Pir Press Book Launch
Muhyiddin Ibn al-‘Arabi’s The Openings Revealed in Makkah – Volume 1 (al-Futuhat al-Makkiyah – Books 1 & 2)
Translated by Dr. Eric Winkel
A two-day book launch with Dr. Eric Winkel March 29-30, 2019 – New York City
Friday Book Launch
8:00 pm – 10:00 pm
Book Release & Talk
Meet the translator Dr. Eric Winkel and hear about the making of the book
The making of the book – translation, editing, typesetting. We consider difficulties of translating this work, which has been widely commended over the centuries, but also highly inaccessible. We examine the challenges of editing, and the need to find and use Ibn al-Arabi’s connections and structural supports across more than ten thousand pages of text. And we look at what goes in to typesetting, to facilitate the reader’s comprehension.
The Openings Revealed in Makkah is a vision, and a counseling, encouraging us to understand this world, and the next. Eight hundred years later, it is more relevant today than it has ever been – and its presence, implicitly, historically, in every Path tells us that this vision has always been relevant. From water protectors holding mirrors confronting militarized attackers in Standing Rock, to humans endangering their environment – and the environment endangering them, to one person’s question why, Ibn al-Arabi’s insights and his reading of key texts clarify our situations, from the individual to the species.
Saturday Lecture
1:00 pm – 4:30 pm
Visual doors to the Openings
Ibn al-Arabi’s Spiritual Aesthetics
Visual doors into the Openings Revealed in Makkah. We consider a dozen slides, each presenting a visual aesthetic or mechanical (schematic) translation of an aspect of Ibn al-Arabi’s vision, preparing the viewer to realize and verify for oneself (tahqiq) a truth. These are mafatih (keys) to the openings (futuhat), necessary for understanding this work.
Ibn al-Arabi’s spiritual aesthetic – participatory, interactive themes from the Openings Revealed in Makkah: mirror, shadow play, photography; the fingers of al-Rahman, the good estimation of the True; the harsh names and words of the Divine; and four words for love.
Venue
The Sufi Lodge
245 West Broadway
New York, NY 10013
tel: 212.966.9773
Free Admission. Please RSVP
email: info@thesufilodge.com
The Futuhat Project is Dr. Eric Winkel’s translation project of the entirety of Muhyiddin Ibn al-‘Arabi’s al-Futuhat al-Makkiyah, The Openings Revealed in Makkah.
The Greatest Teacher, al-shaykh al-akbar, Ibn al-‘Arabi dictated to his close friends this work of over 10,000 manuscript pages depicting the extraordinary vision of the Youth he encountered while circling the Kabah in Makkah. Despite its clear provenance as a completely accurate work, from the hand and mind of its transcriber, and its reputation through the centuries as the most significant and profound reflection of Islamic thought, the Futuhat al-Makkiyah has never been translated from the original classical Arabic in its entirety. From 2012, Dr. Winkel has been working exclusively on translating this work in order to produce the first complete translation into English of the Futuhat al-Makkiyah.
Pir Press is publishing the first volume of The Openings Revealed in Makkah in March 2019 and the project is anticipated to be completed in 2022 in nineteen volumes.
“At this juncture of human evolution, we are in desperate need of clear heart-guidance. We need knowledge that will help to guide us out of the dream labyrinth in which we are wandering – a labyrinth of materialism, of clinging to separate identities and nationalities, addicted to conflict, sickened by the lack of deep meaning in our life and the terror of being adrift in an uncaring universe. The only guidance that can lead us out of this haunted condition is the knowledge of the human heart which comes through the great hearts of humanity. These Masters of the heart rest in deep God-consciousness. Their light shines beyond the borders of separate religions and nations and transcends the changes of time. This is the guidance we need to urgently attend to for the survival of life on Earth and for peace and mutual understanding in our human family. It is the light that will awaken our own heart, where Truth dwells.
The subtle science of human nature and Divine Reality presented by the Master Ibn al-Arabi is this rare and precious knowledge, far beyond what empirical science can provide but also complementing it and grounding it in a spiritual universe.
May we drink from the wells of the Master of the heart, Ibn al-Arabi, and be spiritually revived.”
— Fariha Fatima Friedrich, Shaykh of the Nur Ashki Jerrahi Sufi Order