The ninety-nine Names

The Beautiful Names — the Merciful, the Compassionate, the Withholder, the Expander, the Abaser, the Exalter — told on a rope of ninety-nine beads, three rounds of thirty-three, two to a second through the fingers. For Ibn ʿArabī they are the structure through which the hidden meets the world: every created thing the trace of a Name seeking display.

The closest structural analogue on the bench — and the sharpest parting, for exactly that reason. Names through which the Absolute meets creation is the sephirotic move. But see ⚠ tawḥīd: Islam holds these are Names of the One and emphatically not powers in God, and the distinction is not a quibble — it is the difference between orthodoxy and shirk.