RITES 135

music of the dervishes are mentioned here it is because
these are among the best known of the manifestations
of Sufism ; they belong, however, to a collective and so
to a rather peripheral aspect of tasawwuf and many
masters have pronounced against their too general use.
In any case exercises of this kind ought never to
preponderate over the practice of solitary dhikr.

Preferably invocation is practised during a retreat
(khalwah), but it can equally be combined with all sorts
of external activities. It requires the authorisation (idhn)
of a spiritual master. Without this authorisation the
dervish would not enjoy the spiritual help brought to
him through the initiatic chain (silsilah) and moreover
his purely individual initiative would run the risk of
finding itself in flagrant contradiction to the essentially
non-individual character of the symbol, and from this
might arise incalculable psychic reactions.!

1. ““ When man has made himself familiar with dhikr,”” says Al-Ghazali,
““ he separates himself (inwardly) from all else. Now at death he is separated
from all that is not God . .. What remains is only invocation. If thisinvocation
is familiar to him, he finds his pleasure in it and rejoices that the obstacles
which turped him aside from it have been put away, so that he finds himself
as if alone with his Beloved . .. >’ In another text Al-Ghazali expresses him-
self thus: *“ You must be alone in a retreat . .. and, being seated, concentrate
your thought on God without other inner occupation. This you will accom-
plish, first pronouncing the Name of God with your tongue, ceaselessly repeat-
ing : Allah, Allah, without letting the attention go. The result will be a state
in which you will feel without effort on your part this Name in the spontareous
movemeat of your tongue > (Jhya’ ulum ad-din). Methods of incantation are
diverse, as are spiritual possibilities. At this point we must once again ipsist
on the danger of giving oneself up to such practices outside their traditional
framework and their normal conditions.