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THE TREE OF LIFE
Reality is that IT IS. This must suffice. Omnipresent, eternal and
self-existent-these are ideas which transcend even the loftiest
flights of the trained imagination, abstractions beyond the grasp
of mortal minds. One of the symbols of this potentiality of the Ain
during a period of quiescence is a Circle, signifying that all having
been withdrawn into homogeneity, motion returns perpetually into
itself, as in the glyph the snake's tail returns into and is swallowed
by the head. The circle is only broken so to speak by the law of
periodicity. This law, affecting all, and inhering in the very nature
of things, governs the constant flux and reflux, appearance and
disappearance of the worlds. The potentiality of the Ain Soph is
only mirrored forth with the outgoing from itself of the breath of
creativity, with the commencement of a cycle when the One Life
is polarized into spirit and matter. The breaking of the circle of unceasing
motion is accomplished by a contraction of its Infinite Light,
by a positing of a minute point of scintillating refulgence within the
confines of space. How this concentrktion of Light into a cosmic
centre was effected, what its obscure origin, we are unable to tell.
There are confused explanations concerning the Will of Ain Soplz or
the law of Cycles, but they do not really tend to intelligent satisfaction.
In the one case it is completely impossible to conceive of
so infinite and so abstract a spiritual condition as A ~N Soph possessing
a Will which can be put into operation, any more than that it
possesses a mind or a body. The philosophic tradition is that Ai.n
Soph is not Spirit or Will but the underlying cause of both ; not
force or matter but that which underlies them, their ultimate
Cause. In the second case, this postulate of the cyclic law to account
for the appearance of the Centre of Light bespeaks of something
independent of or imposing necessity upon Ain So;hJz. If the Cyclic
Law is identified with the Absolute, the postulate becomes identical
with the Will to manifest. In any event, since we are agreed in
Theurgy that reason cannot be the final arbiter so far as concerns
this and similar metaphysical questions, the philosophical tradition
must simply be accepted in its bald statement, without endeavouring
to provide rational explanations for a cosmic centre of radiance
appearing in Space.
This cosmic n~etaphysical centre is called Keser, the Crown, and
is the first manifestation from the Unknown, a concentration of its
Infinite Light. It, too, in a certain sense is unknown, the Zohar
naming it the Concealed One. Blavatsky regards it as the first