The Great Invocation to Hûrakhsh, the archangel of the Sun
(Hûrakhsh al-kabîr)[1]
Text from Henry Corbin, En islam iraniene, vol. II, Galimard: 1974.
Hûrakhsh = Sol Splendidus, Resplendent Sun, i.e. the Sun in its active Archangelic theophanic modality, which the Avesta hails “as the most beautiful manifestation of Ohrmazd,” the Godhead. Suhrawardî designates Hûrakhsh as the theurgy of the Archangel Shahrîvar (in the Avesta one of the Amahraspands known as Xshathra Vairya, “Desirable Reign,”precisely identified as “having the appearance of the Sun…”)
Blessed be the Most Luminous of beings endowed with life and thought, the Most Manifest of Persons, the Brightest of Stars. Hail to Thee! May the salutations and benedictions of the Godhead be upon Thee, Sublime Luminary, Most August of the moving stars; You who obey the One from Whom You originate; You Who are moved by the ardor of love for the Inaccessible Majesty of Your Creator. You are Hûrakhsh, the Most Powerful, Vanquisher of darkness, Prince of Heaven, Author of the Day, through the order of the Most High Godhead. You are the King of the Stars, Prince of Persons on High. You reign through the power and the obeyed divine force over the Lights incarnated into bodies. You are the Body that dispenses Light, the Vanquisher, the Brilliant One, the Sage, the One surpassing in Excellence. You are the Most Magnificent of the offspring from the spiritual world through your incandescent splendors. You are the Caliph of the Light of Lights in the world of bodies, Who encircles You with a Light that culminates in Its victory. You are an Image of Its Grandeur, an exemplification of Its beauty, Its proof for the eyes of the faithful. Glory to the One who gives You Your Form and Your Light, Who has made You a Mover through ardent desire for It’s Inaccessible Majesty and Who has enshrined You in the Fourth Heaven.
Oh Holy Father! I pray to You that You may pray to the One who displays the Splendor of Your thinking Soul to His Orient, who is Your Father, Your Cause, the object of Your Love and the Principle of Your movement, Whose Shadow and Theurgy (of the Archangel Shahrîvar) You are. Pray with Him to all Archangelic Lights, the immaterial Intelligences, that they may pray in their turn, in that form of prayer that belongs to the eternal world bereft of change and alteration, to the One who is their Father, their cause and the object of their Love; the Most August of Beings, of Primordial Birth, the Light closest to the Principle Intelligence of the Universe (the Archangel Bahman). May He pray this same way to His God, the God of Gods, eternally subsisting Light of Lights, God of every Intelligence, of every Soul, of every ethereal and elementary body, simple or composed, the Necessary Being. May He pray Him to illuminate my soul with the brightness of the spiritual world, with theosophanic knowledge and superior powers. May He pray Him to count me among those who have that nostalgia for His Light and make me immune to all infirmities of soul and body, to make the faithful of the Light and the mystic Orient triumph. May He bless them and make them holy and us also, for ever and ever. Amen.
[1] Suhrawardî's "Book of Hours" (waridat wa taqdisat) has two invocations to Hûrakhsh: Hûrakhsh al-kabîr and Hûrakhsh al-saghîr. The first one has been published by Muh. Mo'in in Yaghmâ I, 2 (1327 h.s.), pp. 88-89. The citation here is from Mullâ Sadrâ's text, which is better, Gloss 430 on the Hikmat al-Ishrâq, § 159, Teheran lithograph, p. 357 in the margin.
