 The primacy of light signals a shift in the understanding of the very nature of the ‘essence’ of things. The respective degree or intensity of light of essences makes them distinct from one another, although they all share in the same light whose origin remains with the Light of Lights. Everything partakes in and of light, in an almost infinite manner. The distinction between essence and existence no longer becomes appropriate to assert contingency and only remains notional, since the difference between necessary and contingent beings depends now on whether a being possesses light in itself or light for other than itself (Rizvi 1999, 223; PI, §68). In the Philosophy of Illumination (§121), Suhrawardi writes, “Light is divided into light of itself and in itself and light of itself but in another. You know that accidental light is light in another. Thus, it is not a light in itself although it is a light of itself”. 