THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

etween a temporal and spatial Source, and the created world. Both are in fact
proponents of the same emanationist framework, although in entirely different
circumstances. 5
Besides the philosophical architectonics of emanationism which can
be drawn from both groups of theological thinkers, there is the underlying social
esotericism of these quintessentially literate endeavours. 6
I define emanationism as follows. It is essentially based upon one insight:
although there is a complete Monad, Source, Parent, Primal Waters, or One at the
centre of all reality, and although it is inexpressibly perfect in every sense, still there
arose the need for differentiation. This streaming forth, “extension”, hypostasising,
procreation, or emanation through the sheer power of Thought, Word, Generation, or
Intellect, in the Source, resulted in the appearance of various lesser entities, natures,
or levels of metaphysical reality culminating in the natural world. These are referred
to as specific natures in the more philosophical systems (e.g. nous, logos, dynamis
etc.) and their numbers are limited by the ancient Egyptian emphasis upon ogdoads
and enneads, and later Pythagorean number-systems as a rule; as more personalised
entities they appear in the so-called “mythological” systems (e.g. Atum, Ma’at, Isis,
Sophia, Barbelo, Seth, Anthropos etc.) wherein the “aeons” or “syzygies” are more
numerous, their dramatis persona taking on a sexualised role. The emphasis then is
upon the need for theogonic process, for differentiation arising out of the
Undifferentiated. This need, put simply, is one of distancing. The idealism of the
Perfect One is perceived to be at a certain remove from this world which in some
sense must be lower or inferior than the perfect State of Being represented in the
Primal Source. 7
Further, the dysteliological phenomena in human life – war, famine,
plague, disease etc. – these bid the emanationist eventually consider the reality of evil
and incorporate some theory for its existence into the distancing process of the
theogony. Humankind, then, is afflicted by evil because it is at a certain remove from
the Source, either spatially or spiritually (a “Fall” theory), to which it must ultimately
return if it is to regain its pristine spiritual state of being. In various measures, life in
the flesh is regarded as a lower level of incarnation which must be elevated onto the
higher level of spiritual being. Of course the Egyptians believed that the physical
body could attain this, as well as the soul; it was only in the final phases of Egypt’s
5
Three Gnostic tractates name the highest diety in their theogony as “The Hidden One”, and
so the identification with Amun is likely, although Atum shared in apophatic epithets as
well. See The Three Steles of Seth (NHC VII,5), Zostrianos (NHC VIII,1), and Allogenes
(NHC XI,3).
6
In this sense, we may see the Gnostic view of the “hylic” lumpenmensch as being of a piece
with the traditional exclusivism of the Egyptian priesthood. A.A. Barb “Mystery, Myth, and
Magic,”152: “Egyptian cult and ritual as a whole was fundamentally esoteric, the privilege
of a hereditary priesthood which was only too anxious to avoid profanation by the
uneducated and illiterate masses.”
7
Hans Jonas, “Delimitation of the Gnostic Phenomenon,” in Le Origini Dello
Gnosticismo:Colloquio di Messina, 93: “Whatever the beginning, whether one, two, or three
‘roots’, the crisis history of original being issues into a divided state of things. With the
‘cosmos’, reality is clearly polarized; the towering, many-storied structure of the spheres and
aeons images the width of the rift between the poles, its very multiplicity serves to express
the separative power of the antidivine and thus, for the earthbound view, the remoteness
from God.”