The Drawing Back of the Veil: An Explanation of Symbols in the Hierologium

Eternity is depicted. God never began to exist, nor will He ever cease to be. But just as He is from eternity, so from eternity He also produced, and it is childish to imagine God as being entirely idle in the infinite end of eternity, He who was always an operating essence.

Of which this is the symbol of perfection. Just as God Himself is the most perfect being, so too were the things He produced perfect, and all things will be perfect in the future consummation where His splendid and glorious kingdom will begin. Here, if you penetrate with the sharpness of your mind, a marvelous conjunction of natural and spiritual, infernal and supernal things will offer itself to you. The same image, which at first glance presents to you the base and foundation of all sensible nature, also leads to the summit of intellectuality and outlines those inner things which cannot be delineated. For how, in any way, can things that are so immensely distant from one another be joined together? They are not as distant as they appear. A great link intercedes for all things and joins everything to itself with a most tight bond. The same bond that connects things in the sensible world also joins those things that seem distant—the spiritual with the material, and those things that are above with those that are below. Namely, the same source and spring from which spirituality flowed is also the one from which corporality derives its origin, and that divine virtue which disseminated life in the former also disseminated it in the latter.

All universality is a single circle without the end of its circumduction. Do not marvel that a circle cannot exist without circumduction. Therefore you are accustomed to finite and corporeal things, nor can you grasp or conceive in your mind anything that is not concluded within limits. Universality knows no limits. The kingdom of God is, indeed, infinite. That one interminable [circle] contains innumerable circles. For there is an innumerable multitude of regions which constitute the immeasurable kingdom of God. God is of points: He cherishes, sustains, surrounds, and fills all things with the light of His radiations. All things which the infinite circle contains draw their origin from thence. You see, therefore, how all things are cognate, joined to one another. And though they seem to be most remote and distant, they are not separate. They are one, of one origin, and that in which they differ is only degree and quality. Having obtained one end, the rest follow. The same hand that leads into the adytum of nature also leads into the sanctuary of God. And where corporality is revealed before your eyes, the veil also falls by which spirituality was veiled. Everything outside of God is nature; He Himself is the author and Lord of nature. Let nature be coarse, let it be without the subtle; it is always nature.

You are called to speculation, that you may know God and serve Him. You cannot do both unless you simultaneously know in what He has manifested His love, wisdom, and power. That which is internal is not a manifestation. A manifestation is like an eruption and expansion to the outside. Hand-in-hand, so to speak, the knowledge of God will lead you to the knowledge of those things which are outside of God. And if from the highest knowledge, which is that of God, you descend to the most profoundly lowest—that is, the knowledge of those things which occupy the lowest degree in the series of creatures, namely, the most dense corporality—from there you go upward again to God, from whom are the points from which all things begin and to which all things tend. Unless you have begun from Him, you could never arrive at the rest. And what does it profit you, man, if you were to hold perfectly everything that is in heaven and on earth, and felt yourself sequestered from Him? Knowledge is not given to you, nor is it given, except so that you may arrive at God. Knowledge is light; elongation from God carries with it darkness and ignorance. Knowledge is a wing; with its rowers, your soul, which is depressed and bound to sensuality, must elevate itself. Whither do you tend? To God. Whither, therefore, does it lead? Through corporality and intellectuality to God.

Concerning the First Night.

And the soul passes to its creator

The first tablet represents night to you. But it is the first night that I declare to you. Namely, before all things that were made came forth, there was one, and that a most silent, night. Attend to those things which I tell you. There was no darkness: for darkness arose only afterward. Nor should you think, I say, that there was a time when God was solitary. But where we speak to men, who, accustomed to successive ideas, can only measure all things by the measure of time, where we represent God as the first existing cause of all things, we cannot speak otherwise and propose the matter to the mind. There was, therefore, night, not darkness. For where God is, there is light. And where He is not, there is darkness. Do you ask if there can be a place where God is not? Truly, from the beginning there was no place where God is not. Through all the spheres, which constitute His immense plenitude, His Light was diffused from the beginning, and His rays reach everywhere He wills; nevertheless, He averted His face from thence, although He cast the rebellious spirits into exile. Darkness, therefore, did not exist from the beginning, but began to be only then. But there was night. Moreover, this night is a state of absence, solitude, and silence. Absence, I say: for only then could God manifest His light.