In Sufism, [the] universal degrees are called the “Five Divine Presences” ( khams al-Hadarat al-ilahiya). In Sufi terminology they are: the “human realm” ( nasut), that is, the domain of the corporeal, since man is created out of “earth”; then the “realm of royalty” ( malakut), so called because it immediately dominates the corporeal world; next comes “the realm of power” ( jabarut) which, macrocosmically, is Heaven and, microcosmically, the created or human intellect, that “supernaturally natural” Paradise which we carry within us. The fourth degree is the “Realm of the Divine” ( Lahut), which is Being and which coincides with the uncreated Intellect, the Logos; the final degree — if provisional use can be made of such a term — is none other than “Quiddity” or “Aseity” or “Ipseity” ( Hahut, from Hua, He [or It]), in other words, the Infinite Self. Frithjof Schuon FORM AND SUBSTANCE IN THE RELIGIONS, Bloomington, 2002, p. 53.
