6.8.1 The Kaaba
This basic structure of space-time, and how it is created, is represented in Islam by Kaaba, the “house of Allah”, to which millions of Muslims go on pilgrimage every year. For Ibn al-Arabi, those circumambulating the Kaaba are mirroring the circles of higher angels surrounding the divine Throne [I.50.30]. In that symbolic context, the angels also represent the determining forces of Nature, because the Arabic word for Angel is derived from “force”, [al-Durratu al-Baydaa: 138] so the four Archangels holding the Throne of Allah are the four main sustaining forces of Nature, or the four fundamental interactions. Ibn al-Arabi also notes that the hight of the walls of Kaaba is twenty-eight cubits, that correspond to the twenty-eight moon mansions [I.666.28], and the corresponding twenty-eight Arabic letters which we have mentioned in chapter III that they are equivalent to the twenty-eight elementary particles and anti-particles, as we shall also explain further in chapter VII when we talk about Numerology. All this to stress the discrete nature of matter and space-time whose unit is dynamically created in one cosmic Week, six for the directions of space and one for the outward time.
Figure 6.2: Cubic representation of the trinitarian world which is composed of the three levels: spiritual, psychical and physical. The physical world is what appears in the outward level of time, and it is shown here as a dotted line to stress its discrete nature. In Islam, this is represented by the Kaaba, and as Ibn al-Arabi notes the twenty-eight layers of stones that make the walls of Kaaba correspond to the twenty-eight moon mansions, and the twenty-eight Arabic letters which will be shown in chapter VII that they are equivalent to the twenty-eight elementary particles and anti-particles.
In circumambulating the Kaaba, the pilgrim performs seven rounds that correspond to the seven main divine Names, which we have shown in chapter IV how they are related to the cosmic Week as a unit of space-time. Ibn al-Arabi stresses that the Kaaba, in relation to the all-encompassing divine Throne, is like the heart with relation to the human body [I.50.29]. So in fact the Kaaba on the Earth is symbolically like the Single Monad in the cosmos. This analogy also applies to many related details, because the cubic shape of the Kaaba is the simplest structure which constitutes a body that occupies the three spatial dimensions. As Ibn al-Arabi mentioned [III.276.4], the body is composed of at least eight points, corresponding to the corners of the cube. Additionally, one corner of the Kaaba holds the mysterious Black Stone, which, according to tradition, angel Gabriel brought down from Paradise and gave to Abraham to put it in that corner of the Kaaba. This Black Stone symbolically represents the foundational role in the process of creation by the Greatest Element, where the circumambulation starts from the south-eastern corner in which this Black Stone resides, and the pilgrim is supposed to make seven counter-clockwise rounds, which correspond to the way the Greatest Element first gives rise or communicates to the Single Monad in the seven divine Days.