Fons Vitae · Mekor Chayim

A dialogue between master and pupil on matter and form, written in Arabic, lost in the original, surviving whole only in a twelfth-century Latin translation. It never names a Jewish source, never quotes scripture, and never says the word God in any Hebrew form — which is exactly why Latin Christendom could read it for seven hundred years without knowing whose it was.

The bridge text. Universal matter and form beneath everything, and the divine Will between the source and the world — the two ideas the Kabbalah takes and keeps.