the Final Turn

Here is the way I'm concluding the essay for now. It is a discussion of the final section of the prayer.



The themes of solidarity and unity continue into section fourteen, the conclusion of the Long Obligatory Prayer. It reads as follows.

Let him then raise his head, and seat himself, and say:

I testify, O my God, to that whereunto Thy chosen Ones have testified, and acknowledge that which the inmates of the all-highest Paradise and those who have circled round Thy mighty Throne have acknowledged. The kingdoms of earth and heaven are Thine, O Lord of the worlds!

As a way of concluding, the performer steps back and reflects more generally on the affirmations he or she has made throughout the prayer. These include one’s servitude before God, His transcendence beyond thought, His sovereignty, one’s wealth-in-possession of the divine attributes, one’s poverty in origination of those same attributes, that God is greater than every great one!, that the Manifestation of God has been mentioned in all God’s scriptures, that joy is dependent on nearness to the divine attributes, and that the origin of faith is in God. This testimony is not made alone. Thy chosen ones have made it as well. And it has been acknowledged by the inmates of the all-highest Paradise and those who have circled round Thy mighty Throne.

In this last expression we have an image of enduring power: those who have circled round Thy mighty Throne. It is a reference to one of the rituals of the Hajj, the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca. Pilgrims are required to circumambulate the Kab’ah, the cubical shrine at the center of the city seven times in a counterclockwise direction. This ritual is performed twice in the course of the Hajj. Rather than circumambulating individually, the pilgrims perform this walk all together. Seen from above, pilgrims coming from all over the world, dressed in the traditional white robes of the pilgrimage, blend together in one enormous turning wheel. At times of prayer when these same pilgrims all fall into prostration at once, the earth roars with the sound of so many knees hitting the ground simultaneously. This is the image the Long Obligatory Prayer invokes right at the end. What better way can there be to illustrate the way in which all performers of the prayer serve and worship God together?

Still, consideration should be given for what is meant by the expression Thy mighty Throne. Clearly it refers in some way to God's sovereignty and dominion, but not necessarily to the Kab'ah, Mecca, or even any physical entity. In the Baha'i writings there is a tendency to use the image of a throne to express the ascendency of God in the event of His Revelation. This would sit well with earlier discussions of securing His dominion in creation or the manifestation of His attributes, two things which by now should appear quite synonymous. Take for instance, this passage from the Kitab-i-Iqan in which Baha'u'llah praises Mulla Husayn, the first follower of His forerunner, the Bab, himself regarded by Baha'is as a Manifestation of God.

But for him [Mulla Husayn], God would not have been established upon the seat of His mercy, nor ascended the throne of eternal glory. Kitab-i-Iqan passage 248 (It also might not be a bad idea to discuss this passage way earlier, and set it against His other understanding of sovereignty in the Iqan, maybe even discuss the two clearly different interpretations He gives of the seal of the prophets.)

In this understanding of sovereignty, God does not just ascend to His throne by virtue of his transcendent nature. Rather, God ascends through the recognition of His Revelation by His creation, even if it be a single soul. Soon enough, one by one the wheel builds, gaining momentum as it extends further outwards in His creation. The greater the wheel, the greater the testimony, affirmed in the mastery of service that Thou art God, that there is no God but Thee.

The performer then testifies at last, at the conclusion of the prayer that:

The kingdoms of earth and heaven are Thine, O Lord of the Worlds!

And now in the great spirit of turning, the performer turns once more, this time from the private to the public, in the spirit of mastery in service, in manifestation, in anticipation of the turning from one age to the next.