3 
Hieroglyphics 
life and Language Necessarily Symbolic 
Cara Soror, 
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. 
Very natural, the irritation in your last! You write: 
But why? Why all this elaborate symbolism? Why not 
say straight out what you mean? Surely the subject is 
difficult enough in any case- must you put on a mask to 
make it clear? I know you well enough by now to be 
sure that you will not fob me off with any Holy-Willie 
nonsense about the Ineffable, about human language 
being inadequate to reveal such Mysteries, about the 
necessity of constructing a new language to explain a 
new system of thought; of course I know that this had 
to be done in the case of chemistry, of higher 
mathematics, indeed of almost all technical subjects; but 
I feel that you have some other, deeper explanation in 
reserve. After all, most of what I am seeking to learn 
from you has been familiar to many of the great minds 
of humanity for many centuries. Indeed, the Qabalah is 
a special language, and that is old enough; there is not 
much new material to fit into that structure. But why 
did they, in the first place, resort to this symbolic 
jargon? 
You put it very well, and when I think it over, I feel far 
from sure that the explanation which I am about to inflict 
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