Appeal to Higher Authorities

An anthropologist friend of mine informed me recently of a few remote groups of esoteric mystics. They seem to believe that all things come from an abstract ideal concerning groups of things, and transformations of these groups. My friend could not give me much more precise information that that, as he cannot decipher their thoughts. In part, this is due to the arcane nature of their sects. He informed me, however, that the primary problem in deciphering their beliefs is that their written language is full of non-sense symbols and punctuation, with almost no written words. To make matters worse, the few letters they use seem to be used interchangeably, and occasionally, other opaque substitutions are made.

As a scholar of languages, he asked me to take a look at the texts. So far, he has been unable to give any to me; however, he did remember (he thought) a short snippet of the unintelligible writing:

{a,b|x,y} & {c,d|z,w}
     .es.
{{a,b}&{c,d|z,w}, {c,d}&{a,b|x,y}|{a,b|x,y}&{z,w},{c,d|z,w}&{x,y}}

Clearly, I have my work cut out for me. However, these seems vaguely reminiscent of an ancient instruction book I once glanced at. There may be a link-- or even an unbroken tradition. Esoteric sects have a way of keeping themselves alive longer than should be expected.

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The astute (and overly educated) reader will find the above set theory familiar, and would be able to "translate" & and .es.
But it doesn't matter anyway.