sight, power, will, utterance, and other attributes, and the creature is described by them. It is known that their relation to the creature is not as their relation to the Creator. Their relation to humans even differs from their relation to angels, though both are created. Know this.
These glimmers that gleam to sight are essential, affirmative contemplative scenes, not negative. A negative description is not perceived by sight but by intellects. What intellect perceives does not enter glimmers. As for what gleams of the divine names’ lights when their effects are witnessed, so that they become known through their lights: their lights make them manifest.
(The Divine Names and Their Witnessed Effects)
The divine name is a spirit to its effect, and its effect is its form. Sight reaches of the name only its effect, its form, as it reaches Zayd’s bodily form. One can truly say, without interpretation, that he saw Zayd, although Zayd has a governing spirit unseen within him, possessing a form: its corporeality.
The divine names’ effects are the names’ forms. Whoever witnesses the effects speaks truly in saying he witnessed the names. Their glimmers consist in connecting the witnessed effect with the name that is the spirit of that effect’s form. It is like seeing a person without knowing he is Zayd, whom you seek. Another, who knows him, sees him and recognizes
