Seeking to bridge the gap between man and God, the entire sensorial range of the body is deeply interwoven into the lived practice of a Rifaʿi community. Their ritual piercing conducted during Sultan Nevruz, the celebration of the beginning of spring, underscores the powerful dimension of pain in these ecstatic experiences. By inflicting pain and thereby, in a way, ‘befriending’ (to use a word employed by the dervishes) the sharp, clear sensation of pain caused by the cuts of the ritual instruments, they are, as one of the dervishes said, ‘freed’ of the bitter, murky and dark sensations associated with suffering. The configuration of these sensations is thus utilized in the ecstatic ritual to soothe and heal suffering as well as to express exaltation of the divine. Disciplines affecting the sensory formations of the body are known to transform one’s mental states. In the context of the ritual, the mastering of the body’s pain and suffering is not, then, perceived as a negative but as an intrinsically positive empowering force that activates dynamics involving the inner senses.

Pain in such ‘rites of passage’ functions as an essential force in the taming and domesticating of the participating dervishes’ own self (or lower soul; Alb. nefs), the (ongoing) ‘training (of one’s) soul.’ It is not only the struggle with one’s nefs in the context of ritual activities that is central to the process of self-transformation; there is also – and this might seem paradoxical – a powerful attendant process of self-disempowerment and self-deconstruction that is used to attain a particular selfhood through which spiritual advancement is reached.

In spite of, or perhaps because of, the extreme sensory stimulation during these intense and potentially dangerous ritual events, the disciples disassociate the nefs from the materiality of the body that is sensed, observed, and conceived. In the ritual context, this is achieved by closing the door to sense perception, worldly ties, and the material side of the mind, in order to receive the transcendent transmissions of the shaykh, the ultimate source of batini (esoteric or inner) knowledge that goes back to Hazreti ʿAli and the Prophet Muhammad.

When conducting the ritual ordeals, the Rifaʿi constantly invoke the name of God, Hayy, considered to be one of the ‘mothers of the divine names’: Hayy, Hayy, Hayy, Allah. It belongs to the seven divine names of the essence (Arabic asma dhatiyya), representing the seven qualities of the divine. The related acts of ritual self-mortification testify to the living, everlasting being, that which is able to fully actualize all its perfection. This makes the ordeals not only spiritually redeeming and restorative but also a celebration of the ultimate end: reunification with the divine and with eternal life.

Excerpt from “Piercing the Skin: Pain as a Form of Piety in Rifaʿi Ritual Sensescapes,” in: Collectes sensorielles. Recherche-Musée-Art, eds. V. Dassié, A. Fanlo, M.-L. Gélard, C. Isnart, and F. Molle, Univers sensoriels et sciences sociales (Paris: Éditions Pétra 2021), 65–102