Select Works, Section 456

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

The 'dense offspring his own, a host that shares his divinity, King over a king and over kings' describes the population of divine archetypal beings within the Intellect, analogous to aeons in the Pleroma.

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

[auto] The passage states the First debars telling and knowing, describing it only by what it transcends rather than positive attributes.

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

[auto] The text emphasizes that the First is beyond telling and knowing, indicating a radical concealment from ordinary cognition.

Pronoia — the doctrine that the divine actively orders the unfolding of the cosmos and human affairs toward intelligible ends, against pure chance or blind necessity.

Rejects chance as the source of existence, asserting there 'must be an order' derived from the Principle of All.

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

[auto] It describes the First as self-gathered, not inter-blended with forms, and untouched by multiplicity.

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.

[auto] The passage explicitly describes an order of secondaries and tertiaries arising from The First, establishing a downward chain of existence.

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 royal procession metaphor describes a directional, staged descent: 'before the great King in his progress there comes first the minor train, then rank by rank the greater and more exalted, closer to the King the kinglier' — a structured process of spirit unfolding through successive planes.

The divine reason, word, or ordering principle through which the universe was created; mediates between the transcendent God and the material world.

The Intellect is identified as 'the universe of authentic beings, the Truth' and 'holding sway by all reason over a dense offspring his own' — functioning as the divine ordering principle through which the realm of being is structured.

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

[auto] The text defines the First as a Simplex and authentically a unity, stating there can be only one such being from which all else flows.

The dissolution of binary oppositions (male/female, inner/outer, above/below) as a mark of spiritual completion.

[auto] The First is described as transcending Being and untouched by multiplicity, standing beyond standard categorical oppositions.

The divine fullness or totality of the highest realm, populated by aeons and divine attributes, contrasted with the deficient material world.

The Intellect is described as 'the universe of authentic beings, the Truth' and 'the Godhead entire' — the fullness of the divine realm populated by authentic beings who share in divinity.

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

Argues that if another such being existed, they would 'resolve into one,' affirming the ultimate unity of the Source.