A Perfumed Scorpion
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A Perfumed Scorpion
''A Perfumed Scorpion'' is a non-fiction book by the Sufist writer, Idries Shah, that was first published by Octagon Press in 1978, the same year that he published two other major works: '' Learning How to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way'' and ''The Hundred Tales of Wisdom''. It has since been republished by The Idries Shah Foundation. Shortly before he died, Shah stated that his books form a complete course that could fulfill the function he had fulfilled while alive. As such, ''A Perfumed Scorpion'' can be read as part of a whole course of study.Shah, Tahir, ''In Arabian Nights: A Caravan of Moroccan Dreams''. New York, NY: Bantam. pp. 215–216. Summary The book contains the substance of lectures given by the author at various universities in the United States under the aegis of the Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge and the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Fairleigh Dickinson University. The "perfuming of a scorpion" is a reference t ...
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Idries Shah
Idries Shah (; hi, इदरीस शाह, ps, ادريس شاه, ur, ; 16 June 1924 – 23 November 1996), also known as Idris Shah, né Sayed Idries el- Hashimi (Arabic: سيد إدريس هاشمي) and by the pen name Arkon Daraul, was an Afghan author, thinker and teacher in the Sufi tradition. Shah wrote over three dozen books on topics ranging from psychology and spirituality to travelogues and culture studies. Born in British India, the descendant of a family of Afghan nobles on his father's side and a Scottish mother, Shah grew up mainly in England. His early writings centred on magic and witchcraft. In 1960 he established a publishing house, Octagon Press, producing translations of Sufi classics as well as titles of his own. His seminal work was ''The Sufis'', which appeared in 1964 and was well received internationally. In 1965, Shah founded the Institute for Cultural Research, a London-based educational charity devoted to the study o ...
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Hafez
Khwāje Shams-od-Dīn Moḥammad Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī ( fa, خواجه شمس‌‌الدین محمّد حافظ شیرازی), known by his pen name Hafez (, ''Ḥāfeẓ'', 'the memorizer; the (safe) keeper'; 1325–1390) and as "Hafiz", was a Persian lyric poet, whose collected works are regarded by many Iranians as a pinnacle of Persian literature. His works are often found in the homes of people in the Persian-speaking world, who learn his poems by heart and use them as everyday proverbs and sayings. His life and poems have become the subjects of much analysis, commentary and interpretation, influencing post-14th century Persian writing more than any other Persian author. Hafez is best known for his Divan of Hafez, a collection of his surviving poems probably compiled after his death. His works can be described as "antinomian" and with the medieval use of the term "theosophical"; the term "theosophy" in the 13th and 14th centuries was used to indicate mystical work by ...
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Sufi Literature
Sufi literature consists of works in various languages that express and advocate the ideas of Sufism. Sufism had an important influence on medieval literature, especially poetry, that was written in Arabic, Persian, Turkic and Urdu. Sufi doctrines and organizations provided more freedom to literature than did the court poetry of the period. The Sufis borrowed elements of folklore in their literature. The works of Nizami, Nava'i, Hafez, Sam'ani and Jami were more or less related to Sufism. The verse of such Sufi poets as Sanai (died c. 1140), Attar (born c. 1119), and Rumi (died 1273) protested against oppression with an emphasis on divine justice and criticized evil rulers, religious fanaticism and the greed and hypocrisy of the orthodox Muslim clergy. The poetic forms used by these writers were similar to the folk song, parable and fairy tale. Background Sufi literature written in Persian flourished from the 12th to 15th centuries. Later major poets linked with the Sufi tra ...
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Eleven Naqshbandi Principles
The Eleven Naqshbandi principles or the "rules or secrets of the Naqshbandi", known in Persian as the ''kalimat-i qudsiya'' ("sacred words" or "virtuous words"), are a system of principles and guidelines used as spiritual exercises, or to encourage certain preferred states of being, in the Naqshbandi Sufi order of Islamic mysticism. Background There were originally eight principles formulated by the Central Asian Sufi teacher Abdul Khaliq Gajadwani (died 1179), the last three of the eleven being added later by Baha-ud-Din Naqshband Bukhari (1318–1389), founder of the Naqshbandi Order. Editor: Hayter, Augy. Both were Khwajagan (Masters) of the Sufi tariqah (path, way or method). These principles are designed to be borne in mind and used as spiritual practices or exercises in the Naqshbandi system of spiritual development. They are carried out under individual tuition, expertly prescribed, monitored for changes, and carefully adjusted by a teacher, rather than being automatical ...
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The Exploits Of The Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin
''The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin'' is a book by the writer Idries Shah, Article has moved and is now incorrectly dated 18 September 2011. It consists of jokes and anecdotes involving the wise fool of Middle Eastern folklore, Mulla Nasrudin. Published by Octagon Press in 1966, the book was re-released in paperback, ebook and audiobook editions by The Idries Shah Foundation in 2014 and 2015. Shortly before he died, Shah stated that his books form a complete course that could fulfil the function he had fulfilled while alive. As such, ''The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin'' can be read as part of a whole course of study. Content Part of a series of books, ''The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin'' is a collection of anecdotes and jokes drawn from Middle Eastern folklore and the Sufi mystical tradition, which feature the populist Middle Eastern philosopher and wise fool, Mulla Nasrudin. Thousands of stories have been written around this p ...
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Tales Of The Dervishes
''Tales of the Dervishes'' by Idries Shah was first published in 1967, and re-published and made available online for free by The Idries Shah Foundation in October 2016. Summary ''Tales of the Dervishes'' is a collection of stories, parables, legends and fables gathered from classical Sufi texts and oral sources spanning a period from the 7th to the 20th centuries. An author's postscript to each story offers a brief account of its provenance, use and place in Sufi tradition. Reception The Islamic scholar James Kritzeck, reviewing Shah's ''Tales of the Dervishes'' in ''The Nation'', said that it was "beautifully translated" and equipped "men and women to make good use of their lives." In an essay on dervish tales he also discusses at length the value of the stories in this book. The Stanford University professor Robert E. Ornstein, writing in '' Psychology Today'', called the book "... a collection of diamonds ... incredibly well-crafted, multifaceted ... likely to endure in t ...
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Goethe's Way Of Science
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as treatises on botany, anatomy, and colour. He is widely regarded as the greatest and most influential writer in the German language, his work having a profound and wide-ranging influence on Western literary, political, and philosophical thought from the late 18th century to the present day.. Goethe took up residence in Weimar in November 1775 following the success of his first novel, '' The Sorrows of Young Werther'' (1774). He was ennobled by the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Karl August, in 1782. Goethe was an early participant in the '' Sturm und Drang'' literary movement. During his first ten years in Weimar, Goethe became a member of the Duke's privy council (1776–1785), sat on the war and highway commissions, oversaw the reopening of ...
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Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as treatises on botany, anatomy, and colour. He is widely regarded as the greatest and most influential writer in the German language, his work having a profound and wide-ranging influence on Western literary, political, and philosophical thought from the late 18th century to the present day.. Goethe took up residence in Weimar in November 1775 following the success of his first novel, ''The Sorrows of Young Werther'' (1774). He was ennobled by the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Karl August, in 1782. Goethe was an early participant in the ''Sturm und Drang'' literary movement. During his first ten years in Weimar, Goethe became a member of the Duke's privy council (1776–1785), sat on the war and highway commissions, oversaw the reopening of silver min ...
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Henri Bortoft
Peter Henri Bortoft (1938 – 29 December 2012) was a British independent researcher and teacher, lecturer and writer on physics and the philosophy of science. He is best known for his work ''The Wholeness of Nature'', considered a relevant and original recent interpretation of Goethean science. His book ''Taking Appearance Seriously: The Dynamic Way of Seeing in Goethe and European Thought'' was published in 2012. Bortoft completed his studies at the University of Hull, and then performed postgraduate research on the foundations of quantum physics at Birkbeck College, where theoretical physicist David Bohm introduced him to the problem of wholeness in quantum theory. Subsequently, Bortoft worked with John G. Bennett on Bennett's ''Systematics'' (also known as Multi-Term Systems), which was Bennett's methodology for assisting the systematic and progressive understanding of systems, complexity, and wholeness, and on efforts with Bennett and with Kenneth W. Pledge to develop a fo ...
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Science
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for scientific reasoning is tens of thousands of years old. The earliest written records in the history of science come from Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in around 3000 to 1200 BCE. Their contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine entered and shaped Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity, whereby formal attempts were made to provide explanations of events in the physical world based on natural causes. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, knowledge of Greek conceptions of the world deteriorated in Western Europe during the early centuries (400 to 1000 CE) of the Middle Ages, but was preserved in the Muslim world during the Islamic Golden Age and later by the efforts of Byzantine Greek scholars who brought Greek ...
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Jami
Nūr ad-Dīn 'Abd ar-Rahmān Jāmī ( fa, نورالدین عبدالرحمن جامی; 7 November 1414 – 9 November 1492), also known as Mawlanā Nūr al-Dīn 'Abd al-Rahmān or Abd-Al-Rahmān Nur-Al-Din Muhammad Dashti, or simply as Jami or Djāmī and in Turkey as Molla Cami, was a Persian Sunni poet who is known for his achievements as a prolific scholar and writer of mystical Sufi literature. He was primarily a prominent poet-theologian of the school of Ibn Arabi and a Khwājagānī Sũfī, recognized for his eloquence and for his analysis of the metaphysics of mercy. His most famous poetic works are ''Haft Awrang, Tuhfat al-Ahrar, Layla wa Majnun, Fatihat al-Shabab, Lawa'ih, Al-Durrah al-Fakhirah.'' Jami belonged to the Naqshbandi Sufi order. Biography Jami was born in Kharjerd, in Khorasan. Previously his father Nizām al-Dīn Ahmad b. Shams al-Dīn Muhammad had come from Dasht, a small town in the district of Isfahan. A few years after his birth, his family mi ...
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Rumi
Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī ( fa, جلال‌الدین محمد رومی), also known as Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī (), Mevlânâ/Mawlānā ( fa, مولانا, lit= our master) and Mevlevî/Mawlawī ( fa, مولوی, lit= my master), but more popularly known simply as Rumi (30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273), was a 13th-century PersianRitter, H.; Bausani, A. "ḎJ̲alāl al-Dīn Rūmī b. Bahāʾ al-Dīn Sulṭān al-ʿulamāʾ Walad b. Ḥusayn b. Aḥmad Ḵh̲aṭībī." Encyclopaedia of Islam. Edited by: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill, 2007. Brill Online. Excerpt: "known by the sobriquet Mewlānā, persian poet and founder of the Mewlewiyya order of dervishes" poet, Hanafi faqih, Islamic scholar, Maturidi theologian and Sufi mystic originally from Greater Khorasan in Greater Iran. Rumi's influence transcends national borders and ethnic divisions: Iranians, Tajiks, Turks, Greeks, Pashtuns, other C ...
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