November 16, 20224:01 PM ET (NPR.org)

Heard on All Things Considered

CHIARA EISNER

Clockwise from upper left: Holly Sox, Catarino Escobar, Frank Thompson, Bill Breeden, Craig Baxley and Ron McAndrew have all been affected by work related to executions.

Audio: https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1136796857/1137225892

Sean Rayford, Emily Najera, Celeste Noche, Scott Langley and Octavio Jones for NPR

Pretending to die isn’t typically part of a correctional officer’s job. But when the court issues a death warrant, there’s often a team that has to rehearse the execution of the prisoner. In Nevada, one of the people they practiced on was officer Catarino Escobar.

Escobar wasn’t nervous when his colleagues handcuffed him and escorted him out of the holding cell. But then the officers took him into the gas chamber. About the size of a bathroom stall, the room is framed with large bay windows so people can watch from outside as prisoners take their last breaths. It was inside that space that something strange started to happen to him.

As the officers strapped Escobar down to the gurney, his vision narrowed. He yearned for his mother, then his brother. Escobar wanted his family with him, he said, because for what felt like 20 minutes, he was absolutely certain his life was over.

“I wasn’t acting or playing,” said Escobar. “I believed that I was being executed.”

During the past 50 years, more than 1,550 death sentences have been carried out across the U.S. Hundreds of people like Escobar played a role in each of those executions, and again, hundreds of others are getting to work. Five states scheduled seven executions over the last two months of 2022 alone.

There are legal restrictions to revealing the identities of many of the workers while they’re employed, and a culture of secrecy tends to keep them quiet long after they leave their posts. But NPR’s investigations team spoke with 26 current and former workers who were collectively involved with more than 200 executions across 17 states and the federal death chamber. They were executioners, lawyers, correctional officers, prison spokespeople, wardens, corrections leaders, a researcher, a doctor, an engineer, a journalist and a nurse. Many are sharing their names and stories publicly for the first time.

“Nobody talked about it,” said Escobar, who has never even told his family about what he did in the death chamber. “We all knew to keep it silent.”

The answers the workers gave about how their jobs affected them weren’t all the same — and neither were their circumstances. A few said they volunteered for the task and that it didn’t bother them much. Many more of the people NPR spoke with had little choice in their involvement. Execution work was often a required part of their jobs, and it took a toll.

Most of the workers NPR interviewed reported suffering serious mental and physical repercussions. But only one person said they received any psychological support from the government to help them cope. The experience was enough to shift many of their perspectives on capital punishment. No one who NPR spoke with whose work required them to witness executions in Virginia, Nevada, Florida, California, Ohio, South Carolina, Arizona, Nebraska, Texas, Alabama, Oregon, South Dakota or Indiana expressed support for the death penalty afterward, NPR found.

It wasn’t always because the workers felt the process was unfair to the prisoner. It was often because they realized it was too hard on them.

“There was more than one casualty,” said Perrin Damon, a spokeswoman who helped coordinate two executions for the Oregon Department of Corrections. “More people are involved than anyone understands.”

White sheets remain on the lethal injection gurney that Catarino Escobar was strapped down to at Nevada State Prison, a former penitentiary in Carson City, Nev.

Emily Najera for NPR

Out of sight, not mind

Ten of the people NPR interviewed never saw prisoners die in the chamber. Some didn’t work behind bars at all. They were still closely involved with capital punishment.

As a public defender who advocates for people charged with murder in Florida, Allison Miller is constantly thinking about the death penalty. It looms over her and her clients as their worst case scenario. When that scenario came true last year for a man named Markeith Loyd, Miller couldn’t stop blaming herself. To this day, she can’t forget how her toddler wished her luck before she left home to speak with his jury.

“She said, ‘I hope you save Mr. Markeith,’” Miller recalled, her voice breaking. “And then I just remember thinking, I didn’t. I failed him. I failed her. I failed in this godly task that I was given.”

Loyd probably won’t be executed anytime soon. He was sentenced to death in March, and it typically takes people around 20 years to exhaust all their appeals and face the death chamber. But Miller is already seeing her own consequences. She recounted a range of symptoms that she attributes to trying cases like Loyd’s: hair loss, insomnia, irritability, anxiety and dissociation from the world around her.

“I cannot underscore what it feels like to stand there and ask 12 people to not kill somebody,” Miller said. “It broke me a lot.”

Laura Briggs’ job started further down the execution timeline. As a law clerk on a federal death penalty case, she had to monitor documents filed just weeks before a man was scheduled to die in Indiana. If evidence had been submitted that could have paused the process, it was her job to tell the prison in time to save his life.

During the last few days before the execution, Briggs didn’t do anything that could distract her. She barely slept. She rarely ate. She didn’t devote a single thought to anything but worrying that she was going to miss something, she said.

“It was just beyond acute anxiety,” Briggs remembered. “It felt like being suspended in burning oil.”

The anxiety was so extreme that she sensed her blood pressure rising and heard a constant, high pitched noise in her head. Before doing the work, Briggs didn’t have a strong opinion about capital punishment. Now, she’s firmly against it.

“It creates a situation where someone innocent could be executed,” Briggs said. “There’s no chance for peace with that.”

Behind bars — macabre meetings and revelations

Inside the prison, workers experienced a different set of stressors as they got ready for execution day.

“People think that it would be so easy to go up and execute someone who had committed such heinous acts,” said Jeanne Woodford, a warden who oversaw four executions in California’s San Quentin State Prison. “But the truth is, killing a human being is hard. It should be hard.”

Woodford had to speak with the person slated to die, then talk with his family to receive instructions for what to later do with his body. Afterward, she had to speak with the other family involved, too — the family of the victim.

“You just don’t know what to say to people who are in so much pain,” Woodford said. “And no one is sensitive to the fact that you as the warden are sitting there thinking, in 30 days, I’m going to have to go in and give the order to carry out an execution of a human being.”

With that on her mind, Woodford still had to brief security personnel to prepare for protests, select officers to carry out the execution and process permissions for outsiders who wanted to attend. Then, at around midnight on the date of the execution, she gave the signal for the executioner to go ahead.

Woodford felt the effect inside her brain. She tried to be present with her family and rarely missed her children’s sports games. But the memories of what she had done kept her distant and caused persistent insomnia.

“You’re there, but you’re not really there,” she said. “You realize that you’re suffering from post-traumatic stress.”

Farther north, in Oregon, Corrections Superintendent Frank Thompson watched staff suffer similar consequences as the state prepared to carry out its first two executions in more than 30 years.

Shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court banned the death penalty across the country in 1972, the court changed its mind. In 1976, it decided to leave it up to the states to decide whether and when they’d bring capital punishment back. Some states never did. Others, like Oregon, waited decades to do it. That meant many workers who started their jobs in prison when executions were off the table suddenly found themselves required to perform tasks they never expected.

It also meant employees in Oregon had to make much of what they needed to execute someone from scratch. They sourced the cart the gurney rolled on from a hospital and the arm and leg straps they attached to it from another state. Then they tried to anticipate every edge case of what could go wrong. Damon, the spokeswoman, said she even flew above the prison in a plane to spot security vulnerabilities from a bird’s eye view.

The pressure of trying to ensure there would be no mistakes despite the staff’s inexperience affected the psyches of everyone involved, Thompson remembered. Those at the highest levels of power — like the governor, who later issued a moratorium forbidding more executions during his term — were not exempt.

“We had to get the ‘OK’ directly from him before I gave the instruction to proceed with the execution, so he’s very much a part of it,” the superintendent said. “All of us had negative results.”

Like the law clerk, that changed his opinion on the death penalty. Thompson grew up in the segregated South and remembers when two white men tortured and lynched 14-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi. He used to believe that people who did things like that could deserve to die. But after seeing how preparing to carry out executions took a toll on staff, Thompson came to believe the workers didn’t deserve to have to be the ones to do it.

“All of that was on our shoulders,” he said. “My shoulders.”

All of that, and the workers still hadn’t seen the execution itself. Those that did told NPR their jobs were just as challenging.

Inside the death chamber

Nobody in the death chamber had expected Pedro Medina’s head to catch fire. Like the electrician at Florida State Prison had done dozens of times before, on that day in 1997, he had soaked a sponge with saline before applying it to the top of Medina’s scalp, to help conduct electricity and avoid a spark. But after the flames started rising around Medina’s face, something had to be decided. Behind the secret curtain that hid the staff from view, the electrician looked to the warden, Ron McAndrew, for instruction: Should he stop the machine of the electric chair, or not?

“Once the smoke and the fire came out of the helmet, of course, there was no turning back,” McAndrew said. “It was awful.”

McAndrew said the stress of witnessing that execution and seven others caused his fingers and heels to crack and drove him to drink a bottle of scotch a day. It’s been 25 years since the death chamber filled with the smell of a man burning. Though he couldn’t stop Medina’s execution after it started, he still feels responsible for what happened.

Bill Breeden felt a similar kind of guilt. In 2021, Breeden traveled to the federal chamber in Indiana to pray before Corey Johnson’s execution, as his religious minister. Seven minutes after Johnson was injected with the drug that was supposed to kill him, the minister heard Johnson speak up from the gurney.

“He said, ‘I feel my mouth and my hands are on fire,’” Breeden said. The prisoner was still alive.

For months afterward, Breeden became claustrophobic and would start crying randomly in the middle of conversations. He was haunted by nightmares that took him back to the moment when he heard Johnson’s voice. Breeden didn’t work for the government, but he still felt complicit in the death he hadn’t been able to prevent.

“You kind of get this feeling of ‘well, I’m validating this process,’” he said.

For Craig Baxley, that feeling was inescapable. Baxley executed 10 people for the state of South Carolina. Although at least two executioners were supposed to share the task of pushing the drugs into people’s veins, because of frequent staffing shortages, he was often the only one left with the job, he said. Until recently, he thought about suicide.

“Every single one of the death certificates says state-assisted homicide,” Baxley said. “And the state was me.”

Dr. Joseph Currier is a psychology professor at the University of South Alabama who studies military trauma. He said that having to take someone else’s life is the highest predictor of most mental health problems among veterans.

“They think about it again and again and again, and then over time there’s this profound sense of shame or guilt that begins to emerge for people,” he said.

But there’s a difference between servicemen who kill for the government in warzones and execution workers who do it at home. Veterans have access to free, lifelong health care through the Department of Veterans Affairs. Execution workers have no comparable support system. Although his job and his suffering were serious, Baxley never received counseling to discuss what he was going through while he was executing people for the state of South Carolina. He wasn’t alone. Only one of the 26 people NPR interviewed across the country said they received psychological support from the government to help them through the process of working on executions.

Dr. Caterina Spinaris, a psychologist whose practice in Colorado focuses on correctional officers, believes that’s dangerous. The kind of trauma that can result from taking another human being’s life is an occupational hazard that can cause serious damage if workers aren’t protected, she said.

“Think of radiation,” Spinaris said. “You wouldn’t send people to deal with radiation without the appropriate suits on.”

But of the five states that scheduled executions before the end of 2022 — Alabama, Oklahoma, Arizona, Missouri and Texas — none have the kind of support system in place that psychologists and former workers recommend, NPR found.

Quick fixes for long-term problems

What each of the states confirmed they do have are basic Employee Assistance Programs, or EAPs. Those programs provide workers with a handful of free counseling sessions before referring people to pay out of pocket if they want more.

They serve a need, Spinaris indicated, just not this one. Because they’re only available to staff, the EAPs do not provide help to execution workers who aren’t state employees, like religious ministers. And they’re not designed to treat complex problems such as the trauma involved with execution work, she said.

“If somebody has a serious issue like post-traumatic issues, they say, yep, doesn’t cover that because EAP cannot fix it,” Spinaris said. “They don’t run very deep.”

Representatives from Missouri, Texas and Arizona said their corrections departments also have trained teams of counselors that can help workers during some crises in prisons, like riots or hostage situations. But when NPR asked whether the team in Texas attends to staff during executions, a spokeswoman for the Department of Criminal Justice confirmed it does not. And like the EAP programs, the services are mostly optional.

That’s part of the problem, former execution workers said. Because any assistance offered to them while they were working on executions was also overwhelmingly optional, many of them avoided asking for it so as not to seem weak. Not much seems to have changed. A current execution worker in Missouri told NPR that though he knows about the trauma-trained team there, he’s choosing not to seek the help.

Spinaris recommended that basic support be mandatory for everyone involved with executions. At the very least, workers should be prepared in advance for the tasks ahead, provided with immediate assistance following the execution itself and then required to attend counseling for some time afterward, she said. Currier, the psychologist from Alabama who studies veterans, agreed that execution work could be considered an occupational hazard and that the government has a responsibility to make sure that workers who participate are cared for.

But like others NPR spoke with, Holly Sox believes the right solution is to do away with the death penalty. Sox understands why people support the policy. She used to be one of its advocates too, until her father, a prison nurse, worked on his first execution in South Carolina.

That night, after the electric chair was turned on, it was he who had to place his stethoscope over his patient’s heart and listen until it stopped beating. Afterward, it was Sox’s mother who struggled to communicate with him when he grew withdrawn and unrecognizable at home. And it was Sox and her sister who could only watch as their father chose to do the job again and again during the state’s next executions, in order to protect another employee from also having to suffer, he told them.

The idea of capital punishment looks good on paper, Sox said, but in practice, the damage it causes families like hers isn’t worth it.

“Nobody stops to think, somebody has to carry it out,” she said. “Somebody has to be the one.”

The audio for this story was produced by Meg Anderson and Monika Evstatieva; edited by Barrie Hardymon and Robert Little; photo editing by Emily Bogle; and graphic editing by Nick Underwood.

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Were you involved in any way with preparing for executions scheduled this year, like those in Arizona, Alabama, Texas or Oklahoma? Are you involved with any executions soon to happen, like those in Missouri or Idaho, or know anyone who might be? We want to hear about your experience. Your name will not be used without your consent, and you can remain anonymous. Please consider reaching out to NPR by clicking this link.

(Contributed by Gwyllm Llwydd)

“Whoever acts according to what he knows, Allah will make him inherit knowledge that he did not know.“

–The Quran

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Moksha (disambiguation).

Translations of Moksha
English	Emancipation, liberation, release
Sanskrit	मोक्ष (IAST: mokṣa)
Assamese	মোক্ষ (mokkho)
Bengali	মোক্ষ (mokkho)
Gujarati	મોક્ષ (mōkṣa)
Hindi	मोक्ष (moksh)
Javanese	ꦩꦺꦴꦏ꧀ꦱ (moksa)
Kannada	ಮೋಕ್ಷ (mōkṣa)
Malayalam	മോക്ഷം (mōkṣaṁ)
Marathi	मोक्ष (moksh)
Nepali	मोक्ष (moksh)
Odia	ମୋକ୍ଷ (mokṣa)
Punjabi	ਮੋਕਸ਼ (mōkaśa)
Tamil	வீடுபேறு (vīdupēru)
Telugu	మోక్షము (mokshamu)
Glossary of Hinduism terms

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A depiction of liberated souls at moksha.

Moksha (/ˈmoʊkʃə/; Sanskrit: मोक्ष, mokṣa), also called vimoksha, vimukti and mukti,^[1] is a term in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism for various forms of emancipation, enlightenment, liberation, and release.^[2] In its soteriological and eschatological senses, it refers to freedom from saṃsāra, the cycle of death and rebirth.^[3] In its epistemological and psychological senses, moksha is freedom from ignorance: self-realization, self-actualization and self-knowledge.^[4]

In Hindu traditions, moksha is a central concept^[5] and the utmost aim of human life; the other three aims being dharma (virtuous, proper, moral life), artha (material prosperity, income security, means of life), and kama (pleasure, sensuality, emotional fulfillment).^[6] Together, these four concepts are called Puruṣārtha in Hinduism.^[7]

In some schools of Indian religions, moksha is considered equivalent to and used interchangeably with other terms such as vimoksha, vimukti, kaivalya, apavarga, mukti, nihsreyasa and nirvana.^[8] However, terms such as moksha and nirvana differ and mean different states between various schools of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.^[9] The term nirvana is more common in Buddhism,^[10] while moksha is more prevalent in Hinduism.^[11]

Etymology

Moksha is derived from the root, muc, which means to free, let go, release, liberate.^[12]

Definition and meanings

The definition and meaning of moksha varies between various schools of Indian religions.^[13] Moksha means freedom, liberation; from what and how is where the schools differ.^[14] Moksha is also a concept that means liberation from rebirth or saṃsāra.^[3] This liberation can be attained while one is on earth (jivanmukti), or eschatologically (karmamukti,^[3] videhamukti). Some Indian traditions have emphasized liberation on concrete, ethical action within the world. This liberation is an epistemological transformation that permits one to see the truth and reality behind the fog of ignorance.^{[web 1]}

Moksha has been defined not merely as absence of suffering and release from bondage to saṃsāra. Various schools of Hinduism also explain the concept as presence of the state of paripurna-brahmanubhava (the experience of oneness with Brahman, the One Supreme Self), a state of knowledge, peace and bliss.^[15] For example, Vivekachudamani – an ancient book on moksha, explains one of many meditative steps on the path to moksha, as:

जाति नीति कुल गोत्र दूरगं
नाम रूप गुण दोष वर्जितम्।
देश काल विषया तिवर्ति यद्
ब्रह्म तत्त्वमसि भाव यात्मनि॥ २५४ ॥

Beyond caste, creed, family or lineage,
That which is without name and form, beyond merit and demerit,
That which is beyond space, time and sense-objects,
You are that, God himself; Meditate this within yourself. ||Verse 254||

— Vivekachudamani, 8th Century CE^[16]

More at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moksha

“Human compassion is equal to human cruelty, and it is up to each of us to tip the balance.” Alice Walker (b-1944) American Writer

AN OPPORTUNITY FOR DAILY REFLECTION BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE SCHOOL OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY

Kian Pirfalak was one of several people killed on Wednesday as anger over Mahsa Amini transforms into wider protest against the regime

Patrick Wintour, diplomatic editor Thu 17 Nov 2022 13.59 EST (TheGuardian.com)

The family of a nine-year-old boy killed on Wednesday evening by assailants on motorbikes during some of the worst violence in Iran in two months of protests have accused security forces of carrying out the attack.

Kian Pirfalak was one of seven people, including a woman and a 13-year-old child, killed by gunmen in the western city of Izeh.

Authorities blamed the deaths on “terrorists” who “took advantage of a gathering of protesters … to open fire on people and security officers”, according to a report by the official IRNA news agency.

IRNA said eight people were wounded, including three police and two members of the Basij paramilitary force, which is linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.

But in an audio recording tweeted by Radio Farda, a US-funded Persian station based in Prague, a man identifying himself as a family member said security forces were responsible for Kian’s death. “He was going home with his father and was targeted with bullets by the corrupt regime of the Islamic republic. Their car was attacked from all four sides,” the man is heard saying in the recording. A similar allegation was made on Instagram.

The boy’s body was reportedly taken to the family home covered in ice because family members feared if he was sent to the morgue it would be taken by the security forces, as has happened in numerous other cases.

Protesters said members of the Basij paramilitary force were running amok in the city on Wednesday.

Ali Karimi, an Iranian footballer and supporter of the protesters who lives in the United Arab Emirates, wrote on social media: “Kian! We will take back Iran!” Kataneh Afshar Nejad, an Iranian actor, posted footage of herself on Instagram without a hijab condemning Pirfalak’s death.

In a separate attack hours later in Isfahan, two assailants on a motorcycle fired automatic weapons at members of the Basij, killing two and wounding two others, the Fars news agency said.

Protests over the death in custody of Mahsa Amini on 16 September have intensified this week, on the third anniversary of a bloody crackdown on unrest over fuel price hikes. The unrest has been fanned by fury over the brutal enforcement of the mandatory hijab law, but has grown into a broad movement against the theocracy that has ruled Iran since 1979.

https://interactive.guim.co.uk/uploader/embed/2022/11/iranprotests-zip/giv-6562ZMheK9GSpT3j/

On Thursday one protester was killed in Bukan and two in Sanandaj, where mourners were paying tribute to “four victims of the popular resistance” 40 days after they were killed, the Oslo-based Hengaw rights group said.

Footage from Sanandaj on Thursday showed protesters marching down a street filled with bonfires and chanting “death to the dictator”. IRNA reported that a police colonel called Hassan Youssefi had been killed after being stabbed repeatedly in the city.

Late on Wednesday Hengaw had said security forces were accused of killing at least 10 people within a 24-hour period during protests in the cities of Bukan, Kamyaran, Sanandaj and Amini’s home town of Saqez.

Three days of renewed violence had begun on Tuesday when security forces opened fire on people at a metro station in Tehran.

Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you through the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning.

In a sign that the regime could be preparing the ground for an uptick in repression, official news agencies said Wednesday night’s deaths might be evidence that the protests were turning into an “armed insurrection”. An investigation of the bullets in the bodies of those shot dead is to be held and there is now likely to be a massive propaganda battle in which authorities will argue the protests are the seedbed for what it calls the “Syrianisation” of Iran and a collapse of public order.

As well as the protests, shopkeepers and others have gone on strike in Iran, and videos posted on social media on Wednesday showed shops closed in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar as protesters chanted anti-government slogans. The state claims there is no enthusiasm for the strikes and that organised gangs have been harassing hard-pressed business owners into pulling down their shutters.https://interactive.guim.co.uk/uploader/embed/2022/11/protestchart-zip/giv-6562ol06s1CyLXbE/

The regime’s difficulty, acknowledged by many reformist politicians and academics inside Iran, is that many protesters have long ago stopped taking their news from what they regard as utterly discredited official sources, and instead rely either on internal social media or international Farsi-speaking satellite broadcast channels and websites, such as BBC Persian or Iran International.

At least five protesters have now been officially sentenced to death, according to the media centre for the judiciary, one for allegedly setting fire to a government building.

Speaking at the G20 meeting in Indonesia on Wednesday, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, likened recent events in Iran to a revolution.

“Something that has changed [on the ground in Iran] is this revolution of women, young people of Iran, defending universal values like gender equality,” he said. “It’s important to commend the courage and legitimacy of this fight.”

The west appears to be rethinking its entire strategy towards Iran, something Iran’s political establishment is only starting to realise. The internal protests, and evidence that Iran has been supplying Russia with drones to help attack Ukraine, has left advocates of a revival of the nuclear deal struggling for political footing. So far criticism within Iran of the decision to take Russia’s side over Ukraine, given the inevitable wider diplomatic impact, has not been forceful enough to challenge hardliners’ grip on foreign policy.

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

VIA FIRST DRAFT

In Conversation with Mitzi Rapkin on the First Draft Podcast

By First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing 

November 14, 2022 (lithub.com)

First Draft: A Dialogue of Writing is a weekly show featuring in-depth interviews with fiction, nonfiction, essay writers, and poets, highlighting the voices of writers as they discuss their work, their craft, and the literary arts. Hosted by Mitzi Rapkin, First Draft celebrates creative writing and the individuals who are dedicated to bringing their carefully chosen words to print as well as the impact writers have on the world we live in.

In this episode, Mitzi talks to Ross Gay about his new book, Inciting Joy.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

From the episode:

Mitzi Rapkin: You talk about this notion in many different ways in terms of the harm that is done just being alive, like to the environment or people. It’s really heavy when you’re talking about joy, but it’s reality.

Ross Gay: Yeah, it’s totally reality. I think one of the things about joy, I think, is that it’s a profoundly impure emotion. I think that joy is not interested in innocence. I think joy is actually interested in connection and this sort of muddiness of our cohabitation or being together. I think joy understands complicity. Joy understands harm, too. Because it understands that we’re connected to one another and we are not, “innocent” or “pure”, it’s not interested in that. It might be more likely to incite us to try to remedy the various harms that by being creatures we will commit.

I think that’s one of the things that feels so exciting or enlivening or dangerous about joy is that by emerging from our understanding of connection to one another, and illuminating our connection to one another, it reminds us that our connection to one another is actually what might save us and what has always saved us. It’s never been the institutions, it’s always been our neighbor. It’s always been, you know, the person down the street. It’s always just been us. So, that’s kind of how I think about it, that it’s dangerous. 

***

Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding, winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. His first collection of essays, The Book of Delights, was released in 2019 and was a New York Times bestseller. His new collection of essays is called Inciting Joy.

by Vladimir Hedrih

 November 18, 2022 (psypost.org)

[Subscribe to PsyPost on YouTube to stay up-to-date on the latest developments in psychology and neuroscience]

In two daily diary studies on couples and undergraduate students, researchers found that feeling appreciated buffered the negative link between avoidant attachment style and prosocial behavior towards their partners. People who are uncomfortable with intimacy were more willing to do things they do not like for the benefit of their partner if they felt appreciated. The study was published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

At a young age, individuals learn to avoid intimacy when their close others are untrustworthy, unreliable and unwilling to meet their needs. They develop an avoidant attachment style. Later in life, avoidantly attached persons do not expect others to be prosocial towards them i.e., to take care of their needs. This often makes them, in turn, less willing to themselves act in a prosocial way towards others.

Prosociality, proneness to behavior that will benefit others, is a key ingredient of caring relationships. This is particularly the case when done with the intention of enhancing partner’s well-being and not in order to promote self-interests. On the other hand, when avoidantly attached individuals do things they dislike for the benefit of the partner, they usually do so to avoid personal costs such as partner’s anger and frustration, rather than to make partner feel happy and loved.

Can feeling appreciated change that? Previous studies have shown that the behavior of avoidant individuals in a romantic relationship can be improved if their perception that their partner does not care about their needs is challenged.

To study the effects of appreciation on prosocial behavior of avoidantly attached persons, Kristina M. Schrage and her colleagues devised two studies in which participants kept daily diaries of developments of interest for the study.

Eighty couples, of which 75 were heterosexuals from the San Francisco Bay area participated in study 1. Their mean age was around 24 years and half of them were students. The researchers assessed their attachment styles (Experiences in Close Relationships Scale, ECR) at the start of the study and asked them to provide daily assessments of how appreciated they feel, their relationship satisfaction, motives for sacrifice for their partner (“Today, did you do anything that you did not particularly want to do for your partner? Or did you give up something that you did want to do for the sake of your partner?”), how appreciative they feel about their partner, how much they experienced physical affection and whether they made a sacrifice for their partner.

Participants in study 2 were 164 Canadian undergraduate students (89 females). After completing the attachment style survey, they were asked to complete a set of surveys each night assessing how appreciated they feel by their partner, their willingness to sacrifice for the partner, commitment to the relationship, motivations for sacrifice and relationship satisfaction.

The results of both studies showed that highly avoidant individuals were less willing to sacrifice for their partner, unless they were feeling highly appreciated. When they felt highly appreciated, their willingness to sacrifice for their partner was in line with the willingness to sacrifice of low-avoidance individuals. Study 2 also found that highly avoidant individuals displayed a bit higher motivation to benefit their partner when they were feeling highly appreciated compared to low-avoidance participants.

The study highlights the importance of feeling appreciated for the good functioning of partner relationships. However, it relied on daily diaries and spontaneous instances when feeling appreciated arose in daily lives. It is uncertain whether results would remain the same if partners were intentionally expressing appreciation. Notably, future studies should examine the generalizability of these findings by exploring them under experimental conditions and on samples from different cultures.

The study, “Feeling Appreciated Predicts Prosocial Motivation in Avoidantly Attached Individuals“, was authored by Kristina M. Schrage, Bonnie M. Le, Jennifer E. Stellar, and Emily A. Impett.

(Contributed by John Atwater, H.W.)

The Princess of Disks

A young woman indicated by the Princess of Disks would be a quiet, reserved person – sometimes shy. She will be practical and capable, though rarely seeking the limelight. I used to know a stage manager who always came up as a Princess of Disks – she loved the glitz of the theatre as long as she could stay behind the scenes – having, of course, created them first!

She’s a gentle person who, like the Queen of Disks, is much concerned with domestic matters, and with Nature and growth. As a result, sometimes when this card comes up we may be looking at somebody who is expecting a child. The Princess of Cups often represents conception, the Princess of Disks shows the pregnancy and the Ace of Wands will then indicate the birth.

The Princess of Disks woman is a reliable and diligent person, trustworthy and hard-working. She is faithful by nature, and deals badly with conflict. She likes life to unfolds in an ordered fashion. In fact, she contemplates life very thoroughly, being sensitive to the needs of others, and sympathetic to their feelings.

Despite her quiet exterior, she has a huge resource of strength and support to offer to those who need it. She is also an excellent practical manager with marked proficiency in dealing with money and accounting. This will, however, generally be expressed in the home environment where she is at her most content.

When the card comes up to indicate a period in somebody’s life, rather than the person herself, we will be looking at a young woman on the threshold – of life, marriage, motherhood, though rarely on the threshold of some major career ambition. That step would be more readily indicated by the Princess of Wands.

(via angelpaths.com and Alan Blackman(

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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A wali (wali Arabic: وَلِيّ, walīy; plural أَوْلِيَاء, ʾawliyāʾ), the Arabic word which has been variously translated “master”, “authority”, “custodian”, “protector”,^[1][2] is most commonly used by Muslims to indicate an Islamic saint, otherwise referred to by the more literal “friend of God“.^[1][3][4]

When the Arabic definite article “al” (ال) is added, it refers to one of the names of God in Islam, Allah – al-Walī (الْوليّ), meaning “the Helper, Friend”.

In the traditional Islamic understanding of saints, the saint is portrayed as someone “marked by [special] divine favor … [and] holiness”, and who is specifically “chosen by God and endowed with exceptional gifts, such as the ability to work miracles“.^[5] The doctrine of saints was articulated by Muslim scholars very early on in Islamic history,^[6][7][5][8] and particular verses of the Quran and certain hadith were interpreted by early Muslim thinkers as “documentary evidence”^[5] of the existence of saints. Graves of saints around the Muslim world became centers of pilgrimage — especially after 1200 CE — for masses of Muslims seeking their barakah (blessing).^[9]

A Persian miniature depicting the medieval saint and mystic Ahmad Ghazali (d. 1123), brother of the famous al-Ghazali (d. 1111), talking to a disciple, from Meetings of the Lovers (1552).

Since the first Muslim hagiographies were written during the period when the Islamic mystical trend of Sufism began its rapid expansion, many of the figures who later came to be regarded as the major saints in orthodox Sunni Islam were the early Sufi mystics, like Hasan of Basra (d. 728), Farqad Sabakhi (d. 729), Dawud Tai (d. 777–781), Rabia of Basra (d. 801), Maruf Karkhi (d. 815), and Junayd of Baghdad (d. 910).^[1] From the twelfth to the fourteenth century, “the general veneration of saints, among both people and sovereigns, reached its definitive form with the organization of Sufism … into orders or brotherhoods”.^[10] In the common expressions of Islamic piety of this period, the saint was understood to be “a contemplative whose state of spiritual perfection … [found] permanent expression in the teaching bequeathed to his disciples”.^[10] In many prominent Sunni creeds of the time, such as the famous Creed of Tahawi (c. 900) and the Creed of Nasafi (c. 1000), a belief in the existence and miracles of saints was presented as “a requirement” for being an orthodox Muslim believer.^[11][12]

Aside from the Sufis, the preeminent saints in traditional Islamic piety are the Companions of the Prophet, their Successors, and the Successors of the Successors.^[13] Additionally, the prophets and messengers in Islam are also believed to be saints by definition, although they are rarely referred to as such, in order to prevent confusion between them and ordinary saints; as the prophets are exalted by Muslims as the greatest of all humanity, it is a general tenet of Sunni belief that a single prophet is greater than all the regular saints put together.^[14] In short, it is believed that “every prophet is a saint, but not every saint is a prophet”.^[15]

In the modern world, the traditional Sunni and Shia idea of saints has been challenged by puritanical and revivalist Islamic movements such as the Salafi movement, Wahhabism, and Islamic Modernism, all three of which have, to a greater or lesser degree, “formed a front against the veneration and theory of saints.”^[1] As has been noted by scholars, the development of these movements has indirectly led to a trend amongst some mainstream Muslims to resist “acknowledging the existence of Muslim saints altogether or … [to view] their presence and veneration as unacceptable deviations”.^[16] However, despite the presence of these opposing streams of thought, the classical doctrine of saint veneration continues to thrive in many parts of the Islamic world today, playing a vital role in daily expressions of piety among vast segments of Muslim populations in Muslim countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Turkey, Senegal, Iraq, Iran, Algeria, Tunisia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Morocco,^[1] as well as in countries with substantial Islamic populations like India, China, Russia, and the Balkans.^[1]

Names

A Persian miniature depicting Jalal al-Din Rumi showing love for his disciple Hussam al-Din Chelebi (ca. 1594)

Regarding the rendering of the Arabic walī by the English “saint”, prominent scholars such as Gibril Haddad have regarded this as an appropriate translation, with Haddad describing the aversion of some Muslims towards the use of “saint” for walī as “a specious objection … for [this is] – like ‘Religion’ (din), ‘Believer’ (mu’min), ‘prayer’ (salat), etc. – [a] generic term for holiness and holy persons while there is no confusion, for Muslims, over their specific referents in Islam, namely: the reality of iman with Godwariness and those who possess those qualities.”^{[17][better source needed]} In Persian, which became the second most influential and widely spoken language in the Islamic world after Arabic,^[1] the general title for a saint or a spiritual master became pīr (Persian: پیر, literally “old [person]”, “elder”^[18]).^[1] Although the ramifications of this phrase include the connotations of a general “saint,”^[1] it is often used to specifically signify a spiritual guide of some type.^[1]

Amongst Indian Muslims, the title pīr baba (पीर बाबा) is commonly used in Hindi to refer to Sufi masters or similarly honored saints.^[1] Additionally, saints are also sometimes referred to in the Persian or Urdu vernacular with “Hazrat.”^[1] In Islamic mysticism, a pīr’s role is to guide and instruct his disciples on the mystical path.^[1] Hence, the key difference between the use of walī and pīr is that the former does not imply a saint who is also a spiritual master with disciples, while the latter directly does so through its connotations of “elder”.^[1] Additionally, other Arabic and Persian words that also often have the same connotations as pīr, and hence are also sometimes translated into English as “saint”, include murshid (Arabic: مرشد, meaning “guide” or “teacher”), sheikh and sarkar (Persian word meaning “master”).^[1]

In the Turkish Islamic lands, saints have been referred to by many terms, including the Arabic walī, the Persian s̲h̲āh and pīr, and Turkish alternatives like baba in Anatolia, ata in Central Asia (both meaning “father”), and eren or ermis̲h̲ (< ermek “to reach, attain”) or yati̊r (“one who settles down”) in Anatolia.^[1] Their tombs, meanwhile, are “denoted by terms of Arabic or Persian origin alluding to the idea of pilgrimage (mazār, ziyāratgāh), tomb (ḳabr, maḳbar) or domed mausoleum (gunbad, ḳubba). But such tombs are also denoted by terms usually used for dervish convents, or a particular part of it (tekke in the Balkans, langar, ‘refectory,’ and ribāṭ in Central Asia), or by a quality of the saint (pīr, ‘venerable, respectable,’ in Azerbaijan).”^[1]

History

Further information: Holiest sites in Islam and List of Sufi saints

A Mughal miniature dated from the early 1620s depicting the Mughal emperor Jahangir (d. 1627) preferring a Sufi saint to his contemporary, the King of England James I (d. 1625); the picture is inscribed: “Though outwardly kings stand before him, he fixes his gazes on saints.”

According to various traditional Sufi interpretations of the Quran, the concept of sainthood is clearly described.^[19] Some modern scholars, however, assert that the Quran does not explicitly outline a doctrine or theory of saints.^[1] In the Quran, the adjective walī is applied to God, in the sense of him being the “friend” of all believers (Q2:257).^[20] However, particular Quranic verses were interpreted by early Islamic scholars to refer to a special, exalted group of holy people.^[5] These included 10:62:^[5] “Surely God’s friends (awliyāa l-lahi): no fear shall be on them, neither shall they sorrow,”^[5] and 5:54, which refers to God’s love for those who love him.^[5] Additionally, some scholars^[1] interpreted 4:69, “Whosoever obeys God and the Messenger, they are with those unto whom God hath shown favor: the prophets and the ṣidīqīna and the martyrs and the righteous. The best of company are they,” to carry a reference to holy people who were not prophets and were ranked below the latter.^[1] The word ṣidīqīna in this verse literally connotes “the truthful ones” or “the just ones,” and was often interpreted by the early Islamic thinkers in the sense of “saints,” with the famous Quran translator Marmaduke Pickthall rendering it as “saints” in their interpretations of the scripture.^[1] Furthermore, the Quran referred to the miracles of saintly people who were not prophets like Khidr (18:65–18:82) and the People of the Cave (18:7–18:26), which also led many early scholars to deduce that a group of venerable people must exist who occupy a rank below the prophets but are nevertheless exalted by God.^[1] The references in the corpus of hadith literature to bona fide saints like the pre-Islamic Jurayj̲,^{[21][22][23][24]} only lent further credence to this early understanding of saints.^[1]

Collected stories about the “lives or vitae of the saints”, began to be compiled “and transmitted at an early stage”^[1] by many regular Muslim scholars, including Ibn Abi al-Dunya (d. 894),^[1] who wrote a work entitled Kitāb al-Awliyāʾ (Lives of the Saints) in the ninth-century, which constitutes “the earliest [complete] compilation on the theme of God’s friends.”^[1] Prior to Ibn Abi al-Dunya’s work, the stories of the saints were transmitted through oral tradition; but after the composition of his work, many Islamic scholars began writing down the widely circulated accounts,^[1] with later scholars like Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣfahānī (d. 948) making extensive use of Ibn Abi al-Dunya’s work in his own Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ (The Adornment of the Saints).^[1] It is, moreover, evident from the Kitāb al-Kas̲h̲f wa ’l-bayān of the early Baghdadi Sufi mystic Abu Sa’id al-Kharraz (d. 899) that a cohesive understanding of the Muslim saints was already in existence, with al-Kharraz spending ample space distinguishing between the virtues and miracles (karāmāt) of the prophets and the saints.^[1] The genre of hagiography (manāḳib) only became more popular with the passage of time, with numerous prominent Islamic thinkers of the medieval period devoting large works to collecting stories of various saints or to focusing upon “the marvelous aspects of the life, the miracles or at least the prodigies of a [specific] Ṣūfī or of a saint believed to have been endowed with miraculous powers.”^[25]

In the late ninth-century, important thinkers in Sunni Islam officially articulated the previously-oral doctrine of an entire hierarchy of saints, with the first written account of this hierarchy coming from the pen of al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi (d. 907-912).^[1] With the general consensus of Islamic scholars of the period accepting that the ulema were responsible for maintaining the “exoteric” part of Islamic orthodoxy, including the disciplines of law and jurisprudence, while the Sufis were responsible for articulating the religion’s deepest inward truths,^[1] later prominent mystics like Ibn Arabi (d. 1240) only further reinforced this idea of a saintly hierarchy, and the notion of “types” of saints became a mainstay of Sunni mystical thought, with such types including the ṣiddīqūn (“the truthful ones”) and the abdāl (“the substitute-saints”), amongst others.^[1] Many of these concepts appear in writing far before al-Tirmidhi and Ibn Arabi; the idea of the abdāl, for example, appears as early as the Musnad of Ibn Hanbal (d. 855), where the word signifies a group of major saints “whose number would remain constant, one always being replaced by some other on his death.”^[26] It is, in fact, reported that Ibn Hanbal explicitly identified his contemporary, the mystic Maruf Karkhi (d. 815-20), as one of the abdal, saying: “He is one of the substitute-saints, and his supplication is answered.”^[27]

An Mughal miniature of A Discourse between Muslim Sages (ca. 1630), thought to be executed by the court painter Govārdhan.

From the twelfth to the fourteenth century, “the general veneration of saints, among both people and sovereigns, reached its definitive form with the organization of Sufism—the mysticism of Islam—into orders or brotherhoods.”^[10] In general Islamic piety of the period, the saint was understood to be “a contemplative whose state of spiritual perfection … [found] permanent expression in the teaching bequeathed to his disciples.”^[10] It was by virtue of his spiritual wisdom that the saint was accorded veneration in medieval Islam, “and it is this which … [effected] his ‘canonization,’ and not some ecclesiastical institution” as in Christianity.^[10] In fact, the latter point represents one of the crucial differences between the Islamic and Christian veneration of saints, for saints are venerated by unanimous consensus or popular acclaim in Islam, in a manner akin to all those Christian saints who began to be venerated prior to the institution of canonization.^[10] In fact, a belief in the existence of saints became such an important part of medieval Islam^[11][12] that many of the most important creeds articulated during the time period, like the famous Creed of Tahawi, explicitly declared it a requirement for being an “orthodox” Muslim to believe in the existence and veneration of saints and in the traditional narratives of their lives and miracles.^{[14][11][12][3]} Hence, we find that even medieval critics of the widespread practice of venerating the tombs of saints, like Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 1328), never denied the existence of saints as such, with the Hanbali jurist stating: “The miracles of saints are absolutely true and correct, by the acceptance of all Muslim scholars. And the Qur’an has pointed to it in different places, and the sayings of the Prophet have mentioned it, and whoever denies the miraculous power of saints are only people who are innovators and their followers.”^[28] In the words of one contemporary academic, practically all Muslims of that era believed that “the lives of saints and their miracles were incontestable.”^[29]

In the modern world, the traditional idea of saints in Islam has been challenged by the puritanical and revivalist Islamic movements of Salafism and Wahhabism, whose influence has “formed a front against the veneration and theory of saints.”^[1] For the adherents of Wahhabi ideology, for example, the practice of venerating saints appears as an “abomination”, for they see in this a form of idolatry.^[1] It is for this reason that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which adheres to the Wahhabi creed, “destroyed the tombs of saints wherever … able”^[1] during its expansion in the Arabian Peninsula from the eighteenth-century onwards.^{[1][Note 1]} As has been noted by scholars, the development of these movements have indirectly led to a trend amongst some mainstream Muslims to also resist “acknowledging the existence of Muslim saints altogether or … [to view] their presence and veneration as unacceptable deviations.”^[16] At the same time, the movement of Islamic Modernism has also opposed the traditional veneration of saints, for many proponents of this ideology regard the practice as “being both un-Islamic and backwards … rather than the integral part of Islam which they were for over a millennium.”^[30] Despite the presence, however, of these opposing streams of thought, the classical doctrine of saint-veneration continues to thrive in many parts of the Islamic world today, playing a vital part in the daily piety of vast portions of Muslim countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Turkey, Senegal, Iraq, Iran, Algeria, Tunisia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Morocco,^[1] as well as in countries with substantive Islamic populations like India, China, Russia, and the Balkans.^[1]

Definitions

Detail from an Indian miniature depicting the Mughal prince Dara Shikoh (d. 1659) seeking the advice of a local saint named Mian Mir (d. 1635), undated but perhaps from the late seventeenth-century

The general definition of the Muslim saint in classical texts is that he represents a “[friend of God] marked by [special] divine favor … [and] holiness”, being specifically “chosen by God and endowed with exceptional gifts, such as the ability to work miracles.”^[5] Moreover, the saint is also portrayed in traditional hagiographies as one who “in some way … acquires his Friend’s, i.e. God’s, good qualities, and therefore he possesses particular authority, forces, capacities and abilities.”^[1] Amongst classical scholars, Qushayri (d. 1073) defined the saint as someone “whose obedience attains permanence without interference of sin; whom God preserves and guards, in permanent fashion, from the failures of sin through the power of acts of obedience.”^[31] Elsewhere, the same author quoted an older tradition in order to convey his understanding of the purpose of saints, which states: “The saints of God are those who, when they are seen, God is remembered.”^[32]

Meanwhile, al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi (d. 869), the most significant ninth-century expositor of the doctrine, posited six common attributes of true saints (not necessarily applicable to all, according to the author, but nevertheless indicative of a significant portion of them), which are: (1) when people see him, they are automatically reminded of God; (2) anyone who advances towards him in a hostile way is destroyed; (3) he possesses the gift of clairvoyance (firāsa); (4) he receives divine inspiration (ilhām), to be strictly distinguished from revelation proper (waḥy),^[1][33][34] with the latter being something only the prophets receive; (5) he can work miracles (karāmāt) by the leave of God, which may differ from saint to saint, but may include marvels such as walking on water (al-mas̲h̲y ʿalā ’l-māʾ) and shortening space and time (ṭayy al-arḍ); and (6) he associates with Khidr.^[35][1] Al-Tirmidhi states, furthermore, that although the saint is not sinless like the prophets, he or she can nevertheless be “preserved from sin” (maḥfūz) by the grace of God.^[1] The contemporary scholar of Sufism Martin Lings described the Islamic saints as “the great incarnations of the Islamic ideal…. spiritual giants with which almost every generation was blessed.”^[36]

Classical testimonies

Main article: Miracles of the Saints (Islam)

The doctrine of saints, and of their miracles, seems to have been taken for granted by many of the major authors of the Islamic Golden Age (ca. 700–1400),^[1] as well as by many prominent late-medieval scholars.^[1] The phenomena in traditional Islam can be at least partly ascribed to the writings of many of the most prominent Sunni theologians and doctors of the classical and medieval periods,^[1] many of whom considered the belief in saints to be “orthodox” doctrine.^[1] Examples of classical testimonies include:

• “God has saints (awliyā) whom He has specially distinguished by His friendship and whom He has chosen to be the governors of His kingdom… He has made the saints governors of the universe… Through the blessing of their advent the rain falls from heaven, and through the purity of their lives the plants spring up from the earth, and through their spiritual influence the Muslims gain victories over the truth concealers” (Hujwiri [d. 1072-7]; Sunni Hanafi jurist and mystic)^[1]
• “The miracles of the saints (awliyā) are a reality. The miracle appears on behalf of the saint by way of contradicting the customary way of things…. And such a thing is reckoned as an evidentiary miracle on behalf of the Messenger to one of whose people this act appears, because it is evident from it that he is a saint, and he could never be a saint unless he were right in his religion; and his religion is the confession of the message of the Messenger” (al-Nasafī [d. 1142], Creed XV; Sunni Hanafi theologian)^[37]
• “The miracles of saints are absolutely true and correct, and acknowledged by all Muslim scholars. The Qur’an has pointed to it in different places, and the Hadith of the Prophet have mentioned it, and whoever denies the miraculous power of saints are innovators or following innovators” (Ibn Taymiyya [d. 1328], Mukhtasar al-Fatawa al-Masriyya; Sunni Hanbali theologian and jurisconsult)^[38]

Seeking of blessings

The rationale for veneration of deceased saints by pilgrims in an appeal for blessings (Barakah) even though the saints will not rise from the dead until the Day of Resurrection (Yawm ad-Dīn) may come from the hadith that states “the Prophets are alive in their graves and they pray”.^{[citation needed]} (According to the Islamic concept of Punishment of the Grave—established by hadith—the dead are still conscious and active, with the wicked suffering in their graves as a prelude to hell and the pious at ease.) According to Islamic historian Jonathan A.C. Brown, “saints are thought to be no different” than prophets, “as able in death to answer invocations for assistance” as they were while alive.^[9]

Types and hierarchy

A drawing of The Two Poet Saints Hafez and Saadi Shirazi (ca. 17th century), thought to be executed by a certain Muhammad Qāsim

Saints were envisaged to be of different “types” in classical Islamic tradition.^[1] Aside from their earthly differences as regard their temporal duty (i.e. jurist, hadith scholar, judge, traditionist, historian, ascetic, poet), saints were also distinguished cosmologically as regards their celestial function or standing.^[1] In Islam, however, the saints are represented in traditional texts as serving separate celestial functions, in a manner similar to the angels, and this is closely linked to the idea of a celestial hierarchy in which the various types of saints play different roles.^[1] A fundamental distinction was described in the ninth century by al-Tirmidhi in his Sīrat al-awliyāʾ (Lives of the Saints), who distinguished between two principal varieties of saints: the walī ḥaḳḳ Allāh on the one hand and the walī Allāh on the other.^[1] According to the author, “the [spiritual] ascent of the walī ḥaḳḳ Allāh must stop at the end of the created cosmos … he can attain God’s proximity, but not God Himself; he is only admitted to God’s proximity (muḳarrab). It is the walī Allāh who reaches God. Ascent beyond God’s throne means to traverse consciously the realms of light of the Divine Names…. When the walī Allāh has traversed all the realms of the Divine Names, i.e. has come to know God in His names as completely as possible, he is then extinguished in God’s essence. His soul, his ego, is eliminated and … when he acts, it is God Who acts through him. And so the state of extinction means at the same time the highest degree of activity in this world.”^[1]

Although the doctrine of the hierarchy of saints is already found in written sources as early as the eighth-century,^[1] it was al-Tirmidhi who gave it its first systematic articulation.^[1] According to the author, forty major saints, whom he refers to by the various names of ṣiddīḳīn, abdāl, umanāʾ, and nuṣaḥāʾ,^[1] were appointed after the death of Muhammad to perpetuate the knowledge of the divine mysteries vouchsafed to them by the prophet.^[1] These forty saints, al-Tirmidhi stated, would be replaced in each generation after their earthly death; and, according to him, “the fact that they exist is a guarantee for the continuing existence of the world.”^[1] Among these forty, al-Tirmidhi specified that seven of them were especially blessed.^[1] Despite their exalted nature, however, al-Tirmidhi emphasized that these forty saints occupied a rank below the prophets.^[1] Later important works which detailed the hierarchy of saints were composed by the mystic ʿAmmār al-Bidlīsī (d. between 1194 and 1207), the spiritual teacher of Najmuddin Kubra (d. 1220), and by Ruzbihan Baqli (d. 1209), who evidently knew of “a highly developed hierarchy of God’s friends.”^[1] The differences in terminology between the various celestial hierarchies presented by these authors were reconciled by later scholars through their belief that the earlier mystics had highlighted particular parts and different aspects of a single, cohesive hierarchy of saints.^[1]

Sufism

In certain esoteric teachings of Islam, there is said to be a cosmic spiritual hierarchy^[39][40][41] whose ranks include walis (saints, friends of God), abdals (changed ones), headed by a ghawth (helper) or qutb (pole, axis). The details vary according to the source.

One source is the 12th Century Persian Ali Hujwiri. In his divine court, there are three hundred akhyār (“excellent ones”), forty abdāl (“substitutes”), seven abrār (“piously devoted ones”), four awtād (“pillars”), three nuqabā (“leaders”) and one qutb.

All these saints know one another and cannot act without mutual consent. It is the task of the Awtad to go round the whole world every night, and if there should be any place on which their eyes have not fallen, next day some flaw will appear in that place, and they must then inform the Qutb in order that he may direct his attention to the weak spot and that by his blessings the imperfection may be remedied.^[42]

Another is from Ibn Arabi, who lived in Moorish Spain. It has a more exclusive structure. There are eight nujabā (“nobles”), twelve nuqabā, seven abdāl, four awtād, two a’immah (“guides”), and the qutb.^[43]

According to the 20th-century Sufi Inayat Khan, there are seven degrees in the hierarchy. In ascending order, they are pir, buzurg, wali, ghaus, qutb, nabi and rasul He does not say how the levels are populated. Pirs and buzurgs assist the spiritual progress of those who approach them. Walis may take responsibility for protecting a community and generally work in secret. Qutbs are similarly responsible for large regions. Nabis are charged with bringing a reforming message to nations or faiths, and hence have a public role. Rasuls likewise have a mission of transformation of the world at large.^[44]

More at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wali#:~:text=A%20wali%20(wali%20Arabic%3A%20%D9%88%D9%8E%D9%84%D9%90%D9%8A%D9%91,literal%20%22friend%20of%20God%22.

By Rob Brezsny (pghcitypaper.com)

ARIES (March 21-April 19): One of your callings as an Aries is to take risks. You’re inclined to take more leaps of faith than other people, and you’re also more likely to navigate them to your advantage—or at least not get burned. A key reason for your success is your keen intuition about which gambles are relatively smart and which are ill-advised. But even when your chancy ventures bring you exciting new experiences, they may still run you afoul of conventional wisdom, peer pressure, and the way things have always been done. Everything I have described here will be in maximum play for you in the coming weeks.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Your keynote comes from teacher Caroline Myss. She writes, “Becoming adept at the process of self-inquiry and symbolic insight is a vital spiritual task that leads to the growth of faith in oneself.” Encouraging you to grow your faith in yourself will be one of my prime intentions in the next 12 months. Let’s get started! How can you become more adept at self-inquiry and symbolic insight? One idea is to ask yourself a probing new question every Sunday morning, like “What teachings and healings do I most want to attract into my life during the next seven days?” Spend the subsequent week gathering experiences and revelations that will address that query. Another idea is to remember and study your dreams, since doing so is the number one way to develop symbolic insight. For help, I recommend the work of Gayle Delaney: tinyurl.com/InterviewYourDreams

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): The TV science fiction show Legends of Tomorrow features a ragtag team of imperfect but effective superheroes. They travel through time trying to fix aberrations in the timelines caused by various villains. As they experiment and improvise, sometimes resorting to wildly daring gambits, their successes outnumber their stumbles and bumbles. And on occasion, even their apparent mistakes lead to good fortune that unfolds in unexpected ways. One member of the team, Nate, observes, “Sometimes we screw up—for the better.” I foresee you Geminis as having a similar modus operandi in the coming weeks.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): I like how Cancerian poet Stephen Dunn begins his poem, “Before We Leave.” He writes, “Just so it’s clear—no whining on the journey.” I am offering this greeting to you and me, my fellow Cancerians, as we launch the next chapter of our story. In the early stages, our efforts may feel like drudgery, and our progress could seem slow. But as long as we don’t complain excessively and don’t blame others for our own limitations, our labors will become easier and quite productive.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Leo poet Kim Addonizio writes a lot about love and sex. In her book Wild Nights, she says, “I’m thinking of dating trees next. We could just stand around all night together. I’d murmur, they’d rustle, the wind would, like, do its wind thing.” Now might be a favorable time for you, too, to experiment with evergreen romance and arborsexuality and trysts with your favorite plants. When was the last time you hugged an oak or kissed an elm? JUST KIDDING! The coming weeks will indeed be an excellent time to try creative innovations in your approach to intimacy and adoration. But I’d rather see your experiments in togetherness unfold with humans.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): In her book Daughters of the Stone, Virgo novelist Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa tells the tale of five generations of Afro-Cuban women, her ancestors. “These are the stories of a time lost to flesh and bone,” she writes, “a time that lives only in dreams and memories. Like a primeval wave, these stories have carried me, and deposited me on the morning of today. They are the stories of how I came to be who I am, where I am.” I’d love to see you explore your own history with as much passion and focus, Virgo. In my astrological opinion, it’s a favorable time for you to commune with the influences that have made you who you are.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): In accordance with astrological omens, here’s my advice for you in the coming weeks: 1. Know what it takes to please everyone, even if you don’t always choose to please everyone. 2. Know how to be what everyone wants you to be and when they need you to be it, even if you only fulfill that wish when it has selfish value for you. 3. DO NOT give others all you have and thereby neglect to keep enough to give yourself. 4. When others are being closed-minded, help them develop more expansive finesse by sharing your own reasonable views. 5. Start thinking about how, in 2023, you will grow your roots as big and strong as your branches.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Even if some people are nervous or intimidated around you, they may be drawn to you nonetheless. When that happens, you probably enjoy the power you feel. But I wonder what would happen if you made a conscious effort to cut back just a bit on the daunting vibes you emanate. I’m not saying they’re bad. I understand they serve as a protective measure, and I appreciate the fact that they may help you get the cooperation you want. As an experiment, though, I invite you to be more reassuring and welcoming to those who might be inclined to fear you. See if it alters their behavior in ways you enjoy and benefit from.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Sagittarian rapper and entrepreneur Jay-Z has stellar advice for his fellow Sagittarians to contemplate regularly: “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with the aim; just gotta change the target.” In offering Jay-Z’s advice, I don’t mean to suggest that you always need to change the target you’re aiming at. On many occasions, it’s exactly right. But the act of checking in to evaluate whether it is or isn’t the right target will usually be valuable. And on occasion, you may realize that you should indeed aim at a different target.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): You now have extra power to exorcise ghosts and demons that are still lingering from the old days and old ways. You are able to transform the way your history affects you. You have a sixth sense about how to graduate from lessons you have been studying for a long time. In honor of this joyfully tumultuous opportunity, draw inspiration from poet Charles Wright: “Knot by knot I untie myself from the past / And let it rise away from me like a balloon. / What a small thing it becomes. / What a bright tweak at the vanishing point, blue on blue.”

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): In accordance with current astrological rhythms, I am handing over your horoscope to essayist Anne Fadiman. She writes, “I have always felt that the action most worth watching is not at the center of things, but where edges meet. I like shorelines, weather fronts, international borders. There are interesting frictions and incongruities in these places, and often, if you stand at the point of tangency, you can see both sides better than if you were in the middle of either one.”

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Over the course of my life, I have been fortunate to work with 13 psychotherapists. They have helped keep my mental health flourishing. One of them regularly reminded me that if I hoped to get what I wanted, I had to know precisely what I wanted. Once a year, she would give me a giant piece of thick paper and felt-tip markers. “Draw your personal vision of paradise,” she instructed me. “Outline the contours of the welcoming paradise that would make your life eminently delightful and worthwhile.” She would also ask me to finish the sentence that begins with these words: “I am mobilizing all the energy and ingenuity and connections I have at my disposal so as to accomplish the following goal.” In my astrological opinion, Pisces, now is a perfect time to do these two exercises yourself.