DeConick A.D

57
THE GNOSTIC TRUE MAN
Isis, Seth, and Nephthys. This is the beginning of creation, initialized by
Atum, the God Who Made Himself into Millions. He is the One and
All. He is the supergod over all other deities, whose name and figure are
hidden (Assmann 2001, 240–243). He is the undifferentiated unity from
which everything emerges in differentiated forms, whether gods, humans,
animals, or the cosmos at large.
The progression of gods from Atum does not start with a big bang
but with the awakening from unconsciousness of a primal God of All, an
awakening that starts the flux of existence out of Atum’s depths (179). In
an Egyptian myth that is four thousand years old, we see an astute awareness
of a unity behind the diversity of the cosmos. This unity is identified
with a single self-created God responsible for life, which flows from his
mouth like an inundation of the Nile.
In the Book of the Dead, Atum is portrayed as a great serpent of the
deep, dwelling in the ocean that the ancients believed surrounded the
world. In his creative capacity, he is depicted as the circular ouroboros,
whose tail is held in his mouth. This image recalls Atum’s ability to continually
create by inseminating his uterine mouth. As the ouroboros, Atum
perpetually generates, sustains, and renews the world. His circular coil envelops
the world as the unity from which the cosmos perpetually emerges
(figure 2.2).
Atum is the creator, but he is also the destroyer. In this capacity, he is
pictured as an erect, scepter-like snake with a protruding tongue. In this
form he destroys chaos and evil. Just as he did at the beginning of time,
he passes through the underworld on his bark every night, beating down
the writhing coils of Apophis, the serpent of chaos who dwells below the
horizon in the outer darkness.
What will happen when he releases the serpent tail that he is swallowing,
when he decides to stop procreating and to lie down again in the primeval
ocean? At the moment when Atum reclines in the waters, all cosmic
differentiation will cease to exist. Atum will float inert in the primordial
sea, as the potential for life once again.
The Religious Buffer
In seeking the first inklings of Gnostic spirituality, we must look within the
Egyptian context. To be more precise, Gnostic spirituality first emerges