Being didactic is a notable trait of Ibn Mājid’s style. These are not cold, detached manuals. Instead, you find throughout his works series of imperatives exhorting the “seeker”, the “questioner”: “understand and know, strive and realize your knowledge,” because “the cases and causes of the sea are many.”
Now, the first thing on the list is “the actual knowledge” of “the magic circle of the rhumbs and mansions (mandal al-akhnān wa-al-manāzil).”
When Ibn Mājid elaborates on the details of the relation between the thirty-two rhumbs and the twenty-eight lunar mansions, on how to lay them upon the circle of the compass in order to plot your course, the immediate and unexpected analogy coming to mind is that of the Far Eastern luopan. This geomantic compass, or Feng Shui compass, is an outright “magic circle” where a central magnetic needle is surrounded by the concentric sequences of signs in spheres of knowledge. “Ponder and ask for advice, and wake the night and be resolute.” Every time, the navigator is virtually at the centre of the universe to perform his task. [JA]
Now, the first thing on the list is “the actual knowledge” of “the magic circle of the rhumbs and mansions (mandal al-akhnān wa-al-manāzil).”
When Ibn Mājid elaborates on the details of the relation between the thirty-two rhumbs and the twenty-eight lunar mansions, on how to lay them upon the circle of the compass in order to plot your course, the immediate and unexpected analogy coming to mind is that of the Far Eastern luopan. This geomantic compass, or Feng Shui compass, is an outright “magic circle” where a central magnetic needle is surrounded by the concentric sequences of signs in spheres of knowledge. “Ponder and ask for advice, and wake the night and be resolute.” Every time, the navigator is virtually at the centre of the universe to perform his task. [JA]
No comments:
Post a Comment