Ridvan Speculation

Ridvan Speculation: Just What Does Ridvan Mean?

By John Taylor; 2006 April 20

Happy Ridvan, dear friends. For those who want a good general summary
of what this holiest Baha'i festival is I recommend the following
short article about Ridvan on the website of the Baha'is of America.

http://www.bahai.us/content/view/171/154/

What I would like to do on the Badi' list today is examine the meaning
of the word "Ridvan." What does this Arabic term mean, as used by
Baha'u'llah?

Today, the first day of Ridvan, is the first of a twelve day long
festival that, according to the Badi' Calendar, starts off on the
thirteenth day of Jalal, Glory, and continues until the fifth of
Jamal, Beauty. As the names of these two 19 day long Badi' months seem
to signify, Ridvan is a period of passage from glory to beauty, from
Jalal to Jamal. The ultimate Jalal, glory is to recognize God
directly, independently, without need of metaphorical crutches, the
Day of God, even as the prophet Isaiah predicted would come about one
day,

"The sun shall be no more your light by day; neither for brightness
shall the moon give light to you: but Yahweh will be to you an
everlasting light, and your God your glory." (Isa 60:19, WEB)

Ridvan ends in the month of Beauty, and surely the most beautiful
Jamal experience imaginable is to gain final approval from the One who
created us, who made us for a purpose, His purpose. "For the Lord
taketh pleasure in his people: he will beautify the meek with
salvation." (Ps 149:4) From glory to beauty, that is part of what the
word "Ridvan" means. But in the Aqdas, His most important book,
Baha'u'llah made it clear that the purification of Ridvan, especially
this first day of Ridvan, is not confined to two names, or nineteen
names, but takes in and vivifies all names and attributes of God.

"Verily, all created things were immersed in the sea of purification
when, on that first day of Ridvan, We shed upon the whole of creation
the splendours of Our most excellent Names and Our most exalted
Attributes." (Baha'u'llah, Kitab-i-Aqdas, 47)

Ostensibly, Ridvan commemorates the departure of Baha'u'llah from
Baghdad, where He had been exiled from His native Persia (Iran) about
a decade before. His destination was Constantinople, capitol of the
Turkish Empire. The city of Baghdad in ancient times was called
Babylon (Gate of the Gods); it was considered holy from antiquity,
long before Biblical record. The earliest histories relate that the
people of the whole region believed that in Babylon the buildings of
this world most perfectly mirror those of the divine, ideal world. Not
far south of here, in Ur, God sent Abram into exile with a promise
that his seed would multiply. Similarly Baha'u'llah did not leave this
Ridvan garden without God announcing through Him great news to His
followers and admirers.

Just before Baha'u'llah left Baghdad, on this day, the first of
Ridvan, He and a handful of aids crossed over to a garden on an island
on the outskirts of Baghdad, subsequently known as the Garden of
Ridvan, or Paradise. They arrived at the garden just before the
afternoon call to prayer. (Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, 152) Here,
starting on the first day, Baha'u'llah revealed a prodigious number of
His most important Tablets, all in one way or another announcing His
mission to the followers of the Bab. These letters, some book-length,
were entrusted to certain prominent Babis. They were charged to take
them back to Persia, where most Babis lived at the time. From this
Ridvan time forward, anyone who accepted the station of Baha'u'llah
was no longer properly named a Babi but a Baha'i.

The Guardian noticed what is not perhaps obvious to the Western eye,
that this sea change in Baha'u'llah's Mission was not just on paper,
as it were, it also was signaled by a new stance and more dignified
form of dress.

"...the perceptible change noted in His demeanor; and finally, His
adoption of the taj (tall felt head-dress), on the day of His
departure from His Most Holy House - all proclaimed unmistakably His
imminent assumption of the prophetic office and of His open leadership
of the community of the Bab's followers." (Shoghi Effendi, id.)

Baha'u'llah's eldest son, `Abdu'l-Baha, who had been present and was
very busy making all executive arrangements during this pregnant
twelve day period, in later years wrote the following prayer
commemorating Ridvan.

"Thou seest, O my Lord, the assemblage of Thy loved ones, the company
of Thy friends, gathered by the precincts of Thine all-sufficing
Shrine, and in the neighborhood of Thine exalted garden, on a day
among the days of Thy Ridvan Feast -- that blessed time when Thou
didst dawn upon the world, shedding thereon the lights of Thy
holiness, spreading abroad the bright rays of Thy oneness, and didst
issue forth from Baghdad, with a majesty and might that encompassed
all mankind; with a glory that made all to fall prostrate before Thee,
all heads to bow, every neck to bend low, and the gaze of every man to
be cast down. They are calling Thee to mind and making mention of
Thee, their breasts gladdened with the lights of Thy bestowals, their
souls restored by the evidences of Thy gifts, speaking Thy praise,
turning their faces toward Thy Kingdom, humbly supplicating Thy lofty
Realms." (Abdu'l-Baha, Memorials of the Faithful, 175-176)

This prayer evidently was revealed in or near the second garden of
Ridvan, a newer commemorative garden near the Mansion of Bahji, near
Akka, where Baha'u'llah spent His last years. Baha'u'llah, and later
`Abdu'l-Baha, would often, especially on holy days, pitch their tents
in this second garden of Ridvan, no doubt doing all possible to
recall, for the benefit of Themselves and the pilgrims visiting the
holy places, the pristine glory and beauty of the original Ridvan near
Baghdad where the Great Announcement took place.

This mention of Ridvan as the "Great Announcement" is why I said
earlier that Ridvan "ostensibly" commemorates the announcement to the
Babis in the garden near Baghdad. For, judging from what Baha'u'llah
says in the following passage from His tablet to Napoleon III, in a
broader sense Ridvan signifies the annunciation of the Lord of Hosts
to all, a spiritual baptism of creation, sanctified above time and
place.

What does Ridvan mean? Here, based upon a quote cited below, is what I
understand it to mean.

Ridvan is the focal point of each of the nineteen feasts in the Badi'
calendar, each of which is devoted to one of nineteen names of God. It
began long before the announcement in the Baghdad garden with the
parallel, ground breaking announcement of the Babi revelation. It
continued and intensified in the "Great Announcement to Mankind," a
series of Tablets addressed to the world's kings and other leaders,
and it continues apace, with you and me, whenever we ourselves come to
appreciate and accept that announcement -- I was fortunate enough to
declare my faith in Baha'u'llah about a week before Ridvan, in 1973,
but I think not only for me but any soul who portentously declares
their belief in Baha'u'llah, "signing your card" as it is sometimes
called, is mirrored and celebrated in the Ridvan festival. Ridvan also
happens whenever we teach the faith, when we pass on the greatest gift
to others, when we give them a fair chance to call themselves Baha'is
too.

Anyway, I glean all that from the following:

"All feasts have attained their consummation in the two Most Great
Festivals, and in two other Festivals that fall on the twin days; the
first of the Most Great Festivals being those days whereon God shed
the effulgent glory of His most excellent Names upon all who are in
heaven and on earth, and the second being that day on which We raised
up the One Who announced unto the people the glad tidings of this
Great Announcement. Thus hath it been set down in the Book by Him Who
is the Mighty, the Powerful. On other than these four consummate days,
engage ye in your daily occupations, and withhold yourselves not from
the pursuit of your trades and crafts. Thus hath the command been
issued and the law gone forth from Him Who is your Lord, the
All-Knowing, the All-Wise." (Baha'u'llah, Summons, 1.153)

A footnote explains that though there are now nine Holy Days wherein
we take off work, in 1868, when this was written, there were only
four, one, the "naming day" of Ridvan, two the Declaration of the Bab,
which had initiated the Baha'i Era, the first stage of the Great
Announcement. Days three and four are the "twin days" festival; the
two birthdays of the Bab and Baha'u'llah, which in the lunar Muslim
calendar fall on successive days.

Certainly `Abdu'l-Baha supported the idea of a broader Ridvan, a name
change not only of that small number of cowed and persecuted group
from "Babis" to "Baha'is," but an event that spiritually renamed the
entire human race, and to which they albeit unknowingly responded.

"This is the day when the Day-Star of Truth rose over the horizon of
life, and its glory spread, and its brightness shone out with such
power that it clove the dense and high-piled clouds and mounted the
skies of the world in all its splendour. Hence do ye witness a new
stirring throughout all created things. See how, in this day, the
scope of sciences and arts hath widened out, and what wondrous
technical advances have been made, and to what a high degree the
mind's powers have increased, and what stupendous inventions have
appeared." (`Abdu'l-Baha, Selections, 111-112)

Ridvan, then, means an infusion of life, an inspiration, a final
declaration of maturity, a coming of age festival of spirit. Ridvan
leads the backsliding, pleomorphic human race forward to the stage of
unity.

This new understanding had been prepared for in the Writings of the
Bab, who ceased using the word "prophet" to describe Himself and the
One God Would Make "Manifest," now they were to be called
"manifestations," showings, instantiations of the Will of God. The
Manifestation, most importantly, does not predict a future
consummation of our hopes, He offers a plan for implementing it. In
our collective childhood Logos, Word of God, had meant spirit, word or
code, now it means "master plan," for Logos offers a new,
participatory religious sensibility. The plan we work together with
God. No more did the One go out and say, "I will make ye fishers of
men," now every Letter of the Living had to set out on his own and
attain to the Promised One using only his own spiritual resources.
Manifest indeed.

Most of all, there is ample evidence for a broader view of the word
"Ridvan" in the Writings of Baha'u'llah Himself. There are by my count
at least twenty mentions of the word "Ridvan" in the Kitab-i-Iqan, the
foremost doctrinal work of Baha'u'llah. For example, there is a
"Ridvan of the divine presence, the Eternal, the All-Glorious;"
speaking of His own life, He says, "... the portals of the Ridvan
cannot forever remain open"; He talks about the "Ridvan of the
Gospel," the Ridvan of divine wisdom, of everlasting, of heavenly
reunion, of divine knowledge, the Ridvan of God, of understanding, of
immortality, of unfading splendour, of resplendant glory, of the
divine Presence, of the heart, of divine good pleasure, and finally of
the "Sadrih of the Ridvan of God."

Let me close with this remarkable passage that most Badi' readers may
not have seen, and which we only have in a provisional translation. It
sums up not only the essence of the message that Baha'u'llah conveyed
on this, the first day of Ridvan, but also more broadly the three
salient features of His revelation as a whole.

"On the first day of His arrival in the garden designated the Ridvan,
the Ancient Beauty established himself upon the Most Great Throne,
thereupon the Tongue of Glory uttered three blessed verses. First,
that in this revelation the use of the sword is prohibited. Second,
that whoso layeth a claim ere the expiration of a thousand years is
assuredly in grievous error; by year, a complete year is intended and
any interpretation of this matter is forbidden. And third, that the
One True God, exalted be His Glory, at that very moment shed the
splendours of all His Names upon the whole creation." (Baha'u'llah,
quoted in Saiedi, Logos and Civilization, 242)

There is more than enough food for thought in this pregnant passage to
keep us reflecting for the rest of the entire twelve day Festival just
starting. In any case, may it be a joyous and productive time for you
and yours.

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com