Nous · Mind as the substance of things

The Hermetic first move: what everything is made of is mind. The All holds the universe rather than being held by it, and a change in the quality of thought is a change of the world you are standing in.

Set it beside the Sefer Yetzirah and the difference is exact and enormous. Hermeticism makes mind the substance; the Kabbalah makes speech the act — the world is engraved, hewn, weighed and permuted in twenty-two letters. A mind dreaming, against a God covenanting: an utterance implies someone spoken to.