THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

The picture here is in accord with many Gnostic systems, in particular the Trimorphic
Protennoia which abounds with feminine procreative imagery. We are in essence
dealing with the Gnostic Sophia who, through her own fecundity, yearns towards the
higher godhead. In the Gnostic model, the irrational World Soul is dragged down in
bodily form into “sleep” and “forgetfulness”, a quintessentially Gnostic depiction.
Dillon is quite correct in noting that this entity “is completely interwoven with the
Rational Soul, maintaining a constant cosmic tension”. 30
Plutarch details another key feature of the Valentinian system which describes
the extension of Sophia into the lower realms beyond Horus which, for Plutarch is the
sensible cosmos. Plutarch attempted to correct previous conceptions here in
recognising the pre-existence of the chaotic or irrational Soul, before the demiurgic
creation. 31
For the Valentinians this refers precisely to Sophia’s “formless abortion”
which must be hypostasised by the demiurge, subsequent to the establishment of the
Horus-boundary, into the equivalent of the Platonic Forms, and thence into the
creation of the lower realm. This “abortion” cannot be supposed to have come about
“ex nihilo”; rather the whole theogony is a “pleroma” of sexual energy and tension –
Sophia’s desire to “know” the Father must be seen with this double entendre in mind
as we shall see in Chapter 12. His compensating desire to know his “depths” can also
be taken in this light, and the surfacing of these depths uses Sophia as an extension or
facilitator of further theogonic developments, precisely the role of the Isis figure in
Plutarch and the Protennoia of the Trimorphic Protennoia
Another key feature of Plutarch’s thought is the division of humanity into
three classes, a concept at the heart of the Valentinian system, and found in various
Gnostic texts. 32
Plutarch’s demonology reflects a similar world to that of the Chaldeans, a
sublunary realm dominated by Hecate, and Dillon is close to the heart of things in
noting that, “both God’s pronoia and his transcendence must be preserved, and the
universe can tolerate no sharp divisions or sudden transitions” 33
. Gnostic thought
embellishes things further by stipulating that even as an unperturbed Perfection the
Primal Source, replete in its ineffable perfections, still “desired” to know its depths, to
commence differentiation, aeonial extension, a stream of hypostases, a direct descent
into the apogee of matter. This is implicit in Middle Platonism and the Chaldean
system in any case and, as we shall see, it is explicit in Numenius. The pre-existent
aspect of this pneumatic-hylic disorderly polarity is to be found in the ancient
Egyptian concept of Nun, or rather Naunet, a watery “feminine” chaotic realm which
girds the creation itself. And so it is we see Atum’s original onanistic act of creation
mirrored exactly in the Trimorphic Protennoia,
30
Dillon, The Middle Platonists, 206.
31
Ibid., 207.
32
Ibid., 214: “We seem to have here three classes of person, one without any higher element
in their souls at all, another with a higher element to which they are obedient, and a third
with a higher element with which they struggle, but by which they are finally subdued.”
This third group should actually be situated between the two other poles as it is in
Valentinian thought where they are called hylics, psychics, and pneumatics respectively.
33
Ibid., 217.