Time.news – Invites to travel, the hermit pilgrim in constant search of that One who is the Beloved, who is the Inviolate, who is the Origin, who is the End. Franco Battiato died this morning in his hermitage of Milo, on the never-extinguished fire of Etna, in Milo he was on a pilgrimage.
Still the body, heart and mind continued incessantly to search for that Light that innervates and substantiates his most mature and profound artistic production – the one that leaves pop and electronic experiments ante litteram of Weather in Cuccurucucu Paloma and descends into the abyss of the deep spiritual heights of And I come to look for you and of An irresistible call, declarations in music of love and faith.
Which are the same thing, and it is the only law that “the whole universe obeys”. Enraptured as in ecstasy of love by the spiritual search that leads to Sufi current of Islam more ascetic, Franco Battiato prayed in music.
To explain to Agi the philosophy behind and inside spirituality of Sufism is Francesca Bocca-Aldaqre, theologian, writer and professor of Arab Culture at the Humanitarian Society of Milan.
Professor Bocca-Aldaqre, by Franco Battiato we remember a memorable concert in Baghdad, in which he sang his songs and his search for life in Arabic: a fairly hidden choice because he did not take a clear position with respect to religion. But what distinguishes Islam tout court from the mystical pursuit of Sufism?
What brings many artists closer to Sufism is precisely the language that Sufis use, which is that of art and poetry, to express their truths. Truths that are the same as the Koran: there is no separation of religion, sect, or doctrine, and some Sufis will even say of group.
Yet there was a target group.
The Sufi contact of Battiato, in Milan, was Gabriele Mandel, of which he was master Hamza Boubakeur. Mandel himself was an interesting character: he studied with Matisse, D’Annunzio was his godfather. And among other things, Mandel was also a Sufi teacher of the Halveti Jerrahi brotherhood, which was later the brotherhood that Franco Battiato joined. They practice the Khalwa, which is a sort of short hermitage, a withdrawal from the world temporarily and then return to it: he himself made this choice to withdraw radically not only for health reasons but also for a spiritual will.
A stationary pilgrimage.
Hamza defined the Sufis as people in a resolute march, that is, people who are distinguished by their path, not by something specific they believe in or by being a superior category of people: but because they act in a certain way.
Is there a precise geographical origin of this practice?
Each community places practices in its culture. The brotherhood to which Battiato referred was of Turkish origin: this is the reason why he often mentioned the whirling dervishes belonging to the Ottoman Empire.
And the origin of the Sufis?
It is a mystical current born almost simultaneously with the spread of Islam: it therefore dates back to 600. The word is of uncertain etymology: perhaps from the Arabic for “wool”, which recalls the raw wool clothes that these mystics wore, or from the “Suffa”, the bench in the Mohammed Mosque where these hermits went to live, renouncing the world. Or again it refers to the semantic root to indicate those believers who guided the Arab pagans.
What is the figure of Sufism?
The recurring stylistic features are the references to wine, which will not be lacking in Paradise, as an allegory of mystical intoxication, and to the dialogue between lover and Beloved, as a symbol of dialogue with God. There are so many Sufi practices, an infinity. They have in common this fact of using the language of poetry, of art: this makes it possible for many people to perceive something, a scent of the spiritual depth they are talking about, which instead remains inaccessible if you consult only a text on the spirituality of Islam. classic, which uses another language and has many premises to be used.
If, on the other hand, a person reads a poem by Rumi, the greatest Sufi poet in Islam, something senses, and he is not mistaken, because what he senses is right. But there is always something more. Those who are part of the brotherhood of Rumi, for example, all their life read Rumi’s poems, so it is obvious that one, depending on his inner growth, always finds new things in them.
It is a continuous intuition, as well as the Qoelet of the Bible, or the Gospels, or the entire Koran: if they stop telling you something new it is not they who have exhausted the message, but it is you who have stopped reading..
It is so. In Sufism, the language of music is also widely used, even as music therapy in many Sufi brotherhoods, to heal various evils of the soul, of spirituality: music is a cure.
The cure.
In fact: I find it very resonant with Battiato’s production.
As for dance, there are many references to whirling dervishes. There are different ways to approach the sacred and pray to it: is the dance way a prayer, like a Dionysian ecstasy?
Here too there are several levels. The same dancing gesture performed by different people reveals a depth that must already be present in those who do it. The ritual of the dancing dervishes is very codified, so we must not imagine it as a spontaneous dance, or a dance that a person in ecstasy starts to do. It was like this at the beginning: when Rumi describes her mystical experiences she describes this rotation movement from which it is taken as an ecstasy.
But then his brotherhood, the Mevlevi one, which continued this practice, codified it. It becomes more of a reflection on the rotation of the cosmos, an almost astral reflection, an invitation to melt into the peace and harmony of the cosmos. Obviously this dance ritual, which is called semà, is accompanied by music, by pauses, by the recitation of Koranic verses, which have a specific resonance with these things. At the end of the dance a verse from the Koran is recited that says that East and West belong to God and wherever you turn, therefore, there is the face of God. This shows how these things go together: the dance, the spinning, the cosmos, and the religious part.
Linked to this cosmic research is also the theme of light, which often returns: from oriental symbolism, with a Zoroastrian brand, to fire and light that always return in Islam. The shadow of the light?
There is a passage from the Koran that explains exactly this point: it is the story of Abraham, who as a boy, dissatisfied with the idolatrous religion of his tribe, goes into nature, which is a practice that many Sufis have maintained to meditate on the signs of nature, and sees the sun, stars and moon setting, and says the famous phrase “I do not love those who set”. All signs hide something behind.
This is the premise that, in the Koran, Abraham then becomes ready for divine revelation. Islam sees itself as the first religion that was revealed to man: Adam was already a relationship of that divinity there, the only one. The revealed religions are not different in their birth, but different in their evolution: according to Islam God said the same things to Adam that he later said to Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad with some differences in law but never differences of belief. The idea of Islam is to have lived with this man’s feeling of wonder, of numinous in the face of nature, but of having always been there one step before. That is, God was always ready to reveal himself the moment man arrived at that step, to say “here is the light, what the light tells me”.
And the Sufis have greatly valued this element. One of the prayers in the evening breviary is the Prayer of Light in which God is asked “Oh God, bring me light in my heart, light in my tomb, light in front, light behind me, light on the right, light on the left”: a meditation on light “.
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