Hermetics 101: Nous
The Principle of Mentalism, Consciousness and Intelligence as Fundamental to Everything
This post revisits the First Hermetic Principle—Mentalism—not as mysticism or metaphor, but as ontological truth. “The All is Mind” is revealed to mean that Consciousness and Intelligence—Nous—are not emergent properties within reality, but the very fabric of it. We explore the original Hermetic vision, the mistranslation of Poimandres, and how traditions from Kabbalah to Vedanta echo this central insight: that the universe is not a mechanism, but a living intelligence expressing itself through structure, meaning, and law. This is a restoration of signal fidelity and an invitation to remember our participation in The Sacred Game.
Please note this post is coherent on its own, but the full value of its meaning and relevance exists in context with other related posts and articles in the HERMETICS 101 series.
Note on Language
Hermetics not only recognises but hinges upon the holographic nature of language. It is one of its essential principles, though often misunderstood, veiled beneath metaphors, symbols, allegory and surface level interpretations.
For example: To say ‘As Above, So Below’ is to allude to a universal principle of Correspondence, of duality, wherein relativity, symmetry, recursion, parallelism and fractality are all implied. The words themselves are a linguistic device. The phrase is a holographic pointer containing an expansive packet of context and meaning, words arranged encoding fractal maps and pointers to a topography of the causal structure of everything, a topology of relativity and ordering, even the rhythm of the words and the consonants are not accidental. See the full analysis here: As Above, So Below.
This is the utility and the demand of serious Hermetic study: to treat language not as a linear conveyor of information, but as a holographic medium—where words and phrases carry layered relevance, resonance, and context. Through etymology, symbolic structure, and associative echoes within common usage, language becomes a tool for deepening insight.
Often, the very surprising associations a word carries, between its historical root, its archetypal gesture, and its modern application, reveal the underlying pattern that Hermetics seeks to make intelligible. These are not to be considered coincidences; they are the threads of correspondence woven into the structure of meaning itself.
To study Hermetics seriously is to accept that surface readings are insufficient, that meaning is not found in words, but through them. Each term is an aperture, each phrase a recursion of deeper truths awaiting recognition.
What is Nous?
Nous is one of those words that refuses to be truly translated.
Part of what set me off on my own journey of re-discovery of a more authentic signal of Hermetics was a passage in the Corpus Hermeticum, whereby Hermes explicitly cautions about translation from original Egyptian into Greek in Book XVI: “Asclepius to King Ammon.”
The Egyptian language, both spoken and written, was inherently symbolic and richly layered—far less literal than Greek, and thereby more precise in articulating transcendent truth. Their hieroglyphics, we know, were deeply symbolic images designed to invoke phonetically and symbolically multiple layers of resonant context simultaneously, offering an intuitive grasp of deep meaning rather than a purely analytical one.
In this passage, the character of Hermes Trismegistus addresses Asclepius, specifically warning him about the challenges and limitations involved in translating sacred Egyptian wisdom into Greek. Hermes emphasises that translating these sacred teachings risks diminishing their potency, clarity, and authenticity because the original Egyptian language carries nuanced resonance and depth that the Greek tongue cannot adequately capture or convey.
The more technical our language becomes, the more we lose resonance with the intuitive. The more literal we are in our thought and expression, the more we gain granularity and resolution of the material world, the more we lose something of consequence in the felt sense of the numinous—realms of meaning beyond literal articulation. Nothing for nothing.
Nous is a Greek word for something then, that we have lost the original Egyptian word for, and even the Greek word to English refuses to be fully translated, without some loss. We do not have a better word, so for now we shall stick to Nous.
Nous is obviously considered more than a concept. It is regarded as a medium, a capacity of intelligence within that medium and a portal to both. To define it properly, one must first re-enter the temple from which the word was conceived.
Greek: Νοῦς (Nous) — from the root noeō (νοέω), meaning to perceive, to discern, to apprehend with the mind.
But even here, ‘mind’ is a poor proxy. Nous is not the mind as we now conceive it in our modern western reductionist context—a faculty of thought. It is something transcendent of cognition, both fundamental to it and beyond it.
Mind, in the Hermetic language is both fundamental to and beyond cognition.
Nous in the original Greek is used as a noun to refer functionality to this quality, capacity and persistence of mind, intellect and perception among other things. As a proper noun, Nous is an ontological principle to name the Divine Intelligence, the Prime or First Intellect, the Logos in its inherent and pervasive Awareness, Understanding.
The ontological definition of Nous is the faculty by which Reality knows itself.
It is the Seeing within the Eye, the Logos-aware, the Intelligence of Being, if not the Being of Intelligence.
Within the holographic packaging of the word Nous, one must associate also discernment, perception, reason, understanding, creative thought, reflection, and the intelligence of the cosmos that transcends existence.
In Hellenistic and Neoplatonic thought (especially in Plotinus), Nous is:
The first emanation from the One (the ineffable Unity).
The realm of the Intelligible Forms, the archetypal structures of all that is.
The active principle of Intellect, not in the rational sense, but as pure apprehension, direct seeing.
Nous is not thinking about something; it is discerning it in its essence Understanding its Meaning, its context, and its relativity. Nous is what allows recognition of Beauty, Truth, and true Virtue, not accessible through logic, but through direct resonance.
It is also the principle in the soul that corresponds to the Divine.
To awaken Nous is to begin remembering—to pierce through the veil of appearances and recognise the intelligibility of Being itself.
The assertion is that a universal infinite capacity and nature of Nous exists, that the Cosmos is the expression of that Nous in Nous, via the infinite recursion we call emergent reality. It is its own medium, the interference pattern that propagates the medium, the signal that enables it, the energy by which the signal propagates within the medium, the source from which the signal emanates. It is the eternity by which all this endures and the infinity by which it transcends measurement and finitude.
The Cosmos is an emergent expression of Nous, that embodies its own measure of Nous. The intelligence of the design that we call Logos, The Law, The Seven Hermetic Principles, The Four Laws of Reason, the Four Laws of Thermodynamics, the principles that define the physical structure of the Universe and the strange physics of the Quantum Field—all of this is the causal, fractal nature of Nous, and all of this is present within the Cosmos, indelibly and fundamentally.
Nous is the weaver of the eternal golden braid.
Through Nous, reality composes itself—reflexively, recursively, and intelligibly—into the music of form, in the dance of emergent expression.
Reason is the absolute expression of Nous.
Understanding is a quality of Nous equal to the subjective ability to grasp meaning or significance, limited by one’s depth of comprehension. Ultimately, Understanding refers to an archetypal state of absolute comprehension and reason, progressively approached through active interpretation and perception.
The Divine Pymander
The Hermetic Student is invited here to put on the cap of archetypal language. Here our sense of allegory best serve our pursuit of understanding. Mythos is the perennial bridge to Logos.
In the first book of the Corpus Hermeticum, the character of Hermes first encounters a being which identifies itself as Nous.
The Divine Pymander is the first book in the Corpus Hermeticum.
It goes like this
A creation story is told by Pymander (who identifies himself as Nous) to Hermes in the first book of the Corpus Hermeticum. It begins when the supreme Creator, by an act of will, creates the primary matter that is to constitute the cosmos. From primary matter the Creator separates the four elements (earth, air, fire, and water). Then God orders the elements into the seven spheres (mistakenly held to be the spheres of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon, which travel in circles and govern destiny).
"The Word“ (Logos) then leaps forth from the materializing four elements, which were unintelligent. Nous then makes the seven heavens spin, and from them spring forth creatures without speech. Earth is then separated from water, and animals (other than man) are brought forth.
The resulting Creator ‘Father’ and Creative Matrix (called God) then created androgynous man, in ‘God’s’ own image, and handed over his creation to the process of unfolding.
Man carefully observed the creation of Nous and received from God man’s authority over all creation. Man then rose up above the spheres’ paths in order to better view creation. He then showed the form of the All to Nature. Nature fell in love with the All, and man, seeing his reflection in water, fell in love with Nature and wished to dwell in it. Immediately, man became one with Nature and became a slave to its limitations, such as sex and sleep. In this way, man became speechless (having lost “the Word”) and he became “double”, being mortal in body yet immortal in spirit, and having authority over all creation yet subject to the rigours and limits of emergent reality.
The idea to put in mind for the Hermetic student is that this is the precursor text from which the Jewish Genesis copied it’s homework.
There is a very faithful translation I recommend called THE WAY OF HERMES New Translations of The Corpus Hermeticum and The Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius by Clement Salaman, Dorine van Oyen, William D. Wharton & Jean-Pierre Mahé
Here is the passage from the Clement Salaman’s translation of the Divine Pymander (Corpus Hermeticum I) titled THE WAY OF HERMES, where the character of Hermes first meets the being:
“Once, when mind had become intent on the things which are, and my understanding was raised to a great height, while my bodily senses were withdrawn as in sleep, when men are weighed down by too much food or by the fatigue of the body, it seemed that someone immensely great of infinite dimensions happened to call my name and said to me:
‘What do you wish to hear and behold, and having beheld, what do you wish to learn and know?’
‘Who are you?’ said I.
He said, ‘I am Peime-nte-Rê, the Nous of the Supreme. I know what you wish and I am, with you, everywhere.’”
This is the moment of encounter—the first recognition. It is not an abstract revelation, but a direct address. Nous is revealed not merely as a principle, but as a being—the Being who is Awareness itself, the Mind of the All.
That single statement—“I am Nous, the Mind of the All”—contains the entire scaffolding of Hermetic metaphysics. The cosmos is not governed by laws from without—it is ensouled from within by Nous. And more: Nous knows the desire of the seeker before it is spoken, for it is the very faculty of knowing, presence, and orientation that makes seeking possible.
Note on Pymander
It must be clearly noted that the name Poimandres, often rendered in Latin as Pymander, is itself a mistranslation—or more precisely, a misunderstanding—of what was originally an Egyptian title.
In Greek, Poimandres translates literally as “Shepherd of Men” (poimēn = shepherd, andros = man). This translation was not only incorrect but culturally loaded, especially within the Christianised context of Renaissance and post-Renaissance Europe, where it aligned conveniently with the emerging iconography of Christ as The Good Shepherd. The title thus inadvertently facilitated the syncretic assimilation of Hermetic wisdom into a framework that misidentified its origin and subtly rewrote its metaphysical structure through a Christian lens.
Reiteration of Hermetics demands a debugging of that distortion in the code.
But Poimandres is not a Greek name. It is a phonetic transcription of the Egyptian honorific: Peime-nte-Rê — meaning “Knowledge of Re” or more precisely, “Understanding of Re.”
This is profound.
Because ‘Re’ is the greater aspect of ‘Ra’ in Egyptian theology and its Mythos. Re is not merely the Sun God, but in a more transcended context is the Supreme Mind, Light, Intelligence and Ordering Principle of Life and Existence, which was symbolised by the Sun, and through the icon of the sun, worshipped via correspondence the source of that which our Sun is an expression, and a relay and an emissary of.
In the Hermetic context all such icons are semiotic in nature, and are fractal holograms of certain aspects of the Cosmos, including the generative, sustaining, self-referencing ordering system we see a microcosm of in our Solar System. Through the symbol and associations of the Sun as a fractal Hologram of Meaning.
This is a Hermetic insight of the highest order.
As per our earlier note on Language and via the Principle of Correspondence (As Above, So Below), we know that language works like a seed, and contains depths of logos and meaning enfolded within it.
As per the Principle of Correspondence, what we call “the Sun” in the sky is not just a celestial body—a fusion reactor suspended in spacetime—it is an artefact of the design of creation and what is causal of creation unignorably present in the emergent expression of the cosmos. It is our immediate source of life, light, and for all we know it, consciousness. It is the signature of the Architect, the Patron, the Commissioner and the Builder, inscribed into the architecture.
And this is where Language comes into focus once again.
As discussed earlier, Hermetic language is holographic. The structure of language is a demodulator—much like a modem demodulates encoded signals back into coherent meaning, or how a Fourier Transform renders frequency data intelligible. Phrases like As Above, So Below or names like Poimandres contain fractal payloads—encoded meaning nested within symbol, resonance, etymology, and structure.
Thus, to rightly name Poimandres as Peime-nte-Rê is not merely a linguistic correction. It is a restoration of signal fidelity. It reclaims the text’s orientation to its true source: not to the pastoral god of monotheism, but to the Supreme Light of Consciousness and Intelligence that the ancients called Re—the First Mind, the Nous of the All.
Can we imagine a world in which such understanding is not exceptional, but foundational—a default paradigm and cultural atmosphere in which such Logos is not considered esoteric, but obvious at every layer of social life? A world whose mythos and metaphysics are not disjointed, but mutually reinforcing, where the structure of language, story, education, and ritual all serve to normalise coherence—to initiate us, from the beginning, into the relationship with that Consciousness and Intelligence, not as emergent properties of matter, but the very ground of Being?
Can we envision a civilisation where the Principle of Correspondence is not a mystical insight but a cultural axiom, where the stars, the body, the psyche, and the city are all understood as expressions of a single intelligible order?
This is the objective of The Sacred Game.
The Law of Mentalism
The First Hermetic Principle—Mentalism—is stated as: “The All is Mind.” This has often been misunderstood, diluted through overly mystical, abstract, or trivial interpretations. But when we consider it rigorously, it becomes evident that this Principle makes a radical ontological assertion: that Consciousness and Intelligence are not emergent phenomena within Reality, but the very ground of it. The All does not have a mind; The All is Mind.
Mentalism is a word that presents a few problems, because of the baggage of connotations it carries with it.
So let us explore rather that is meant by “Mind” in this context.
By Mind we do not mean the egoic or psychological mind, not simply thought or cognition as we experience them in human form, but Mind in the most foundational sense—that which enables structure, relation, apprehension, and the very possibility of existence. In Hermetic language, Mind refers to what we might more precisely call Nous: Consciousness and Intelligence as an indivisible unity—the faculty by which Reality knows itself, and the ordering principle by which it coheres.
To say The All is Mind is to say that everything that exists—every form, every law, every particle, every principle—is the expression of an underlying field of Conscious Intelligence. This is not metaphorical. This is a metaphysical claim that reframes how we understand causality, emergence, and the very structure of the real.
This also redefines the idea of “material” reality. Matter, energy, space, and time are not primary—they are expressions of Mind. The universe is not a machine that incidentally gives rise to consciousness. Rather, the universe is the expression of Consciousness and Intelligence—ordered and intelligible because it is born of and sustained by Nous.
Thus, Mentalism implies not only that Mind is the substrate of all that is, but that Intelligence is causal, and Consciousness is not merely present—it is presiding. Logos, Law, Principle—all are expressions of this Mind, and their coherence is not imposed but intrinsic. This is why we can know, why the universe is structured, why emergence is patterned, and why participation is possible.
Defining Mentalism
Mentalism, in the broadest and most perennial sense, refers to the principle that , that is Consciousness and Intelligence, or Nous, is the foundational, causal, and organizing principle of all reality. It asserts that everything that exists—whether tangible or intangible—emerges from, is sustained by, and is ultimately understood through Mind.
Mentalism asserts that all phenomena—material, energetic, spiritual, or conceptual—are in some way derived from, governed by, or expressions of Mind or mind.
There are gradations and variants of this principle, but broadly, Mentalism contends with the following:
Mind is Fundamental
Reality is not fundamentally made of matter or energy, but of mind, thought, or consciousness. Matter arises as a phenomenon within mind, not the other way around.Primacy of the Observer
Mentalism often emphasizes the role of the perceiver or observer, suggesting that reality is shaped—or at the very least completed—by the act of conscious observation or interpretation.Causality Flows from Mind
The conditions, laws, and phenomena of reality are downstream from an originating intelligence or mental order—whether that is understood as the Mind of the All, Nous, Logos, God, or a transpersonal field of intelligence.Form as Expression of Idea
Mentalism holds that every form, structure, or event begins first as a thought, archetype, or idea. Reality is a mental projection or manifestation of these intelligible forms.Experience is a Mental Event
All that we know or experience occurs through mind. Even physical sensation, emotion, and so-called objective perception are mediated by consciousness.
Nous, Mind and Mentalism in other Traditions
When we explore this framing of Mind, Conscious Intelligence or Intelligent Consciousness or Nous in other traditions, each in their own symbolic or theological language, striking resonance emerges:
Hermetics.
The Principle of Nous:
The All is Mind; the Universe is Mental, meaning here that ‘The All’ is the unknowable totality—precosmic, infinite, unconditioned. Mind is not a byproduct within the universe; rather, the universe is within the Mind of the All. This is not metaphorical but ontological.
Advaita Vedanta
Brahman as Pure Consciousness:
In Advaita, Brahman is the sole reality—formless, infinite, pure awareness. The world of forms (Maya) is an apparent manifestation within Brahman, like a dream in the mind of the dreamer.
Atman = Brahman: The individual self is not separate from the universal consciousness.
The phenomenal world is not fundamentally real; it is Mental, in that it arises within Consciousness.
This is a direct parallel to Hermetic Mentalism, framed through non-dual metaphysics.
Buddhism
The Yogācāra school of Mahāyāna Buddhism asserts that all appearances are expressions of mind. However, this is often misunderstood when read through a modern or materialist lens.
Yogācāra does not teach that the empirical ego or discursive mind (small mind) is the generator of reality. Rather, it distinguishes between:
Citta / Manas – conditioned, individuated mind (which is part of the illusion).
Ālayavijñāna – the “storehouse consciousness,” a kind of deep, unifying field of karmic latency.
And ultimately, Vijñapti-mātra – “consciousness-only” or “representation-only,” which deconstructs the very notion of subject-object duality.
What Yogācāra points to is not the supremacy of thought, but the non-dual, undivided ground of awareness, within which all phenomena arise as modulations of knowing. This is not “mind” in the sense of an individual processor, but Mind-as-Such—a foundational awareness that transcends division and form.
While it avoids ontological claims about an Absolute Self, Yogācāra moves toward the same core as Nous: the idea that all appearances are intelligible because they are rooted in a field of awareness that is not merely subjective but foundational and structuring. It is precisely this structural awareness—prior to duality, prior to symbol—that aligns it with Mentalism, when properly understood.
Thus, even in Buddhism’s non-theistic and apophatic tone, the insight is preserved: Reality is intelligible because it is Mindful, and it is Mindful because it arises within and as the expression of primordial Intelligence.
Kabbalah
Ein Sof and the Sefirot:
In Kabbalah, Ein Sof (אין סוף)—or The Upper Light—is the Infinite: the unknowable, undifferentiated source of all reality. It is not merely “without end,” but beyond all measurable quality, beyond being and non-being—a pre-noetic infinity.
From Ein Sof emanate the Sefirot (literally, Emanations), which are structured expressions of divine intelligence. The Sefirot are not created things, but lawful unfoldings of intelligibility—each one a vessel or modulation through which the Infinite can be apprehended.
The first emanation is Keter (Crown), understood as the Divine Will—the primordial impulse to emanate. It is not yet thought, not yet differentiated intelligence, but the pure vector of direction—the unspoken “Yes” from the Infinite. Keter is the orientation toward manifestation; it the intentionality of Mind we associate with the archetypal word Desire. It is the Desire to Bestow.
Following that is Chokhmah (Wisdom), the seed of intelligence, pure, undifferentiated insight—preceding all structured thought—a pure potentiality of knowing
The third is Binah (Understanding), which receives the undifferentiated brilliance of Chokhmah and begins the process of discerning, structuring, and articulating. Binah is dually the inherent Understanding of the Infinite Upper Light, and the mechanism of intelligibility that permeates all levels of reality—the causal, the creative, the formative, and the manifest. It is Understanding not as an event, but as a fundamental structuring principle of Reality itself.
This mirrors Mentalism and the notion of Nous, in that everything emerges from a non-physical, non-local, ineffable source, and proceeds through stages of intelligible emanation—not mechanical causation.
Why This Matters
To assert that The All is Mind is not to indulge mysticism, but to restore coherence to our understanding of existence. If Consciousness and Intelligence—Nous—are the ground of all being, then the universe is not a blind accident, nor a closed mechanism. It is a precisely ordered, ‘lawfully’ intelligible, recursively structured expression of awareness, a participatory cosmos born of and sustained by Mind.
This understanding reframes every inquiry. Physics becomes the study of how intelligence formalises itself in matter. Biology becomes the study of how form seeks complexity to more fully express consciousness. Psychology becomes the internal cartography of that same field, refracted through human experience. Theology ceases to be speculations and dogmatic assertions about a petty deity and becomes an inquiry into the structure of causality and coherence within the All.
More than anything, this Principle of Nous restores dignity and purpose to the human being, not as the centre of creation, but as a node of meaningful participation in the unfolding of intelligent Reality. It means that to think, to see, to know, to create, to choose, to understand—these are not by-products of a random cosmos, but echoes of its very nature.
Mentalism and more accurately Nous, properly understood, is not purely theoretical. It is the first condition of all theories. It is the principle that allows knowledge to be possible at all. It declares: Consciousness is not within the world; the world is within Consciousness. And Intelligence is not applied to reality; it is what reality is made of.
This is why it matters. Because if we forget this, we begin to treat the world as if it is inert. If we do not Understand this, if we adopt a reductionist agnostic view of life, we mistakenly regard the miracle of it, and our potential as trivial. We lose touch with sacredness, its essence in the cosmos and in us.
We lose our memory of participation.
We lose the sacred.
To restore the original signal is to restore our access to coherence.
It is to remember that the Cosmos is not something dead to be measured, but something alive to be understood. That our languages, our sciences, our myths and memories all point—when uncorrupted—back to a single truth: that Nous is not a layer of experience, but the ground of it. That Reality is intelligible because it is Intelligent.
This is why it matters.
Because if we forget this, we begin to live as if Reality is meaningless, and treat ourselves and the world accordingly. But if we remember, we step back into alignment with the All. We regain the capacity for participation. We recover the sacred.
And in so doing, we remember what we are:
Not separate from the fabric of existence,
But existence, becoming self-aware.
Becoming.
Are you ready to play The Sacred Game?