Most of them include the well-known Der vish dances, absolute silence for several years, and other occult practices.
Sufism is rich in symbolism and some of it is familiar to readers of Hafiz and other Persian Sufi poets. A symbol is to a Sufi rather more than an emblem or a figure of speech; it is what he calls a "veil," that through and by its ma terial form reveals the Deity. When Hafiz and Omar Khayyam in true Sufi fashion glory in wine, for instance, they do not glorify intoxica tion in any other sense than that in which it was used about Spinoza, namely, that he was full of God—a "God-intoxicated man." Wine is to them a form or manifestation of God, as it is in the sacrament to the Christian. When they sing its praises, their song is a hymn and spiritually they partake in a mystery. A Sufi is not a drunkard nor a licentious man. The °wine and women" of the reveler has no place in asceticism and the inner life. That Sufi poets should use such strange language has always been a mystery to the uninitiated, who likes to read the Sufi s language literally and believe what he says literally.
Sufis lay more weight upon the conception of God as the "Eternal Beauty" than most re ligious and mystics. God creates because he is beauty, it being the essential nature of beauty to reveal itself. The act of creation consisted in God throwing His reflection on "the mirror of not-being," and creation itself is thus only a reflection, a contingent being.
Man is the eye of creation, the point through which the Divine looks out and the cne who, if he loves wisdom, goodness and beauty, can overlap his individual limitations and attain °Union with God," the goal of Sufism.
In addition to the already mentioned famous Sufis are to be reckoned Dhun-Nun (859 A.D.), who formulated the doctrine of ecstacy and prepared a scale of mystic steps; Junaid (910 A.D.), who wrote about Sufism; Al-Ghazzali (411 A.D.), and Jallal-ud-Din Rumi (1262 A D.), the two most famous Doctors of Sufism. Omar Khayyam is now known in the West mainly in the negative light of Fitzgerald's paraphrase and by (thus far) the only Sufi interpretation by the writer of this article. Almost all the famous Persian poets were Sufis, namely, Attar, Anvari, Nizami, Hafiz, Saadi, Jami, etc.
A Sufi Publishing Society, Ltd., has been established in London by Inayat Whan in 1915. He is of the Chistee Order and is the Pir-O Murshid of the order in the West. Sufism is also being preached in America, but has as yet no recognized headquarters and director.
A large number of the Ottoman poets are also Sufis. Consult following Sufi works: Jalal ud Din Rumi,
; Attar, (Mantigat Tail° ; Shabistari, 'Gulsan-i-Raz' ; Al-Ghazzali,