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16 October 2024
Dear Companions on the Path,
Flooding is a great peril, as we know. In 2022 nearly two thousand people died in floods in Pakistan, and last year four thousand people died in floods in Libya. This year, serious weather events have caused extensive damage and loss of life in China, Central and Eastern Europe, and the southern United States. Florida is still recovering from the fury of Hurricane Milton. It was deeply reassuring to learn that members of our community survived the storm without injury. I trust that everyone in the U.S. is aware of the Murids’ Emergency Relief Fund, which dispenses grants to murids in North America in times of special need. If there is a silver lining to a catastrophe it is the way it can bring people together in awakened kinship and mutual support.
Climate scientists say that hurricanes will continue to intensify as ocean temperatures rise. Strong evidence supports this prediction. And there is another factor as well. The elementals who live and move and have their being in sea and sky are repeatedly provoked to frenzy by the disaccord in which we live with respect to them, and by our aggressive hubris and materialism. Our bomb blasts, smokestacks, and tyrannies exacerbate their longstanding malaise and they begin to fantasize about a world without us. Humankind’s meditations, prayers, and acts of redress, by contrast, serve to calm and reassure Earth’s subtle community. A forward-looking alliance—or at least, more modestly, a renewal of past detentes—is long overdue. There are intermediary beings who are well positioned to contribute to the facilitation of this reconciliation if the intention on our side is clear.
 A brief pause in my schedule in August, while Pirani and I were at Fazal Manzil, allowed me to begin penning some notes on Earthic chivalry. Afterward, in September, we traveled in Germany where, following tributes to Pirzadi-Shahida Noor in Dachau and Munich, we made our way to the east of the country. Our friends Nura and Klaus took us to an exhibition of the work of Caspar David Friedrich (d. 1840), whose paintings evoke the light of Nature with extraordinary insight. Afterward we visited the homes and tomb of the great Novalis (d. 1801), who, within the brief span of his twenty-eight years on the planet, distinguished himself as a geologist, novelist, poet, and philosopher—a true geosophical bard. In his unfinished romance Heinrich von Ofterdingen, Novalis describes mining as astrology in reverse and identifies the motive force that impels it as the allure of underground fire. Novalis is alluding here to the spiritual magnetism that wells up from the core of the Earth. In his philosophical notes under the title of Pollen, he writes, “We are on a mission: we are called to cultivate the Earth.”
As we drove from Dresden to Weissenfels we were engulfed in the edge of the storm that was causing so much flooding elsewhere in Germany and beyond. From Halle we took a train to Berlin, where the wonderful new German translation of Pirzadi-Shahida Noor’s collected works was introduced at the House for Poetry. After seeing the places where Murshid stayed and spoke in Berlin and meeting with the local murids at Petra-Beate Schildbach’s atmospheric Sufi center, we began our train journey back to Paris. The long ride gave me the chance to work on my Earthic notes on Murshid’s Chivalric Rules, and I was able to reach the end of the Silver Rules by the time the train rolled into Gare du Nord.
Let me take this opportunity to share with you my notes on the Iron Rules; you will find them here. I will post the others in due course as well, God willing.
In closing: Novalis called on the world to cultivate the Earth, and we may be sure that, foretelling Murshid’s ensouled cosmology, he meant the spiritually unveiled Earth encrusted with stars and aflame with noetic fire. Let us do so without delay.
Yours ever,
Pir Zia |
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The Alchemy of Happiness—Part I
A Six-Part Course w/ Pir Zia Inayat Khan via Zoom
Sundays, October 6th - November 10th, 2024 |
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This fall we turn toward what it means to create happiness in life. Over six weeks, Pir Zia will guide us through our own inner happiness landscape, providing simple yet profound teachings from the work of the Sufi mystic, Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882-1927). We will explore themes such as cultivating purpose, developing a positive attitude, dealing with life’s struggles, tempering our reactions, and how to find meaning—all leading to greater contentment and happiness. More details and registration. |
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Prophets of Our Being
The Illuminated Souls in World History & Inner Experience w/ Pir Zia Inayat Khan, Marcia Hermansen & Omid Safi
November 15th - 17th, 2024 |
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This program is specifically designed for Inayatiyya Inner School Leaders, Universal Worship Cherags & clergy of all faiths, Suluk graduates, scholars, and all those drawn to exploring the esoteric dimensions of the inner life.
Please join Pir Zia with special guest teachers Omid Safi and Marcia Hermansen in the second installment of our Inner History series where we will survey the seeds planted by illuminated prophets and sages in many parts of the world from the Copper Age to Late Antiquity. We will discern the hand of the Spirit of Guidance in the world’s history, and see how our own awakening is an outgrowth of the revelations brought through the trailblazers of the human journey to the Infinite. More details and registration. |
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One Soul—Ruh Wahida
An Online Concert w/ Yuval Ron
Live from the Astana on Saturday, November 2
4:00 – 6:00 pm ET / 9:00 – 11:00 pm CET via Zoom |
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Join our dear friend, Yuval Ron, for a passionate, soulful and inspired performance of sacred Sufi and Kabbalistic music arranged for the Middle Eastern Lute known as the oud. Contemplative, meditative and deeply moving, this performance showcases the various expressive sounds of the oud, an ancient biblical instrument that was used to inspire the Hebrew prophets and many Near East poets.
We will be webcasting live from the Astana in Richmond, Virginia via Zoom, so that we can be with our friends from around the world for this special concert. Tickets to join us online are only $10. More details and registration. |
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We are launching a new section of the Zephyr to share news about recent passings into and out of this earthly realm. If you have any news to share, specifically about births and deaths, please send it to astana@inayatiyya.org with the subject heading “For the Zephyr”. Photos are welcome. To initiate a remembrance page for a murid who has passed contact sufiremembrance@sonic.net.
To visit the remembrance site where you will find remembrance pages for more than 150 Inayatiyya murids, please go to sufiremembrance.net. |
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The Zephyr is a monthly newsletter of the Inayatiyya, an interfaith mystical fellowship with branches worldwide. For more information, please visit us at inayatiyya.org. |
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