Magick Without Tears

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 44