kwaw
Pour les sages le ciel c'est la suprême raison et l'enfer c'est la folie.
(To the wise heaven is supreme reason and hell is madness.)
On comprend que nous employons ici le mot ciel dans le sens mystique qu on lui donne en l'opposant au mot enfer.
(One understands that we employ here the word heaven in the mystical sense that gives the opposing the word hell.)
La science des esprit E. Levi
"The wise man builds on the fear of the true God, the fool is overwhelmed by fear of a false god in his own image" Levi says is the exoteric meaning of the emblem, but that it also contains the unspeakable formula of the Grand Arcanum.
The reflected image the fool froms that of the devil - shin, according to Levi, is the torch between the devil's horns.
Again, from his Livre Des Sages:
I. The paradise of the soul, this is reason satisfied; its hell is irritated madness.
II. The God of reason is himself the luminous reason of things. The God of madness is the dark irrationality of dreams. . .*
Levi did not believe in eternal damnation but in universal salvation - one could even infer from certain extracts of his works that he thought the concepts of hell and purgatory (and 'The Devil'?) were part and parcel of the hallucinations of madness.
VI. The devil, this is folly attributed to God. It is God who appears to affirm evil by a plenipotentiary issuing from the nightmares of human folly.*
XVII. Two trees bear fruit in Eden; the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life; the tree of knowledge is reason, and the tree of life is love that produces faith. Faith without reason is madness, creatrix of hell; it is the annihilation of the mind.
XXI. To argue against the insane, this is crazy; to upset them or make fun of them, this is inhuman; we must only prevent them from harming.
Kwaw
* corrections or amendments to translation welcomed:
I. Le paradis de l'âme, c'est la raison satisfaite; son enfer, c'est la folie irritée.
II. Le Dieu de raison est lui-même raison lumineuse des choses. Le Dieu de la folie est la déraison obscure des rêves. . .
VI. Le diable, c'est la folie attribuée à Dieu. C'est Dieu qui semble s'affirmer méchant par un plénipotentiaire issu des cauchemars de la folie humaine.
XVIII. Dans Eden fructifient deux arbres; l'arbre de science et l'arbre de vie;l'arbre de science, c'est la raison et l'arbre de vie, c'est l'amour qui produit la foi. La foi sans raison, c'est la folie créatrice de l'enfer, c'est l'anéantissement de l'esprit.
XXI. Discuter contre les fous, c'est insensé; les contrarier ou se moquer d'eux, c'est inhumain; il faut seulement les empêcher de nuire.