THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

formlessness and disorder”. 22
The One operates through this, limiting, shaping, and
making it receptive to the higher will. It is highly significant that Plutarch describes
this activity using Egyptian mythological figures. The One relates to the world
through the Logos whose two aspects are seen as the soul and body of Osiris. While
the soul is indestructible, the body is torn asunder by the ruler of the Underworld
(Seth-Typhon) to be reassembled by the female divinity Isis. Contrast the sense of the
following passage from On Isis and Osiris:
For what [truly] exists and is intelligible and is good prevails over destruction
and change; but the images (eikones) which is perceptible and corporeal
fashions from it, and the logoi, forms and likenesses which it assumes, are like
figures stamped on wax in that they do not endure for ever. They are seized by
the element of disorder and confusion which is driven here from the regions
above and fights against Horus, whom Isis brings forth as a image of the
intelligible, he being the perceptible world. (De Iside 373A) 23
with a passage from the Gnostic Trimorphic Protennoia:
The Archigenetor of Ignorance who ruled over Chaos and the Underworld
produced a person in my (the Protennoia) Form. But he did not know that this
one would become a sentence of dissolution for him, nor did he understand the
Power which is in it. But now I have descended and have reached down into
Chaos, and I was [near] those of mine who are in that place I am hidden among
them, I give them Power, I give them Form... (40.23-34) 24
Isis and the female Protennoia share the same function, which might almost be
described as one permitting Immanuel Kant’s numenon to surface through the a priori
categories. As is usually the case in Gnostic thought, what might have been an
absolute emphasis upon the masculine Word is contextualised by the feminine power
operative within it. This feminine dynamic is seen to be an executor of a Primal
Source which is itself beyond words, yet she herself employs the dynamis of logoi in
the struggle against Chaos, Disorder, the Abyss, Ignorance, and Malign Powers. The
Chaldean focus upon Hekate and the Iynges is also strongly suggested here.
In Plutarch’s dualism, based upon a late passage from Plato, 25
the unruly
disorder is defined as an active force, a “Maleficent Soul” which is in a state of revolt
against the manifest world. 26
Plutarch, besides drawing upon Egyptian thought,
doubtlessly passed on from Ammonius, is also incorporating Persian elements into his
thought, or is at least intent upon showing such parallels, considering Zoroastrian
22
Dillon, The Middle Platonists, 199.
23
Griffiths, Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride, 204-205
24
Coptic transcription from NHS, vol. XXVIII, 412.
25
Book Ten of the Laws (896Dff), in which an antagonist “of the opposite capacity” is set
against the beneficent “World Soul.”
26
Dillon, The Middle Platonists, 202.