Sufi

Sufism (Arabic: ٱلصُّوفِيَّة), also known as Tasawwuf[1] (ٱلتَّصَوُّف), is a mystic body of religious practice within Islam characterized by a focus on Islamic spirituality, ritualism, asceticism and esotericism... it is precisely because it is historically proven that "many of the most eminent defenders of Islamic orthodoxy, such as Abdul-Qadir Gilani, Ghazali, and the Sultan Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn (Saladin) were connected with Sufism"[74] that the popular studies of writers like Idries Shah are continuously disregarded by scholars as conveying the fallacious image that "Sufism" is somehow distinct from "Islam." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufism (note "dervish")

Idries Shah (/ˈɪdrɪs ˈʃɑː/; Hindi: इदरीस शाह, Pashto: ادريس شاه, Urdu: ادریس شاه; 16 June 1924 – 23 November 1996), also known as Idris Shah, né Sayed Idries el-Hashimi (Arabic: سيد إدريس هاشمي) and by the pen name Arkon Daraul, was an Indian author and thinker, and a teacher in the Sufi tradition. Shah wrote over three dozen books on topics ranging from psychology and spirituality to travelogues and culture studies... In his writings, Shah presented Sufism as a universal form of wisdom that predated Islam. Shah used teaching stories and humour to great effect in his work.[62][73] Shah emphasised the therapeutic function of surprising anecdotes, and the fresh perspectives these tales revealed... Colin Wilson stated that "partly through Idries Shah, I have begun to see some rather new and interesting implications [about the subject of mysticism]"[93] and in his review of The Magic Monastery (1972) noted that Shah "is not primarily concerned with propagating some secret doctrine. He is concerned with the method by which mystical knowledge is transmitted... [The Sufis] transmit knowledge through direct intuition rather in the manner of the Zen masters, and one of the chief means of doing this is by means of brief stories and parables which work their way into the subconscious and activate its hidden forces." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idries_Shah

A fakir, faqeer or faqir (/fəˈkɪər/; Arabic: فقیر (noun of faqr)), derived from faqr (Arabic: فقر, "poverty"[1]) is an Islamic term traditionally used for a Sufi Muslim whose contingency and utter dependence upon God is manifest in everything they do and every breath they take. They do not necessarily renounce all relationships and take a vow of poverty, some may be poor and some may even be wealthy, but the adornments of the temporal worldly life are kept in perspective and do not detract from their constant neediness of God. The connotations of poverty associated with the term relate to their spiritual neediness, not necessarily their physical neediness.... In the Fourth Way teaching of G. I. Gurdjieff the word fakir is used to denote the specifically physical path of development, as opposed to the words yogi (which Gurdjieff used for a path of mental development) and monk (which he used for the path of emotional development). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fakir

• cf bed of nails https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bed_of_nails

cf Magick?