both are diversions from the way of reality, both are
attempts to replace reality,
God is near His forms if man does not remove them
from Him. But when the expanding movement of
religion suppresses the movement of reversal and
removes the form from God, the countenance of the
form is obliterated, its lips are dead, its hands hang
down, God knows it no more, and the universal dwelling-
place that is built about its altar, .the spiritually appre-
hended cosmos, tumbles in. And the fact that man,
in the disturbance of his truth, no longer sees what is
then taking place, is a part of what has then taken
place.
Disintegration of the Word has taken place.
The Word has its essence in revelation, its effect in
the life of the form, its currency during the domination
of the form that has died*
This is the course and the counter-course of the
eternal and eternally present Word in history.
The times in which the living Word appears are
those in which the solidarity of connexion between /
and the world is renewed; the times in which the
effective Word reigns are those in which the agreement
between I and the world are maintained; the times in
which the Word becomes current are those in which
alienation between I and the world, logs of reality,
growth of fate, is completed—till there comes the great
shudder, the holding of the breath in the dark, and the
preparing silence.
But this course is not circular. It is the way. In
each new aeon fate becomes more oppressive, reversal
more shattering. And the theophany becomes ever
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