Figure I.1: 'The Cloud' and what it contains, down to the 'establishing Throne'. This diagram is translated from Ibn Arabi's drawing in chapter 371 [III 421].

According to this account in chapter 371, the universe appeared in the Universal Soul through the Universal Intellect as the result of what Ibn Arabi calls an 'abstract (or 'spiritual') marriage' (nikah ma nawi). This is because everything that happens due to a particular cause is like a 'son' of this cause who is considered its 'father', and its 'mother' is the object where this 'son' appears or happens. Just as we are all (in our outer bodily dimension) the 'children' of Adam and Eve, all other things in the universe can be considered the 'children' of the Universal Intellect and the Universal Soul.

The Universal Soul has two forces mentioned in the Figure I.1: the 'intellective force' (quwwa ilmiyya) by which it perceives knowledge, and the 'active force' (quwwa amaliyya) by which it preserves its existence through motion. The first thing the Universal Soul gives rise to, as indicated in the same figure, is twofold: 'the level of Nature'[10] and the 'Chaos' (al-haba : literally 'the Dust') or 'the Prime Matter' (al-hayula al-ula) [I.140.14]. From here on, Ibn Arabi uses the symbolic conjugal imagery of the 'wedding' of generative elements and of 'birth' at each successive level of creation or manifestation. Thus the Universal Soul first begets Nature and then Prime Matter or Dust. Then Nature and Dust in turn beget their first 'son', which is called the 'Universal Body' (al-jism al-kull). This symbolic process of cosmic 'births' continues in a long and defined series of causes and results until it reaches the 'soil' (turab) [I.140.17] which refers to physical matter in general. So the physical world appeared 'after' this Universal Body, while before that all was only spiritual.

As in Figure I.3, the Universal Body seems to contain everything beneath it including the zodiac (with all the stars and galaxies). Alternatively, we can consider that the physical world is formed by (not 'in') the Universal Body because, like the Universal Intellect and Soul, this Body can be called the First Body because it was the first body to be created. In addition to that, the world both as material and spiritual is formed by the Single Monad through the continuous manifestations of this Monad. If we then consider that the First Body was the first 'elementary particle' to be formed by the Single Monad then the physical world is formed 'by' this First Body. The other possibility is that the Universal Body is some sort of a huge cloud of matter in primary form, which then developed into stars and galaxies, in which case we could say that the physical world is formed 'in' the Universal Body. The first thing which was formed in (or by) the Universal Body was the 'Throne' (al- Arsh) on which Allah established his authority (istiwa )^[11] from His Name 'the All-Merciful' (al-Rahman), which means that all creatures beneath the Throne are to be granted the creative Mercy of their existence from Him. Therefore the first thing that the Highest Pen or First Intellect wrote in the Higher Tablet (the Universal Soul) was this 'Throne' in which the entire creation (the cosmos) is to appear. All this is shown in Figure I.2.

Inside (or 'beneath') the divine Throne there appeared the 'Pedestal' (al-Kursi), whose relative dimensions and plenitude, in comparison to the infinitely vast noetic or spiritual dimension of the 'Throne', Ibn Arabi compares here to 'a tiny ring in a vast desert'. And within this 'Pedestal' is the 'Isotropic Orb' (al-falak al-atlas), which is shown to contain the sphere of the divisions of the zodiac (falak al-buruj) and the sphere of the stars (al-falak al-mukawkab), including beneath them the separate orbs of the five planets, sun, moon, and the earth. All this is shown in Figure I.3 and Figure I.4.