Dancing With The Stars!

Zikr—The Ecstatic Practice

What is Zikr?
Zikr is a practice performed by a group of mystical seekers, by chanting, rhythmic gestures, dancing, and deep breathing. While performing their ritualistic dance, the group repeats words and phrases, accompanied by a well-trained choir performing instrumental and vocal music. In zikr, the accompanying singing of well-composed musical rosaries helps achieve the trance. The music sets the rhythm (beat), which is altered by the conductor/guide to achieve the trance conditions needed to achieve ecstatic visions.

The bodily movements of zikr participants are linked to a thought and a sound, or a series of sounds. The movements develop the body, the thought focuses the mind, and the sound fuses the two and orients them towards a consciousness of divine contact.

The representational sacred dance of the zikr is analogous to the movements of the cosmos and the oneness of the universe. The individuals performing the zikr—as led by their guide - are like the planets of a solar system. In other words: the guide/leader is the sun and the participant seekers are the planets—each in his own orbit—yet, they are held in unison by their guide/leader.

Like the dancing planets, the mystical seekers (Sufis) participating in the zikr become both ritual subjects/agents and ritual objects. They become so in the repetition of the most economical and condensed of symbols—the word. As explained in items 3 and 4 of Appendix A, it is not only the word of Divinity, but the logos; the word that, in a mysterious sense, is Divinity. [More details follow, later.]

Early Sufi traditions acknowledge that zikr was introduced into Islamized Sufism by the Egyptian Dhu ‘l-Nun al-Misri, who said: “zikr is the absence from oneself (by recollecting God alone).” The absence from oneself is the ideal recollection of God. The whole of Egyptian mysticism rests on the belief that when the individual self is lost, the Universal Self is found. The purified mystics strive for loss of self and absorption into the Divine, in order to obtain personal illumination and transcendence—an ecstatic visionary.

There are three terms for this practice. All three terms describe various aspects of the same practice. The following are the meanings of each term:

Zikr—means testifying or remembrance. Implicit in the term remembrance is the notion that we are coming back to what we once knew (through our past lives)—what we have already learned. Remembrance is achieved by each’s heart and tongue [also see Appendix A].

Hadra—means presence; i.e. being in the presence of spirits in higher realms, or calling on higher spirits. The response and participation of these higher spirits in the zikr are very important, as will be detailed later. The goal of the zikr/hadra is to achieve ecstatic trance when the soul is drawn to and is absorbed for a time in the “All-Soul”, like a magnet.

Samaa—which, in the Ancient Egyptian language, means to unite through sound/music. As stated earlier, Sufi traditions acknowledge that appropriate music is the means of transmission and intermediation between human and Divine. Samaa is the effective method/way to fulfill the desire to unite/vanish into God. In other words, the right musical compositions and sound of words/names induce a state of ecstasy. The Egyptian Dhu ‘l-Nun el-Masri said, of samaa: “Those who listen with their souls can hear the heavenly music/call.”

It should be noted that the concept of samaa is also very important in mouleds [see Chapter 10 for more details].

[An excerpt from Egyptian Mystics : Seekers of The Way by Moustafa Gadalla]

View Book @ { https://egyptianwisdomcenter.org/product/egyptian-mystics-seekers-of-the-way-2nd-edition/}

[Also read The Enduring Ancient Egyptian Musical System : Theory and Practice by Moustafa Gadalla]