A Sufi Master’s message

A SUFI MASTER’S MESSAGE. In Memoriam René Guénon

Autore: Shaykh Abd al-Wahid Pallavicini

Who is the Master that sends us his message through this book? Certainly, it is the author, Shaykh ‘Abd al-Wahid Pallavicini, who has legitimately received this function, but it is also his Master, Shaykh Abd al-Wahid Yahya, Réné Guénon, who in turn had other Masters connected, through a chain of transmission, to the first of all Masters, the Prophet Muhammad, in whom Islamic orthodoxy has its origin. All true masters of Islam have taught their disciples the same message of knowledge, knowledge that truly transforms whoever knows it through faith, ritual practices and virtue. These various links in the traditional chain therefore give the sense that the scope of the message is not about the life and personal experience of certain individuals, but rather the expression of an Islamic school of wisdom within the contemplative dimension of Islam, Sufism, or tasawwuf.

“What I find remarkable about Shaykh ‘Abd al-Wahid Pallavicini is his sincerity, his dignity, his insistence on effacement, on religious truth, on traditional orthodox doctrine, and on spiritual method. I can hardly imagine the moral courage needed for a young Italian nobleman to enter Islam at the age of 25 (in 1951!) out of a desire to practice Islamic mysticism, and then to marry a japanese lady and be ostracized by his prominent family but nevertheless tofaithfully practice Islam and the Invocation of God for 58 years – but that is the true story of this latter-day sage!”

H.R.H. Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal

Special Advisor to, and Personal Envoy of, H.M. King Abdullah II of Jordan