Zeke Mazur
Ph.D. Candidate, University of Chicago
ajmazur@uchicago.edu

The Delphic Maxim “Know Yourself” as Ritual Praxis: Self–Knowledge and Self–Apprehension in Gnosticism and the Roots of Plotinian Mysticism

This paper will present research in progress on the history of the theme of transformative self–apprehension and / or reflexive self–manifestation (autophany) in Plotinus and a variety of prior and contemporaneous Gnostic and Hermetic sources.

The premise is as follows. In several passages— e.g., I.6[1].9.6-25, IV.8[6].1.1-11, VI.9[9].9.52-60, V.5[32].8.9-13, V.8[31].11.1-19, VI.8[39].15.14-21, etc.— Plotinus describes a contemplative epistrophê resulting in a reflexive vision or luminous manifestation of his higher self. This effulgent self— an eikôn of the supreme principle that is sometimes described as transcending even the hypostatic Intellect— represents the ultimate mystical subject, the hypernoetic faculty of transcendental apprehension that is uniquely able to see and / or unite with the One. As I demonstrate in my dissertation, the immediate background of this aspect of Plotinus’ mysticism lies in Sethian Gnostic thought. Indeed, descriptions of reflexive self–apprehension occur in a variety of prior Sethian, Valentinian, and Hermetic sources, in which the experience of a vision of one’s divinized self (or of a sudden manifestation of the deity inherent within the human subject) represents a crucial, transitional phase in the context of visionary ascent or of spiritual development more generally. Echoes of this theme, interestingly enough, can also be found in para–Biblical apocalyptic, Hekhalot literature, Manichaeism, and Graeco–Egyptian magical and alchemical texts.

What I would like to explore here, however, is the genesis of this theme in earlier Gnostic thought. To begin with, the conceptual roots of the Gnostic accounts of visionary self–apprehension apparently lie in the confluence of common philosophical ideas, such as (a) the anthropological equation of the true or inner self with a fragment of the divine (itself ultimately drawn from Stoic ideas about the immanence of divinity and Platonic–Pythagorean notions of the immortality of the soul); (b) particular source–texts— including the (possibly spurious) Platonic 1st Alcibiades 130a–c and also, less philosophically, 1 Corinthians 13:12— that equate reflexive vision with vision of God; (c) theological interpretations of Aristotelian epistemology such as that of Alexander of Aphrodisias; and finally— and most importantly— (d) the Delphic exhortation to “know yourself.’ Yet the specific point I would like to make is that the Gnostics appear to have been the first to conflate the conventional philosophical topos of the search for self–knowledge— a theme that was also profoundly important for their own self–definition— with ritual and / or contemplative–visionary praxis: a reflexive praxis that was itself correlated with the ineffable self–apprehension of the transcendent deity. It was from this Gnostic conflation, I suggest, that Plotinus developed both what Pierre Courcelle considered to be his novel interpretation of the Delphic maxim, and also— as I have argued elsewhere— other crucial elements of his mysticism. If correct, this has profound implications for our conception of the relationship of Gnosticism to academic philosophy in late antiquity.

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