Al-Kimiya
Al-Kimiya, 2021, graphite on watercolor paper, 15"x 11"
This was the first piece I finished after taking my leave from academia, and the many months it took to do so served as a deep meditation, enabling me to recover parts of myself that were set aside long ago. I had begun this drawing more than twenty years prior when I first took up the study of Sufism. I was captivated then, as I am still, by the figure of Rabiʿa al-Adawiyya (d. 801), who is universally revered as the first Sufi and one of the tradition’s most important saints. Teaching stories of her single-pointed love for God—as well as her tenacious boldness in the face of patriarchal power and privilege—have served as an ongoing inspiration for countless men and women Sufis from her time until today.
When I was packing up to relocate, I found the original sketch drawn on a piece of heavy watercolor paper, and finishing the piece seemed a natural way to transition into the next phase of my life. In so doing, I reimagined the figure as an archetype of the fully developed human soul, which in Sufism—as well as many other spiritual traditions—is considered to be “feminine,” symbolizing its receptivity to the light of God, as the moon receives the light of the sun.
In this image, she rests in the essential sea of primordial matter, seated before the fire of creation, the alchemical womb, from which arises the mystical letter Alif, representing divine unity and symbolizing its immanent presence manifested in the world. According to the wisdom of Sufism, this divine presence finds its most complete container in the human heart. Thus, from the center of her chest radiates the highest name of God, evincing her complete immersion in the divine and evoking the Sufi tradition where God states: “My earth and My heavens do not contain Me, but the heart of My believing servant contains Me.”
In her hands she turns a circle of prayer beads, which move in tandem with her fingers, tongue, and heart in constant recognition of God’s immanent presence. Her protective shawl blows forcefully open in the wind representing mystical unveiling and the dynamic state of divine knowing. The reticulated halo of light surrounding her head marks her complete receptivity to the Transcendent. Yet this divine light is encompassed by the Tree of Life, revealing the reason for creation as the ground of divine knowledge, which manifests through the seasons of inner and outer life—encompassing the spiritual and temporal processes of birth and death.
The Tree is yet further encircled by the terrifying dragon eating its own tail—the ouroboros or “tail eater”—itself made of water, revealing its mercurial nature. Like the Tree, the ancient symbol of the ouroboros is found in multifarious cultures throughout history and similarly represents the fluid cycle of birth, death, and rebirth—its elegant form suggesting the dynamic phases of the moon itself.
The ouroboros differs from the Tree, however, by more directly symbolizing the process of spiritual transformation through the unity of opposites— overcoming the destructive resistances of the ego by its paradoxical self-inflicted annihilation. The higher self devours the lower self and subsequently births ever new iterations of existence freed from the constricting knots of habitual thought and conventional belief. This transformational process of becoming is the mark of true humanity, the Philosopher’s Stone itself, and thus the turning of psychic manure into spiritual food, the lead of constrictive narcissism into the gold of ecstatic selflessness.
The transformation of long-held habits of shadow gazing into new courses of light is mirrored in the symbolic union of primordial sun and moon, forming the upper half of a quaternity containing the inner mandala of the self. Traveling in time and space on its course through the heavens, the alchemical moon reflects the brilliance of the divine sun, symbolizing the outer relationship between heaven and earth and the internal marriage of opposites—the union of matriarchal and patriarchal consciousness and energies.
The lower half of the quaternity reflects the alchemical realization of primordial completeness. On the side of the sun, the storm cloud pours forth rain, symbolizing divine blessings of nurturance and spiritual growth—the lightning representing enlightenment. On the opposite side under the light of the moon, the phoenix rises from the ashes of the narcissistic and constricted self, symbolizing a return to divine essence and cosmic wholeness.