M6:1550 — حق بکشت او را و در پاچه‌ش دمید / زود قصابانه پوست از وی کشید

Translation: God killed him and blew into his leg, Then, like a butcher, swiftly peeled off his skin.

Meaning: This verse vividly depicts the harsh and rapid process of the mystic's liberation from the ego, likening it to a butcher's act where the Divine, through an outwardly fatal intervention, strips away the skin of worldly existence to reveal the true, inner essence.

I have often emphasized in the Masnavi that the spiritual journey is one in which the seeker must die repeatedly to attain true life. In this verse, Rumi presents a vivid, even somewhat violent, yet precise image of this process. The Divine, in the path of love and spiritual endeavor, 'kills' the seeker, then 'blows into his leg,' and 'butcher-like, peels off his skin.' This phrase, which might seem harsh and unusual to the ordinary reader, in fact embodies a profound mystical tradition: the tradition of 'voluntary death' and fanā fi Allāh (annihilation in God).

Rumi recalls the story of the ghazi (warrior-mystic) who, in his hermitage, killed his nafs (ego) a hundred times a day; an ego that disobeyed divine command a hundred times and only surrendered to this continuous slaughter. This is the 'three hundred thousand' deaths the mystic endures, in contrast to the single ordinary death for common people. This verse teaches us that for the seeker, death is not an end, but a beginning for repeated resurrections, just like the Prophet Jirjis who was killed and resurrected many times. The seeker, relishing the 'spear of the just Giver' (God), pleads, 'strike another wound,' for these wounds are the balm of his soul, and he is 'more in love with the second killing.'

However, the crucial point here is that we must not confuse the 'blowing into the leg' with the 'Divine breath' (nafkḥ-i Ḥaqq) in human creation (as in 'and breathed into him of My Spirit'). Rumi himself subtly clarifies this: 'The breath remained within him until the return / It was not the breath of God, like that of the butcher / Great is the difference between the two breaths.' The butcher's breath is an act to separate skin from flesh, done for preparation; but the Divine breath is a breath that bestows existence and life upon the soul. Here, the 'blowing into the leg' is a metaphor for an action that, though from God, has a butcher-like and seemingly harsh appearance; it separates the outer layers and the false self of the seeker from his true soul. This 'skinning' is an idiom for shedding attachments, self-conceit, and ego-worship. While this process may seem painful and unpleasant, in Rumi's view, it is the path to eternal life and everlasting union.

I have seen this image many times: when a butcher blows into the leg of a slaughtered sheep to quickly separate the skin from the meat. This is an earthly and purely practical action. Rumi borrows this 'physical and material' image to delineate a 'spiritual and metaphysical reality.' He wishes to convey that in the path of purifying the nafs, the Divine sometimes comes with hands that appear to act like a butcher, liberating the seeker from the shackles of their own self. This 'breath' and 'skinning' by the Divine is a death that brings manifold life; a death that is itself liberation and rebirth. And this is precisely what the truly 'living' ones (the divine friends, awliyā-Allāh) do to the 'dead' (the common people): they kill them to make them live, they empty them of their ego-self to fill them with the Divine Spirit.

Key takeaways

• Death in the spiritual journey is not annihilation but purification and repeated rebirth.
• Divine actions, though outwardly harsh, are inwardly life-giving and path-opening for the seeker.
• The true seeker actively desires and yearns for the process of self-sacrifice and the 'skinning' of their ego.
• The metaphor of the 'butcher's breath' is not for creation, but for an act that separates false layers from the soul.
• This verse emphasizes liberation from egoic attachments as a prerequisite for attaining ultimate truth.