On the Theories of 'Ibdā' and Ta'Thīr

But the God in whom man was thus to find his own fulfilment was, as has been pointed out, not one God but two. He was the Idea of the Good, but he was also the Idea of Goodness; and though the second attribute was nominally deduced dialectically from the first, no two notions could be more antithetic. The one was an apotheosis of unity, self-sufficiency, and quietude, the other of diversity, self-transcendence, and fecundity... The one God was the goal of the 'way up,' of that ascending process by which the finite soul, turning from all created things, took its way back to the immutable Perfection in which alone it could find rest. The other God was the source and the informing energy of that descending process by which being flows through all the levels of possibility down to the very lowest

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• Ālam al-dīn in Ismā'īlism

  Open Access•Simonetta Calderini•Bulletin of the School of…•1993

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