Proodos · the procession

The going-forth: each level overflows into the next, and the source loses nothing by it — Plotinus's image is the sun, which is not diminished by shining, and later the candle from which a candle is lit. The Kabbalah's word is hishtalshelut, the "enchainment" of the four worlds, one link drawn out of the last. But the Kabbalah adds something Neoplatonism has no room for: tzimtzum, a withdrawal that must happen before there can be an overflow at all. The Greek source pours; the Jewish source first makes space. That difference is the whole moral difference between the two systems.