WOOLLY POMPOSITIES 
105 
And now you look shocked and surprised! And no 
wonder! What (you exclaim) is the whole Qabalistic doctrine 
but the very apotheosis of this "realism"? (It was also called 
"idealism," apparently to cheer and comfort the student on 
his rough and rugged road!) Is not Atziluth the "archetypal 
world"? Is not . .. 
Oh, all right, all right! Keep your blouse on! I didn't go for 
to do it. You're quite right: the Tree of Life is like that, in 
appearance. But that is the wrong way to look at it. We get 
our number two, for example, as "that which is common to a 
bird's legs, a man's ears, twins, the cube root of eight, the 
greater luminaries, the spikes of a pitchfork," etc., but having 
got it, we must not go on to argue that the number two being 
possessed of this and that property, therefore there must be 
two of something or other which for one reason or another 
we cannot count on our fingers. 
The trouble is that sometimes we can do so; we are very 
often obliged to do so, and it comes out correct. But we must 
not trust any such theorem; it is little more than a hint to 
help us in our guesses. Example: an angel appears and tells us 
that his name is MALIEL (MLlAL) which adds to Ill, the 
third of the numbers of the Sun. Do we conclude that his 
nature is solar? In this case, yes, perhaps, because, (on the 
theory) he took that name for the very reason that it chimed 
with his nature . But a man may reside at 81 Silver Street 
without being a lunatic, or be born at five o'clock on the 5th 
of May, 1905, and make a very poor soldier. 
I think you already understand the main point: you must 
structuralise 
your thinking. You must learn how to 
differentiate and how to integrate your thoughts. Nothing 
exists in isolation; it is always conditioned by its relations with 
other things; indeed, in one sense, a thing is no more than the 
sum of these relations. (For the only "reality," in the long 
run, is, as we have seen, a Point of View.) 
Now, this task of organising the mind, of erecting a 
coherent and intelligible structure, is enormously facilitated 
by the Qabalah.