Suhrawardi taught a complex and
profound emanationist cosmology, according to which all creation is a
successive outflow from the original supreme Light of Lights (nur al-anwar).
The cosmos and all planes of existence are therefore ultimately nothing more
than varying degrees of Light - or more properly Xvarnah, a Zoroastrian term
meaning "Light of Glory" - and darkness.
From this original Light of Lights there issues
the Vic-torial Light (al-nur al-qahir), also called the Greatest Light (al-nur
al-a`zam) or Most Proximate Light (al-nur al-aqrab).
Suhrawardi identifies this original Light with the Zoroastrian Bahman
(late Zoroastrian (Mazdean) Vohumen) or "Good (or Divine)
Mind".
From this first Light there in turn emanates a
whole "longitudinal" (tuli) order of Lights, so called because
each higher Light generates the one following it. Each Light thus stands
in a position or aspect of domination (qahr) to the one below it, and
love (mahabbah) to the one above it (from which it arose), and serves as an
isthmus (barzakh) or purgatory between the Lights above and below
it. This original order of Lights, each of which is also, like the first
Light, a "victorial light", is also called the world of mothers (ummahat)
since all things in the Cosmos are generated from it.
From the "masculine" pole of this
supreme hierarchy, which is its aspect as domination and contemplation, there
issues a further hierarchies of angels. These are transcendent spiritual
Intelligences independent of any material body. They are described as
"latitudinal" (`ardi) because they do not generate each other
as do the longitudinal order, but rather subsist side by side as the
"masters of the species" (arbab al-anwa) or "masters of
the theurgies (arbab al-tilasm). Theu are identified with the
Platonic Ideas, and are the celestial archetypes of all the types of entities
in the universe.
While from the "feminine" pole of the
Spiritual Lights, which is their aspect as love and receptivity to illumination
and irridation, there come into being the visible, astrological heavens, and
finally the Earth. The heavens can thus be considered the
"materialisation" or "crystallisation" of the original
archangelic Light; the "non-being" or "privation" or
separation from the original Light of Lights, which is the only absolute
Reality.
Thus, as in Kashmir Shaivite
metaphysics, Suhrawardi's cosmology sees both matter (maya or prakriti) and
transcendent spirits (purushas) arising from the "feminine" and
"masculine" aspects of an original chain of polarised yet still
unitary divine principles (here, the tattwas Sadashiva, Ishwara, and Sadvidya).
But whereas in Kashmir Shaivism the successive
stages of being unfold from transcendent matter (maya or prakriti), Suhrawardi
has the transcendent spirits as the source of the next lower order of
reality. So from the "latitudinal" order of angelic
Intel-ligences there issues a further hierarchy; an intermediary angelic order
which acts as its vice-regent and reigns over the species diercetly.
These are called the "regent lights" (al-anwar al-muhabbirah)
or "lordly lights" (al-anwar al-isfahbadiyah). They
include the Souls of the Heavenly Spheres and the human souls (the higher
spiritual being - the Higher Self), angels and pure spiritual beings, who
overshadow the natural and the human world. Thus we have the world of
Malakut, the angelic world or world of Creative-Imaginative perception.
Between this Angelic World and the material world
of the senses there is a further world, the world of images and archetypal
forms (`alam al-mithal). This is an interworld (barzakh),
the world of subtle forms revealed through the Imagination, having attributes
of both physical and spiritual, and intermediate between the two. [Sayyed
Hossein Nasr, Three Muslim Sages, pp.71-3; Corbin, Spiritual Body and
Celestial Earth, p.55, 59; and Suhrawardi, translated by Corbin, Spiritual
Body and Celestial Earth, pp.126ff]
