A fundamental doctrine of the _Kabalah_ is that the gradual development of the Deity from negative to positive Existence is symbolized by the gradual development of the Ten Numbers of the denary scale of numeration, from the Zero, through the Unity, into the Plurality. This is the doctrine of the Sephiroth, or Emanations. For the inward and concealed Negative Form concentrates a centre which is the primal Unity. But the Unity is one and indivisible: it can neither be increased by multiplication nor decreased by division, for 1 × 1 = 1, and no more; and 1 ÷ 1 = 1, and no less. And it is this changelessness of the Unity, or Monad, which makes it a fitting type of the One and Changeless Deity. It answers thus to the Christian idea of God the Father, for as the Unity is the parent of the other numbers, so is the Deity the Father of All. The philosophical Eastern mind would never fall into the error which the _connotation_ of these words implies. With them the “One and Changeless”—Parabrahman—the Absolute All and One, cannot be conceived as standing in any _relation_ to things finite and conditioned, and hence they would never use such terms as these, which in their very essence imply such a relation. Do they, then, absolutely sever man from God? On the contrary. They feel a closer union than the Western mind has done in calling God the “Father of All,” for they know that in his immortal essence man _is_ himself the Changeless, Secondless One. But we have just said that the Unity is one and changeless by either multiplication or division; how then is two, the Duad, formed? By reflection. For, unlike Zero, the Unity is partly definable—that is, in its positive aspect; and the definition creates an Eikon or Eidolon of itself which, together with itself, forms a Duad; and thus the number two is to a certain extent analogous to the Christian idea of the Son as the Second Person. And as the Monad vibrates, and recoils into the Darkness of the Primary Thought, so is the Duad left as its vice‐gerent and representative, and thus co‐equal with the Positive Duad is the Triune Idea, the number three, co‐equal and co‐eternal with the Duad in the bosom of the Unity, yet, as it were, proceeding therefrom in the numerical conception of its sequence. This explanation would seem to imply that Mr. Mathers is aware that this “creation” is not the truly divine or primary one, since the Monad—the first manifestation on _our_ plane of objectivity—“recoils into the Darkness of the Primal Thought,” _i.e._, into the subjectivity of the first divine Creation.