I must, at the risk of appearing to digress, insist upon this distinction between philosophical and practical points of view, or (in Qabalistic language) between Kether and Malkuth.
In private conversation I find it hard — almost impossible — to get people to understand what seems to me so very simple a point. I shall try to make it exceptionally clear.
A boot is an Illusion.
A hat is an illusion.
Therefore, a boot is a hat.
So argue my friends, not distributing the middle term.
But this argue I.
All boots are illusions.
All hats are illusions.
Therefore (though it is not a syllogism), all boots and hats are illusions.
I add:
To the man in Kether no illusions matter.
Therefore: To the man in Kether neither boots nor hats matter.
In fact, the man in Kether is out of all relation to these boots and hats.
You, they say, claim to be a man in Kether (I don't). Why then, do you not wear boots on your head and hats on your feet?
I can only answer that I the man in Kether ('tis but an argument) am out of all relation as much with feet and heads as with boots and hats. But why should I (from my exalted pinnacle) stoop down and worry the headed and footed gentleman in Malkuth, who after all doesn't exist for me, by these drastic alterations in his toilet? There is no distinction whatever; I might easily put the boots on his shoulders, with his head on one foot and the hat on the other.
In short, why not be a clean-living Irish gentleman, even if you do have insane ideas about the universe?
Very good, say my friends, unabashed, then why not stick to that? Why glorify Spanish gipsies when you have married a clergyman's daughter?
Why go about proclaiming that you can get as good fun for eighteenpence as usually costs men a career?
Ah! let me introduce you to the man in Tiphereth; that is, the man who is trying to raise his consciousness from Malkuth to Kether.
This Tiphereth man is in a devil of a hole! He knows theoretically all about the Kether point of view (or thinks he does) and practically all about the Malkuth point of view. Consequently he goes about contradicting Malkuth; he refuses to allow Malkuth to obsess his thought. He keeps on crying out that there is no difference between a goat and a God, in the hope of hypnotising himself (as it were) into that perception of their identity, which is his (partial and incorrect) idea of how things look from Kether.
This man performs great magic; very strong medicine. He does really find gold on the midden and skeletons in pretty girls.
In Abiegnus the Sacred Mountain of the Rosicrucians the Postulant finds but a coffin in the central shrine; yet that coffin contains Christian Rosencreutz who is dead and is alive for evermore and hath the keys of Hell and of Death.
Ay! your Tiphereth man, child of Mercy and Justice, looks deeper than the skin!
But he seems a ridiculous object enough both to the Malkuth man and to the Kether man.
Still, he's the most interesting man there is; and we all must pass through that stage before we get our heads really clear, the Kether-vision above the Clouds that encircle the mountain Abiegnus.
