  Attempting to put all the pieces of Ibn Gabirol's complex cosmogony together, we can find pieces of creation ex nihilo, emanation, and creation ex aliquo; God's formative act begins with creating matter and form (possibly a creation ex nihilo, but described fluidly enough as to leave open other interpretations), and He then draws out, in an emanating flow, the remainder of existence from these dual starting points (emanation, but also creation ex aliquo in the sense that all of existence is being formed through the mediation of matter, as opposed to each existent being created directly—in the sense of ‘unmediated’—by God as in other versions of creation ex nihilo  accounts).[20] In the end, Ibn Gabirol's conceptual play—with  notions of creation and emanation side by side—ought  leave us open to various interpretations of how precisely to understand his cosmogony.