākī al-ṭāhir) [free] from every blemish by His sanctity! (14) O Sufficient, the [One] Expansive (yā kāfī al-wāsʿi)17 over what He has created from the bounties of His excellence! (15) O Immaculate from every inequity (yā naqī min kulli jawr), for neither shall He be contented/satisfied nor muddled/cluttered by His activities! (16) O
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Empathetic/Intimately Clement (yā ḥannān), Thou art the One Who encompasses all things by His Mercy! (17) O Munificent (yā mannān) possessed of All-Beneficence which indeed He infuses over His [entire] creation! (18) O Arbiter/Judge (yā dayyān) over the worshipers/servants who obediently arise in awe/dread of Him! (19) O Creator (yā khāliq) of whosoever is in the Heavens and in the earth, for all are returning to Him! (20) O Merciful to every lamenting pliant and anguished griever (yā raḥīm kulli ṣarīkh wa makrūb), their invoked aid and their succor/refuge! (21) O Completely Perfect (yā tāmm), for no speech can describe the depth of His Majesty or His Sovereignty or His Tremendousness! (22) O Originator of [all] originations (yā mubdiʾ al-badāʾiʿ), [for] nothing can contend/rival [with Him] as an aid in its [i.e. the world’s] initiating formation among His [whole] creation! (23) O All-Knower of the unseen
(yā
ʿallām
al-ghuyūb),
for
nothing
wearies
Him
in
His
protection/preservation [of creation]! (24) O Clement possessed of forbearance (yā ḥalīm dha’l-anāʾa), for nothing can compare [with Him] in His creation! (25) O Restorer of what He has extinguished/annihilated (yā muʿīd ma afnāhu) [at the time] when the creatures emerge by His summons from fear of Him! (26) O Praiseworthy in action (yā ḥamīd al-faʿāl), the Possessor of Grace over his entire creation by His Magnanimity! (27) O Tremendously Impregnable (yā ʿazīz al-manīʿ), predominant over His Cause-Command, for nothing equals Him! (28) O Vanquisher/Victorious possessed of the most intensely violent/valorous assault (yā qahhār dha’l-baṭash al-shadīd), Thou art the One Whose vengeance is unendurable! (29) O Proximate (yā qarīb), the AllHigh above everything by the supremacy of His Lofty Elevation/Height!18 (30) O Humiliater/Debaser of every oppressing tyrant (yā mudhil kulla jabbār) by [the
overshadowing]
subjugation/vanquishment
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of
[i.e.
via]
the
Tremendousness of His Dominating Authority! (31) O Light of all things and their guide (yā nūr kulli shayʾ wa hudāhu), Thou art the One Who cleaves asunder the darknesses by His Light! (32) O Holy, the Pure from all evil (yā quddūs al-ṭāhir min kulli sūʾ), for nothing can rival Him in [all of] His creation! (33) O Elevated, the Loftily High above all things (yā ʿālī al-shāmikh fawq kulla shayʾ), supreme in His altitude! (34) O Initiating Cause of all initiating causes and their return (yā mubdiʾ al-badāyāʾ wa mūʿīdaha) after their annihilation by His Power! (35) O Majestic, the Haughtily Great over all things (yā jalīl almutakabbir ʿalā kulli shayʾ), for His Cause-Command is Just and His guarantee/promise is truthful! (36) O One Praised (yā maḥmūd), for conjecture/delusion is incapable of accounting for His every state or [of] His Glory! (37) O Gracious/Generous in forgiveness (yā karīm al-ʿafw), [the One] Possessed of Justice, Thou art the One who has filled all things [in creation] with His Justice! (38) O Mighty possessed of the Most Excellent Laudation/Praise and the Tremendousness and the Glory and the Greatness (yā ʿazīm dha’l-thanāʾ al-fākhir wa’l-ʿizza wa’l-majd wa’l-kibrīyāʾ), for His Tremendousness is never abased! (39) O Wondrously Extraordinary (yā ʿajīb), for no expressions of speech can [possibly] enumerate all of His bounties and His praise! (40) O my Invoked Aid (yā ghīyāthī) in every distress/agony and O the One Who Answers me in every prayer/invocation!19
~
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Arabic Transcription
F ُﺳْ #ﺒ! َﺎ َﻧﻚ ﻻ ٕا َ َ ا ّٕﻻ َﻧﺖ َرب ِ ّ ﳾ ٍء َو وا ِرﺛَ ُﻪ ٕا َ َ ا)ٓ ِﻟﻬَ ِﺔ ُﰻ َ ْ ُ 9اﻟْ َﻤ ْﺤ ُﻤﻮ ُد ﰲ ُ ِ ّ ﳾ ٍء و َر ِ َ ﰻ اﲪ ُﻪ اﻟﺮِﻓُ -ﻊ َ+ﻼ َ ُ َر ْﲪ َﻦ ُﰻ َ ْ ﻗَF-ﻮ ُم َ Eِ Cﲔ ﻻ َِ Cﰲ َدﻳْ ُﻤﻮ َﻣ ِﺔ ُﻣﻠ ِﻜ ِﻪ و َﺑﻘ ِﺎﺋِﻪ ِﻓﻌﺎ ِ F َ . وا ِEﺪُ ْا ِ ﻟﺒﺎﰶ و َل ُﰻ ﳾ ٌء ِLﻠْ ِﻤ ِﻪ وﻻ َﻳُﺆدُﻩ ﻓَﻼ ﻳ َ ُﻔ ُﻮت َ ْ وال ِﳌ ُ ِﻠ ِﻜﻪ َ َ َاﰂ ﺑِﻼ ﻓَXﺎ ٍء و ﻻ َز ٍ ﲳﺪُ ِْﻣﻦ َ ْ ِﲑ ﳾ ٍء َو ٓ ِﺧ َﺮ ُﻩ د ِ ُ َْ ﳾ َء ُﻛ ْﻔ َﺆ ُﻩ َوﻻ َﻣ َﲀ َن ِﻟ َﻮ ِﺻ ِﻔﻪ ﳾ َء ِﳈﺜ ِ ِْ^ ِ dر ُئ ﻓَﻼ َ ْ َﺷ ٍِ -aﻪ وﻻ َ ْ يء َﻛﺒ ُِﲑ ﻧ َْﺖ َا ّjي ﻻ ﲥَ ْ َﺘ ِﺪي اﻟْ ُﻘﻠُﻮب َِﻟﻮ ْﺻ ِﻒ َﻋ َﻈ َﻤﺘ ِﻪ ِdر َ ِزاﰾ اﻟﻄﺎ ِﻫ ُﺮ ِﻣ ْﻦ ُ ِ ّ اﻟﻨُ Fﻔ ِﻮس ﺑِﻼ ِﻣ ٍ ﰻ ٓﻓَ ٍﺔ tﺎل َsﻼ ِﻣ ْﻦ َ ْ ِﲑ ِﻩ ِﰷﰲ ْاﻟﻮا ِﺳ ُﻊ ِﻟﲈ َsﻠَ َﻖ ِﻣ ْﻦ َﻋﻄﺎ ﻓَ ْﻀ ِ ِ^ ﻧ َ ِﻘ Fﻲ ِﻣ ْﻦ ِﺑ ُﻘ ْﺪ ِﺳ ِﻪ ﰻ َﺟ ْﻮ ٍر َو ﻟَ ْﻢ ْ َ€ﺮﺿَ ُﻪ َوﻟَ ْﻢ ُ َﳜﺎ ِﻟ ْﻄ ُﻪ ﻓَﻌﺎ َ ُ ِّ َﺣُ Xﺎن ﻧ َْﺖ ِاjي ﺴﺎن ﻗَ ْﺪ َﰪ اﻟْ َِ ƒﻼ ِﺋﻖ َﻣُ F Xﻪ ﳾ ٍ ّء َر ْ َﲪ ُﺘ ُﻪ َﻣُ Xﺎن ذا ا ٕﻻ ْﺣ ِ َو ِﺳ ْﻌ َﺖ ُﰻ َ ُ َد َن اﻟْ ِﻌﺒﺎ ِد ُ F sﺎ ِﻟ َﻖ َﻣ ْﻦ ﰲ ﰻ ﻳ َ ُﻘﻮ ُم َِ sﺎﺿ ًﻌﺎ َِﻟﺮ ْﻫ َﺒ ِﺘ ِﻪ ﰻ اﻟَ ْﻴ ِﻪ َﻣﻌﺎ ُد ُﻩ َر ِﺣ َﲓ ُ ِ ّ اﻟﺴﲈو ِات َوا ٔ) ْر ِض و ُ F وب ﴏ ٍﱗ َو َﻣ ْﻜ ُﺮ ٍ ﰻ َِ َو ِﻏ•-ﺎﺛَ• ُﻪ َو َﻣﻌ•ﺎ َذ ُﻩ –َ Fم َ ‰ﻓ•ﻼ ﺗ َـ ِﺼ ُﻒ ا)ﻟْ ُﺴ ُﻦ ُﻛ ْﻨ َﻪ َ+ﻼ ِ ِ َو ُﻣ ْﻠ ِﻜﻪِ َو ِﻋـِّﺰ ِﻩ َ ُﻣ ِْ žﺪ َع اﻟْ َﺒﺪَ اﺋِﻊ ِ ﻟَ ْﻢ ﻳ َ ْﺒﻎ ِ ِﰲ إ›ﺸﺎﲛِ ﺎ َﻋ ْﻮ˜َ ً ِﻣ ْﻦ َsﻠْ ِﻘ ِﻪ َِ Eﻠ ُﲓ َذا ا ٔ)˜َ ِة ﻓَﻼ ﳾ ٌء ِﻣ ْﻦ ِﺣ ْﻔﻈ ِﻪ ّ َLﻼ َم اﻟ ُﻐ ُﻴ ِ ﻮب ﻓَﻼ ﻳ َ ُﺆ ُد ُﻩ َ ْ ص
.2
.1
.4
.3
.6
5
.7
.9
.8
.11
.10
.12
.13
.15
.14
.16
.17
.19
.18
.20
.21
.23
.22
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ﳾ ٌء ِﻣ ْﻦ َsﻠْ ِﻘ ِﻪ َ ُﻣ ِﻌﻴﺪَ ﻣﺎ ﻓْXﺎ ُﻩ إذا َ َ¢ﺮ َز اﻟَْƒﻼﺋِ ُﻖ ِ َ¡ﻋ َْﻮ ِﺗ ِﻪ ﻳُﻌﺎ ِد ُ ُ َ ْ ِﻣ ْﻦ َﻣَƒﺎﻓَ ِِ £ﻪ ﻳَ¤ﺎ َ ِﲪ¤-ﺪَ اﻟْ َﻔ ِ ﻌﺎل ذا اﻟْ َﻤﻦ َLﲆ َ ِﲨ¤-ﻊ ِ ﺧَ¤ﻠْ ِﻘ ِﻪ ِﺑﻠُ ْـﻄ ِﻔ ِﻪ ﻳَ¤ﺎ ﳾ َء ﻳُﻌﺎ ِد ُ ﻳ¤ﺎ ﻗَ¤ﺎ ِﻫ ُﺮ َذا َﻋـ ِﺰ ُ€ﺰ اﻟْﻤﻨﻴ ُﻊ اﻟْﻐﺎ ِﻟ ُﺐ َLﲆ ٔ ْﻣ ِﺮ ِﻩ ﻓَﻼ ْ ﻳﺐ اﻟْ ُﻤِ َ¤£ ﻌﺎﱄ اﻟْ َﺒ ْﻄ ِﺶ اﻟﺸِ ¤ﺪﻳ ِﺪ ﻧ َْﺖ ِاjي ﻻ ﻳُ ُ ﻄﺎق اﻧْ ِﺘﻘﺎ ُﻣ ُﻪ ﻳ¤ﺎ ﻗـَ ِﺮ ُ ﰻ َ ﻓـَ ْﻮ َق ُ ِ ّ ﳾ ٍء ُﻋ¤ﻠُ Fﻮ ا ْرِﺗ¤ﻔﺎ ِِ Lﻪ ﻳَ¤ﺎ ُﻣ ِﺬل ُﰻ َﺟٍ žﺎر ﺑِﻘـَﻬْ ِﺮ َﻋ ِﺰِ €ﺰ ْ ُ ّ َ‰ ُ ٍ ِ ِ َ ﳾء َو ﻫُﺪَ ا ُﻩ ﻧ َْﺖ اjي ﻓﻠـَ َﻖ اﻟﻈF¤ﻠﲈت ﻧ ُُﻮر ُﻩ ُﺳﻠْﻄﺎ ِﻧ ِﻪ ﻳَ¤ﺎ ﻧ َُﻮر ِ ﰻ ْ Fوس اﻟﻄ¤ﺎ ِﻫ ُﺮ ِﻣ ْﻦ ُ ِ ّ ﳾ َء ﻳُﻌ¤ﺎ Fز ُﻩ ِﻣ ْﻦ َsﻠْ ِﻘ ِﻪ ﻗ ُ¤ﺪ ُ ﰻ ُﺳﻮ ٍء ﻓَﻼ َ َ ْ Lﺎﱄ اﻟﺸﺎ ِﻣﺦُ ﻓـَ ْﻮ َق ُﰻ َ ِ ﳾ ٍء ُﻋ¤ﻠُ Fﻮ ا ْرِﺗﻔﺎ ِِ Lﻪ يء اﻟْ َﺒﺪا َ ْ ُﻣ ِْ žﺪ َ ﳾءٍ ﰻ َْ َو ُﻣ ِﻌﻴﺪَ ﻫَﺎ َﺑ ْﻌﺪَ ﻓََXﺎﲛِ ﺎ ﺑِ¤ﻘ ُْ ¤ﺪ َرِﺗ ِﻪ َ َِ +ﻠ ‰ﻴ ُﻞ اﻟْ ُﻤَ َ¤£ﻜ ِ ّ ُﱪ َLﲆ ُ ِ ّ ﻓَ¤ﺎﻟْ َﻌ ْﺪ ُل ْﻣ ُﺮ ُﻩ و َاﻟﺼ ْﺪ ُق َو ْLﺪُ ُﻩ َ َﻣ ْﺤ ُﻤﻮ ُد ﻓَ¤ﻼ ﺗْ َ¤ﺴَ #ﺘﻄﻴ ُﻊ ا ٔ) ْوﻫَﺎ ُم ُﻛ¤ﻞ َﺷ¯ٔ ِﻧ ِﻪ َو َﻣ ِْ °ﺪ ِﻩ َ ﻛـَﺮ َﱘ اﻟْ َﻌ ْﻔ ِﻮ ذا اﻟْ َﻌ ْﺪ ِل ﻧْ َﺖ ِاjي َﻣُ ²ﰻ ﳾ ٍء ْ َLﺪ ُ ُ َﻋ ِﻈ ُﲓ ذا اﻟ•tﻨﺎ ِء اﻟْﻔﺎ ِﺧ ِﺮ َو اﻟْ ِﻌ ّ ِﺰ َواﻟْ َﻤ ِْ °ﺪ َْ ﻄﻖ ا)ﻟ ِﺴ#ﻨَ ُﺔ ِِّ ¢ ﲁ ٓﻻﺋِ ِﻪ َو ْاﻟ ِﻜ ْ ِﱪ َ ِء َﻓﻼ ﻳ َ ِﺬ Fل ِﻋ Fﺰ ُﻩ ﻴﺐ ﻓَﻼ ﺗَ ْﻨ ُ َﲺ ُ وﺛﻨﺎﺋِ ِﻪ ِﻏﻴﺎﰔ ِﻋ ْﻨﺪَ ﰻ ُﻛﺮﺑ َ ٍﺔ و ُﻣﺠﻴﱯ ِﻋ ْﻨﺪَ ﰻ َد ْﻋ َﻮ ٍة .25
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Text of Iranian Majlis MS 942/26: 621-4 20
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Text in the Beirut printed edition of muhaj al-daʿwāt
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Notes 1
In much of the MSS tradition this prayer with its forty names has often been popularly identified as the asmāʾ al-suhrawardīya (the Suhrawardiyan Names). To give just a handful of brief examples here, see, for example, the Iranian Majlis MS 50516/8995, Paris BnF MSS Arabe 2644 and 7322 and other MSS identifying it in the same fashion in Istanbul, Tehran, Berlin, Rome (Vatican), Cambridge, the British Museum and elsewhere such as this Saudi MSS online, which unequivocally attributes it to Shihābuddīn Suhrawardī al-Maqtūl (the murdered), the Illuminationist, right from the beginning: https://ia802308.us.archive.org/18/items/abdelghani22021977_gmail_20140816/%D8%A7%D9%84%D 8%A3%D8%B3%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%A1%20%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%AF%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8% B3%D9%8A%D8%A9-
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%D8%B4%D9%87%D8%A7%D8%A8%20%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AF%D9%8A%D9%86%20%D8%A7%D9%84 %D8%B3%D9%87%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%B1%D8%AF%D9%8A.pdf (accessed 20 December 2017); see as well, publications such as the printed edition of Muhammad Tūnisī’s al-rawḍa al-sundusīya fī alasmāʾ al-ḥusnāʾ al-idrīsīya al-suhrawardīya (the Sundūsī Rose Garden regarding the Most Beautiful Idrīsid Suhrawardiyan Names) (Cairo: al-maktaba al-azharīya lil-turāth, 2005 CE/1426 CE) and similar. Such examples can be multiplied many times over. 2 It’s attribution to Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar Suhrawardī is explicitly made by the Ottoman era scholars and Sufis ʿAbd‘ul-Raʿuf Muḥammad al-Munawī (d. 1621 CE), Hājjī Khalīfa Kâtip Çelebi (d. 1657), author of the famed kashf’ul-ẓunūn (Uncovering of the Opinions), Ismāʿīl Ḥaḳḳī al-Brūsawī (d. 1724-5 CE), one of eminent Ottoman era commentators of Ibn ʿArabī’s fuṣūs al-ḥikam (the Bezels of Wisdom) and Ismaʿīl Pāshā al-Baghdadi (d. 1920). We are grateful to Australian scholar Aydogan Kars (Monash University) for pointing this detail out to us in email (10 December 2017). Be that as it may, because such attribution to Abū Ḥafṣ by these Ottoman era figures is quite late as compared to earlier transmissions of various versions of the prayer provided by scholars four to six centuries earlier than them, such Ibn Ṭāwwūs (d. 1264-5 CE) and the Shaykh al-Ṭāʾifa al-Ṭūsī (d. 1066 CE), there are reasons to remain incredulous about the continued attribution of authorship to Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar Suhrawardī since, as we shall see, one text of this prayer was already in circulation long before Abū Ḥafṣ’s lifetime. 3 See Hugh Talat Halman’s useful entry “Idris” in (ed.) Phyllis G. Jestice Holy People of the World: A CrossCultural Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2004), volume two, 388, which is worthwhile to quote here: … Muslim and Manichaean legendary prophet, sage The Qur’an describes Idris as a prophet (nabi) who was “truthful” (saddiq), “patient” (sabir), and “righteous” (salih). It says, moreover, that God “raised him to a high station” (19:56–57; 21:85–86). In many accounts of the prophet Muhammad’s ascension (mi’raj), Idris welcomes Muhammad into the fourth of the seven heavens, the solar sphere. In a canonical hadith, the prophet Muhammad, commenting on the first received verses of the Qur’an (96:1–4), identifies Idris as the first person who wrote with the pen. His dates are unknown. Idris is popularly depicted as the first to sew clothing and is revered by tailors as the patron of their guild. Popular tales of the prophets narrate that Idris achieved immortality when he tricked the angel of death into letting him step into paradise for just a moment. When the angel asked him to come out, Idris slyly replied that once entering paradise, one cannot return. By the tenth century, Abu Ma’shar al-Balkhi identified Idris as the biblical Enoch and Hermes Trismegistus (Hirmis al-Muthalath bi’l-Hikma), the legendary Greek figure associated with the Egyptian god Thoth. The historian Mas’udi (d. 956) identified Enoch as “Idris the Prophet” and the Hermes of the Sabaens. These associations were echoed by the bibliographer Ibn Nadim (d. 987) and the polymath al-Biruni (973–1050), who equated Idris with Mercury, the Buddha, and Hermes. The relationship between the names Idris and Hermes may rest on the name of Hermes’ initiatory guide, Poimandres, in the ancient Greek Corpus Hermeticum I.1. Although the form of the name Idris is not a recognized Arabic word, its etymological root (d-r-s) means “to teach.” The prophet’s mention of Idris as the first to use the pen conforms to Egyptian iconography of Thoth (who, combined with the Greek Hermes, became Hermes Trismegistus). The narrative of Idris’s cunning entry into paradise
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parallels the Homeric “Hymn to Hermes” where Hermes elevates himself into the Olympian pantheon by offering a sacrifice to himself. Idris’s direct entry into paradise, and his association with the sun, echoes Enoch (Gen. 5:18–24). Idris is identified as the first of three Hermeses. The first, Hirmis al-Haramisah, invented the alphabet, writing, tailoring, medicine, and astronomy. This Hermes also built the eponymous pyramids (Ahram). After the flood, the second one, the “Babylonian Hermes,”master of Pythagoras, taught math, science, and philosophy. The third, “Egyptian Hermes,” was a builder of cities and master of alchemy. In Manichaenism, Hermes was one of the five major prophets before Mani (216–274/277). The oldest extant version of Hermes Trismegistus’s Emerald Tablet is ascribed to Jabir ibn Hayyan (d. 776), student of the sixth Shi’a imam Ja’far as-Saddiq (699–765). The historian Shahrastani (1086– 1153) reported that the people of Harran (today’s Altinbasak, Turkey) achieved “protected peoples”(dhimmi) status under Caliph al-Ma’mun (813–833) when they claimed to be the Sabaens named in the Qur’an (2.26) and identified Idris/Hermes as their prophet. The hermetic motif of the man of light (phos) articulated by Zosimos and found in the opening of the Corpus Hermeticum appears in the Islamic illuminationist (Ishraqi) writings of Suhrawardi (1154–1191). Ibn Wahshiyyah (ninth century), who first used the term “Ishraq,”meant a class of priests descended from Hermes’ sister. In the hermetic Kore Kosmou (Virgin of the cosmos), Isis describes herself as Hermes’ sister. Suhrawardi and Ibn Sina (980–1037) present Hermes as the disciple of “perfect Nature,” that is, Poimandres. Suhrawardi also constructed a hermetic lineage (the hakim al-’atiqa, “ancient wisdom”), including Hermes, Pythagoras, Plato, Empedocles, and the sufis Dhu’l Nun alMisri (796–859), Sahl al-Tustari (818–896), and Husayn b. Mansur al-Hallaj (858–922). Suhrawardi’s disciple Shahrazuri proposed that Idris founded the pre-Islamic monotheistic religion of the Hanifs. Suhrawardi’s model was reiterated by Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) as prisca theologia (original theology). The sufi master and theosophist Ibn al-‘Arabi (1165–1240) identified Idris as the axial prophet (qutb) sharing exclusively with Jesus, Elijah, and al-Khidr (the Green One) the status of immortals. Islamic writers of hermetic, alchemical, and philosophical works, including Ibn al-‘Arabi, designated Idris as the “prophet of the philosophers” and the “father of the philosophers” (Abu’l-Hukama’) and revered him as the prophetic patron of alchemy and the hermetic arts… (ibid.) While not a widely accepted identification, some sources have also equated the Prophet Idrīs with the enigmatic ‘Green Man’ Khiḍr; see, for example, online http://khidr.org/gunawardhana.htm (accessed 17 December 2017). 4 Biḥār al-anwār, vol.92 (Beirut: dār al-turāth al-ʿarabī, n.d.) 168-9, online http://alfeker.net/library.php?id=4027 (accessed 14 December 2017). 5 See muhaj al-daʿwāt wa minhaj al-ʿibāda (n.p, n.d.), 364-5, online http://mediafire.com/?evxzu36qt3fxxto (accessed 14 December 2017), and the text here. For a biography of Ibn Ṭāwwūs, see Etan Kohlberg A Medieval Muslim Scholar at Work: Ibn Ṭāwwūs and His Library (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1992). 6 In ‘The Devotional and Occult Works of Suhrawardi the Illuminationist’, Ishraq, 2, Moscow, 2011: 94, John Walbridge asserts that Ibn Ṭāwwūs cites Saʿd ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ashʿarī al-Qummī (d. ca. 300/912) as the source for the claim of its provenance originating with Ḥasan al-Basrī: “…The latter claims to
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have found this particular prayer in the Faḍl al-Duʿā’ of Saʿd b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Ashʿarī al-Qummī (d. ca. 300/912), who in turn says that he found it attributed to al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī” (ibid.) However, such a statement by Ibn Ṭāwwūs sourcing it to Saʿd ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ashʿarī al-Qummī does not appear in the current Beirut printed edition of this source linked above as a PDF. Nor, for that matter, does Walbridge provide a citation as to which edition of Ibn Ṭāwwūs (or even MS) he himself is using as the basis for this claim. The statement attributed to Ibn Ṭāwwūs by Walbridge also does not appear in the illuminated Iranian Majlis MS 942/26 of the muhaj al-daʿwāt displayed here (621-4). As for the work of Saʿd ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ashʿarī al-Qummī entitled the faḍl al-duʿā wa al-dhikr (the Excellence of Prayer and Remembrance), which according to Walbridge Ibn Ṭāwwūs relied on for his own attribution regarding the history of its transmission: no text (whether as a MS or a printed edition) has so far been identified by us. We are not sure exactly what Walbridge is relying on for his unreferenced statement because on further inquiry it would appear that Saʿd ibn ʿAbd Allāh alAshʿarī al-Qummī’s faḍl al-duʿā wa al-dhikr has apparently not even survived as a text. 7 Being the great 11th century CE Khurāsānī Imāmī Shiʿi traditionist, scholar, faqīh and compiler of two of the four canonical Shiʿi books of ḥadīth. 8 See miṣbāḥ al-mutahajjid wa silāḥ al-mutaʿabbid, (ed.) ʿAlī Asghar Morvārīd (Beirut: muʿassisa faqr’u’lshīʿa, first printed edition, 1411 AH/1991 CE), 601-2 (prayer #49), online http://alfeker.net/library.php?id=3654 (accessed 10 December 2017). This appears to be the only modern printed edition of the work. However, as the initial pages show, it is based only on a single MS (n.d.) that is presently located in Mashḥad, Iran. Although the MS is stamped with the date 1239 AH (1823-4 CE) on its incipit, this is not the actual colophon by the scribe. The date of the actual transcription occurs on the final page; but just where the date is supposed to occur at the conclusion of its colophon, the photostatic copy reproduced in the book has faded it out, leaving it completely illegible -- nor does its modern editor provide any further details or clues. 9 In 2014 and then 2016 we were informed by Polish scholar Łukasz Piątak that they were in the process of preparing a critical text based on MSS they had obtained from the Vatican, Turkey, Berlin, Paris and elsewhere. In a 2016 email they mentioned a stemma of their critical text consisting of 40 MSS. Although we have yet to see it, it is our opinion that without primary consideration to the now obviously Imāmī Shiʿi pedigree of this prayer that any critical text based on MSS originating from a primarily Sufi milieu of the thirteenth century CE onwards will only obscure rather than clarify matters because its Imāmī Shiʿi provenance (at least in those versions transmitted from the 10th-11th centuries of the CE onward) is, to us at least, now a settled matter. 10 Muhaj al-daʿwāt and biḥār al-anwār, ibid. 11 A defective MS of one can be found on our blog here, http://wahidazal.blogspot.de/2014/12/adefective-ms-of-40-idrisid-names.html (accessed 11 December 2017), being a commentary attributed to “Suhrawardī” but without specifying which one. The arrangement of the names in this MS are also different than the one we have delineated here. We are grateful to the site owner of the Digital Occult Manuscript Library for sending us a copy of this MS a few years ago. We are also grateful to Aydogan Kars for forwarding several noted Turkish MSS more recently. See also the items mentioned in n1 above. 12 Such as the one found on this site http://www.knozalasrar.com/knoz885/ (accessed 14 December 2014). This particular commentary, which is one of the most interesting occult commentaries of it we have so far come across, appears to be incomplete (at least as it has been transcribed online), as it only offers a full commentary on only thirty-seven of the names. It also cuts off a little under a third through the thirty-eighth name. This commentary appears to have been posted and reposted repeatedly from site to site, but there is no reference or other indication as to who originally may
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have authored it. We have so far also been unable to situate it in either the MSS tradition or the printed texts. 13 See Jaako Hämeen-Antilla The Last Pagans of Iraq: Ibn Waḥshiyya and his Nabataean Agriculture (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2006). The notion of the Godhead, i.e. the God of gods, is also consistent with the religiophilosophical paganism of late antique Neoplatonism, such as the system of Proclus (d. 485), for example, which literally regarded the Hermetica as ‘revealed scripture’. This religio-philosophical paganism of late antiquity bequeathed in translation a rich literary heritage to the Islamic world. As evidenced by his writings, and besides the obviously pronounced Mazdaean elements of his thought, Shihābuddīn Yaḥyā Suhrawardī also deeply imbibed from this wellspring. Henry Corbin highlighted this in several of his studies on Suhrawardī, especially in En islam iranien, aspect spirituels et philosophiques II: Sohrawardî et les Platoniciens des perse (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), passim. For the sources of the Arabic Hermetica, see Kevin van Bladel’s The Arabic Hermes: From Pagan Sage to Prophet of Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 14
An expression -- predicated as it is upon Suhrawardī’s metaphysical hierarchy of the lights and
angelic-intelligences (with the Light of lights standing at the apex and axis of these, hence ‘God of gods’) -- which is replete throughout his philosophical works as well as the visionary treatises and, especially, in those prayers and devotional pieces positively identified to have been authored by him, viz. the Spiritual Influxes and Sanctifications (al-wāridāt wa al-taqdīsāt) with its supplications (munājāt); see, for example, the second line of the following prayer by him, ‘The Oration of the Supreme Sanctification for each day’, online https://www.academia.edu/9576982/A_translation_and_transcription_of_Suhraward%C4%ABs_Orati on_of_the_Supreme_Sanctification_for_each_day_from_the_Book_of_the_Spiritual_Influxes_and_Sanc tifications_al-w%C4%81rid%C4%81t_wa_al-taqd%C4%ABs%C4%81t_ (accessed 11 December 2017). It is also conspicuously mentioned in his invocation to the Perfect Nature (daʿwa ṭibaʾa al-tamm), online http://wahidazal.blogspot.de/2015/10/oldest-known-ms-text-of-suhrawardis.html (accessed 11 December 2017). 15 See our translation, https://www.academia.edu/9799507/The_Birhat%C4%ABya_Conjuration_Oath_and_the_meaning_of_ its_first_28_names (accessed 11 December 2017). 16 Online, http://www.duas.org/idreesmafzaee.htm (accessed 13 December 2017). 17 We have preferred this reading here, which appears in the illuminated MS, to the one in the printed edition which is “ .”
ﰷﰲ اﳌﻮﺳﻊ
18
The illuminated MS has it as “
ّ ﻴﺐ اﳌﺘﺪاﱐ دونºﻗﺮﻳﺐ ا ﰻ ﺷﺊ ﻗﺮﺑﻪ
” (“O Proximate, the
Answerer/Responder, the One Approaching without anything [being] in His proximity”) which is the same wording as in miṣbāḥ al-mutahajjid. However, we have chosen our reading above because it is also the version in the printed edition of the muhaj al-daʿwāt and also the same worded version appearing elsewhere of this same passage. 19 After this point, most of the current standard texts add this following second clause to the fortieth name, (“.. and my succor/shelter/sanctuary in every hardship
ﻠﱵ-ﲔ ﺗﻨﻘﻄﻊ ﺣE ﺎﰄ+و ﻣﻌﺎذي ﻋﻨﺪ ﰻ ﺷﺪة و ر
and O my [only] hope at the moment when Thou hast cut off/interrupts my deception”), whereas the text of muhaj al-daʿwāt/biḥār al-anwār does not contain this specific final clause to the fortieth name at all. Instead this version continues on for a few more lines with the following from the point where our text ends above:
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ت ا¡ﻧﻴﺎ وdﻠﻴﻪ و ٓ و ٔﻣﺎ˜ ﻣﻦ ﻋﻘﻮL ﻚ ﶊﺪ ﺻﲆ ﷲ-aﲆ ﻧL ٔﺳ¯ٔ¿ ا¾ﻠﻬﻢ رب اﻟﺼﻼة ﻦ ﰊ اﻟﺴﻮء و ٔن ﺗﴫف ﻗﻠﻮﲠﻢ ﻋﻦ ﴍ ﻣﺎ€ﺲ ﻋﲏ ٔﺑﺼﺎر اﻟﻈﻠﻤﺔ اﳌﺮﻳﺪaا)ٓﺧﺮة و ٔن ﲢ نÍﻠﻴﻚ اﻟﺘL ﺎﺑﺔ و ﻫﺬا اﳉﻬﺪ و+ٕﻚ اﻻXﺎء و ﻣL¡ﲑ ﻣﺎ ﻻ ﳝﻠﻜﻪ ﲑك ا¾ﻠﻬﻢ ﻫﺬا اs ﻳﻀﻤﺮون إﱃ اﻟﻌﲇ اﻟﻌﻈﲓ9d و ﻻ ﺣﻮل و ﻻ ﻗﻮة إﻻ …I ask/beseech Thee O my God, O Lord, [for] the blessings upon Thy prophet Muḥammad –- the salutations of God be upon Him and His Family -- and to protect/preserve/secure [me] from the chastisements/punishments of the world and the hereafter; and that Thou shut/close off from me the eyes of darkness of those inclined to wickedness and that Thou hinder/turn away their hearts from the evil [animating] their inner consciences [and change it] to the good which none other than Thee possesses! O God, this is the prayer/invocation and from Thee is the answer; and this is the effort/striving and upon Thee is [my placement of] the affirming trust; and no power and no strength is there save in God the High, the Mighty! (my trans.) Compare these two versions of the ending offered here with the much longer one offered in miṣbāḥ al-mutahajjid. 20 The rubrications in red underneath the main text is a Persian translation of the prayer. Just as in the printed edition, the item preceding ours is a prayer attributed to the Prophet Noah (which is simply one thousand repetitions of the tahlīl), and following that is one attributed to Abraham. Given that in the MSS and printed edition of the muhaj al-daʿwāt in our possession Ibn Ṭāwwūs mentions Aḥmad ibn Dāwūd al-Naʿmānī (Nuʿmānī?) (9th/10th century CE?) and the fourth section of his dafʿ alhammūm wa al-aḥzab (Defence against Troubles and [Sacred] Litanies/Prayers) as the source for the item on Noah; while not mentioning any further sources for either our item or the subsequent one; it is quite possible that Ibn Ṭāwwūs’s silence may be due to the fact that this is his source for the Prayer of the Forty Idrīsid Names with its attribution to Ḥasan al-Basrī rather than Saʿd ibn ʿAbd Allāh alAshʿarī al-Qummī’s faḍl al-duʿā wa al-dhikr as claimed by Walbridge. Like al-Qummī, we have so far been unable to locate a text for this latter source either in a MS or a printed edition -- or, moreover, to glean further biographical details about its author. However, Aḥmad ibn Dāwūd al-Naʿmānī could in fact be the father of Ibn Dāwūd al-Qummī (d. 978-9 CE), a famed Imāmī Shiʿi traditionist and jurisprudent of the tenth century CE; see http://ar.wikishia.net/view/%D8%A7%D8%A8%D9%86_%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%88%D8%AF_%D8%A7% D9%84%D9%82%D9%85%D9%8A (accessed 20 December 2017).
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Introduction, Provisional Translation, Transcription, MS, Printed Text and Notes
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Introduction After introductory comments here we will be offering our translation and text of the famed Idrīsid Prayer of the Forty (divine) Names below. In the sources it has been variously attributed to Shihābuddīn Yaḥyā Suhrawardī (d. 1191),1 the Illuminationist, as well to the Sufis Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar Suhrawardī (d. 1234)2 and his calligrapher-mystic descendant Aḥmad Suhrawardī (d. 1301-2). While a certain consensus from the Ottoman period holds it to be a composition of Abū Ḥafṣ, it is also usually claimed to be that prayer of the Quranic Prophet Idrīs who has often been identified in the sources with the Old Testament figure of Enoch as well as the Egyptian/Greco-Hellenistic mystagogue Hermes Trismegistus.3 In Imāmī Shīʿī sources authorship has also been attributed to the Prophet Muḥammad himself (d. 632 CE) as well as to the early Sufi figure Ḥasan al-Basrī (d. 728 CE). It is the Safavīd traditionist Muḥammad Bāqir al-Majlisī (d. 1698) –- compiler of the most comprehensive Shīʿī collection of ḥadīth, the Oceans of the Lights (biḥār alanwār) –- who attributes authorial transmission to Ḥasan al-Basrī.4 Majlisī’s source for this attribution is, of course, Ibn Ṭāwwūs (d. 1266 CE) and his The Spirit-Heart of Invocations and the Path of Worship (muhaj al-daʿwāt wa minhaj al-ʿibāda).5 But contrary
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to more recent assertions made in Western academic print, Ibn Ṭāwwūs does not provide any further explicit sources regarding this transmission from Ḥasan alBasrī.6 Two centuries earlier than even Ibn Ṭāwwūs, a longer variant text of The Idrīsid Prayer of the Forty Names can be found in Shaykh al-Ṭāʾifa Muḥammad ibn alḤasan al-Ṭūsī’s7 The Lamp of the Prayerful Petitioner of the Night and Weapon of the Worshiper (miṣbāḥ al-mutahajjid wa silāḥ al-mutaʿabbid), which then obviously invalidates any possible attribution of original authorship to Shihābuddīn Yaḥyā, Abū Ḥafṣ or Aḥmad Suhrawardī.8 Presuming a text of Saʿd ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ashʿarī al-Qummī’s faḍl al-duʿā wa al-dhikr has actually survived -- and if, as Walbridge implies, this prayer is included in it -- then this would strongly suggest that any original recension (with its circulation) would have originated from within specifically Imāmī Shiʿi circles only after which time it entered into the milieu of ṭarīqa Sufism.9 Per the introduction to the prayer in both muhaj al-daʿwāt and biḥār al-anwār, Ḥasan al-Basrī is held to have claimed that God first revealed and taught the specific names associated with the prayer to the Prophet Idrīs when he initially sent him to his people, instructing Idrīs to silently repeat them to himself and to not disclose them but to secretly call his people to God by these names (i.e. a form of missionary or prophetic “mass” theurgy, as it were). From these names, claims al-Basrī, our prayer was composed, which God later revealed to the Prophet Muḥammad as well. Al-Basrī states that once when he had disguised himself while on the pilgrimage (presumably to Mecca) he had invoked God specifically by these names whereupon six women had entered into his presence (apparently who knew him) and God had completely concealed al-Basrī from their gaze (or, made him invisible to them). The reason for the number forty, it is maintained, is because it is the number associated with the number of repentance (tawba) and its days. Al-Basrī recommends the
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efficacy of this prayer for purposes of penitence from all sins and the affairs in both the material world and the hereafter whereby God will grant the penitent who recites it their request.10 Within the white occult tradition of Sunnī Sufism (i.e. rūḥānīya) –- and particularly beginning from the thirteen century CE forward -- commentaries on this prayer abound, many offering assorted instructions regarding the precise application of each of the forty names to a particular matter, predicament, ailment, or even a whole range of them.11 Practice with these names has also been recommended for the term of a traditional forty-day retreat, i.e. the khalwa. We have also seen commentaries where various angelic names as well as names of spirit guardians (muwakkilūn) and their celestial hosts and concourses are invoked after each verse.12 Over the past two decades Arabic language cyberspace has become littered with literally thousands of versions of this prayer with its online commentaries, the majority of which unfortunately cannot be relied upon for scholarly purposes. That said, while many sources continue to attribute this piece to the Illuminationist Shihābuddīn Yaḥyā Suhrawardī, beyond issues of textual transmission and provenance; an originally pre-Islamic and possibly pagan provenance, to our knowledge, has never been adequately addressed or detailed anywhere. Here we wish to offer one working hypothesis based on the formulated locution of its second name, i.e. ilāha al-āliha, the God of gods (ﻟﻬﺔ
)ا.
This
construct, while not altogether absent in other sources, is a somewhat unusual and idiosyncratic one for any orthodox Muslim (Sunnī Sufi, Shiʿi or otherwise) to be making because it sounds distinctly pagan. Most versions of the prayer we have seen, whether in printed editions or MSS, contain it. It is also a form of expression quite consistent with similar doxologies found in the Arabic Hermetica as well as in
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Ibn Waḥshīya’s Nabataean Agriculture (filāḥa al-nabatīya).13 It is also a locution distinctly employed repeatedly by the shaykh al-ishrāq Shihābuddīn Yaḥyā Suhrawardī himself, which may explain the reasons for the widespread belief that he may have authored it.14 The popularity of this prayer and its names among assorted mystical and esoteric oriented circles throughout the Islamic world, whether Sunnī or Shīʿī, cannot be underestimated. Within its specifically occult milieu this prayer and its names sometimes stand alongside (and even on par) with the jaljalūtīya poem (minora and majora) and the birhatīya conjuration oath.15 Like the other two, this is the case because it is considered to be among the mujarrabāt, i.e. those prayers, invocations, supplications and doxologies whose efficacy has been attested by numerous practitioners throughout the ages; but also especially because of its attribution to the Prophet Idrīs and his association in Islamicate hierohistoriography and occulture with both Enoch and the Thrice Great Hermes. However, as far as we are aware, it is not broached or cited anywhere in the known works of the North African occult encyclopedist Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī al-Būnī (d. 1225 CE), which, on its own, would tend to further bolster the case for the Forty Idrīsid Names being in all probability produced somewhere originally in the eastern Islamic lands before entering into the sources within the maghrib. Readings of the text vary from source to source as do the chronological placement of its names or verses. Additions and subtractions of phrases and entire clauses from reading to reading are the norm. Below we offer a translation of one of its current standard readings, based on the text offered by Ibn Ṭāwwūs in his muhaj al-daʿwāt, together with a transcription of the Arabic text and scans of the Iranian Majlis MS 942/26: 621-4 (as well as the printed edition version following that). A concluding entreaty that is sometimes found as a final addendum in many versions
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(in a long version in al-Ṭūsī and a shorter one in Ibn Tawwūs and Majlisī, but which also appears in different versions and with completely different wording among various other recensions and commentaries) has not been included in the main body of our translation and its Arabic transcription because this, to us, clearly appears to be a later addition -- a paratextual amendment, as it were -- made by others and so is not, in our opinion, integral to the main body of the prayer itself with the iteration of its actual forty names. The two standard versions of this amendment to the prayer (in transcription) have instead been endnoted and translated within the note. In fact, everything following the end of our text here, which is found in all the assorted versions, is extrinsic to the actual delineation of these forty names themselves. A parallel Arabic text and English translation of the prayer of the Forty Idrīsid Names is available online based on the text offered in miṣbāḥ al-mutahajjid.16 However, we find this translation inelegant as well as imprecise. It is also an altogether different arrangement of the prayer -- nor is it iterative of forty names -– than either the standard popular versions or that of Ibn Ṭāwwūs/Majlisī. The verses constituting each of the names have been numbered here from (1) to (40) in the English translation (and .1 to .40 for the Arabic transcription of the text). Transliteration of the initial divine names have been placed within round brackets () with expanded readings placed inside square brackets []. Alternative translations for the names have been placed between a slash (/). As has been our practice elsewhere, we have opted for a moderate King Jamesian style and diction in the translation here. As such the pronouns, names, attributes and epithets for the divinity have been capitalized. Like poetry, prayer constitutes a genre of textual performance; and given this, we believe our method here for translating an item like this in such fashion is justified.
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Translation
(1) Glorified art Thou (subḥānaka), no other god is there besides Thee, O Lord of all-things and their Inheritor! (2) O God of gods (yā ilāha al-āliha), whose Majesty is elevated! (3) O Compassionate (yā raḥmān) [towards] all things and their Mercifier! (4) O God (yā allāh), the One Praised in all of His activities! (5) O Alive (yā ḥayy) in the moment before all life within the durationlessness of His Sovereignty and His [eternal] Subsistence! (6) O Peerless Self-Subsistent (yā qayyūm), for nothing shall extinguish His knowledge nor shall weariness overcome Him! (7) O Single/One (yā wāḥid), the [eternally] Subsistent, the First among all things and the Last! (8) O Perpetual (yā dāʾim) without annihilation nor ephemerality [occurring] to His Sovereignty! (9) O Everlasting (yā ṣamad) without a similar/familiar, for nothing is like unto Him! (10) O Originator [of being/existence] (yā bārīʾ), for nothing is His equal and no locus can describe Him! (11) O Great One (yā kabīr), Thou art the One Who does not guide the hearts by ascriptions of His Mightiness! (12) O Fashioner of the souls without exemplar (yā bārīʾ al-nufūs bi-lā mithāl) who are free from [all] other than Him! (13) O the Unsulliedly Pure (yā zākī al-ṭāhir) [free] from every blemish by His sanctity! (14) O Sufficient, the [One] Expansive (yā kāfī al-wāsʿi)17 over what He has created from the bounties of His excellence! (15) O Immaculate from every inequity (yā naqī min kulli jawr), for neither shall He be contented/satisfied nor muddled/cluttered by His activities! (16) O
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Empathetic/Intimately Clement (yā ḥannān), Thou art the One Who encompasses all things by His Mercy! (17) O Munificent (yā mannān) possessed of All-Beneficence which indeed He infuses over His [entire] creation! (18) O Arbiter/Judge (yā dayyān) over the worshipers/servants who obediently arise in awe/dread of Him! (19) O Creator (yā khāliq) of whosoever is in the Heavens and in the earth, for all are returning to Him! (20) O Merciful to every lamenting pliant and anguished griever (yā raḥīm kulli ṣarīkh wa makrūb), their invoked aid and their succor/refuge! (21) O Completely Perfect (yā tāmm), for no speech can describe the depth of His Majesty or His Sovereignty or His Tremendousness! (22) O Originator of [all] originations (yā mubdiʾ al-badāʾiʿ), [for] nothing can contend/rival [with Him] as an aid in its [i.e. the world’s] initiating formation among His [whole] creation! (23) O All-Knower of the unseen
(yā
ʿallām
al-ghuyūb),
for
nothing
wearies
Him
in
His
protection/preservation [of creation]! (24) O Clement possessed of forbearance (yā ḥalīm dha’l-anāʾa), for nothing can compare [with Him] in His creation! (25) O Restorer of what He has extinguished/annihilated (yā muʿīd ma afnāhu) [at the time] when the creatures emerge by His summons from fear of Him! (26) O Praiseworthy in action (yā ḥamīd al-faʿāl), the Possessor of Grace over his entire creation by His Magnanimity! (27) O Tremendously Impregnable (yā ʿazīz al-manīʿ), predominant over His Cause-Command, for nothing equals Him! (28) O Vanquisher/Victorious possessed of the most intensely violent/valorous assault (yā qahhār dha’l-baṭash al-shadīd), Thou art the One Whose vengeance is unendurable! (29) O Proximate (yā qarīb), the AllHigh above everything by the supremacy of His Lofty Elevation/Height!18 (30) O Humiliater/Debaser of every oppressing tyrant (yā mudhil kulla jabbār) by [the
overshadowing]
subjugation/vanquishment
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of
[i.e.
via]
the
Tremendousness of His Dominating Authority! (31) O Light of all things and their guide (yā nūr kulli shayʾ wa hudāhu), Thou art the One Who cleaves asunder the darknesses by His Light! (32) O Holy, the Pure from all evil (yā quddūs al-ṭāhir min kulli sūʾ), for nothing can rival Him in [all of] His creation! (33) O Elevated, the Loftily High above all things (yā ʿālī al-shāmikh fawq kulla shayʾ), supreme in His altitude! (34) O Initiating Cause of all initiating causes and their return (yā mubdiʾ al-badāyāʾ wa mūʿīdaha) after their annihilation by His Power! (35) O Majestic, the Haughtily Great over all things (yā jalīl almutakabbir ʿalā kulli shayʾ), for His Cause-Command is Just and His guarantee/promise is truthful! (36) O One Praised (yā maḥmūd), for conjecture/delusion is incapable of accounting for His every state or [of] His Glory! (37) O Gracious/Generous in forgiveness (yā karīm al-ʿafw), [the One] Possessed of Justice, Thou art the One who has filled all things [in creation] with His Justice! (38) O Mighty possessed of the Most Excellent Laudation/Praise and the Tremendousness and the Glory and the Greatness (yā ʿazīm dha’l-thanāʾ al-fākhir wa’l-ʿizza wa’l-majd wa’l-kibrīyāʾ), for His Tremendousness is never abased! (39) O Wondrously Extraordinary (yā ʿajīb), for no expressions of speech can [possibly] enumerate all of His bounties and His praise! (40) O my Invoked Aid (yā ghīyāthī) in every distress/agony and O the One Who Answers me in every prayer/invocation!19
~
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Arabic Transcription
F ُﺳْ #ﺒ! َﺎ َﻧﻚ ﻻ ٕا َ َ ا ّٕﻻ َﻧﺖ َرب ِ ّ ﳾ ٍء َو وا ِرﺛَ ُﻪ ٕا َ َ ا)ٓ ِﻟﻬَ ِﺔ ُﰻ َ ْ ُ 9اﻟْ َﻤ ْﺤ ُﻤﻮ ُد ﰲ ُ ِ ّ ﳾ ٍء و َر ِ َ ﰻ اﲪ ُﻪ اﻟﺮِﻓُ -ﻊ َ+ﻼ َ ُ َر ْﲪ َﻦ ُﰻ َ ْ ﻗَF-ﻮ ُم َ Eِ Cﲔ ﻻ َِ Cﰲ َدﻳْ ُﻤﻮ َﻣ ِﺔ ُﻣﻠ ِﻜ ِﻪ و َﺑﻘ ِﺎﺋِﻪ ِﻓﻌﺎ ِ F َ . وا ِEﺪُ ْا ِ ﻟﺒﺎﰶ و َل ُﰻ ﳾ ٌء ِLﻠْ ِﻤ ِﻪ وﻻ َﻳُﺆدُﻩ ﻓَﻼ ﻳ َ ُﻔ ُﻮت َ ْ وال ِﳌ ُ ِﻠ ِﻜﻪ َ َ َاﰂ ﺑِﻼ ﻓَXﺎ ٍء و ﻻ َز ٍ ﲳﺪُ ِْﻣﻦ َ ْ ِﲑ ﳾ ٍء َو ٓ ِﺧ َﺮ ُﻩ د ِ ُ َْ ﳾ َء ُﻛ ْﻔ َﺆ ُﻩ َوﻻ َﻣ َﲀ َن ِﻟ َﻮ ِﺻ ِﻔﻪ ﳾ َء ِﳈﺜ ِ ِْ^ ِ dر ُئ ﻓَﻼ َ ْ َﺷ ٍِ -aﻪ وﻻ َ ْ يء َﻛﺒ ُِﲑ ﻧ َْﺖ َا ّjي ﻻ ﲥَ ْ َﺘ ِﺪي اﻟْ ُﻘﻠُﻮب َِﻟﻮ ْﺻ ِﻒ َﻋ َﻈ َﻤﺘ ِﻪ ِdر َ ِزاﰾ اﻟﻄﺎ ِﻫ ُﺮ ِﻣ ْﻦ ُ ِ ّ اﻟﻨُ Fﻔ ِﻮس ﺑِﻼ ِﻣ ٍ ﰻ ٓﻓَ ٍﺔ tﺎل َsﻼ ِﻣ ْﻦ َ ْ ِﲑ ِﻩ ِﰷﰲ ْاﻟﻮا ِﺳ ُﻊ ِﻟﲈ َsﻠَ َﻖ ِﻣ ْﻦ َﻋﻄﺎ ﻓَ ْﻀ ِ ِ^ ﻧ َ ِﻘ Fﻲ ِﻣ ْﻦ ِﺑ ُﻘ ْﺪ ِﺳ ِﻪ ﰻ َﺟ ْﻮ ٍر َو ﻟَ ْﻢ ْ َ€ﺮﺿَ ُﻪ َوﻟَ ْﻢ ُ َﳜﺎ ِﻟ ْﻄ ُﻪ ﻓَﻌﺎ َ ُ ِّ َﺣُ Xﺎن ﻧ َْﺖ ِاjي ﺴﺎن ﻗَ ْﺪ َﰪ اﻟْ َِ ƒﻼ ِﺋﻖ َﻣُ F Xﻪ ﳾ ٍ ّء َر ْ َﲪ ُﺘ ُﻪ َﻣُ Xﺎن ذا ا ٕﻻ ْﺣ ِ َو ِﺳ ْﻌ َﺖ ُﰻ َ ُ َد َن اﻟْ ِﻌﺒﺎ ِد ُ F sﺎ ِﻟ َﻖ َﻣ ْﻦ ﰲ ﰻ ﻳ َ ُﻘﻮ ُم َِ sﺎﺿ ًﻌﺎ َِﻟﺮ ْﻫ َﺒ ِﺘ ِﻪ ﰻ اﻟَ ْﻴ ِﻪ َﻣﻌﺎ ُد ُﻩ َر ِﺣ َﲓ ُ ِ ّ اﻟﺴﲈو ِات َوا ٔ) ْر ِض و ُ F وب ﴏ ٍﱗ َو َﻣ ْﻜ ُﺮ ٍ ﰻ َِ َو ِﻏ•-ﺎﺛَ• ُﻪ َو َﻣﻌ•ﺎ َذ ُﻩ –َ Fم َ ‰ﻓ•ﻼ ﺗ َـ ِﺼ ُﻒ ا)ﻟْ ُﺴ ُﻦ ُﻛ ْﻨ َﻪ َ+ﻼ ِ ِ َو ُﻣ ْﻠ ِﻜﻪِ َو ِﻋـِّﺰ ِﻩ َ ُﻣ ِْ žﺪ َع اﻟْ َﺒﺪَ اﺋِﻊ ِ ﻟَ ْﻢ ﻳ َ ْﺒﻎ ِ ِﰲ إ›ﺸﺎﲛِ ﺎ َﻋ ْﻮ˜َ ً ِﻣ ْﻦ َsﻠْ ِﻘ ِﻪ َِ Eﻠ ُﲓ َذا ا ٔ)˜َ ِة ﻓَﻼ ﳾ ٌء ِﻣ ْﻦ ِﺣ ْﻔﻈ ِﻪ ّ َLﻼ َم اﻟ ُﻐ ُﻴ ِ ﻮب ﻓَﻼ ﻳ َ ُﺆ ُد ُﻩ َ ْ ص
.2
.1
.4
.3
.6
5
.7
.9
.8
.11
.10
.12
.13
.15
.14
.16
.17
.19
.18
.20
.21
.23
.22
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ﳾ ٌء ِﻣ ْﻦ َsﻠْ ِﻘ ِﻪ َ ُﻣ ِﻌﻴﺪَ ﻣﺎ ﻓْXﺎ ُﻩ إذا َ َ¢ﺮ َز اﻟَْƒﻼﺋِ ُﻖ ِ َ¡ﻋ َْﻮ ِﺗ ِﻪ ﻳُﻌﺎ ِد ُ ُ َ ْ ِﻣ ْﻦ َﻣَƒﺎﻓَ ِِ £ﻪ ﻳَ¤ﺎ َ ِﲪ¤-ﺪَ اﻟْ َﻔ ِ ﻌﺎل ذا اﻟْ َﻤﻦ َLﲆ َ ِﲨ¤-ﻊ ِ ﺧَ¤ﻠْ ِﻘ ِﻪ ِﺑﻠُ ْـﻄ ِﻔ ِﻪ ﻳَ¤ﺎ ﳾ َء ﻳُﻌﺎ ِد ُ ﻳ¤ﺎ ﻗَ¤ﺎ ِﻫ ُﺮ َذا َﻋـ ِﺰ ُ€ﺰ اﻟْﻤﻨﻴ ُﻊ اﻟْﻐﺎ ِﻟ ُﺐ َLﲆ ٔ ْﻣ ِﺮ ِﻩ ﻓَﻼ ْ ﻳﺐ اﻟْ ُﻤِ َ¤£ ﻌﺎﱄ اﻟْ َﺒ ْﻄ ِﺶ اﻟﺸِ ¤ﺪﻳ ِﺪ ﻧ َْﺖ ِاjي ﻻ ﻳُ ُ ﻄﺎق اﻧْ ِﺘﻘﺎ ُﻣ ُﻪ ﻳ¤ﺎ ﻗـَ ِﺮ ُ ﰻ َ ﻓـَ ْﻮ َق ُ ِ ّ ﳾ ٍء ُﻋ¤ﻠُ Fﻮ ا ْرِﺗ¤ﻔﺎ ِِ Lﻪ ﻳَ¤ﺎ ُﻣ ِﺬل ُﰻ َﺟٍ žﺎر ﺑِﻘـَﻬْ ِﺮ َﻋ ِﺰِ €ﺰ ْ ُ ّ َ‰ ُ ٍ ِ ِ َ ﳾء َو ﻫُﺪَ ا ُﻩ ﻧ َْﺖ اjي ﻓﻠـَ َﻖ اﻟﻈF¤ﻠﲈت ﻧ ُُﻮر ُﻩ ُﺳﻠْﻄﺎ ِﻧ ِﻪ ﻳَ¤ﺎ ﻧ َُﻮر ِ ﰻ ْ Fوس اﻟﻄ¤ﺎ ِﻫ ُﺮ ِﻣ ْﻦ ُ ِ ّ ﳾ َء ﻳُﻌ¤ﺎ Fز ُﻩ ِﻣ ْﻦ َsﻠْ ِﻘ ِﻪ ﻗ ُ¤ﺪ ُ ﰻ ُﺳﻮ ٍء ﻓَﻼ َ َ ْ Lﺎﱄ اﻟﺸﺎ ِﻣﺦُ ﻓـَ ْﻮ َق ُﰻ َ ِ ﳾ ٍء ُﻋ¤ﻠُ Fﻮ ا ْرِﺗﻔﺎ ِِ Lﻪ يء اﻟْ َﺒﺪا َ ْ ُﻣ ِْ žﺪ َ ﳾءٍ ﰻ َْ َو ُﻣ ِﻌﻴﺪَ ﻫَﺎ َﺑ ْﻌﺪَ ﻓََXﺎﲛِ ﺎ ﺑِ¤ﻘ ُْ ¤ﺪ َرِﺗ ِﻪ َ َِ +ﻠ ‰ﻴ ُﻞ اﻟْ ُﻤَ َ¤£ﻜ ِ ّ ُﱪ َLﲆ ُ ِ ّ ﻓَ¤ﺎﻟْ َﻌ ْﺪ ُل ْﻣ ُﺮ ُﻩ و َاﻟﺼ ْﺪ ُق َو ْLﺪُ ُﻩ َ َﻣ ْﺤ ُﻤﻮ ُد ﻓَ¤ﻼ ﺗْ َ¤ﺴَ #ﺘﻄﻴ ُﻊ ا ٔ) ْوﻫَﺎ ُم ُﻛ¤ﻞ َﺷ¯ٔ ِﻧ ِﻪ َو َﻣ ِْ °ﺪ ِﻩ َ ﻛـَﺮ َﱘ اﻟْ َﻌ ْﻔ ِﻮ ذا اﻟْ َﻌ ْﺪ ِل ﻧْ َﺖ ِاjي َﻣُ ²ﰻ ﳾ ٍء ْ َLﺪ ُ ُ َﻋ ِﻈ ُﲓ ذا اﻟ•tﻨﺎ ِء اﻟْﻔﺎ ِﺧ ِﺮ َو اﻟْ ِﻌ ّ ِﺰ َواﻟْ َﻤ ِْ °ﺪ َْ ﻄﻖ ا)ﻟ ِﺴ#ﻨَ ُﺔ ِِّ ¢ ﲁ ٓﻻﺋِ ِﻪ َو ْاﻟ ِﻜ ْ ِﱪ َ ِء َﻓﻼ ﻳ َ ِﺬ Fل ِﻋ Fﺰ ُﻩ ﻴﺐ ﻓَﻼ ﺗَ ْﻨ ُ َﲺ ُ وﺛﻨﺎﺋِ ِﻪ ِﻏﻴﺎﰔ ِﻋ ْﻨﺪَ ﰻ ُﻛﺮﺑ َ ٍﺔ و ُﻣﺠﻴﱯ ِﻋ ْﻨﺪَ ﰻ َد ْﻋ َﻮ ٍة .25
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Text of Iranian Majlis MS 942/26: 621-4 20
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Text in the Beirut printed edition of muhaj al-daʿwāt
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Notes 1
In much of the MSS tradition this prayer with its forty names has often been popularly identified as the asmāʾ al-suhrawardīya (the Suhrawardiyan Names). To give just a handful of brief examples here, see, for example, the Iranian Majlis MS 50516/8995, Paris BnF MSS Arabe 2644 and 7322 and other MSS identifying it in the same fashion in Istanbul, Tehran, Berlin, Rome (Vatican), Cambridge, the British Museum and elsewhere such as this Saudi MSS online, which unequivocally attributes it to Shihābuddīn Suhrawardī al-Maqtūl (the murdered), the Illuminationist, right from the beginning: https://ia802308.us.archive.org/18/items/abdelghani22021977_gmail_20140816/%D8%A7%D9%84%D 8%A3%D8%B3%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%A1%20%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%AF%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8% B3%D9%8A%D8%A9-
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%D8%B4%D9%87%D8%A7%D8%A8%20%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AF%D9%8A%D9%86%20%D8%A7%D9%84 %D8%B3%D9%87%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%B1%D8%AF%D9%8A.pdf (accessed 20 December 2017); see as well, publications such as the printed edition of Muhammad Tūnisī’s al-rawḍa al-sundusīya fī alasmāʾ al-ḥusnāʾ al-idrīsīya al-suhrawardīya (the Sundūsī Rose Garden regarding the Most Beautiful Idrīsid Suhrawardiyan Names) (Cairo: al-maktaba al-azharīya lil-turāth, 2005 CE/1426 CE) and similar. Such examples can be multiplied many times over. 2 It’s attribution to Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar Suhrawardī is explicitly made by the Ottoman era scholars and Sufis ʿAbd‘ul-Raʿuf Muḥammad al-Munawī (d. 1621 CE), Hājjī Khalīfa Kâtip Çelebi (d. 1657), author of the famed kashf’ul-ẓunūn (Uncovering of the Opinions), Ismāʿīl Ḥaḳḳī al-Brūsawī (d. 1724-5 CE), one of eminent Ottoman era commentators of Ibn ʿArabī’s fuṣūs al-ḥikam (the Bezels of Wisdom) and Ismaʿīl Pāshā al-Baghdadi (d. 1920). We are grateful to Australian scholar Aydogan Kars (Monash University) for pointing this detail out to us in email (10 December 2017). Be that as it may, because such attribution to Abū Ḥafṣ by these Ottoman era figures is quite late as compared to earlier transmissions of various versions of the prayer provided by scholars four to six centuries earlier than them, such Ibn Ṭāwwūs (d. 1264-5 CE) and the Shaykh al-Ṭāʾifa al-Ṭūsī (d. 1066 CE), there are reasons to remain incredulous about the continued attribution of authorship to Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar Suhrawardī since, as we shall see, one text of this prayer was already in circulation long before Abū Ḥafṣ’s lifetime. 3 See Hugh Talat Halman’s useful entry “Idris” in (ed.) Phyllis G. Jestice Holy People of the World: A CrossCultural Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2004), volume two, 388, which is worthwhile to quote here: … Muslim and Manichaean legendary prophet, sage The Qur’an describes Idris as a prophet (nabi) who was “truthful” (saddiq), “patient” (sabir), and “righteous” (salih). It says, moreover, that God “raised him to a high station” (19:56–57; 21:85–86). In many accounts of the prophet Muhammad’s ascension (mi’raj), Idris welcomes Muhammad into the fourth of the seven heavens, the solar sphere. In a canonical hadith, the prophet Muhammad, commenting on the first received verses of the Qur’an (96:1–4), identifies Idris as the first person who wrote with the pen. His dates are unknown. Idris is popularly depicted as the first to sew clothing and is revered by tailors as the patron of their guild. Popular tales of the prophets narrate that Idris achieved immortality when he tricked the angel of death into letting him step into paradise for just a moment. When the angel asked him to come out, Idris slyly replied that once entering paradise, one cannot return. By the tenth century, Abu Ma’shar al-Balkhi identified Idris as the biblical Enoch and Hermes Trismegistus (Hirmis al-Muthalath bi’l-Hikma), the legendary Greek figure associated with the Egyptian god Thoth. The historian Mas’udi (d. 956) identified Enoch as “Idris the Prophet” and the Hermes of the Sabaens. These associations were echoed by the bibliographer Ibn Nadim (d. 987) and the polymath al-Biruni (973–1050), who equated Idris with Mercury, the Buddha, and Hermes. The relationship between the names Idris and Hermes may rest on the name of Hermes’ initiatory guide, Poimandres, in the ancient Greek Corpus Hermeticum I.1. Although the form of the name Idris is not a recognized Arabic word, its etymological root (d-r-s) means “to teach.” The prophet’s mention of Idris as the first to use the pen conforms to Egyptian iconography of Thoth (who, combined with the Greek Hermes, became Hermes Trismegistus). The narrative of Idris’s cunning entry into paradise
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parallels the Homeric “Hymn to Hermes” where Hermes elevates himself into the Olympian pantheon by offering a sacrifice to himself. Idris’s direct entry into paradise, and his association with the sun, echoes Enoch (Gen. 5:18–24). Idris is identified as the first of three Hermeses. The first, Hirmis al-Haramisah, invented the alphabet, writing, tailoring, medicine, and astronomy. This Hermes also built the eponymous pyramids (Ahram). After the flood, the second one, the “Babylonian Hermes,”master of Pythagoras, taught math, science, and philosophy. The third, “Egyptian Hermes,” was a builder of cities and master of alchemy. In Manichaenism, Hermes was one of the five major prophets before Mani (216–274/277). The oldest extant version of Hermes Trismegistus’s Emerald Tablet is ascribed to Jabir ibn Hayyan (d. 776), student of the sixth Shi’a imam Ja’far as-Saddiq (699–765). The historian Shahrastani (1086– 1153) reported that the people of Harran (today’s Altinbasak, Turkey) achieved “protected peoples”(dhimmi) status under Caliph al-Ma’mun (813–833) when they claimed to be the Sabaens named in the Qur’an (2.26) and identified Idris/Hermes as their prophet. The hermetic motif of the man of light (phos) articulated by Zosimos and found in the opening of the Corpus Hermeticum appears in the Islamic illuminationist (Ishraqi) writings of Suhrawardi (1154–1191). Ibn Wahshiyyah (ninth century), who first used the term “Ishraq,”meant a class of priests descended from Hermes’ sister. In the hermetic Kore Kosmou (Virgin of the cosmos), Isis describes herself as Hermes’ sister. Suhrawardi and Ibn Sina (980–1037) present Hermes as the disciple of “perfect Nature,” that is, Poimandres. Suhrawardi also constructed a hermetic lineage (the hakim al-’atiqa, “ancient wisdom”), including Hermes, Pythagoras, Plato, Empedocles, and the sufis Dhu’l Nun alMisri (796–859), Sahl al-Tustari (818–896), and Husayn b. Mansur al-Hallaj (858–922). Suhrawardi’s disciple Shahrazuri proposed that Idris founded the pre-Islamic monotheistic religion of the Hanifs. Suhrawardi’s model was reiterated by Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) as prisca theologia (original theology). The sufi master and theosophist Ibn al-‘Arabi (1165–1240) identified Idris as the axial prophet (qutb) sharing exclusively with Jesus, Elijah, and al-Khidr (the Green One) the status of immortals. Islamic writers of hermetic, alchemical, and philosophical works, including Ibn al-‘Arabi, designated Idris as the “prophet of the philosophers” and the “father of the philosophers” (Abu’l-Hukama’) and revered him as the prophetic patron of alchemy and the hermetic arts… (ibid.) While not a widely accepted identification, some sources have also equated the Prophet Idrīs with the enigmatic ‘Green Man’ Khiḍr; see, for example, online http://khidr.org/gunawardhana.htm (accessed 17 December 2017). 4 Biḥār al-anwār, vol.92 (Beirut: dār al-turāth al-ʿarabī, n.d.) 168-9, online http://alfeker.net/library.php?id=4027 (accessed 14 December 2017). 5 See muhaj al-daʿwāt wa minhaj al-ʿibāda (n.p, n.d.), 364-5, online http://mediafire.com/?evxzu36qt3fxxto (accessed 14 December 2017), and the text here. For a biography of Ibn Ṭāwwūs, see Etan Kohlberg A Medieval Muslim Scholar at Work: Ibn Ṭāwwūs and His Library (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1992). 6 In ‘The Devotional and Occult Works of Suhrawardi the Illuminationist’, Ishraq, 2, Moscow, 2011: 94, John Walbridge asserts that Ibn Ṭāwwūs cites Saʿd ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ashʿarī al-Qummī (d. ca. 300/912) as the source for the claim of its provenance originating with Ḥasan al-Basrī: “…The latter claims to
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have found this particular prayer in the Faḍl al-Duʿā’ of Saʿd b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Ashʿarī al-Qummī (d. ca. 300/912), who in turn says that he found it attributed to al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī” (ibid.) However, such a statement by Ibn Ṭāwwūs sourcing it to Saʿd ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ashʿarī al-Qummī does not appear in the current Beirut printed edition of this source linked above as a PDF. Nor, for that matter, does Walbridge provide a citation as to which edition of Ibn Ṭāwwūs (or even MS) he himself is using as the basis for this claim. The statement attributed to Ibn Ṭāwwūs by Walbridge also does not appear in the illuminated Iranian Majlis MS 942/26 of the muhaj al-daʿwāt displayed here (621-4). As for the work of Saʿd ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ashʿarī al-Qummī entitled the faḍl al-duʿā wa al-dhikr (the Excellence of Prayer and Remembrance), which according to Walbridge Ibn Ṭāwwūs relied on for his own attribution regarding the history of its transmission: no text (whether as a MS or a printed edition) has so far been identified by us. We are not sure exactly what Walbridge is relying on for his unreferenced statement because on further inquiry it would appear that Saʿd ibn ʿAbd Allāh alAshʿarī al-Qummī’s faḍl al-duʿā wa al-dhikr has apparently not even survived as a text. 7 Being the great 11th century CE Khurāsānī Imāmī Shiʿi traditionist, scholar, faqīh and compiler of two of the four canonical Shiʿi books of ḥadīth. 8 See miṣbāḥ al-mutahajjid wa silāḥ al-mutaʿabbid, (ed.) ʿAlī Asghar Morvārīd (Beirut: muʿassisa faqr’u’lshīʿa, first printed edition, 1411 AH/1991 CE), 601-2 (prayer #49), online http://alfeker.net/library.php?id=3654 (accessed 10 December 2017). This appears to be the only modern printed edition of the work. However, as the initial pages show, it is based only on a single MS (n.d.) that is presently located in Mashḥad, Iran. Although the MS is stamped with the date 1239 AH (1823-4 CE) on its incipit, this is not the actual colophon by the scribe. The date of the actual transcription occurs on the final page; but just where the date is supposed to occur at the conclusion of its colophon, the photostatic copy reproduced in the book has faded it out, leaving it completely illegible -- nor does its modern editor provide any further details or clues. 9 In 2014 and then 2016 we were informed by Polish scholar Łukasz Piątak that they were in the process of preparing a critical text based on MSS they had obtained from the Vatican, Turkey, Berlin, Paris and elsewhere. In a 2016 email they mentioned a stemma of their critical text consisting of 40 MSS. Although we have yet to see it, it is our opinion that without primary consideration to the now obviously Imāmī Shiʿi pedigree of this prayer that any critical text based on MSS originating from a primarily Sufi milieu of the thirteenth century CE onwards will only obscure rather than clarify matters because its Imāmī Shiʿi provenance (at least in those versions transmitted from the 10th-11th centuries of the CE onward) is, to us at least, now a settled matter. 10 Muhaj al-daʿwāt and biḥār al-anwār, ibid. 11 A defective MS of one can be found on our blog here, http://wahidazal.blogspot.de/2014/12/adefective-ms-of-40-idrisid-names.html (accessed 11 December 2017), being a commentary attributed to “Suhrawardī” but without specifying which one. The arrangement of the names in this MS are also different than the one we have delineated here. We are grateful to the site owner of the Digital Occult Manuscript Library for sending us a copy of this MS a few years ago. We are also grateful to Aydogan Kars for forwarding several noted Turkish MSS more recently. See also the items mentioned in n1 above. 12 Such as the one found on this site http://www.knozalasrar.com/knoz885/ (accessed 14 December 2014). This particular commentary, which is one of the most interesting occult commentaries of it we have so far come across, appears to be incomplete (at least as it has been transcribed online), as it only offers a full commentary on only thirty-seven of the names. It also cuts off a little under a third through the thirty-eighth name. This commentary appears to have been posted and reposted repeatedly from site to site, but there is no reference or other indication as to who originally may
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have authored it. We have so far also been unable to situate it in either the MSS tradition or the printed texts. 13 See Jaako Hämeen-Antilla The Last Pagans of Iraq: Ibn Waḥshiyya and his Nabataean Agriculture (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2006). The notion of the Godhead, i.e. the God of gods, is also consistent with the religiophilosophical paganism of late antique Neoplatonism, such as the system of Proclus (d. 485), for example, which literally regarded the Hermetica as ‘revealed scripture’. This religio-philosophical paganism of late antiquity bequeathed in translation a rich literary heritage to the Islamic world. As evidenced by his writings, and besides the obviously pronounced Mazdaean elements of his thought, Shihābuddīn Yaḥyā Suhrawardī also deeply imbibed from this wellspring. Henry Corbin highlighted this in several of his studies on Suhrawardī, especially in En islam iranien, aspect spirituels et philosophiques II: Sohrawardî et les Platoniciens des perse (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), passim. For the sources of the Arabic Hermetica, see Kevin van Bladel’s The Arabic Hermes: From Pagan Sage to Prophet of Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 14
An expression -- predicated as it is upon Suhrawardī’s metaphysical hierarchy of the lights and
angelic-intelligences (with the Light of lights standing at the apex and axis of these, hence ‘God of gods’) -- which is replete throughout his philosophical works as well as the visionary treatises and, especially, in those prayers and devotional pieces positively identified to have been authored by him, viz. the Spiritual Influxes and Sanctifications (al-wāridāt wa al-taqdīsāt) with its supplications (munājāt); see, for example, the second line of the following prayer by him, ‘The Oration of the Supreme Sanctification for each day’, online https://www.academia.edu/9576982/A_translation_and_transcription_of_Suhraward%C4%ABs_Orati on_of_the_Supreme_Sanctification_for_each_day_from_the_Book_of_the_Spiritual_Influxes_and_Sanc tifications_al-w%C4%81rid%C4%81t_wa_al-taqd%C4%ABs%C4%81t_ (accessed 11 December 2017). It is also conspicuously mentioned in his invocation to the Perfect Nature (daʿwa ṭibaʾa al-tamm), online http://wahidazal.blogspot.de/2015/10/oldest-known-ms-text-of-suhrawardis.html (accessed 11 December 2017). 15 See our translation, https://www.academia.edu/9799507/The_Birhat%C4%ABya_Conjuration_Oath_and_the_meaning_of_ its_first_28_names (accessed 11 December 2017). 16 Online, http://www.duas.org/idreesmafzaee.htm (accessed 13 December 2017). 17 We have preferred this reading here, which appears in the illuminated MS, to the one in the printed edition which is “ .”
ﰷﰲ اﳌﻮﺳﻊ
18
The illuminated MS has it as “
ّ ﻴﺐ اﳌﺘﺪاﱐ دونºﻗﺮﻳﺐ ا ﰻ ﺷﺊ ﻗﺮﺑﻪ
” (“O Proximate, the
Answerer/Responder, the One Approaching without anything [being] in His proximity”) which is the same wording as in miṣbāḥ al-mutahajjid. However, we have chosen our reading above because it is also the version in the printed edition of the muhaj al-daʿwāt and also the same worded version appearing elsewhere of this same passage. 19 After this point, most of the current standard texts add this following second clause to the fortieth name, (“.. and my succor/shelter/sanctuary in every hardship
ﻠﱵ-ﲔ ﺗﻨﻘﻄﻊ ﺣE ﺎﰄ+و ﻣﻌﺎذي ﻋﻨﺪ ﰻ ﺷﺪة و ر
and O my [only] hope at the moment when Thou hast cut off/interrupts my deception”), whereas the text of muhaj al-daʿwāt/biḥār al-anwār does not contain this specific final clause to the fortieth name at all. Instead this version continues on for a few more lines with the following from the point where our text ends above:
N. Wahid Azal © 2017
ت ا¡ﻧﻴﺎ وdﻠﻴﻪ و ٓ و ٔﻣﺎ˜ ﻣﻦ ﻋﻘﻮL ﻚ ﶊﺪ ﺻﲆ ﷲ-aﲆ ﻧL ٔﺳ¯ٔ¿ ا¾ﻠﻬﻢ رب اﻟﺼﻼة ﻦ ﰊ اﻟﺴﻮء و ٔن ﺗﴫف ﻗﻠﻮﲠﻢ ﻋﻦ ﴍ ﻣﺎ€ﺲ ﻋﲏ ٔﺑﺼﺎر اﻟﻈﻠﻤﺔ اﳌﺮﻳﺪaا)ٓﺧﺮة و ٔن ﲢ نÍﻠﻴﻚ اﻟﺘL ﺎﺑﺔ و ﻫﺬا اﳉﻬﺪ و+ٕﻚ اﻻXﺎء و ﻣL¡ﲑ ﻣﺎ ﻻ ﳝﻠﻜﻪ ﲑك ا¾ﻠﻬﻢ ﻫﺬا اs ﻳﻀﻤﺮون إﱃ اﻟﻌﲇ اﻟﻌﻈﲓ9d و ﻻ ﺣﻮل و ﻻ ﻗﻮة إﻻ …I ask/beseech Thee O my God, O Lord, [for] the blessings upon Thy prophet Muḥammad –- the salutations of God be upon Him and His Family -- and to protect/preserve/secure [me] from the chastisements/punishments of the world and the hereafter; and that Thou shut/close off from me the eyes of darkness of those inclined to wickedness and that Thou hinder/turn away their hearts from the evil [animating] their inner consciences [and change it] to the good which none other than Thee possesses! O God, this is the prayer/invocation and from Thee is the answer; and this is the effort/striving and upon Thee is [my placement of] the affirming trust; and no power and no strength is there save in God the High, the Mighty! (my trans.) Compare these two versions of the ending offered here with the much longer one offered in miṣbāḥ al-mutahajjid. 20 The rubrications in red underneath the main text is a Persian translation of the prayer. Just as in the printed edition, the item preceding ours is a prayer attributed to the Prophet Noah (which is simply one thousand repetitions of the tahlīl), and following that is one attributed to Abraham. Given that in the MSS and printed edition of the muhaj al-daʿwāt in our possession Ibn Ṭāwwūs mentions Aḥmad ibn Dāwūd al-Naʿmānī (Nuʿmānī?) (9th/10th century CE?) and the fourth section of his dafʿ alhammūm wa al-aḥzab (Defence against Troubles and [Sacred] Litanies/Prayers) as the source for the item on Noah; while not mentioning any further sources for either our item or the subsequent one; it is quite possible that Ibn Ṭāwwūs’s silence may be due to the fact that this is his source for the Prayer of the Forty Idrīsid Names with its attribution to Ḥasan al-Basrī rather than Saʿd ibn ʿAbd Allāh alAshʿarī al-Qummī’s faḍl al-duʿā wa al-dhikr as claimed by Walbridge. Like al-Qummī, we have so far been unable to locate a text for this latter source either in a MS or a printed edition -- or, moreover, to glean further biographical details about its author. However, Aḥmad ibn Dāwūd al-Naʿmānī could in fact be the father of Ibn Dāwūd al-Qummī (d. 978-9 CE), a famed Imāmī Shiʿi traditionist and jurisprudent of the tenth century CE; see http://ar.wikishia.net/view/%D8%A7%D8%A8%D9%86_%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%88%D8%AF_%D8%A7% D9%84%D9%82%D9%85%D9%8A (accessed 20 December 2017).
N. Wahid Azal © 2017
five out of ten thought beyond play
preview
recruitment Despite its alleged linearity, time has a habit of creeping up on you when you least expect it. I was re-reading our first issue, New Horizons, and I found its age impossible to ignore: elements of design and turns of phrase that we just wouldn’t use now. If you look on your work from a few months back and wish you could have done things differently, that’s a good thing — it shows your work has matured — but you have to resist the urge to go back and start editing again. In the case of our first few issues, that urge was impossible to ignore: keep an eye on our website and Twitter feeds for more information! This issue, we’re looking to the future as well as the past: please join me in welcoming our new Managing Editor, Kaitlin Tremblay, who is also the co-author of our new book Escape to Na Pali: A Journey to the Unreal. The book is also about time: looking at a classic game through the lens of today’s experiences, taking a trip to a place that only exists in your memories. Kaitlin’s first essay for us, ‘It Takes Time’, is a personal reflection on Mountain and you’ll see much more of her in the issues that follow. We’ve also got four great features that examine the nature of time in games: how classics fade over the years, what happens when online ties get severed, the virtue of patience in stealth and how characters grow with us during a game. Thanks to Trevor White, who illustrated Zoya Street’s ‘Failed Men in Failed Satires’ for our eighth issue and has provided our beautiful front cover.
Alan Williamson
Editor-in-Chief of Five out of Ten, occasional contributor to the New Statesman, Eurogamer and Critical Distance. He has played thirty hours of Unreal in the last three months and would quite happily play thirty more.
five out of ten
#9: Time
Editor-in-Chief: Alan Williamson Managing Editor: Kaitlin Tremblay Design Editor: Craig Wilson Copy Editor: Robbie Pickles Tech Wizard: Marko Jung Special Thanks: Trevor White Email: [email protected] Twitter, Facebook: @fiveoutoftenmag
contributors Becky Chambers Freelance writer and editor. Her work has appeared at The Mary Sue, Tor.com, and elsewhere around the internet. Her first novel, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, is out now in ebook and paperback.
Chay Close Writer from South Wales. He likes big words, but doesn’t know what they mean. You can find his work on Kill Screen, The Atlantic, Unwinnable, and more.
Jordan Garland Games tester at Rockstar Lincoln, on hiatus from games writing in order to keep Uncle Take Two happy. He has written for VideoGamer, NowGamer, X-ONE, gamesTM, Loaded and Techradar, badly.
Joe Köller Editor-in-Chief of Haywire Magazine, German Correspondent for Critical Distance, and irregular contributor to German sites such as Video Game Tourism, Superlevel, and WASD.
Kaitlin Tremblay Managing Editor of Five out of Ten, and an editor for a children’s educational publisher in Ontario. She has developed games such as Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before and There Are Monsters Under Your Bed. Cover image: Trevor White, @rocketboots
© 2014 Five out of Ten. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without explicit permission is prohibited. Products named in these pages are trade names, or trademarks, of their respective companies.
http://www.fiveoutoftenmagazine.com 9-SHEIK-02-PREVIEW
contents 5
I Was Born for This
Exploring the musical triggers of memory.
No Refuge: Bullet Hell and the Art of Excess
11
Wanderer in a Sea of Stars
19
Death of a Marksman
28
Creature Comforts
35
It Takes Time
44
The Temple of Time
51
Silence from a Dead Land
58
Down and Out in Dwarf Fortress
67
Dear Stealth Games...
78
Examining a genre of games which overwhelm our senses with a unique challenge.
Space exploration games like Out There are a unique way to experience the sublime.
Military shooters need to emphasise dying, not killing.
We can form bonds with animals in games that are stronger than any human companion.
Mountain provides a stark, refreshing take on the depiction of mental illness in games.
Learning to embrace the worship of nostalgia with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
What will happen to the world of Lordran when Dark Souls’ servers are decommissioned?
In Dwarf Fortress, the banal minutiae of life becomes the stuff of legend.
A love letter to patience.
have a mountain of deadlines, paperwork that needs filing, a laundry hamper I’d rather not discuss, and an inbox tugging at my sleeve like a neglected child. Focus is not something easily achieved right now, but I have to write this essay — the one you’re reading now. I want to write this essay. So I’ve done what I always do when my brain doesn’t want to get to work. I’ve turned off my router, full-screened my word processor and, crucially, put track 20 of the Portal 2 OST (Volume 1) on repeat. The song is called I Made It All Up, and it is my silver bullet for a frazzled mind.
5/10
I WAS BORN FOR THIS Becky Chambers I
don’t have the vocabulary to properly talk about music. I’ve never studied it — unless you count a few half-hearted years of playing saxophone in my middle school band — and I’m not musically inclined. I can’t correctly describe what’s being pumped through my headphones right now, at least not in terms of mechanics. There are bouncing notes, made by the plucking of some electronic chord. They dart and ripple, like drops of water hitting a pond. There’s no melody, just a scattering of soft reverberation. This continues for a while, and the repetition of it makes the dissonance in my head smooth itself out. But I’m not content yet. I’m waiting for the best moment of all: the high, clear flight of a string instrument, soaring undisturbed above the ripples. It hitches itself to something deep within my chest and pulls me free.
There has been much written about how game mechanics often inspire deeply focused productivity in the real world — that is, in the oft used word and concept “gamification”. Gamers are intimately acquainted with this mindset, one focused on rewards for progress and the achievement of goals. Game designer Jane McGonigal discusses this at length in her book Reality Is Broken, which makes a case for increasing both productivity and positivity by infusing our everyday tasks with game-like systems. I suppose, in some sense, I’m trying to achieve the same ends when I prescribe myself a particular game soundtrack. But unlike the approach McGonigal advocates, I’m not trying to make my life more game-like. I’m trying to tap into a place the game took me to, a place anchored within my brain.
NO REFUGE BULLET HELL AND THE ART OF EXCESS
CHAY CLOSE
E
ver since Space Invaders first shuffled its way across screens in 1978, the shoot-em-up formula has been engrained in the public consciousness. From Galaga to Gradius, the genre’s crude blips and bloops — the sound, image, and feel of spaceships fighting through space — has become one of the key characterisations of the medium.
Shoot-em-ups are iconic in their simplicity. Enemies emerge from one side of the screen; a lone protagonist sits on the other. This setup tells the player everything they need to know, and gives them the tools to progress: a button to shoot the enemy, and a two-dimensional plane of movement on which intent is easily translated. By nature, the shoot-em-up is clear, concise, and uncomplicated.
Which is perhaps why, for all of its similarities, the most disorienting thing about the ‘bullet hell’ shooter is that it is profoundly complicated. A direct descendant of the shoot-em-up, any given bullet hell game will bear a striking aesthetic resemblance to its predecessors, those blips and bloops easily identifiable. Both shoot-em-ups and bullet hell games involve shooting copious amounts of unthinking enemies that descend toward your ship from the top of the screen, and both revel in the simplicity of the one-versus-many struggle. Yet the bullet hell shooter differs simply because it offers more: more bullets, more enemies, more challenge.
It’s strange to think that something so vast can fit onto such a tiny screen.
Wanderer in a Sea of Stars Joe Köller I
’m playing Out There on my phone, a game about being stranded in space. Fortunately, you can jump between star systems, so the vastness is yours to explore. The star in the last system I jumped to turned out to be a black hole, and now I’m low on fuel with no planets nearby to gather more. There’s another star in range, about an inch from this one on the map, but I can’t get there without depleting my reserves. This next jump will be my last. At the beginning of the game, Out There pinpoints the source of a mysterious signal, the only beacon of hope for your lost little space farer. It then whizzes you back to your starting location as dozens and dozens of stars swoosh past. When coming to terms with my own helplessness, moving through Out There’s galaxies, I am experiencing the sublime: a joyful apprehension created by facing something far greater than myself, beautiful and terrifying all
at once, like the black hole in my path. Space is a new frontier for confronting the feelings of insignificance, but humanity’s contemplation of its place in the grand scheme of things came long before. The sublime entered philosophical discourse in the 18th century when a number of British thinkers wrote about their trips across the Alps, describing the peculiar mix of feelings: “[A]n agreeable kind of horror”, in the words of Joseph Addison. It is a complex concept, with roots in ancient philosophy. Throughout the romantic period, many artists were interested in further exploring nature’s capacity to be both beautiful and dangerous at the same time. Immanuel Kant gives his interpretation of the sublime in his Critique of Judgement, where he differentiates between the dynamically and mathematical sublime. The former, according to Kant, is inspired by fearful sights observed from a safe distance:
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MILITARY SHOOTER?
DEATH OF A MARKSMAN
JORDAN GARLAND
I
f the upcoming Battlefield: Hardline is the series’ equivalent of your dad having a midlife crisis and deciding to become a volunteer community support officer, then Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is like the last ten seasons of The Simpsons, wheeling out Kevin Spacey in a vain, desperate attempt to fend off irrelevance. These are the hallmarks of a genre wallowing in its own dull, grey filth: a genre out of ideas. Quite simply: why should anybody care?
You could cite Titanfall as a very different beast from previous military shooters — except that it sort of isn’t, really. It’s a logical step forward for the genre at large, but it isn’t revolutionary. It’s derivative as hell. It hones an accessible chaos, taking the immediacy of Call of Duty, the frenetic rinse and repeat in killing or being killed once every six seconds, combined with the verticality of Unreal Tournament, jetpacking around urban playgrounds like a daddy longlegs with nothing to lose. On paper, this is the perfect composite. It’s still fun — really fun — but despite enjoying it to an unhealthy degree for about two weeks, the feeling waned, and I stopped playing.
There are dog people, cat people, and people like me who love everything — especially otters. Otters are great. But whether you’re a fan of hamsters or harriers, the feelings of affection we have toward animals are no less genuine than the ones we feel for humans. In fact, since they don’t truly reciprocate, the ‘friendships’ we have with our pets are pure, absolute. They accept us for who we are.
Meg
Creature Comforts Alan Williamson
V
ideogames have always struggled to meaningfully convey human interactions and emotions. Even with the best-written characters, the most engaging motion capture and voice acting, the impassable aesthetic-technological gulf of the uncanny valley gets in the way. We find it hard to empathise with humans in games, because they just aren’t quite real enough. Their eyes are glazed over and their faces lumpen, muscle-less, like looking at figures in a wax museum. Paradoxically, the closer to reality the simulation comes, the more distanced from it we become. As a computer-generated character moves closer to ‘reality’, our brain doesn’t need to fill in the gaps in the representation, so it focuses on the details. This is where a computer’s representation falls short.
In the battle to create artificial people with human emotion, we’ve overlooked something obvious — something close to our hearts. We already have honorary persons, creatures that feel basic emotions such as happiness or fear even if they lack the ability to know what we’re thinking. When we describe a dog as mischievous or a cat as lazy, that’s not the animal — that’s your brain, filling in the gaps. When it comes to games, fake animals are actually far better suited to eliciting emotions than fake human actors. Quite simply, if games want to make us feel emotions, then games, like that vat of ‘Red Tick Beer’ in The Simpsons, need more dog.
Jasper
Putting a Name to a Face
H
umans are great at anthropomorphising. We can project our own expectations of emotions and feelings onto creatures that can never experience them. Consider a picture of a ‘guilty’ dog that’s been caught chewing the furniture. Dogs may not actually feel guilt, of course — but we attribute it to them anyway. Dogs are great associative learners, and if they adopt a ‘guilty’ posture in response to a scolding voice, we don’t feel so mad at them any more. Their behaviour conforms to our expectations: the next time we use our ‘bad dog’ voice, they’ll do their guilty pose to get out of trouble. It works- for dogs and humans alike!
This act of anthropomorphising is behind many of the internet’s most popular images: ‘Lolcats’ are an obvious example. Ceiling Cat isn’t really watching you masturbate — Ceiling Cat doesn’t know what masturbation is — but we can laugh along with it. This isn’t limited to animals: we see faces in everything, from Jesus in a piece of toast to the pocket of a pool table shouting “OM NOM NOM NOM” as it swallows the eight ball.
One of the many crazes that swept my childhood was the Tamagotchi, a “digital pet” from Bandai. According to the ‘Tamagotchi L.i.f.e’ website, which seems to be as much a part of the Nineties as the creatures themselves, over 79 million Tamagotchi have been purchased. The quintessential Tamagotchi lives in a pebble-shaped keychain: it begins its artificial life as a blob with eyes. As you care for the Tamagotchi by feeding it pellets and playing rudimentary games, it evolves into a variety of creatures which look similar to normal animals. I had a cheap knockoff digital pet which was a puppy: it used to wake up in the middle of the night and defecate all over the LCD screen. Based on my experiences of puppies, this is actually quite realistic.
Spot
It goes without saying that kids of my generation mourned the deaths of their Tamagotchi like any other pet, whether the battery died or they drowned in their own excrement. Another bastion of Nineties virtual pets were the Norns from Creatures. In an essay for Unwinnable, Jenn Frank discusses how Creatures augments the inherent cuteness of the Norns with artificial intelligence:
“In one apocryphal story, a Norn had become ill, had died, and another Norn — the two had always been inseparable — refused to abandon the body. Eventually both creatures were dead. The devoted Norn had starved to death by waiting. “You can’t program that!” one of the software designers had told the (Wired) magazine excitedly.”
Frank describes keeping her Norns on floppy disks to prevent their deaths, eventually finding a box of digital creatures in stasis at her mother’s house. Eventually, the virtual cats and dogs of Petz and Nintendogs replaced Norns and Tamagotchi. These puppies and kittens can’t die — I don’t think anyone really wants to go through that, in a game or the real world — although they may run away if neglected. As players are not made to feel responsible for their Petz, the game becomes more of a desk toy than and out-and-out life simulation.
Norman
Virtual Hamsters When it comes to artificial life, you can’t avoid The Sims, one of a handful of games that appeals to a massive audience that wouldn’t necessarily consider themselves to be ‘gamers’. The Sims is a kind of digital doll’s house combined with the pre-medicated tension of Mouse Trap: you create your Sims, giving them unique personality traits and desires, then set them loose in the neighbourhood and watch the sparks fly. The latest instalment, The Sims 4, promises “smarter Sims and weirder stories”. Sims have largely escaped a trip to the uncanny valley by eschewing realism; the games deliberately target older hardware in order to reach customers who have no need for a liquid-cooled supercomputer. The reason why we find our Sims so convincing is simple: they are pets. Yet unlike the Norns or Tamagotchi, players of the Sims often revel in the death of their creations — and they lobby the developers for increasingly inventive ways to kill them off. Sims rarely appeal directly for their master’s attention, unless one of their ‘need meters’ is empty and they’re desperately in need of the bathroom, food or companionship. The player observes their Sims from a ‘god’s eye’ view, similar to other strategy games like Civilization, which distances us from our Sims, allowing for acts of dramatic cruelty. In the grand scheme of pets, Sims aren’t like dogs or cats — they’re more like hamsters, running
Winston
around a maze we have specifically constructed for them. Despite the superficial similarities, Sims are less human than our real-life companion animals. To complicate matters, Sims can keep their own pets, too. I spoke to my friend Jordan Erica Webber, an enthusiastic Simkeeper: “As the series has progressed the pets have moved further from being objects and closer to being characters. In The Sims 3, cats, dogs, and horses (introduced in the Pets expansion) have names, needs, wants, relationships, and emotional states.” “You can play as the pet, directing it to perform certain actions, though like all Sims if you have autonomy turned up and don’t keep an eye on them they might do things you don’t want them to (e.g. pee on the carpet, chew the furniture).”
Churchill
Dogs & Dragons
Lagi
Sausages The distinction between Sims and their pets has blurred over time. In The Sims 3, pets are just another type of Sim, albeit a little more furry and diminutive. It’s a similar experience to Rare’s underrated Viva Piñata, where the player must cultivate a garden to attract all sorts of adorable, sugary denizens to Piñata Island. You can name the piñatas, change their colours by feeding them flowers, and feel a tinge of loss when a Syrupent devours your favourite Mousemallow, but there remains emotional distance between you and your creatures. Real pets are more than just zoo animals — they’re our friends, even if the friendship is a little lopsided. What’s lacking from games like The Sims and Viva Piñata is the inability for such a friendship to develop. But other games allow us to form a real bond with artificial creatures. My earliest memory of such a bond came from one of my
all-time favourite games, Panzer Dragoon Saga. The player character, Edge, is rescued from death by a dragon and the two form a natural partnership. But unlike regular non-player characters in an RPG, who are usually entwined with the player due to the demands of the story rather than your emotional investments, you’re able to interact with your dragon at campsites across the world. At first, the dragon doesn’t acknowledge you much. You approach it and can choose to pet it, or not. Over time, the bond strengthens with your dragon — regardless of the story — and you can name it and even unlock new magical abilities. It lets out an affectionate screech when you arrive at the camp and follows you around with a bounce in its step. You’re dependent on the dragon because of circumstance, but you become friends through these interactions.
Someone else’s dog, Fable II (2008)
When it comes to building relationships with artificial characters in games, few have promised as much — and disappointed as much — as Lionhead Studios and their Black and White series of ‘god games’. I remember racing home from school at the start of the summer holidays when Black and White was released, agonising over the choice of titanic creature to be my avatar in this land of the gods. I chose a tiger, but no matter how many times I stroked his chin with a rainbow-coloured leash, we never really bonded. Part of the problem was that Black and White’s much-hyped artificial intelligence was, like the rest of the game, riddled with bugs. Your creature would be in a state of permanent confusion. It was really nobody’s fault, but as they cried in fear or had uncontrollable diarrhoea in the middle of a village you couldn’t help but feel like a bad parent. Like real children, the creatures didn’t really come with a manual, and after a few hours I just couldn’t take it any more. I’ve been playing games for over twenty years, and the fate of that poor tiger is the saddest moment of all of them. In a strange twist, the same AI that powered my saddest gaming memory is also behind one of my fondest ones. In Lionhead’s Fable II, you befriend a dog as a child: the canine companion becomes your guide through Albion, replacing the need
to rely on mini maps and artificial ‘spider sense’style abilities. The dog growls when danger is near, defends you from enemies, and barks when it can smell buried treasure. Or you can just play fetch or give it a cuddle if you feel like taking a break from being a hero. Whenever the villain kills your dog near the game’s conclusion, it’s not just some emotional cliché of kicking a puppy — you lose your talisman. The world is quieter and its secrets are no longer revealed to you. At the end of Fable II, you are offered a choice: restore the lives of all those killed by Lucien except your family, bring back your family and dog, or receive a huge sum of cash. Virtuous hero that I am, I chose the dog. I think my family are still in the saved game somewhere, but I’m not sure — I was having too much fun with my faithful companion Sausages. I care more about that collection of polygons and algorithms than any virtual human I’ve ever met — possibly even some real-life ones, too. When I sat down to write this piece, I asked our readers for pictures of their pets because I knew there were many of them who would understand that bond. I’ve cared for and lost pets before, real and virtual — Homer the hamster, Buster the rabbit, Meg the golden retriever — and I hope that games continue to include companion animals: not to allow for loss, but to allow for friendship.
@JordanMcDeere
@davidsgallant
@lesmocon
@mandogfish
@gw0001
@johnnycullen
@gethill
@metalblackbird
@mralexbethke
Michelle Bradley Michelle Bradley
@NickCapozzoli @qwallath
@normalmode
@pillowfort
@rowankaiser
@Rick_Lane
Further Reading Jenn Frank — Playing God: On Death, Motherhood and ‘Creatures’, Unwinnable http://www.unwinnable.com/2012/01/27/playing-god-on-death-motherhood-and-creatures/#.U9Ta1lYepQo/
Jordan Erica Webber — Blood, Births and Backsides, Five out of Ten #3 Nate Lanxon — Tamagotchis to make a 2014 comeback, dot matrix LCD ‘n’ all, Wired. http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013–11/25/tamagotchi-revival/
time
It Takes Time
Kaitlin Tremblay
“
These things take time.” This is what my doctor told me as I sat crying in her office, clutching my bottle of antidepressants and demanding to know why I still felt like I didn’t deserve to live.
This is the same thing I say when people ask me what’s so great about Mountain, the mountain simulator published by Double Fine and written by Irish filmmaker and artist David O’Reilly. “It takes time,” I say, “to see what makes Mountain so good.”
For a game that say much, a lot has been said about Mountain. Is it a game? What do we count as interaction? How do we talk about games other than in terms of technical or analytical terms? Questioning the nature of interactivity in videogames such as Mountain, Brendan Keogh asks, “At what point did looking and hearing stop being actions—interactions with a thing—in and of themselves?” But he also discusses how he found Mountain to be not about his expected “nothingness”, but more simply about “nothing” at all. There’s a line in the adventure game Kentucky Route Zero that has stuck with me: “Keep your eyes open, especially in the dark.” What do we see when there’s nothing to be seen? Mountain is no more profound or evocative than a horoscope — and as someone who regrets getting their zodiac sign tattooed onto their body, that statement carries a lot of weight for me. Mountain is about nothing. But that doesn’t mean nothing happens.
The Temple of Time
Alan Williamson
W
hat’s your favourite game? What’s the best game ever? There are millions of possible answers to this question (and none of them are Blinx: The Time Sweeper) but critics and players often vote for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Released for the Nintendo 64 at the end of 1998, it holds a Guinness World Record as the most critically acclaimed game of all time. It tops every magazine reader’s poll. And I… well, I’ve never played it. Compared to other media like books and music, games are more susceptible to the ravages of time. Most are explicit works of fleeting entertainment rather than lasting cultural titans — see the yearly releases of FIFA and Call of Duty - but they’re also products at the bleeding edge of technology, and technology ages quickly. Ocarina of Time was the first Zelda game rendered in three dimensions compared to the two-dimensional, birds-eyeview of previous Zelda adventures. While modern games are close to digital paintings in terms of art quality, the games of 1998 required imagination to bring life to the angular boxes that populated their worlds. There’s a reason why games pay aesthetic homage to the 8- or 16-bit era: no one wants to go back to the blurry, foggy days of the PlayStation, Saturn, and N64 — even those of us who were there at the time! This is why Ocarina of Time has aged dramatically, but A Link to the Past remains relatively fresh.
Silence from a Dead Land Joe Köller
I
n the heart of Lordran, connecting the Undead Parish with Anor Londo, there’s a place called Sen’s Fortress: a stronghold filled with perilous walkways, swinging axes, and rolling boulders. During the many attempts it took me to navigate these traps successfully, one question crossed my mind several times: who is Sen? The origin of the location’s name is never established. Maybe Sen’s Fortress is named after a person, but why would they have designed such a labyrinth? Some have explained the name as a mistranslation of the Japanese sen, meaning ‘thousand’, while others refer to Senhime, the daughter of a Japanese Shogun from the 17th century. We’ll never know for sure. Dark Souls deliberately makes you a stranger in its world. The game begins with your character locked in the Undead Asylum. You have been imprisoned there because of a curse that makes it impossible for you to die, but will eventually destroy your old self in a process of constant reincarnation. When you are set free and return to Lordran, looking for a way to lift the curse, you discover that it has spread beyond control: the rest of the world’s inhabitants are as dead as you. Lordran is filled with those the curse has broken and a few who are barely clinging on to their sanity; there’s certainly nobody you can ask for directions.
Down and Out in Dwarf Fortress
Chay Close
F
rom Commander Shepard’s fight against alien invasion in Mass Effect to Gandhi’s bid for world conquest in Civilization, a large number of videogames are concerned with securing a place in history. More often than not, the player is the crux of a grand narrative: a story that will be written about for years to come. Non-player characters are reduced to footnotes, their stories but stepping stones, if not outright hindrances, on the player’s quest for glory.
Viewed from a distance, Bay 12’s Dwarf Fortress fits easily into this tradition. Dropped into a sprawling, procedurally-generated world, the player is cast in the role of a leader and asked to develop a dwarven civilization. With a gathering of citizens ready to take orders under their wing, they are offered the opportunity to contribute to their world’s history: to stitch together their own grand narrative, in the hopes of leaving some sort of lasting mark on the world around them. A sandbox civilization sim, Dwarf Fortress doesn’t have a stated goal, but instead threatens to last until the end of time — or, more likely, until the player’s fortress crumbles as a result of enemy invasion or garden-variety negligence. From one fortress to the next, the world is persistent: the tales of any given civilization or dwarf could potentially be passed down on to the next. Naturally, the first-time player will want to involve themselves in their world’s history as much as possible, to see their influence spread through the ages.
Dear Stealth Games...
Becky Chambers
Dear Stealth Games, We’re not exclusive, you and I. You’ve never been the only genre in my life. I’ve been going steady with RPGs for a long time, and I do love a summer fling with a shooter. But you...you’re something else. You, I’ll always make time for. I’ll never forget how we met. It was my freshman year in college, and one of my fellow dorm residents handed me his copy of Thief II. It was unlike anything I’d ever played. It had the adrenaline punch of an action game, the complexity of a good puzzle, the pace of a late night fox trot — slow, slow, quick, quick. Throughout that game, your allure was palpable. From the moment I let that first water arrow fly, I was smitten. I watched as my target — a burning torch — fizzled into smoke. I heard the sounds of guards nearby, and suddenly, darkness became a comfort. I understood what it was you wanted of me. You didn’t want me to run in, guns blazing, and blood spattering. No, you wanted me to think things through. You wanted me to savour every moment.
It’s Time to continue our latest issue get it from
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fiveout of ten year one
Five great magazines, one essential collection 1: New Horizons November 2012
2: Players Guide February 2013
3: Reflecting Reality April 2013
4: Storytellers July 2013
5: Players Guide September 2013
Get it from http://www.fiveoutoftenmagazine.com
ESCAPE TO NA PALI: A JOURNEY TO THE UNREAL
The new book from Kaitlin Tremblay and Alan Williamson Get it now from http://fiveoutoftenmagazine.com/
http://fiveoutoftenmagazine.com @fiveoutoftenmag
preview
recruitment Despite its alleged linearity, time has a habit of creeping up on you when you least expect it. I was re-reading our first issue, New Horizons, and I found its age impossible to ignore: elements of design and turns of phrase that we just wouldn’t use now. If you look on your work from a few months back and wish you could have done things differently, that’s a good thing — it shows your work has matured — but you have to resist the urge to go back and start editing again. In the case of our first few issues, that urge was impossible to ignore: keep an eye on our website and Twitter feeds for more information! This issue, we’re looking to the future as well as the past: please join me in welcoming our new Managing Editor, Kaitlin Tremblay, who is also the co-author of our new book Escape to Na Pali: A Journey to the Unreal. The book is also about time: looking at a classic game through the lens of today’s experiences, taking a trip to a place that only exists in your memories. Kaitlin’s first essay for us, ‘It Takes Time’, is a personal reflection on Mountain and you’ll see much more of her in the issues that follow. We’ve also got four great features that examine the nature of time in games: how classics fade over the years, what happens when online ties get severed, the virtue of patience in stealth and how characters grow with us during a game. Thanks to Trevor White, who illustrated Zoya Street’s ‘Failed Men in Failed Satires’ for our eighth issue and has provided our beautiful front cover.
Alan Williamson
Editor-in-Chief of Five out of Ten, occasional contributor to the New Statesman, Eurogamer and Critical Distance. He has played thirty hours of Unreal in the last three months and would quite happily play thirty more.
five out of ten
#9: Time
Editor-in-Chief: Alan Williamson Managing Editor: Kaitlin Tremblay Design Editor: Craig Wilson Copy Editor: Robbie Pickles Tech Wizard: Marko Jung Special Thanks: Trevor White Email: [email protected] Twitter, Facebook: @fiveoutoftenmag
contributors Becky Chambers Freelance writer and editor. Her work has appeared at The Mary Sue, Tor.com, and elsewhere around the internet. Her first novel, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, is out now in ebook and paperback.
Chay Close Writer from South Wales. He likes big words, but doesn’t know what they mean. You can find his work on Kill Screen, The Atlantic, Unwinnable, and more.
Jordan Garland Games tester at Rockstar Lincoln, on hiatus from games writing in order to keep Uncle Take Two happy. He has written for VideoGamer, NowGamer, X-ONE, gamesTM, Loaded and Techradar, badly.
Joe Köller Editor-in-Chief of Haywire Magazine, German Correspondent for Critical Distance, and irregular contributor to German sites such as Video Game Tourism, Superlevel, and WASD.
Kaitlin Tremblay Managing Editor of Five out of Ten, and an editor for a children’s educational publisher in Ontario. She has developed games such as Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before and There Are Monsters Under Your Bed. Cover image: Trevor White, @rocketboots
© 2014 Five out of Ten. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without explicit permission is prohibited. Products named in these pages are trade names, or trademarks, of their respective companies.
http://www.fiveoutoftenmagazine.com 9-SHEIK-02-PREVIEW
contents 5
I Was Born for This
Exploring the musical triggers of memory.
No Refuge: Bullet Hell and the Art of Excess
11
Wanderer in a Sea of Stars
19
Death of a Marksman
28
Creature Comforts
35
It Takes Time
44
The Temple of Time
51
Silence from a Dead Land
58
Down and Out in Dwarf Fortress
67
Dear Stealth Games...
78
Examining a genre of games which overwhelm our senses with a unique challenge.
Space exploration games like Out There are a unique way to experience the sublime.
Military shooters need to emphasise dying, not killing.
We can form bonds with animals in games that are stronger than any human companion.
Mountain provides a stark, refreshing take on the depiction of mental illness in games.
Learning to embrace the worship of nostalgia with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
What will happen to the world of Lordran when Dark Souls’ servers are decommissioned?
In Dwarf Fortress, the banal minutiae of life becomes the stuff of legend.
A love letter to patience.
have a mountain of deadlines, paperwork that needs filing, a laundry hamper I’d rather not discuss, and an inbox tugging at my sleeve like a neglected child. Focus is not something easily achieved right now, but I have to write this essay — the one you’re reading now. I want to write this essay. So I’ve done what I always do when my brain doesn’t want to get to work. I’ve turned off my router, full-screened my word processor and, crucially, put track 20 of the Portal 2 OST (Volume 1) on repeat. The song is called I Made It All Up, and it is my silver bullet for a frazzled mind.
5/10
I WAS BORN FOR THIS Becky Chambers I
don’t have the vocabulary to properly talk about music. I’ve never studied it — unless you count a few half-hearted years of playing saxophone in my middle school band — and I’m not musically inclined. I can’t correctly describe what’s being pumped through my headphones right now, at least not in terms of mechanics. There are bouncing notes, made by the plucking of some electronic chord. They dart and ripple, like drops of water hitting a pond. There’s no melody, just a scattering of soft reverberation. This continues for a while, and the repetition of it makes the dissonance in my head smooth itself out. But I’m not content yet. I’m waiting for the best moment of all: the high, clear flight of a string instrument, soaring undisturbed above the ripples. It hitches itself to something deep within my chest and pulls me free.
There has been much written about how game mechanics often inspire deeply focused productivity in the real world — that is, in the oft used word and concept “gamification”. Gamers are intimately acquainted with this mindset, one focused on rewards for progress and the achievement of goals. Game designer Jane McGonigal discusses this at length in her book Reality Is Broken, which makes a case for increasing both productivity and positivity by infusing our everyday tasks with game-like systems. I suppose, in some sense, I’m trying to achieve the same ends when I prescribe myself a particular game soundtrack. But unlike the approach McGonigal advocates, I’m not trying to make my life more game-like. I’m trying to tap into a place the game took me to, a place anchored within my brain.
NO REFUGE BULLET HELL AND THE ART OF EXCESS
CHAY CLOSE
E
ver since Space Invaders first shuffled its way across screens in 1978, the shoot-em-up formula has been engrained in the public consciousness. From Galaga to Gradius, the genre’s crude blips and bloops — the sound, image, and feel of spaceships fighting through space — has become one of the key characterisations of the medium.
Shoot-em-ups are iconic in their simplicity. Enemies emerge from one side of the screen; a lone protagonist sits on the other. This setup tells the player everything they need to know, and gives them the tools to progress: a button to shoot the enemy, and a two-dimensional plane of movement on which intent is easily translated. By nature, the shoot-em-up is clear, concise, and uncomplicated.
Which is perhaps why, for all of its similarities, the most disorienting thing about the ‘bullet hell’ shooter is that it is profoundly complicated. A direct descendant of the shoot-em-up, any given bullet hell game will bear a striking aesthetic resemblance to its predecessors, those blips and bloops easily identifiable. Both shoot-em-ups and bullet hell games involve shooting copious amounts of unthinking enemies that descend toward your ship from the top of the screen, and both revel in the simplicity of the one-versus-many struggle. Yet the bullet hell shooter differs simply because it offers more: more bullets, more enemies, more challenge.
It’s strange to think that something so vast can fit onto such a tiny screen.
Wanderer in a Sea of Stars Joe Köller I
’m playing Out There on my phone, a game about being stranded in space. Fortunately, you can jump between star systems, so the vastness is yours to explore. The star in the last system I jumped to turned out to be a black hole, and now I’m low on fuel with no planets nearby to gather more. There’s another star in range, about an inch from this one on the map, but I can’t get there without depleting my reserves. This next jump will be my last. At the beginning of the game, Out There pinpoints the source of a mysterious signal, the only beacon of hope for your lost little space farer. It then whizzes you back to your starting location as dozens and dozens of stars swoosh past. When coming to terms with my own helplessness, moving through Out There’s galaxies, I am experiencing the sublime: a joyful apprehension created by facing something far greater than myself, beautiful and terrifying all
at once, like the black hole in my path. Space is a new frontier for confronting the feelings of insignificance, but humanity’s contemplation of its place in the grand scheme of things came long before. The sublime entered philosophical discourse in the 18th century when a number of British thinkers wrote about their trips across the Alps, describing the peculiar mix of feelings: “[A]n agreeable kind of horror”, in the words of Joseph Addison. It is a complex concept, with roots in ancient philosophy. Throughout the romantic period, many artists were interested in further exploring nature’s capacity to be both beautiful and dangerous at the same time. Immanuel Kant gives his interpretation of the sublime in his Critique of Judgement, where he differentiates between the dynamically and mathematical sublime. The former, according to Kant, is inspired by fearful sights observed from a safe distance:
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MILITARY SHOOTER?
DEATH OF A MARKSMAN
JORDAN GARLAND
I
f the upcoming Battlefield: Hardline is the series’ equivalent of your dad having a midlife crisis and deciding to become a volunteer community support officer, then Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is like the last ten seasons of The Simpsons, wheeling out Kevin Spacey in a vain, desperate attempt to fend off irrelevance. These are the hallmarks of a genre wallowing in its own dull, grey filth: a genre out of ideas. Quite simply: why should anybody care?
You could cite Titanfall as a very different beast from previous military shooters — except that it sort of isn’t, really. It’s a logical step forward for the genre at large, but it isn’t revolutionary. It’s derivative as hell. It hones an accessible chaos, taking the immediacy of Call of Duty, the frenetic rinse and repeat in killing or being killed once every six seconds, combined with the verticality of Unreal Tournament, jetpacking around urban playgrounds like a daddy longlegs with nothing to lose. On paper, this is the perfect composite. It’s still fun — really fun — but despite enjoying it to an unhealthy degree for about two weeks, the feeling waned, and I stopped playing.
There are dog people, cat people, and people like me who love everything — especially otters. Otters are great. But whether you’re a fan of hamsters or harriers, the feelings of affection we have toward animals are no less genuine than the ones we feel for humans. In fact, since they don’t truly reciprocate, the ‘friendships’ we have with our pets are pure, absolute. They accept us for who we are.
Meg
Creature Comforts Alan Williamson
V
ideogames have always struggled to meaningfully convey human interactions and emotions. Even with the best-written characters, the most engaging motion capture and voice acting, the impassable aesthetic-technological gulf of the uncanny valley gets in the way. We find it hard to empathise with humans in games, because they just aren’t quite real enough. Their eyes are glazed over and their faces lumpen, muscle-less, like looking at figures in a wax museum. Paradoxically, the closer to reality the simulation comes, the more distanced from it we become. As a computer-generated character moves closer to ‘reality’, our brain doesn’t need to fill in the gaps in the representation, so it focuses on the details. This is where a computer’s representation falls short.
In the battle to create artificial people with human emotion, we’ve overlooked something obvious — something close to our hearts. We already have honorary persons, creatures that feel basic emotions such as happiness or fear even if they lack the ability to know what we’re thinking. When we describe a dog as mischievous or a cat as lazy, that’s not the animal — that’s your brain, filling in the gaps. When it comes to games, fake animals are actually far better suited to eliciting emotions than fake human actors. Quite simply, if games want to make us feel emotions, then games, like that vat of ‘Red Tick Beer’ in The Simpsons, need more dog.
Jasper
Putting a Name to a Face
H
umans are great at anthropomorphising. We can project our own expectations of emotions and feelings onto creatures that can never experience them. Consider a picture of a ‘guilty’ dog that’s been caught chewing the furniture. Dogs may not actually feel guilt, of course — but we attribute it to them anyway. Dogs are great associative learners, and if they adopt a ‘guilty’ posture in response to a scolding voice, we don’t feel so mad at them any more. Their behaviour conforms to our expectations: the next time we use our ‘bad dog’ voice, they’ll do their guilty pose to get out of trouble. It works- for dogs and humans alike!
This act of anthropomorphising is behind many of the internet’s most popular images: ‘Lolcats’ are an obvious example. Ceiling Cat isn’t really watching you masturbate — Ceiling Cat doesn’t know what masturbation is — but we can laugh along with it. This isn’t limited to animals: we see faces in everything, from Jesus in a piece of toast to the pocket of a pool table shouting “OM NOM NOM NOM” as it swallows the eight ball.
One of the many crazes that swept my childhood was the Tamagotchi, a “digital pet” from Bandai. According to the ‘Tamagotchi L.i.f.e’ website, which seems to be as much a part of the Nineties as the creatures themselves, over 79 million Tamagotchi have been purchased. The quintessential Tamagotchi lives in a pebble-shaped keychain: it begins its artificial life as a blob with eyes. As you care for the Tamagotchi by feeding it pellets and playing rudimentary games, it evolves into a variety of creatures which look similar to normal animals. I had a cheap knockoff digital pet which was a puppy: it used to wake up in the middle of the night and defecate all over the LCD screen. Based on my experiences of puppies, this is actually quite realistic.
Spot
It goes without saying that kids of my generation mourned the deaths of their Tamagotchi like any other pet, whether the battery died or they drowned in their own excrement. Another bastion of Nineties virtual pets were the Norns from Creatures. In an essay for Unwinnable, Jenn Frank discusses how Creatures augments the inherent cuteness of the Norns with artificial intelligence:
“In one apocryphal story, a Norn had become ill, had died, and another Norn — the two had always been inseparable — refused to abandon the body. Eventually both creatures were dead. The devoted Norn had starved to death by waiting. “You can’t program that!” one of the software designers had told the (Wired) magazine excitedly.”
Frank describes keeping her Norns on floppy disks to prevent their deaths, eventually finding a box of digital creatures in stasis at her mother’s house. Eventually, the virtual cats and dogs of Petz and Nintendogs replaced Norns and Tamagotchi. These puppies and kittens can’t die — I don’t think anyone really wants to go through that, in a game or the real world — although they may run away if neglected. As players are not made to feel responsible for their Petz, the game becomes more of a desk toy than and out-and-out life simulation.
Norman
Virtual Hamsters When it comes to artificial life, you can’t avoid The Sims, one of a handful of games that appeals to a massive audience that wouldn’t necessarily consider themselves to be ‘gamers’. The Sims is a kind of digital doll’s house combined with the pre-medicated tension of Mouse Trap: you create your Sims, giving them unique personality traits and desires, then set them loose in the neighbourhood and watch the sparks fly. The latest instalment, The Sims 4, promises “smarter Sims and weirder stories”. Sims have largely escaped a trip to the uncanny valley by eschewing realism; the games deliberately target older hardware in order to reach customers who have no need for a liquid-cooled supercomputer. The reason why we find our Sims so convincing is simple: they are pets. Yet unlike the Norns or Tamagotchi, players of the Sims often revel in the death of their creations — and they lobby the developers for increasingly inventive ways to kill them off. Sims rarely appeal directly for their master’s attention, unless one of their ‘need meters’ is empty and they’re desperately in need of the bathroom, food or companionship. The player observes their Sims from a ‘god’s eye’ view, similar to other strategy games like Civilization, which distances us from our Sims, allowing for acts of dramatic cruelty. In the grand scheme of pets, Sims aren’t like dogs or cats — they’re more like hamsters, running
Winston
around a maze we have specifically constructed for them. Despite the superficial similarities, Sims are less human than our real-life companion animals. To complicate matters, Sims can keep their own pets, too. I spoke to my friend Jordan Erica Webber, an enthusiastic Simkeeper: “As the series has progressed the pets have moved further from being objects and closer to being characters. In The Sims 3, cats, dogs, and horses (introduced in the Pets expansion) have names, needs, wants, relationships, and emotional states.” “You can play as the pet, directing it to perform certain actions, though like all Sims if you have autonomy turned up and don’t keep an eye on them they might do things you don’t want them to (e.g. pee on the carpet, chew the furniture).”
Churchill
Dogs & Dragons
Lagi
Sausages The distinction between Sims and their pets has blurred over time. In The Sims 3, pets are just another type of Sim, albeit a little more furry and diminutive. It’s a similar experience to Rare’s underrated Viva Piñata, where the player must cultivate a garden to attract all sorts of adorable, sugary denizens to Piñata Island. You can name the piñatas, change their colours by feeding them flowers, and feel a tinge of loss when a Syrupent devours your favourite Mousemallow, but there remains emotional distance between you and your creatures. Real pets are more than just zoo animals — they’re our friends, even if the friendship is a little lopsided. What’s lacking from games like The Sims and Viva Piñata is the inability for such a friendship to develop. But other games allow us to form a real bond with artificial creatures. My earliest memory of such a bond came from one of my
all-time favourite games, Panzer Dragoon Saga. The player character, Edge, is rescued from death by a dragon and the two form a natural partnership. But unlike regular non-player characters in an RPG, who are usually entwined with the player due to the demands of the story rather than your emotional investments, you’re able to interact with your dragon at campsites across the world. At first, the dragon doesn’t acknowledge you much. You approach it and can choose to pet it, or not. Over time, the bond strengthens with your dragon — regardless of the story — and you can name it and even unlock new magical abilities. It lets out an affectionate screech when you arrive at the camp and follows you around with a bounce in its step. You’re dependent on the dragon because of circumstance, but you become friends through these interactions.
Someone else’s dog, Fable II (2008)
When it comes to building relationships with artificial characters in games, few have promised as much — and disappointed as much — as Lionhead Studios and their Black and White series of ‘god games’. I remember racing home from school at the start of the summer holidays when Black and White was released, agonising over the choice of titanic creature to be my avatar in this land of the gods. I chose a tiger, but no matter how many times I stroked his chin with a rainbow-coloured leash, we never really bonded. Part of the problem was that Black and White’s much-hyped artificial intelligence was, like the rest of the game, riddled with bugs. Your creature would be in a state of permanent confusion. It was really nobody’s fault, but as they cried in fear or had uncontrollable diarrhoea in the middle of a village you couldn’t help but feel like a bad parent. Like real children, the creatures didn’t really come with a manual, and after a few hours I just couldn’t take it any more. I’ve been playing games for over twenty years, and the fate of that poor tiger is the saddest moment of all of them. In a strange twist, the same AI that powered my saddest gaming memory is also behind one of my fondest ones. In Lionhead’s Fable II, you befriend a dog as a child: the canine companion becomes your guide through Albion, replacing the need
to rely on mini maps and artificial ‘spider sense’style abilities. The dog growls when danger is near, defends you from enemies, and barks when it can smell buried treasure. Or you can just play fetch or give it a cuddle if you feel like taking a break from being a hero. Whenever the villain kills your dog near the game’s conclusion, it’s not just some emotional cliché of kicking a puppy — you lose your talisman. The world is quieter and its secrets are no longer revealed to you. At the end of Fable II, you are offered a choice: restore the lives of all those killed by Lucien except your family, bring back your family and dog, or receive a huge sum of cash. Virtuous hero that I am, I chose the dog. I think my family are still in the saved game somewhere, but I’m not sure — I was having too much fun with my faithful companion Sausages. I care more about that collection of polygons and algorithms than any virtual human I’ve ever met — possibly even some real-life ones, too. When I sat down to write this piece, I asked our readers for pictures of their pets because I knew there were many of them who would understand that bond. I’ve cared for and lost pets before, real and virtual — Homer the hamster, Buster the rabbit, Meg the golden retriever — and I hope that games continue to include companion animals: not to allow for loss, but to allow for friendship.
@JordanMcDeere
@davidsgallant
@lesmocon
@mandogfish
@gw0001
@johnnycullen
@gethill
@metalblackbird
@mralexbethke
Michelle Bradley Michelle Bradley
@NickCapozzoli @qwallath
@normalmode
@pillowfort
@rowankaiser
@Rick_Lane
Further Reading Jenn Frank — Playing God: On Death, Motherhood and ‘Creatures’, Unwinnable http://www.unwinnable.com/2012/01/27/playing-god-on-death-motherhood-and-creatures/#.U9Ta1lYepQo/
Jordan Erica Webber — Blood, Births and Backsides, Five out of Ten #3 Nate Lanxon — Tamagotchis to make a 2014 comeback, dot matrix LCD ‘n’ all, Wired. http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013–11/25/tamagotchi-revival/
time
It Takes Time
Kaitlin Tremblay
“
These things take time.” This is what my doctor told me as I sat crying in her office, clutching my bottle of antidepressants and demanding to know why I still felt like I didn’t deserve to live.
This is the same thing I say when people ask me what’s so great about Mountain, the mountain simulator published by Double Fine and written by Irish filmmaker and artist David O’Reilly. “It takes time,” I say, “to see what makes Mountain so good.”
For a game that say much, a lot has been said about Mountain. Is it a game? What do we count as interaction? How do we talk about games other than in terms of technical or analytical terms? Questioning the nature of interactivity in videogames such as Mountain, Brendan Keogh asks, “At what point did looking and hearing stop being actions—interactions with a thing—in and of themselves?” But he also discusses how he found Mountain to be not about his expected “nothingness”, but more simply about “nothing” at all. There’s a line in the adventure game Kentucky Route Zero that has stuck with me: “Keep your eyes open, especially in the dark.” What do we see when there’s nothing to be seen? Mountain is no more profound or evocative than a horoscope — and as someone who regrets getting their zodiac sign tattooed onto their body, that statement carries a lot of weight for me. Mountain is about nothing. But that doesn’t mean nothing happens.
The Temple of Time
Alan Williamson
W
hat’s your favourite game? What’s the best game ever? There are millions of possible answers to this question (and none of them are Blinx: The Time Sweeper) but critics and players often vote for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Released for the Nintendo 64 at the end of 1998, it holds a Guinness World Record as the most critically acclaimed game of all time. It tops every magazine reader’s poll. And I… well, I’ve never played it. Compared to other media like books and music, games are more susceptible to the ravages of time. Most are explicit works of fleeting entertainment rather than lasting cultural titans — see the yearly releases of FIFA and Call of Duty - but they’re also products at the bleeding edge of technology, and technology ages quickly. Ocarina of Time was the first Zelda game rendered in three dimensions compared to the two-dimensional, birds-eyeview of previous Zelda adventures. While modern games are close to digital paintings in terms of art quality, the games of 1998 required imagination to bring life to the angular boxes that populated their worlds. There’s a reason why games pay aesthetic homage to the 8- or 16-bit era: no one wants to go back to the blurry, foggy days of the PlayStation, Saturn, and N64 — even those of us who were there at the time! This is why Ocarina of Time has aged dramatically, but A Link to the Past remains relatively fresh.
Silence from a Dead Land Joe Köller
I
n the heart of Lordran, connecting the Undead Parish with Anor Londo, there’s a place called Sen’s Fortress: a stronghold filled with perilous walkways, swinging axes, and rolling boulders. During the many attempts it took me to navigate these traps successfully, one question crossed my mind several times: who is Sen? The origin of the location’s name is never established. Maybe Sen’s Fortress is named after a person, but why would they have designed such a labyrinth? Some have explained the name as a mistranslation of the Japanese sen, meaning ‘thousand’, while others refer to Senhime, the daughter of a Japanese Shogun from the 17th century. We’ll never know for sure. Dark Souls deliberately makes you a stranger in its world. The game begins with your character locked in the Undead Asylum. You have been imprisoned there because of a curse that makes it impossible for you to die, but will eventually destroy your old self in a process of constant reincarnation. When you are set free and return to Lordran, looking for a way to lift the curse, you discover that it has spread beyond control: the rest of the world’s inhabitants are as dead as you. Lordran is filled with those the curse has broken and a few who are barely clinging on to their sanity; there’s certainly nobody you can ask for directions.
Down and Out in Dwarf Fortress
Chay Close
F
rom Commander Shepard’s fight against alien invasion in Mass Effect to Gandhi’s bid for world conquest in Civilization, a large number of videogames are concerned with securing a place in history. More often than not, the player is the crux of a grand narrative: a story that will be written about for years to come. Non-player characters are reduced to footnotes, their stories but stepping stones, if not outright hindrances, on the player’s quest for glory.
Viewed from a distance, Bay 12’s Dwarf Fortress fits easily into this tradition. Dropped into a sprawling, procedurally-generated world, the player is cast in the role of a leader and asked to develop a dwarven civilization. With a gathering of citizens ready to take orders under their wing, they are offered the opportunity to contribute to their world’s history: to stitch together their own grand narrative, in the hopes of leaving some sort of lasting mark on the world around them. A sandbox civilization sim, Dwarf Fortress doesn’t have a stated goal, but instead threatens to last until the end of time — or, more likely, until the player’s fortress crumbles as a result of enemy invasion or garden-variety negligence. From one fortress to the next, the world is persistent: the tales of any given civilization or dwarf could potentially be passed down on to the next. Naturally, the first-time player will want to involve themselves in their world’s history as much as possible, to see their influence spread through the ages.
Dear Stealth Games...
Becky Chambers
Dear Stealth Games, We’re not exclusive, you and I. You’ve never been the only genre in my life. I’ve been going steady with RPGs for a long time, and I do love a summer fling with a shooter. But you...you’re something else. You, I’ll always make time for. I’ll never forget how we met. It was my freshman year in college, and one of my fellow dorm residents handed me his copy of Thief II. It was unlike anything I’d ever played. It had the adrenaline punch of an action game, the complexity of a good puzzle, the pace of a late night fox trot — slow, slow, quick, quick. Throughout that game, your allure was palpable. From the moment I let that first water arrow fly, I was smitten. I watched as my target — a burning torch — fizzled into smoke. I heard the sounds of guards nearby, and suddenly, darkness became a comfort. I understood what it was you wanted of me. You didn’t want me to run in, guns blazing, and blood spattering. No, you wanted me to think things through. You wanted me to savour every moment.
It’s Time to continue our latest issue get it from
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fiveout of ten year one
Five great magazines, one essential collection 1: New Horizons November 2012
2: Players Guide February 2013
3: Reflecting Reality April 2013
4: Storytellers July 2013
5: Players Guide September 2013
Get it from http://www.fiveoutoftenmagazine.com
ESCAPE TO NA PALI: A JOURNEY TO THE UNREAL
The new book from Kaitlin Tremblay and Alan Williamson Get it now from http://fiveoutoftenmagazine.com/
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Themes: Praise, Eternity, Ascension. A hymn of glory let us sing, New hymns throughout the world shall ring; By a new way none ever trod Christ takes His place—the throne of God. You are a present joy, O Lord; You will be ever our reward; And great the light in You we see To guide us to eternity. Jan 7, 2019 - You can scan and convert the sheet music so you can then play it. Then by converting it to MIDI you can edit, play back, enhance the. Play sheet music back on a digital piano: Another popular reason why you might want to scan music. So if all you want to work with is piano music, or a 4-part choral.