 This seemingly extraneous ending is actually a grand and arcane finale. It hints at a secret that no Christian of Pico’s day could have grasped: that Moses himself, the author of the creation story, had passed through 49 Gates of Understanding—7 × 7—on his way to the fiftieth, the supreme and final Gate to union with God. The 49 preliminary Gates are all the compartments of creation, which in turn demonstrate Pico’s new allegorical method by exemplifying it: the universe of existence is also the universe of understanding that shows the path to mystical union.