The adequate conception of God according to instructed Kabalism is that which was revealed by St. Paul when he said that to attain God we must believe that He is and that He recompenses those who seek Him out. So is there nothing outside the idea of being, in combination with the idea of goodness and justice: these alone are absolute. To say that there is no God or to define what He is, constitutes equal blasphemy. Every definition of God hazarded by human intelligence is a recipe of religious empiricism, out of which superstition will subsequently extract a devil. In Kabalistic symbolism the representation of God is always by a duplicated image—one erect, the other reversed; one white, and the other black.[16] In such manner did the sages seek to express the intelligent and vulgar conceptions of the same idea—that of the God of light and the God of shadow. To the miscomprehension of this symbol must be referred the Persian Ahriman—that black but divine ancestor of all demons. The dream of the infernal king is but a false notion of God. Light in the absence of shadow would be invisible for our eyes, since it would produce an overpowering brilliance equal to the greatest darkness. In the analogies of this physical truth, understood and considered adequately, a solution will be found for one of the most terrible of problems, the origin of evil. But to grasp it fully, together with all its consequences, is not meant for the multitude, who must not penetrate so readily into the secrets of universal harmony. It was only after the initiate of the Eleusinian mysteries had passed victoriously through all the tests, had seen and touched the holy things, that, if he were judged strong enough to withstand the last and most dreadful secret, a veiled priest passed him at flying pace and uttered in his ear the enigmatic words: Osiris is a black god. So was Osiris—of whom Typhon is the oracle—and so was the divine religious sun of Egypt, eclipsed suddenly, becoming the shadow of that grand, indefinable Isis who is all that has been and shall be, and whose eternal veil has no one lifted. Light is the active principle for Kabalists, while darkness is analogous to the passive principle, for which reason they regarded the sun and moon as emblems of the two divine sexes and the two creative forces. So also they attributed to woman the first temptation and sin, and subsequently the first labour—the maternal labour of redemption: it is from the bosom of the dark itself that light is reborn. The void attracts the _plenum_, and thus the abyss of poverty and wretchedness, pretended evil, seeming nothingness and the ephemeral rebellion of creatures, attracts eternally an ocean of being, wealth, mercy and love. This interprets the symbol of the Christ descending into hell after pouring out upon the cross all immensities of the most marvellous forgiveness.