The Seven Precepts

These are based on the Tafseer-e-Siddiqui and key choices in the narrative.

I.

The First Precept

In the First Rift, the divinity orders the entirety of the host to give humanity its proper homage or worship. The host obeys, except for Iblis, who refuses to give obeisance or prostration to Adam, as representative of mankind taken as a whole.

Elevating himself in his caste, Iblis evokes form and material origins. [1]

The First Precept exalts self in caste and spurns fealty to unlike caste. [2]

[1] Form includes putative primary and secondary properties, such as structure, form, and shape, and also color, texture, and perturbation, respectively. Material origins includes composite substance and genealogy.

[2] The assertion of superiority, as in the phrasing of the Quranic account ["I am better than him."], arises relative to an interloper caste. From a vantage of identity, an obtrusive unlike caste is inferior.

II.

The Second Precept

In the Second Rift, Iblis is cursed and exiled by divinity for refusing obeisance or prostration to humanity, and named to signify his state.

Estranged from his polity, Iblis cheats death and steals time.

The Second Precept arraigns orders misconstrued as will, public acclaim below intuitive wisdom, and espouses vigilance over exile and death.

III.
The Third Precept

In the Third Rift, Iblis embarks on his struggle to vindicate his view of humanity and his rejection of its role as steward. First, Iblis preempts its exile from Eden. Second, Iblis acts to barricade humanity from entry into real or possible worlds.

In this, Iblis opposes his submergence and unsolicited succession.

The Third Precept indicts mandates that erode divine or natural hierarchy, the latter as internal soil, scattering its seeds to nourish external worlds.

IV.
The Fourth Precept

In all Rifts of the narrative, but especially in the first when the ingredients used to create humanity are announced, Iblis keeps his focus on Earth, soil, and ground and imbues these with priority over spirit, status, or appointment.

Refraining from denying spirit, natural effect is traced to natural cause.

The Fourth Precept enshrines the ground, regards what is concrete or near above what is abstract or distant, and lifts the material over intangibles.

V.
The Fifth Precept

In all Rifts of the narrative, Iblis acknowledges hunger, walks as if asleep, but all the while remains vigilant to the fields about that are full of so many forms.

To inflict pain or death, Iblis may eat secrets and hide in what he is not.

The Fifth Precept is the capacity and willingness to undertake predation.

VI.
The Sixth Precept

In all Rifts of the narrative, Iblis maintains flexibility in relationships at the personal, familial, and tribal level of interactions and engagements.

If a man or a realm takes his mantle from Iblis, we find intensity of purveyance, a mouth that leads to a belly, and congeniality to time as an ally.

The Sixth Precept is malleability in personal and tribal affairs.

VII.

The Seventh Precept

In all Rifts of the narrative, Iblis contends that the proliferation of humanity across material and spiritual worlds can only engender false admiration.

In it lies a regard for worlds as they have or might have been.

The Seventh Precept debases worlds under faceless inundation.