The Chaldean Oracles: Text, Translation, and Commentary

But this process entails the existence of a Third God, a feminine, generative entity, described either as “Power” original: "δύναμις" and situated as a median figure between the First and Second Gods (e.g., fr. 4), or conflated with Hecate as the World Soul (e.g., frr. 6, 51-53, 56) and thus located (in traditional Platonic fashion) on the borders between the intelligible and sensible realms. In this last regard, Hecate is described either as a “girdling membrane” (fr. 6) through whom influences travel from one level of reality to another, or is depicted in anthropomorphic terms as a goddess-like figure from whose right hip the particular souls of generation are said to issue (fr. 51).

The ambiguous localization of this feminine principle reflects an obvious truth: that a feminine element is necessary if there is to be a process of generation at all, whether at the highest or lowest levels. The figures of Ennoia and Sophia function in a similar manner in Valentinian Gnosticism. Indeed, the linking of “Power” with the Chaldean “Father” (or “Abyss”) suggests a primordial bisexual deity akin to the Gnostic Abyss-Ennoia or Abyss-Sigē (see fr. 4 and notes). Sigē or “silence” is also mentioned in the Oracles, but seemingly not as a fully hypostatized entity (see fr. 16 and notes). A bisexual First God is also a feature of C.H. I—all these systems, then, underscoring the notion of an androgynous primogenitor who is the ultimate source of material creation, however dimly or darkly that creation is subsequently viewed.

Further, in the Chaldean system, the Father (or First Intellect), Power, and (Demiurgic) Intellect are regarded triadically; the Supreme God, in summary, understood as a triadic-monad or three-in-one deity (see frr. 26 and 27) whose Power and Intellect constitute, as it were, his immediate “faculties.” A “triple-powered” Monad is also a familiar figure in various Gnostic systems, sometimes understood as the Supreme God (e.g., Allogenes, NHC XI, 49,36-38), other times as a lesser being (e.g., Steles Seth, NHC VII, 121,32-34). Of particular importance is the occurrence of the term tridynamos original: "τριδύναμος" (or tridynamis original: "τριδύναμις") in several Gnostic texts and the similar triglochis original: "τριγλώχις" and triouchon original: "τριοῦχον" in the Oracles (as descriptive of the Monad; see frr. 2, 26 and notes). In addition, in the Gnostic systems, this triple-powered One or Monad is said to be constituted of e.g., Existence, Life, and Thought/Intellect, formulas which parallel the