Page:A Moslem seeker after God - showing Islam at its best in the life and teaching of al-Ghazali, mystic and theologian of the eleventh century (IA moslemseekeraft00zwem).pdf/179

 were at that time purely spiritual beings without bodies. He then caused them to die, but gathered them and kept them in a receptacle near His throne. When the germ of a new being is placed in the womb of the mother, it remains there till its body is sufficiently developed; the soul in the same is then dead yet. When God Almighty breathes into the spirit, He restores to it its most precious part of which it had been deprived while preserved in the receptacle near the throne. This is the first death and the second life. Then God places man in this world till he has reached the term fixed for him."

The great Mystic was also superstitious. Some of his books deal with magical formulae taken from the Koran and the medicinal use of its text or of the names of God. One of the most celebrated magic squares used on amulets, etc., is called the " Square of Al-Ghazali " or Al-Buduh. It may interest in conclusion to give an account of this form of magic, approved by Al-Ghazali, because it is one of the things by which he is best known among the masses in the world of Islam.

In the older Arabic books on magic this formula plays a comparatively minor part; but after it was taken up by Al-Ghazali and cited in his Munkidh (pp. 46 and 50 of ed. of Cairo, 1303) as an inexplicable, but certain assistance in cases of difficult labour, it came to be universally known as "the three-fold talisman, or seal, or table of Al-Ghaz