Chapter II

Divine archetypal beings or eternal attributes dwelling within the Pleroma, often arranged in male-female syzygies.

The intelligible forms and the empyrean, etherial, and celestial Gods function as divine archetypal beings arranged in a structured hierarchy, analogous to aeons.

Describing the divine only by negation—God transcends all positive categories and concepts; the via negativa.

The text describes God by negation, stating he is not connected to intelligible things or essence.

A state of awareness transcending ordinary human consciousness, often involving unity with the universe or higher dimensions.

The reference to 'etherial, empyrean, and celestial Gods' implies a higher level of cosmic awareness.

Narratives or doctrines of cosmic origin — how heaven, earth, and the primordial deities first came into being. The Kojiki's deities born alone on the Plain of High Heaven, Voluspo's Ginnungagap, Genesis's tohu wa-bohu, the Timaeus's Demiurge fashioning the Receptacle, the Hesiodic Theogony, the Kalevala's egg-cosmogony, Egyptian Nun-and-Atum. Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (structural-ontological cascade), letters_of_creation (mechanism of creation), and apocatastasis/frashokereti (end-state restoration); cosmogony is temporally-narrative beginning.

The passage narrates the origin of the divine hierarchy: from the supreme God, the Self-Begotten unfolds, from whom entity, essence, and intelligible forms are derived, establishing the most ancient principles of all things.

The supreme God's radical concealment beyond ordinary knowledge or perception; the Hidden Father.

The text emphasizes God's abiding in the solitude of his own unity and prior to all other deities.

The uncreated luminous quality of the divine, sometimes experienced directly in mystical states; illumination as revelation.

The Self-Begotten God 'unfolds himself, into light,' making divine luminosity a key mode of manifestation in this cosmology.

The doctrine that God has no parts, divisions, or composite attributes; pure undivided being.

The God is described as 'immoveable, and abiding in the solitude of his own unity' with nothing connected to him, expressing pure undivided being without composite attributes.

The infinite, unknowable aspect of the divine prior to and beyond all emanation; the hidden root from which the Sephirot unfold.

The supreme God is described as 'prior to truly existing beings and total principles' and 'prior to essence,' functioning as the infinite, unknowable source beyond all emanation.

A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.

The passage explicitly describes a chain of divine beings flowing from the one God into light and then into etherial, empyrean, and celestial Gods.

A non-physical dimension of reality, interpenetrating the physical world, populated by forces, beings, and forms ordinarily imperceptible to physical senses and instruments, that can affect embodied life without being seen — Dion Fortune's 'mind-side of nature,' the astral plane of Western esotericism broadly construed. Distinct from astral_light (a specific transmitting medium or fluid operating within this realm, not the realm itself), pleroma (the divine fullness at the summit of a cosmic hierarchy, not a parallel plane coextensive with ordinary life), and animism (particular indwelling spirits bound to specific natural objects, not the general unseen dimension itself).

The passage describes an entire non-physical dimension of reality populated by intelligible forms and multiple classes of divine beings (empyrean, etherial, celestial) that constitute the true cosmos.

The doctrine that the cosmos unfolds as a structured descent of spirit into matter — a directional process traced stage by stage from an unconditioned principle down through successive planes to full materialization — complemented by its own eventual return ('evolution'). Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (the static structure of the resulting levels of the cascade) and cosmogony (a single originating event rather than an ongoing staged process) in naming the directional cosmic PROCESS of descent itself, paired with its own complementary ascent.

The passage describes a directional descent from the unconditioned One through the Self-Begotten, intelligible forms, and into the empyrean, etherial, and celestial Gods, a staged unfolding of spirit into structured multiplicity.

The absolutely simple, undivided first principle from which all multiplicity and existence flows.

The text identifies a singular 'one God' prior to all other deities who is the fountain of all things.

The Self-Begotten (Autogenes) — the great angel and 'God of the Light' who emerges from the luminous cloud at the supreme Spirit's command and organizes the aeons, luminaries, and realms of light; the Sethian first-born of the divine fullness, distinct from the demiurge in being an emanation of light rather than an ignorant creator.

The passage explicitly describes the second principle as 'the God who is the father of himself, is self begotten, is father alone,' making this a central theological claim of the text.

The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim.

The passage asserts that from the one deity, entity and essence are derived, implying a unified source of existence.