The Theologians
It was originally published in Los Annales de Buenos Aires in April 1947 and appears in the 1949 short story collection The Aleph.Though much of their work is a thinly veiled criticism of one another, the topic of their writing is regarding the heretical factions that appear around them such as the Monotoni, whose heresy is to preach that "history is a circle, and that all things have existed and will exist again", and the Histrioni, who argue that all individuals occupy dual forms – one on earth and one in heaven – and that actions on earth influence heaven.Though at first, Aurelian struggles to put to words the nature of their heresy, he is surprised when a subconscious sentence springs forward that efficiently describes their beliefs.The narrator notes that the remainder of the story is rife with metaphor since it must take place in heaven but considers the possibility that in the eyes of an ineffable divine intelligence, both Aurelian and John of Pannonia may appear to be a single person.The author's attention to symbols (such as the wheel, the cross, the mirror, the obolus, and even the "iron scimitar") suggests that the battle between orthodoxy and heresy is a war between these physical objects that provide a doorway to esoteric spiritual truth.