THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

theology to be the “opinion of the majority of the wisest men”. In the same passage is
found a depiction of a stark dualism that is indeed akin to the Persian:
Life and the cosmos, on the contrary.... are compounded of two opposite
principles (archai) and of two antithetical powers (dynameis), one of which
leads by a straight path and to the right, while the other reverses and bends back.
For if nothing comes into being without a cause, and if good could not provide
the cause of evil, then Nature must contain in itself the creation and origin of
evil as well as good. (De Is. 369C) 27
Plutarch occupies a position midway between a radical and mitigated dualism.
He does not posit the existence of a pre-existing Evil realm of equal force to the good,
one which subsequently attacks the good realm as is the case with Manichaeism;
rather he suggests that the Maleficent Soul created a proto-cosmos before the real one
was made, a world of “wraith and phantasm”, which shares the above depiction in the
Trimorphic Protennoia of the Archigenitor of Ignorance attempting to model a form
of the higher Protennoia. The shared picture is further strengthened in the clear
portrayal of this first proto-cosmos nonetheless being bound up with the higher
feminine principle. For Plutarch it is the desire for order in Isis which brings this
about, and in the Trimorphic Protennoia it is the “innocent sophia” over whom the
lower powers attained a temporary victory, “the one who descended so that I (the
Protennoia) would dissolve their ends” (40.15-17) 28
.
Plutarch’s depiction of Isis draws upon the very heart of the Isis-worship of
his time:
Thus Isis is the female principle in nature and that which receives all
procreation, and so she is called by Plato the Nurse and the All-receiving....
Imbued in her she has a love of the first and most sovereign principle of all,
which is the same as the Good, and this she longs for and pursues. The lot
which lies with evil she shuns and rejects; she is, indeed, a sphere of activity
and subject matter for both of them, but she inclines always of herself to what is
better, offering herself to it for reproduction, and for the sowing in herself of
effluxes and likenesses. In these she rejoices and she is glad when she is
pregnant with them and teems with procreations. For procreation in Matter is an
image of Being and an imitation of That which Is. (De Iside 372E) 29
27
Griffiths, Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride, 190-191.
28
Coptic transcription from NHS, vol. XXVIII, 412.
29
Griffiths, Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride, 202-4. See also Marvin W. Meyer, The Ancient
Mysteries (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987: “Isis is, in fact, the female principle of
Nature, and is receptive of every form of generation, in accord with which she is called by
Plato the gentle nurse and the all-receptive, and by most people has been called by countless
names, since, because of the force of Reason, she turns herself to this thing or that.... [S]he
has an innate love for the first and most dominant of all things, which is identical with the
good, and this she yearns for and pursues; but the portion which comes from evil she tries to
avoid and to reject, for she serves them both as place and means of growth,”(170-71).