Fuller J.F.C. The Secret Wisdom of the Qabalah

AGNZ, 2006. — 92 p.Life is shrouded in a mystery; this is the fundamental fact which confronts us. We live in a cave with our backs to the light, and, as Plato said, our knowledge is nothing more than the shadows which play upon its walls. What this mystery is in itself we cannot tell. All we know is that it exists, and ultimately all we know of ourselves is that we exist. If we call this mystery God, then our lives vibrate between the two poles of God is and I am; but because the first transcends the reason, as the infinite transcends the finite, the relationship between them can only be expressed in symbols; that is in finite, or rational, terms. If in the place of God we write Reality, Nature, Unknowable, or Zero, it matters not one whit; the equation is just as obscure; for all we have done is to replace a by b, c, d, or e, not knowing what these letters mean. The symbol has changed, but what it symbolizes remains as inscrutable.
Granted that this is so, then it follows that our intellectual lives are purely symbolical existences.
All our thoughts are nothing more than symbols of a mystery, whether it embraces God - the ultimate source of all things - or reality - the tangible world in which we live. All are, in fact, equidistant from what they represent and are, consequently, of equal value from the point of view of the represented. If say that God is ineffable, God is inscrutable, or God is omnipotent, though the words differ we are saying no more than that God is. All these word symbols are of equal value, because they in no way uncover this mystery. Yet, though equidistant from the represented, these symbols are by no means equidistant from the mind of man, which is not archetypal but protean; that is to say it is for ever changing its intellectual forms. Whilst at one time one set of symbols keeps it in tune with the mystery, at another time a different set of symbols can alone do so. Consequently, though a, b, c, d, and e are all of equal value to the represented, they are by no means of equal value to the representer - ourselves.