Moral Healer's Handbook: The Psychology of Spiritual Chivalry (God's Will be Done, Vol. 2)
The contemporary religious scene is characterized not only by the survival and in some cases revival of the traditions which have been the millennial gardens of wisdom, but also new so-called religious and spiritual currents usually associated with a teacher who declares his independence of any sacred tradition and presents himself ultimately as a new prophet. Of dubious pedigree and origin, many such movements claim at the same time to have received, refined and made available some of the esoteric practices and doctrines of the religious traditions, practices and doctrines which they then present independently of the framework within which they possess full meaning. Some of these techniques and practices still possess at least some efficacy even outside of the sacred cadre where they naturally belong, while others are most dangerous and only contribute to the psychological imbalance and spiritual confusion which characterizes today's world.One such technique is meditation upon and the study of the Enneagram which is now used widely as help for psychological healing and even spiritual advancement. Made popular by some of the self-appointed gurus and teacher of the earlier part of this century and some who are still active today, it has also spread among Christians especially Catholics, millions of whom use it regularly but few have bothered to delve into the traditional origin of the Enneagram and the significant role that it has played in the traditional sacred universe.It is the virtue of this book to have dealt for the first time with this theme and to have revealed the origin of the Enneagram as used in spiritual practice and moral healing in the Islamic tradition. The author deals in detail with the spiritual significance of the Saturn-Jupiter cycle in Islamic symbolic astrology as developed by the Sufis, especially Ibn Arabi, and the relation of this cycle to the Enneagram. She also brings other important evidence to bear upon the Islamic origin of the Enneagram as used in spiritual practice, making use of not only Sufi texts but also works of philosophical ethics such as those of Nasir al-Din Tusi.The greatest contribution of the book, however, is to situate the use of the Enneagram within the context of the Islamic tradition of spiritual chivalry. Known as futuwwah (in Arabic) or javanmardi (in Persian), spiritual chivalry is of the utmost significance for the understanding of the spiritual life of Islam. Associated originally in the Quran with the Prophet Abraham, it is embodied in the Islamic tradition itself with Ali ibn Abi Talib, who plays such a pivotal role, as heir to the esoteric teachings of the Prophet of Islam in not only the Sufi orders but also the guilds and orders of knightly chivalry. Spiritual chivalry means a continuous spiritual warfare by means of which the soul of the human being becomes imbued with the virtues that heal the wounds of the fallen soul and prepare it for the encounter with God.The author reintegrates the meaning and practical use of the Enneagram into the traditional Islamic framework from which it issued. She develops fully the doctrine of the correspondence between the macrocosm and the microcosm which, in fact, makes possible the use of such a symbol and is the basis for its efficacy within a living spiritual tradition. In doing so, not only does she provide knowledge concerning the historical origin of the Enneagram as an instrument for moral and psychological healing and spiritual development, she also emphasizes in this connection, the role of moral and spiritual virtues so characteristic of spiritual chivalry, thereby refuting the claim to the possibility of the amoral use of this and other spiritual techniques and methods employed in so many nontraditional circles today.Dr. Bakhtiar is to be congratulated in clarifying an aspect of Islamic spiritual --Seyyed Hossein Nasr Washington, D. C., May, 1994