IN MYSTICAL THOUGHT the basic assumption for understanding reality is that the upper and lower worlds are joined and related. The hidden world is implied in the revealed world and is seen in its unity despite its various contrasts, whereas the revealed world reflects in its variety the hidden world and draws its life and essence from it. Everything is included in everything else, and every aspect has depths of reflections and endless reciprocal interrelations.

This reciprocity is based on language, which according to the mystical point of view has a divine source whose existence is multifaceted.1 Speech is the unfolding of the divine being in language, and reality, as we know it, is simply the unfolding and revelation of the divine word. Divine language is thus a revelation in perceptible concepts of the infinite power of God within creation, understood by mystical doctrine as an infinite stream of letters or as a chain of letters and divine names whose links are connected from the highest level of the unknown being down to its revealed end. The letters are thus understood as a ‘ladder placed on earth whose top touches heaven’. Creative power is embodied in the letters of the sacred divine language, which constitute the building blocks of being and join one another in the process of creation. Each letter is a doorway to one of the upper worlds, which are successively connected in revelation and concealment to all the other worlds.