O thou who art in search after poverty and contentment!

To am Yisra'el [Hebrew for people of Israel, i.e., Jews], shalom aleichem. Once more, to HaChaverim [Hebrew, plural of HaChaver for the friends] amongst ahl al-Islām [Arabic for people of the surrender, i.e., Muslims], as-salāmu 'ālaykum [Hebrew, shalom, for peace, as a cognate of the Arabic, salām and Islām, and the Hebrew, aleichem, for upon you, as a cognate of the Arabic, 'ālaikum, i.e., peace be upon you].

fervent greetings from al-Ṭarīqah al-Asmā'™ [Arabic, ṭarīqah for path or method, and al-Asmā' as the plural of ism for names; in Hebrew, HaDerech HaShemot, with Derech as way and ha'shemot as the plural of ha'shem, i.e., the Way of the Names]. This suppliant, Mūsā al-Asmā’ī ibn Hirsch, standeth in the maqām [Arabic for station] of that order's preceptor.

This risāla [Arabic for treatise] encompasseth a distillation of the concepts of Taṣawwuf [Arabic for Ṣūfī], as regarded by this lowly and trifling `abdullāh [Arabic, servant of God], in a kabbalistic attire. Its leqat [Hebrew, doctrine, and a reference to the application of a nominalist, or relativist, epistemology within the Jewish, Islāmic, and Christian categories], now under your purview, presenteth, sequentially, a cursory bayān [Arabic for exposition] and ta'wīl [Arabic for analogue or mystical interpretation] of three classes of al-Asmā'™ [Arabic for the names] or, in the lucent tongue of the Hebrews, ha'shemot [Hebrew, the plural of ha'shem for the names]. Consequently, each of the explanations which doth emanate, one by one, from this pen is naught save a précis.

1. These midrashim [Hebrew, plural of midrash for investigations, i.e., homiletic hermeneutics] wilt initially inquire into the constructive effects of appellative practices.
2. This weak one's tafāsīr [Arabic, plural of tafsīr for interpretation, i.e., commentary or exegesis] then turneth to a brief consideration of such sodim [Hebrew, plural of sod for secrets] as inform the names or kingdoms of existence.
3. The concluding section of the disquisition shalt expound upon the names of the human soul as a pathway to ascending ha'shamayim [Hebrew, plural of ha'shama for the heavens].

Buruch ha'Shem [Hebrew for blessed be the Name]!

O, akhī [Arabic for brother]! Shouldst thou be a nefesh [Hebrew term for self or soul which approximates its Arabic cognate, nafs] of unfeigned constancy in the Five Pillars of ṣalāt [daily supplications], ṣawn [fasting during Ramaḍān], shahādah [bearing witness to Islām], zakāt [alms], and hajj [pilgrimage to Mecca], one desirous of perfecting as a bochur [Yiddish designation for a student or, literally, a bachelor] at the madrasa [Arabic, school], graduating as a diplomate in Ibn al-Asmā'™ [Arabic for, sequentially, son and the names, i.e., son of the names], and occupying the exalted maqām of ha'atzilut [Hebrew for the becoming], thou art humbly requested, if soever it appeareth pleasing by thy will, to contemplate the grammar of our pedagogy. Verily, lettered in that grammar art the propositions of al-ṭarīqah.

This neophyte was, for save a few moments in time, immersed betwixt al-waḥdat al-wujūd [Arabic for the unity of being] of Shaykh 'ibn Arabī's al-Akbarī [Arabic for of the great elder] school and al-ālam al-mithal [Arabic for the imaginal world] of Shihābuddīn Yahyā Suhrawardī's al-Ḥikmat al-'Ishrāq [Arabic for the theosophy or, literally, wisdom of illumination]. He latterly served as pīr [Persian for elder and, literally, a synonym for the Arabic, shaykh] and al-murshīd [Arabic for the guide] to al-Ṭarīqah al-Wujūd dar Kathrat [Arabic for the Path of Unity in Multiplicity]. In Taṣawwūf, the commissioning of all al-ṭurqāt [Arabic, plural of all al-ṭarīqah for the paths] abideth beneath the succoring compass of 'Allāh al-Ālīm [Arabic for God the Omniscient] alone.

[The Persian, ḥūrī (usually anglicized as houri), is from the Arabic, ḥūrīya, and may be translated as a black-in-white-eyed maiden.]

Māshā Allāh [Arabic for God has willed it]! Notwithstanding the abiding influence of these encounters on the outlook of this Muslim Chasid [Hebrew for pietist], cradled within Jewry, some of the deepest fountainheads of his propositional inspiration dost spring forth from Christendom in twain:

1. This poor one hath mused upon the Sententia Vocum [Latin for doctrine of voices, that is to say, nominalism], and its premise of flatus vocis [Latin for blowing of the voice], from Roscelin of Compiègne, the monk, who was erstwhile inequitably threatened with excommunication by the Church of the West [never actually excommunicated].
2. This wanderer was subsequently edified by the Franciscan, William of Ockham, on his program for the Via Moderna [Latin for new way], while laying prostrate at his feet, but owing to his recent, and unjust, excommunication from the Church at Rome [subsequently reversed], our interlocutions wert, alas, ofttimes conducted privily and in closed quarters.

Concurrent with traversing the manifold planes of Abraham [Islams, Christianities, and Judaisms], this wayfarer didst arrange the propositions of this sūrah [Arabic for a line or row of stones used as a fortification or other enclosure, i.e., steps or sections] in the utmost of symmetry. On account of his constancy in the acculturative religion of the sages, he hadst, whilst recognizing these planes as the divine and social fabrics of al-Asmā', appropriated the epistemology [nominalism], save not colonized the creeds, he encountered from the two Roman churchmen. [That is to say, while he used their ideas for the nominal deconstructions contained in this document, he remained committed to Islām. He did not become a Christian.]

Subhan'Allāh [God is devoid of impurity]! This process of appropriation, surceasing in the formulation of a Judæo-Islāmic Sententia Vocum [in other words, al-Asmā'], hath been twofold:

1. Concerning the mélanges of Jews, Muslims, and Christians, this pilgrim hadst, in recognizing the attachment to words as mere fancy, repudiated the orthodoxies of the zealots for a tolerant polydoxy.
2. Afterwards, this inquiring one didst, with respect to ha'mesorot ha'avrahami'im [Hebrew, plural of ha'mesorah for the traditions and Hebrew for the Abrahamic, i.e., the Abrahamic traditions], spurn the antinomianism of a medley of libertines for a covenantally contextualized, yet flexible, orthopraxy.

As to the premises of this framework, in the Gematria [Hebrew from Greek, geometry, for a numerological system] of Kabbalah [Hebrew for a receiving], יִ [Hebrew, the letter yod], the first character of the Tetragrammaton [Greek for four letters, viz., Hebrew, יִהוה or YHVH, and, in English, self-subsistent], at once emblematizeth the Hand [of G-d?] and symbolizeth a value of measure [10]. Hence, the quantity of propositions, represented by the Roman numeral X, remaineth fixed.

However, more to the substance of the matter, albeit these Propositions of al-Asmā'™ hast, in their rudiments, been elucidated within al-ṭarīqah in exacting detail, presently, as an expression of benevolence to the sincere reader, this lowly one hast penned them on this scroll with the crimson ink of ha'buttul ha'yesh [Hebrew, ha'buttul for the extinction and ha'yesh for the self, and approximating the Arabic, al-fanā al-nafs al-ammāra for extinction of the commanding self]:

1. Even whilst particulars, including individuals, exist and can, through their middot [Hebrew, plural of middah for attributes] or, in the Arabic tongue, ṣifāt [plural of ṣifā for attributes], be observed, ha'etzem [Hebrew for the essence] of each continueth unknown.
2. Given that abstractions or universals, such as species and kabbalistic systems, art contextually dependent categories, names, constructions, ethoi, logics, et cetera, they possess neither ontological existence nor shared etzem [Hebrew for essence].
3. Via the sovereign and untrammelled ha'ratzon ha'Shem [Hebrew for, first, the, and, second, Name, an appellative for G-d, i.e., al-insh'allāh in Arabic and the divine Will in English] or ha'brit [Hebrew for the covenant of G-d or, in Arabic, al-ahd], ever subject to modification or transformation, particulars art created and destroyed.
4. By direction of the deific Volition, revealed universals art constructed, reconstructed, named, renamed, categorized, and recategorized, or they shalt be deconstructed, denamed, and decategorized.
5. As ha'Shem gave Adam, the personification of humanity, the authority to name, so people, in interaction, can, by their relative ha'ratzonot ha'enosh'im [Hebrew, plurals of ha'razon, the wills, and ha'enosh, the humans, i.e., human wills] or ha'matzpunim [Hebrew, plural of ha'matzpun for the consciences], construct and deconstruct reality.
6. The multiplicity of constructions of ha'Shem and of humans art embraced through power dominance, utility, or both.
7. A truth can only be evaluated, narratively and nonfoundationally, anent its particularized and temporal efficacy in a divine or human construction of reality.
8. As imparted through the didactics of ṣuḥba [Arabic for association, i.e., conversational lessons in al-ṭarīqah], all bochurim [Yiddish, plural of bochur] must wise acknowledge the temporal validity of each contingent and voluntary construction of reality, with its associated mitzvot [Hebrew, plural of mitzvah for commandments], revealed unto us from ha'Shem. Such britot [Hebrew, plural of brit for covenants], relative to ha'yom [Hebrew for the day but used here to reference an age], art not limited to ha'brit Noach [Hebrew for the Noachide Covenant], ha'brit Moshe [Hebrew for the Mosaic Covenant], ha'brit Yeshua [Hebrew for the Covenant of Jesus], and, in the present yom, ha'brit Muḥammad [Hebrew for the Covenant of Muḥammad], may the ever-abiding peace of 'Allāh rest upon Them All.
9. All bochurim, acknowledging that al-Asmā' constituteth merely one hermeneutic strategy for al-Qur'ān and ha'Torah [Hebrew for the instruction or teaching, a cognate of the Arabic al-Tawrāt, and apparently used here broadly to identify, not only the Pentateuch, but the entire Tanakh, the Mishnah, the Gemara, the Kabbalah, and more] amongst many, art advised to reject the idolatry of doctrinal orthodoxy.
10. Additionally, all bochurim, as defenders of the poor and infirm through orthopraxy, shouldst, in ha'mussar [Hebrew for the ethics or the morality] undergirding tikkun ha'olam [Hebrew for repairing the world], construct the loftiest and most inclusive of social realities save deconstruct those realities oppressive to the voiceless ones.

In pursuit of a philosopher's stone, an empyrean elixir of the alchemy, this cleric hadst, informed by the propositions, pruned the kabbalistic cosmology of Eitz Chayim [Hebrew for tree of life]. It hath, as a sign of the providence of ha'Shem, been recently explicated, within the lands of ha'Sephardim [Hebrew, plural of ha'Sephardi and referring, literally, to the Spaniards but used for all Mediteranean European Jewry], in the Zohar [Hebrew for Splendor], set down, aforetime, in the Sefer Yetzirah [Hebrew for Book of Creation], and recorded in other sacred scriptures.

Furthermore, this scribe regardeth ha'arba'ah ha'olamot [Hebrew, ha'araba'ah for the four and the plural of ha'olam for the worlds, i.e., the four worlds] of ha'eitz [Hebrew for the tree] as relative ha'shemot or constructions, incorporeal and corporeal alike, save not as planes of absolute Sephiroth [Hebrew plural of Sephirah for enumerations and adapted from Neoplatonic emanations]. Significantly, ד [Hebrew, the letter dalet for four], in the Gematria, bespeaketh a door or gateway and, in this minor discourse, betokeneth a portal to the empyreal hokhma [Hebrew for wisdom and a cognate of the Arabic, ḥikmat].

O 'Azīz [Arabic for beloved or dear one]! That which followeth is an encapsulation of this seeker's ruminations on the subject:

What followeth is a précis on the three quṭūb [Arabic for axes or poles, i.e., Great Masters] of the age. This unworthy one, may ha'Shem assist him, wilt, whilst naming each quṭb [Arabic singular of quṭūb] in a modicum of ink, make mention of his most noteworthy contribution to 'al-ilm [Arabic for the knowledge] of the present age. Only the second hath been of personal acquaintance to this favored one.

1. Roscelin of Compiègne [c.1045-c.1120], the great monk of the Church in the West, penned these immortal words, in his epistle to Peter Abelard, "Words are only breaths of the voice." His principium of flatus vocis [Latin for breaths of the voice] formulated the precepts for a sententia vocum [Latin for doctrine of voices, i.e., nominalism]. May Allāh bless his memory.
2. William of Ockham [1280-1349], the Franciscan friar, hadst written, "A spoken word, which is numerically one quality, is a universal; it is a sign conventionally appointed for the signification of many things." He further established the unfettered character of the Will of God, whilst divorcing His amr [Arabic for command or cause] from all save Himself. May his pure soul continue to be the recipient of the mercy of Allāh.
3. Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ghazālī [1058-1111] in Islām, like William, in his Church of Rome, promoted a variety of divine voluntarism. May ha'Shem watch over this glorious being in all the realms of Allāh.

This yearning one hadst discerned an unadorned taxonomy of ha'shemot of the soul in verse fifty and three of the Sefer HaBahir [a Hebrew text, Book of Illumination, which, though sometimes ascribed to the first-century Talmudic sage, Rabbi Nehuniah ben HaKana, is ostensibly a thirteenth-century manuscript]. Whereas the count of these names, in isopsephy, doth culminate at ה [Hebrew, the letter heh for five], the number of the window glass, their felicitous application wilt, as one gazeth towards the desideratum of the Beloved through the pane of a physical habitation, intensify ha'kochot ha'nefesh [Hebrew, plural of ha'koach for the powers and ha'nefesh for the soul, i.e., powers of the soul] in all the grades of existence.

Due to the predilections of this insignificant `abd [Arabic, servant], and apprised by his propositions, he regardeth the names, recited in unicity, as descriptions of ha'middot [Hebrew for the attributes] and ha'ko'ach [Hebrew for the puissance or power] of one's soul. They do not depict a soul's quiddity and haecceity which lieth beyond the pale of human comprehension.

In approaching the final sections of this tractate, it appeareth meet and seemly that a commentary, attired in the raiments of lucidity and brevity, be offered forthwith on this kabbalistic typology of the soul [the names later defined somewhat differently by Rabbi Isaac Luria, 1534-1572, in his Eitz Chayim]. The mysteries of celestial ascent and tikkun ha'nefesh [Hebrew for repairing or perfecting the soul] hast been wrapped in every jot and tittle of these verses:

1. Yechidah [Hebrew for uniqueness] revealeth ma'rifa [Arabic for knowledge; commonly used in Ṣūfī thought for insight or intuition through ecstatic experiences] into the particularity or singularity of the manifestations or revelations and the emanations or creations of ha'Shem, Who hath, from pre-existence, been ha'echad [Hebrew for the One] or, in the terminology of Muḥammad ibn Abd'u'llāh, may the peace of ha'Shem be upon him, and his acolytes, al-Tawḥīd [Arabic for the divine Unification].
2. Chiah [Hebrew for vitality] doth designate the vitality of tafwīḍ [Arabic for free will] in a soul's moral life which, whensoever rightly submitted to the divine Will, shalt intoxicate one's character with the wine of jubilation. The maqām of the human will is, in other contexts, designated as the heart and the conscience.
3. Neshamah [Hebrew for breath of life], known elseways as the spirit of faith, the power of steadfastness in ba'brit Moshe, and the breath of life, constituteth the means by which obedience to ha'ratzon of ha'Shem, as revealed by Yekutiel [according to tradition, the original name of Moses], accelerateth the advancement of one's soul.
4. Ruach [Hebrew for spirit] concerneth the logical faculties of the human spirit, classified by Aristotle of Stagira [and, though apparently unknown to the writer, by Plato] as the rational soul, including intellection, imagination, cerebration, comprehension, and retention.
5. Nefesh [Hebrew for soul, self, or life and a cognate of the Arabic, nafs] pertaineth to the harmonization of the functions attributed to an individual's animalian or physical temple.

O friend! If thou dost desire to give bay'ah [Arabic for one's hand in allegiance] to this murshīd, and to become a salik (initiate) and murīd [Arabic for devotee] within the ephemeral visage of al-Ṭarīqah al-Asmā', thou shalt begin each passing morning with the performance of waḍū [Arabic for ablutions]. Then, placing thine hand firmly upon thine heart, recite, to the number of fifty-four by nineteen [1,026], the spiritually charged words, Yā al-malik al-asmā' [Arabic for O King of the Names]. In due course, thou wilt sense thine heart with no need of thine hand.

O divine lover! When thou repeatest these sounds, thou shouldst envision them, through the inward eye of the soul, becoming synchronized with thine heartbeats. As thy repetitions fluctuate in their rapidity, thou shouldst, inshā' Allāh [Arabic for God willing], find that the pace of thine heart's rhythms wilt increase and decrease accordingly. Indeed, the association betwixt thine heart and the invocation must, during thy ta'ammul [Arabic for meditation], become so intimate that, throughout thy days, thou shalt find thyself continuing in this ẓikr [Arabic for remembrance, i.e., the "mantra"] absent any forethought whatsoever. Only then can the nafs [Arabic for soul] attain tazkiah [Arabic for, literally, pruning the plant, i.e., spiritual transformation]

O ye fellow traveler on the passageway to Allāh! Haply, by the grace of ha'Shem, thou mayest abide in the world of al-malakūt [Arabic for the kingdom or "heaven"] even whilst thou resideth upon the transitory planes of al-mulk [Arabic for the dominion].

Salutations be upon thee!

Mūsā al-Asmā’ī ibn Hirsch