The Chaldean Oracles: Text, Translation, and Commentary

an expression which nicely captures the rather murky quality of these various systems with: a) their elaborate and often exasperating metaphysical constructions; b) an extreme disparagement of material existence; c) a dualistic understanding of human nature that envisions the soul or mind as a “spark” of the Divine trapped in matter; d) a method of salvation or enlightenment that generally involves a spiritual and/or ritual ascent of the soul; and e) a mythologizing tendency that turns various abstractions into quasi-mythical beings. This movement away from the school traditions of Platonism towards an unabashed religiosity is the hallmark of these systems, although all three retain a veneer of philosophical respectability by assimilating elements from the eclectic Platonism of the day.

For example, the Highest God in all three systems is often described in Pythagorean terms as a “Monad” a single, indivisible first principle who either exists alongside of or extends into a “Dyad” the number two, representing duality or differentiation (see frr. 8, 11, 12 and notes). However, in the “underworld” of Platonism, abstract philosophical speculation gives way at this point to mythic formulations, and a complex proliferation of cosmic entities is introduced13, with a dominant female principle, in each case, operating at all levels and directly responsible for material creation as we know it. In certain Gnostic systems, for example, she is Ennoia (Thought) or Sophia (Wisdom); in the Chaldean system, Dynamis (Power) or Hecate; in the Hermetica (esp. C. H. I), Life or Nature. Despite the abstract quality of most of these names, a definite personal function is assigned to each: the Gnostic Sophia experiences feelings of grief and fear, she gives birth to the Demiurge the creator deity of the material world, Ialdabaoth; the Chaldean Hecate generates life from her right hip; the Hermetic Nature entices and unites with the primal Anthropos the primordial Human.

This female principle ultimately reflects the World Soul of Plato’s Timaeus, refracted in varying degrees through the prism of Middle Platonism; along the way, Plutarch will have assimilated this figure to the Egyptian Isis; Philo, to the Jewish figure of Wisdom; and Numenius will have split it into opposed good and evil entities. But it is only in the “underworld” of Platonism that philosophical speculation about this figure becomes part of revelatory myth, often to the extent that “knowing” the myth becomes an important condition of salvation (this is especially true of the Gnostic systems). In other words, knowledge for its own sake passes over to “gnosis” for the sake of soteria (salvation), with spiritual enlightenment often coupled with magic and ritual as a means of freeing the soul.

13 It should be noted here that the proliferation of entities in C. H. I (Poimandres) is less “fantastic” than either that of the Oracles or the various Gnostic systems. Although C. H. Dodd, at one time, had suggested that the Poimandres myth was a precursor of the system associated with Valentinus (“...the Valentinian system, apart from its definitely Christian elements, has the aspect of an elaboration of a system very like that of the Poimandres;” see The Bible and the Greeks, London, 1954, p. 208), any direct borrowing should be ruled out in favor of a mutual stream of influence.