THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

Father, thereby receiving the Forms and shapes. This striving towards the thoughts of
God, the Platonic Ideas, is depicted as a process of recollection (anamnêsis) furthered
by “small sparks” (aithygmata) which, in the nature of déja vus, prompt the soul to
recall its previous existences and strive upwards. 60
Likewise, the soul comes to
realise its state of forgetfulness in the Trimorphic Protennoia and the catalyst of
gnosis is much the same:
I went beneath their language and told the Mysteries to my own, a Hidden
Mystery (through which) the fetters and sleep of Eternity were dissolved.
(41.26) 61
One cannot differentiate between Philosophy and Gnosis as there do not
appear to be critical differences between the nature of the “small sparks” of
philosophical insight described by Albinus, and the Gnosis which operates “beneath
language” in the Trimorphic Protennoia. This is a pivotal test case to deal with, for in
both systems the reception of this particular mode of knowledge is of the highest
soteriological significance What is missing in the system of Albinus is an enhanced
female salvific figure seen to exist in intimate collusion with the word, or iynges in
the Chaldean system.
Albinus depicts a counter-movement in the soul, a “wantonness” or
“wilfulness” bound up in its irrational nature, a downward moving erring autonomy
akin to the Gnostic depiction of hylic lust that is a pre-existent given, as expressed in
the Trimorphic Protennoia:
For as for our tree from which we grew, a fruit of Ignorance is what it
possesses, and death also exists in its leaves, and Darkness exists beneath the
shade of its boughs, (from) which we plucked with guile and lust, this (tree) of
the Chaos of Ignorance which became for us a dwelling-place (44.20) 62
Atticus was another influential philosopher in this time period (his floruit was
about 176 C.E.), who was a leader of Platonism in Athens following Taurus (a
Skeptic), possibly head of the Athenian Academy there, assuming it existed at all. 63
God, for Atticus, is transcendent, and the Logos is his instrument, not simply
an aspect of the divine countenance Again, unordered matter is pre-existent, along
with “the Maleficent Soul” (kakergetis psychê). The syllogistic thrust of Atticus’
speculation is as follows: motion comes from the soul and this motion is disorderly,
therefore there is a disorderly soul. This soul is adulterated by the higher Forms
pressing down, and the result is a lower World Soul akin to Plutarch’s Isis. 64
59
Dillon, The Middle Platonists, 287.
60
Ibid., 291.
61
Coptic transcription from NHS, vol. XXVIII, 414.
62
Coptic transcription from NHS, vol. XXVIII, 420.
63
Dillon, The Middle Platonists, 247-48.
64
Ibid., 254.