the secret of beginninglessness, endless eternity, the present state, imagination, dreams, the intermediate realms, and similar divine relations. Among their sciences are the special properties of knowledge of letters and names, and the composite and simple properties of everything in the natural world, which is the unknown Nature.
(The Secret of Beginninglessness and the Established Character of Possibility)
As for knowledge of the secret of beginninglessness, know that beginninglessness denotes the negation of firstness from the one described by it. It is a description of God Most High insofar as He is God. When firstness is negated of Him, exalted is He, insofar as He is God, He is the One named, without beginning, by every Name with which He has named Himself insofar as He speaks.
He is therefore the Knowing, the Living, the Willing, the Powerful, the Hearing, the Seeing, the Speaking, the Creator, the Originator, the Fashioner, and the King. He has never ceased to be named by these Names, and any firstness of such qualification is negated of Him. Thus He hears what is heard and sees what is seen, and so forth, while the entities of the things heard and seen among us are nonexistent, not existent. He sees them without beginning, just as He knows them without beginning, distinguishes them, and differentiates them without beginning. They have no entity in concrete existence for themselves; rather, they are entities established in the rank of possibility.
Possibility belongs to them without beginning, just as it belongs to them now and without end. They were never necessary through themselves and then became possible, nor impossible and then became possible. Rather, just as the intrinsic necessity of existence belongs to God Most High without beginning, so the necessity of possibility belongs to the world without beginning. Thus God—
