Neoplatonism, The Sethians, and The Johannines Fusion -- The Epilogue

 Revelatory Comment & Conclusion, (c) Epinoia Cesare 2026

The following is from Alexander J. Mazur's work, PhD from The University of Chicago, The Platonizing Sethian Background of Plotinus' Mysticism, at the beginning:

One of the most strikingly and apparent original aspects of Plotinus’ thought—the “end and goal” (telos … kai skips) of his life and philosophy, according to Porphyry—was his notion of a full-fledged mystical union: that is, the conjunction, assimilation, coalescence, or complete identification of the innermost core of the human subject with the transcendent One ‘above’ Being and Intellect. In several passages throughout the Enneads, Plotinus describes this event as an overwhelmingly intense subjective experience that culminates a contemplative ‘ascent.’ At the climactic moment—to give one example—the aspirant “neither sees nor distinguishes nor imagines two, but as if having become another and not himself nor belonging to himself there, having come to ‘belong’ to [the One], he is one, as if attached center to center, or, in another passage, “[T]here was not even any reason or thinking, nor even a self at all, if one must say even this; but he was as if snatched away or divinely possessed, in quiet solitude and stillness, having become motionless and indeed having become a kind of status. It must be emphasized that we are not dealing with a mere rhetorical flourish or a conventional metaphor, but rather with something that Plotinus understood to be a discrete, transformative event. He repeatedly implies that he has himself experienced mystical union with the One first-hand—he often makes cryptic intimations to the effect that “whoever has seen, knows what I mean.”

Epilogue

Though theoretical, the possibility exits that Plotinus was a Johannine secessionist/Sethian (Barbeloite) prior to starting his own school of thought. In fact, this notion is even more conceivable given he lived in the epicenter--Alexandria--as did many secessionists. Plato was held in high regard by both.

According to Dr. Alastair Logan, The Apocryphon of John & Trimorphic Protennoia are both at base fundamentally Christian treatises. The former was written in the second century, likely before Plotinus' time, but the latter both post-dates the Apocryphon & is most likely reliant on the treatise, as discussed in Section XIX. Trimorphic Protennoia‘s Relation with The Apocryphon of John. As mentioned in the description of the work from the beginning: Plotinus could have been the primary drafter of Trimorphic Protennoia, rather simply supported by Wikipedia: “Some [Sethian] gospels (for example Trimorphic Protennoia) make use of fully developed Neoplatonism and thus need to be dated after Plotinus in the 3rd century.”

Plotinus moved to Rome in his forties. Note that A H Armstrong’s translation of Against the Gnostics was the only one in existence until Lloyd Gerson's, and this version could have been tailored to his own specific message. Plotinus could have been addressing the Valentinians, not the secessionists / Sethians (the Barbeloites--not the Sethites, who again held Seth, born after Cain & Abel of the OT, in the highest regard. Recall that the secessionists disregarded the OT. I believe the Neoplatonists did too. The Sethites too believed in "heavenly abodes," a fallacy the Barbeloites did not share.) Furthermore, Porphyry potentially could have edited this work to suit his interests, as Tuomas Rasimus & Alexander Mazur either imply or indirectly discuss below; we do not have a Time Machine to actually know. However, how could Plotinus have held that the Demiurge was a good character if his primary role was shaping Matter--which is inherently evil per The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy? The Valentinian Tripartite Tractate is in opposition with ApJohn & TriProt as it holds the Demiurge & Matter as good, a core belief of those who followed Valentinus. Furthermore, as Irenaeus describes right at the beginning of his work, Against Heresies (Book I, Chapter 1:) “Absurd ideas of the disciples of Valentinus as to the origin, name, order, and conjugal productions of their fancied Æons, with the passages of Scripture which they adapt to their opinions.”

Additionally, per Trinity College's (Dublin) Paul Kalligas' discussion in Plotinus against the Gnostics,"The arrival in Rome of the heresiarch Valentinus, around the year 140, and his stay there for more than two decades, when he was nearly appointed to the Episcopal see of the city, but was eventually outvoted by a colleague with stronger credentials as a martyr, symbolizes, one might say, the beginning of a process of crystallization of this theosophical movement into a more or less philosophically structured theological system, based on Platonic and Pythagorean principles. Valentinus himself is commonly described in our sources as a Platonist, and Hippolytus maintains, not without some plausibility, that his system was based on a famous passage from the Second pseudo-Platonic Epistle, which we know had inspired several

other Pythagorising Platonists of the time, like for instance, Numenius. Within the following century, the process continued and acquired considerable momentum through the contribution of numerous disciples of Valentinus, some of whom, like Heracleon and Ptolemaeus, were, according to the testimony of Hippolytus, also active in Italy. A sure indication of the amount of Gnostic material that was circulating in Rome a few years before the arrival of Plotinus is given by the fact that Hippolytus, while compiling his massive Attack Against the Heresies, was able to collect there the immense material of Gnostic provenance that is used in this work. Further fascinating testimony on the presence and the activities of Gnostic sects in Rome during the first half of the third century is provided by the famous hypogaeum of the Aurelii, with the imaginative depiction of Gnostic allegorical scenes on its murals.”

Kalligas continues: "The continuing tendency to formulate such speculations in ever more theoretical terminology, their formidable complexity and the effort to support or embellish them by employing philosophical concepts or even forms of argumentation led to the production of treatises where, under the guise of phantasmagoric allegories of a revelatory character and the intricacies of a complicated symbolism, one can discern an effort to tackle theological issues that had preoccupied Greek philosophy since the time of the Presocratics. To this category seem to belong at least two of the treatises mentioned by Porphyry in Chapter 16 of his Life of Plotinus, which have miraculously emerged again among the codices found buried in a jar, near the Egyptian village of Nag Hammadi. These are the ‘Revelations' of Zostrianus and Allogenes, which contain some of the most theoretically pretentious passages in the whole library. Other Sethian texts included in the collection are the ones under the titles The Apocryphon of John, The Hypostasis of the Archons, The Gospel of the Egyptians, The Three Steles of Seth, Marsanès and the treatise entitled Trimorphic Protennoia. However, we have to note that although Porphyry explicitly characterizes those who circulated these texts in Rome as Christians', the only one of them which bears any distinctively Christian elements is The Apocryphon of John." (However, I do believe Trimorphic Protennoia does as well given the close relationship.)

Directly from Plotinus' Enneads, pp. 208-209: "So, we should not go looking for other principles; rather, we should take this as our principle, and next after it Intellect, that is, the primary thinker, and next after Intellect Soul, since this is the natural order. And we ought not to posit any more or any fewer principles in the intelligible world. For if anyone posits fewer, they will have to say either that Soul and Intellect are identical, or that Intellect and that which is first are identical, but it has been shown repeatedly that these are distinct from one another.

What remains for us to investigate right now is what other natures besides these three there could be, then, [were we to concede that] there are more than these. For no one could discover any principle that is simpler or higher than this principle of all things as it was just described. For, certainly, they will not maintain that there is one principle in potentiality and another in actuality, because it would be ridiculous to attempt to establish more natures among those things that are immaterial and in actuality by distinguishing between potentiality and actuality.

But neither [could one establish more natures] among the subsequent principles. One cannot pretend that there is one Intellect that is in some state of stillness and another that is, in a way, in motion. For what would Intellect’s stillness be, and what would its motion and procession be, and what would the idleness of the one Intellect and the work of the other Intellect amount to? For Intellect just is as it is; always the same and established in a steady state of activity. By contrast, motion towards and around Intellect is already Soul’s work, and it is an expressed principle proceeding from Intellect into Soul that makes Soul intellectual, and not another nature between Intellect and Soul.

And surely one cannot attempt to produce more than one Intellect by saying that there is one Intellect that thinks and another Intellect that thinks that it thinks. For even if thinking in the sensible world is distinct from thinking that one is thinking, there is still a single act of apprehension that is not unaware of the results of its own acts. Indeed, it would be ridiculous to make this assumption of the true Intellect; rather, the Intellect that was supposed to be thinking will certainly be identical with the one thinking that it is thinking.

Otherwise, the one will only think, and the other that thinks that it is thinking will belong to something else and not to the one that was supposed to be thinking.”

It would appear that Plotinus was referencing the Valentinians, as Alastair Logan stated in his Thesis, from the beginning of this work: p. 9 of Gnostic Truth and Christian Heresy: “The reference in [Irenaeus’ Against Heresies] 1.11.3-5 and elsewhere to Valentinian claims to be ‘more gnostic than the Gnostics’ must be seen in this context of primal emanations: the Gnostics, Irenaeus is claiming, were the first to develop the concept of emission of mental states or attributes of the Father like intelligence (nous) and reason (logos) as hypostases. The various Valentinian attempts to posit prior emissions and entities to these is to try to outdo these Gnostics—their spiritual ancestors!”

In fact, Neoplatonism is not entirely inline with Plato's Timaeus, a matter that is particularly curious as regards: "Although the Neoplatonists followed Platonic tradition in talking about a demiurge (divine craftsman), their cosmology has nothing demiurgic about it, as Plotinus rarely failed to point out. Craftsmen think, forge, labor, arrange, and coordinate a host of diverse technical operations towards the creation of some product of their craft. Unlike Plato’s character Timaeus or the authors of Genesis, Neoplatonic metaphysics has no room for such crude analogies." Stanford University on Neoplatonism

Thus, in some ways, the Sethians indirectly were more true to the spirit of Timaeus, though they approached the Demiurge figure quite differently; this could have evolved over time in the Neoplatonic sense given Mazur's commentary that follows. Furthermore, Plotinus might very well have avoided tackling the concept more directly, as potentially he had roots in Sethianism earlier in his life, and he simply would not have wanted to tread on these waters at all.

Again, Alexander J. Mazur (Ph.D., The University of Chicago) argues that many Neoplatonic concepts and ideas are ultimately derived from Sethianism during the third century in Lower Egypt, and that Plotinus himself may have been a Sethian before nominally distancing himself from the movement. Plotinus was a student of Ammonius Saccas, along with Origen, and Trimorphic Protennoia is attributed to The Father, or in Platonic terms the Form of The Good.

Though the Johannine secessionists/Sethians are more or less associated with spirituality, and the Neoplatonists with philosophy, the two represent the main focal point.

This logic is supported by The University of Exeter's Alastair Logan on p. 34 of Gnostic Truth & Christian Heresy: "Indeed it could be suggested that the Gnostics were among the first Christians to be influenced by Platonism, and thus that the claims of scholars like Schenke, Turner, and Pearson to detect the Platonization of the later Sethian writings like Allogenes, Zostrianos, The Three Steles of Seth, and Marsanès is slightly misleading: the Gnostics are in dialogue with he evolving Platonic tradition, perhaps even anticipating Neoplatonism in some respects." Of course I equate Logan's Gnostics with the Sethians, who in turn are the same as the Johannine secessionists; however I have added the notion that Plotinus himself could have been originally a secessionist/Sethian, and that he could have written Trimorphic Protennoia. This treatise predates the Sethian Neoplatonic works mentioned.

Incidentally, Logan goes as far as to state the following: "The Gnostics [Sethians/secessionists] were Platonists from the first! They developed their Platonism in dialogue with the evolving Platonic tradition, [thereby anticipating] Neoplatonism.”

Logan very much differentiates the Gnostics [secessionists] from the Valentinians -- and duly so. I wholeheartedly agree.

As The Gospel of John states:

• 17:4-10 “I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed. I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I come from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours.”

[Note the incredible allusion to The Apocryphon of John — “that I had in your presence before the world existed.”]

• 17:14-19 “I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from evil. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.”

Additionally, per The Gospel of Thomas:

• Saying 23: “Jesus said, ‘I shall choose you, one from a thousand and two from ten thousand, and they will stand as a single one.’”

As regards The Father in the Sethian / Johannine secessionist treatises:

• Zostrianos 114 “There are those who are begotten, and those who are in an unborn begetting, and there are those who are Holy and Eternal, and there are those who are as All; there are those who are races and who are in All; there are those who are races and those who are in a world and order; there are those in indestructibility, and these are the first who stand and the second in all of them. All those who are from them and those who are in them, and from these who followed them, these stood, they existing in them, being scattered abroad. They are not crowded against one another, but to the contrary they are alive, existing in themselves and agreeing with one another, as they are from a single origin. They are reconciled because they are all in a single Aeon of Kalyptos, not being divided in power, for they exist in accord with each of the Aeons, standing in relationship to the one which has reached them.”

• Trimorphic Protennoia -- perhaps the most important Verse of all: “I am the Invisible One within the All. It is I who counsel those who are hidden, since I know the All that exists in it. I am numberless beyond everyone. I am immeasurable, ineffable, yet whenever I wish, I shall reveal myself of my own accord. I am the head of the All. I exist before the All, and I am the All, since I exist in everyone.”

Furthermore, the following from Tuomas Rasimus' The Sethians and the Gnostics of Plotinus lends further support to this work:

Summary and Conclusion

"The author of the Sethian The Apocryphon of John conceived of the true godhead as an intellectual triad of Father-Mother-and-Son. His description of the intellect’s autogeneration via mirror and childbirth metaphors anticipates the later Neoplatonic procession-and-return scheme and being-life-mind triad, but the Apocryphon’s speculations derive from the author’s Philonic reading of The Gospel of John and other biblical materials. Later Sethians then modified this material into the recognizable Neoplatonic scheme and triad, as we can see in Zostrianos and Allogenes. These texts circulated in Plotinus’ seminars and Plotinus, on his own testimony, had been open to the ideas of his Sethian friends. Though he later discarded his Two Intellect theory as an essentially Sethian misinterpretation of Timaeus 39e, Plotinus continued to use the being-life-mind triad, which he does seem to have inherited somewhere, as Hadot already suspected. Today, the Nag Hammadi evidence, which was not yet available to Hadot, suggests that Plotinus learned of the triad from his Sethian friends and appropriated it as a Platonic doctrine, compatible as it was with Sophist 248e-249a. It may even be due to Plotinus’ own influence on his friends that the raw material in the Apocryphon received its recognizably Neoplatonic form in Zostrianos and Allogenes. Porphyry, then, having arrived at the seminars, learned of the triad and its enneadic structuring (either directly from Allogenes or indirectly from Plotinus’ early works) and appropriated these ideas as compatible with his dear Chaldean Oracles. At any rate, the original innovators of these important metaphysical concepts appear to be Sethian Gnostics, whose role in the history of Neoplatonism has been greatly underestimated.”

Finally, Mazur concludes his work with the following regarding the relative closeness of Neoplatonism & Sethianism:

“Although I cannot claim to have done more than a preliminary exploration of the topic in the present study, I believe we can conclude with more or less certainty that Plotinus’s mysticism must now be understood to be inextricably embedded in the context of contemporaneous Sethian thought and ritual praxis.

This comprised the intellectual, spiritual, and practical ground from which Plotinus’s mysticism originally germinated, and with which he remained in continuous dialogue throughout his life. The exact historical relation between Plotinus and his Sethian contemporaries may prove impossible to determine.

Nevertheless, the recognition of the true intellectual- and religio-historical context of Plotinian mysticism—and in particular, its close interrelation with both Sethian derivational schemata and visionary praxis—allows us to understand elements that had previously remained bewilderingly obscure, and that had often been relegated to the inscrutable domain of ‘mystical experience.’

Ironically, however, it is its close relation with Sethian thought that allows us to recuperate Plotinian mysticism for the domain of the history of philosophy.”

“With respect to the study of Sethianism itself, the present study suggests a reconsideration of the position of the Sethians in the course of intellectual history. As I have mentioned in the introduction, the most common assumption is that the Sethians were generally derivative. What we have seen here, however, suggests quite the reverse, that the Platonizing Sethians and other Sethians were extremely innovative interpreters of ancient philosophical tradition, and that they had a far greater degree of intellectual agency with respect to contemporaneous academic philosophy than is usually supposed.

We have seen that Plotinus’s mysticism itself relied upon several Sethian innovations that had emerged from speculation on the nature of the hypertranscendental deity. According to the broad scenario I have suggested, the Sethians are a necessary phase in the development of Plotinian mysticism. Three tendencies specific to the Sethians are at play: first, the emphasis on subjective visionary experience; second, the tendency to reify and hypostatize psychological states and metaphysical abstractions into discrete objective entities; and third, a tradition of sophisticated speculation on the mechanism of transcendental apprehension in the practical service of salvation. Without these Sethian developments, I submit, we would not have Plotinus’s mysticism.”

Mazur’s final word is as regards the actual intersection of Philosophy & Spirituality, often neglected by many in the academic community:

“The final point I would like to make concerns the categorical delimitations of ancient philosophy itself. I believe that this study has demonstrated that Plotinus’s mysticism lies in the liminal domain between discursive philosophy and ritual praxis. Indeed, we cannot assume the conceptual boundaries of the contemporary categories of either “philosophy” or “ritual” are valid for other historical periods.

Precisely what these categories involve and their semantic contours vary over time and between cultures. Therefore, I would suggest that—by contrast with the conventional history of philosophy and the study of religion—we dissolve these boundaries, and not limit our definition of philosophical praxis to discursive reason alone, but expand it to encompass non-discursive ritual praxis as well, while also, simultaneously, broadening the category of ritual so as to include purely contemplative acts. This richer conception—which is, after all, merely a robust interpretation of Hadot’s exercises spirituels—will allow us to reconceptualize both Plotinus’s mysticism and Platonizing Sethian ritual as part of a common enterprise. In so doing, we will come to a better appreciation of the seemingly esoteric thought-world of those late antique sectaries who sought salvation through ritual techniques, while simultaneously enriching our conception of ancient philosophy itself.”

Thus, Alexander Mazur’s work suggests a close relationship between Neoplatonism and Sethianism. Mazur argues that Plotinus’s mysticism is deeply rooted in Sethian thought and ritual practices, challenging the notion that Sethians were merely derivative. This connection, along with the possibility of Plotinus’s early association with Johannine secessionists/Sethians, prompts a reevaluation of the boundaries between philosophy and spirituality in ancient thought, the fundamental argument of this thesis.

For more detail on the Johannines and the Sethians, please see the following:
The Neoplatonists & The Johannine secessionists: The Sethian Connection

More discussion on Alexander Mazur's work:

The Platonizing Sethian Foundations of Plotinian Mysticism: A Structural and Historiographical Revaluation

The philosophical career of Plotinus, spanning from approximately 205 to 270 CE, represents what E.R. Dodds famously characterized as a "nodal point" in European intellectual history, a moment where the rigorous dialectic of the Hellenic tradition fused with a profound, unprecedented mystical impulse. While the influence of Plotinian Neoplatonism on medieval Jewish, Christian, and Islamic theology is well-documented, the historical and practical origins of Plotinus's most striking innovation—the concept of full-fledged mystical union with an ineffable One—remain subjects of intense debate. Traditional scholarship has often operated within an "internalist" framework, viewing Plotinus's mysticism either as the logical culmination of Platonic dialectic or as a unique, sui generis psychological propensity. However, recent analysis, most notably by Alexander J. Mazur, suggests that this mysticism is inextricably embedded within the context of contemporaneous Platonizing Sethianism and ritual visionary praxis. This revaluation necessitates a radical re-conceptualization of the relationship between academic philosophy and sectarian religion in Late Antiquity, suggesting that Plotinus tacitly patterned his mystical ascent on visionary rituals first attested in Sethian sources such as the Nag Hammadi tractates Zostrianos and Allogenes.

The Fundamental Problem of Plotinian Mystical Experience

The "end and goal" (telos kai skopos) of Plotinus’s life, according to his biographer Porphyry, was to be united with and approach the God who is above all things. This state, described as a conjunction, assimilation, or complete identification of the core of the human subject with the transcendent One, represents an experience that Plotinus claimed to have achieved personally. Porphyry reports that Plotinus attained this union four times during their six-year association "in an unutterable actuality and not in mere potentiality". Despite the seminal nature of this concept, a similarly robust notion of unio mystica is absent from prior Middle Platonic or orthodox theological traditions. The fundamental difficulty facing the historian of philosophy is that the act of union, by Plotinus's own admission, exceeds the parameters of discursive philosophical praxis. The One is hyperontic and hypernoetic; its absolute simplicity renders it inaccessible to ordinary intellection, which requires a minimal duality between the subject and the object of knowledge.

Scholarly discomfort with non-discursive knowledge and ineffable experience has historically led to two problematic interpretive trajectories. One attempt to preserve Plotinus for the "history of philosophy" seeks to interpret the mystical union as merely a heightened form of reflexive cogitation, downplaying its extraordinary, ecstatic nature. Conversely, a more "phenomenological" approach views Plotinian union as a private, psychological event, often comparing it anachronistically to later Christian or Islamic mysticism. Both approaches tend to de-contextualize Plotinus from his immediate religious milieu. Mazur’s thesis challenges these views by demonstrating that Plotinus's accounts of contemplative ascent possess extremely close, yet long-neglected, parallels in Sethian literature.

The Structural Narrative of the Mystical Ascent

A rigorous philological and structural analysis of the Enneads—specifically paradigmatic passages such as VI.9, V.3, and VI.7—reveals that Plotinus conceived of the ascent as a complex but consistent meditative praxis. This praxis is not a spontaneous psychological state but a structured technique involving identifiable phases that transform the subject's ontological and cognitive status.

Phase A: Catharsis and the Practice of Subtraction

The initial phase of the ascent is rooted in the traditional Platonic concept of catharsis (purification), wherein the soul sloughs off external sensory accretions and lower psychic passions to actualize its noetic core. In specifically mystical contexts, this is intensified into aphairesis (taking away or subtraction). Unlike the propaedeutic dialectic that identifies the soul with the hypostatic Intellect, this ultimate aphairesis requires the rejection of all multiplicity, including the formal structures of Being and the self-knowing of the Intellect. At the heights of the ascent, the practitioner must "remove" Being itself to achieve a unity of the self that mirrors the absolute unity of the One.

Phase B: Mystical Self-Reversion (MSR)

Following the initial purification, the practitioner undertakes a mystical self-reversion (MSR), described through spatial metaphors of "running into the within" (eis to eisō) or "withdrawing backwards". This reflexive re-focusing shifts the locus of awareness from the external world and the multiple Forms of the Intellect to the internal "center-point" of the self. This reversion is not merely intellectual; Plotinus frequently characterizes it in erotic terms as a movement impelled by an auto-erotic desire for the beauty reflected from the source within the self.

Phase C: Autophany and the Vision of the Transcendental Self

The MSR culminates in a sudden (exaiphnēs) event of autophany (self-manifestation). In this phase, the object of the luminous vision is not the One itself, but rather the practitioner’s own "transcendental self"—a hypernoetic modality of identity that resides above Being and Intellect. Plotinus describes this self as being "pure light," "weightless," and "having become a god". This moment serves as a prerequisite for the final union, providing the "eye" that is capable of perceiving the "great beauty" of the One.

Phase C2: Self-Unification

In Phase C2, the duality of subject and object within the vision of the transcendental self is overcome through a preliminary "self-unification". Plotinus advises the aspirant to coalesce with the beautified image of the self to attain a complete self-identity. This state of absolute simplicity is necessary because "like is known by like"; only a self that has become "one" can conjoin with the absolute One.

Phase D: Annihilation and the Rejection of Identity

Lest the transcendental self be mistaken for the One, Plotinus insists that even this hypernoetic self must be rejected in a terminal moment of annihilation. This phase entails an utter self-negation, surrender, or displacement (ekstasis). The practitioner becomes "as if having become another and not himself nor belonging to himself there". To achieve union, all self-identity, however refined or unified, must be dissolved.

Phase E and E2: Mystical Union and Desubjectification

Phase E constitutes the Mystical Union with the One (MUO), where there are no longer two, but the seer and the seen have been unified. This is frequently accompanied by Phase E2, desubjectification, where the perspective of the perceiving subject is radically extinguished. Plotinus notes that in this state, one should perhaps not say "one will see" but rather that one "was seen" (to ophthen). The subject dissolves into the visionary radiation of the One, becoming a perceive object for another or becoming the very "ray" that generates the lower hypostases.

The Structural Homology between Ontogenesis and Mystical Experience

The most significant philosophical insight in the Mazur analysis is the identification of a structural homology between the objective process of primordial ontogenesis (the generation of Intellect from the One) and the subjective mystical experience. Plotinus envisioned the final stages of the mystical ascent as a contemporaneous replication of the first eternal moments of the universe's emergence.

The Role of the Prenoetic Efflux (PNE)

Plotinian metaphysics explains the derivation of the second hypostasis (Intellect) from the first (the One) as a two-stage process. First, an unbounded and indefinite activity gushes forth from the One, characterized as the prenoetic efflux (PNE) or "intelligible matter". This PNE is an "indefinite sight" that lacks form. Second, this efflux "turns back" toward its source in an act of primordial self-reversion. It is this act of looking back at the One that provides the PNE with the "boundary" or "limit" that constitutes it as the hypostatic Intellect (Nous).

The Identity of Hypernoetic and Prenoetic Subjects

Mazur argues that Plotinus believed the "hypernoetic subject"—the part of the human soul that achieves union—to be consubstantial with this primordial PNE. When a practitioner undergoes mystical self-reversion (Phase B) and autophany (Phase C), they are not performing a purely novel psychological act; rather, they are actualizing the "One in us," which is a residue or "trace" of the One’s own primordial activity. The "germinal ecstasy" of the universe’s creation is thus structurally identical to the "mystical ecstasy" of the returning soul. This explains why Plotinus’s descriptions of union often slide into descriptions of cosmogony; the "loving intellect" (nous erōn) is simply the human realization of the PNE's own primordial desire for its source.

The Platonizing Sethian Background: Nag Hammadi Comparanda

The structural homology between ascent and ontogenesis is not an isolated Plotinian innovation but is explicitly elaborated in the Platonizing Sethian tractates discovered at Nag Hammadi. According to Porphyry, apocalypses attributed to figures like Zostrianos and Allogenes were read and rigorously critiqued in Plotinus’s circle. These texts provide detailed templates for contemplative ascent that mirror Plotinus’s own mystical structure.

Zostrianos and the Ritual of Self-Seeking

In the tractate Zostrianos, the visionary’s ascent is framed as a series of baptisms that represent the progressive transformation of the soul’s faculty of apprehension. The revealer Ephesech informs Zostrianos that the "person that can be saved is the one that seeks himself and his intellect". This process involves identifying a "tupos" (impression) of the divine within the self. The Sethian aspirant’s withdrawal into themselves to find the indwelling deity parallels Plotinus’s Phase B (MSR) and Phase C (Autophany).

Allogenes and the Primary Revelation

The tractate Allogenes focuses on the highest reaches of the ascent, beyond the "Barbelo Aeon" (the equivalent of Intellect) to the "Unknowable One". The central mechanism for this final apprehension is the shorp nouonh ebol (Primary Revelation or First Manifestation). This is a "transcendental apprehension" wherein the subject identifies with the Huparxis (Existence) of the "Triple Powered One".

The visionary is instructed to "unknow" what he has previously known, achieving a state of "mystical unknowing" or "learned ignorance". This "unknowing" is described as a stable, quiet state that transcends discursive thought, matching the Plotinian Phase D (Annihilation). The "Primary Revelation" is experienced as an internal light that shines forth once the subject has reverted to their source, mirroring Plotinus’s photic imagery of the One appearing "within" the soul.

Biographical Re-evaluations: The "Ghosts of the Past"

The profound similarities between Plotinus and his Sethian "friends" (philoi) suggest a much more complex biography than the traditional narrative of a "pure" Platonist defending Hellenism against foreign Gnostic usurpers. Mazur proposes that Plotinus’s worldview, at least in his youth, was likely indistinguishable from Gnosticism, and that his later anti-Gnostic vehemence represents the passion of an apostate attempting to conceal a "shadowy past".

The Alexandrian Milieu and Ammonius Saccas

Plotinus studied in Alexandria for eleven years under Ammonius Saccas, a teacher often described as an ex-Christian or ex-Gnostic who sought to harmonize Plato and Aristotle. Ammonius’s "secret doctrines"—protected by a pact of secrecy between his students Plotinus, Erennius, and the Pagan Origen—likely involved the very Gnostic-style derivational schemata (such as the Being-Life-Mind triad) that Plotinus later employed with caution. Mazur suggests that Plotinus's departure from Alexandria and his failed expedition to Persia marked a radical break from a Gnostic identity that had become a source of shame.

The Parable of the Wet-Nurse

A rare biographical detail provided by Plotinus himself recounts that he continued to suckle from his wet-nurse until the age of eight, when someone shamed him for being a "mischievous brat". Mazur interprets this as an encoded parable for Plotinus’s overlong dependence on the "Gnostic milk" of Ammonius Saccas. His subsequent "weaning" was his transition to the "pure" Platonism he championed in Rome, yet the Gnostic structures remained as the "skeletal framework" of his mystical thought.

The Roman Seminar: Friends and Enemies

When Plotinus arrived in Rome in approximately 245 CE, he eventually encountered Gnostic sectaries, specifically those around Adelphius and Aculinus, among his auditors. Porphyry notes that these sectaries possessed many treatises of "Alexander the Libyan" and apocalypses of "Zostrianos" and "Allogenes". While Plotinus refers to them as philoi, their presence was threatening because they argued that "Plato had not attained to the depth of intelligible essence". Plotinus’s massive work Against the Gnostics (Ennead II.9) was written not necessarily to convert the Gnostics, but to protect his own students from Gnostic influence and to distinguish his "Hellenic" philosophy from what he perceived as irrational self-assertion.

The Convergence of Philosophy and Ritual Praxis

A cornerstone of the Mazur thesis is the dissolution of the categorical boundary between "rational" philosophical contemplation and "irrational" ritual praxis. Modern scholars have often defined ritual as physical performance, while defining contemplation as purely discursive or dialectical thought. However, the Isabella-like structure of the ascent in both Plotinus and the Sethian tractates suggests they are part of a common tradition of interiorized ritual.

Visualization as Praxis

The final stages of the Plotinian ascent involve sophisticated techniques of contemplative visualization that mirror Gnostic ritual templates. For example, in Ennead V.8.9, Plotinus instructs his students in a "guided meditation" to visualize the noetic sphere of the cosmos and then to "somehow assimilate oneself" to it. These are not mere metaphors for logic; they are specific, learnable techniques for inducing extraordinary states of consciousness. The "baptisms" in Zostrianos, likewise, are reconfigured as specific acts of cognition representing the mastery of ontological categories.

The Theurgical Connection and the Iseum Incident

An anecdotal evidence of Plotinus’s comfort with ritual is Porphyry’s account of an evocation (klēsis) of Plotinus’s guardian spirit (daimōn) in the Iseum of Rome. To the amazement of the witnesses, Plotinus’s daimōn appeared as a "god" (theos), rather than a lower spirit. In his treatise On Our Allotted Companion Daimōn (III.4), Plotinus identifies the daimōn as the "higher self" residing on the ontological plane immediately above the one on which a person is currently active. For one living according to Intellect, the "One in us" is their daimōn. This incident demonstrates that Plotinus understood the manifest deity of a ritual evocation to be identical to the "transcendental self" apprehended during a mystical autophany. The mystical autophany is effectively a "privatized" interiorization of theurgical evocation.

Philological Parallels: The Six Predicates of VI.9.11.22-25

The conflation of ontogenesis and mystical union is most explicitly evident in the famous "adyton simile" of Ennead VI.9. Plotinus compares the final stages of union to a devotee entering the inner sanctuary of a temple, leaving behind the statues (Forms) in the outer chamber to commune with the God (the One). He corrects the notion that this is a "vision" (theama) and instead calls it "another way to see," defined by six striking and semantically ambiguous predicates: ekstasis, haplōsis, epidosis autou, ephesis pros haphēn, stasis, and perinoēsis pros epharmogēn.

Mazur demonstrates that these terms were carefully selected to convey a double meaning, simultaneously describing the human mystical experience and the primordial generation of the universe.

Ekstasis: While commonly understood as "ecstasy," its primary sense in the Enneads is an "exteriorization" or "displacement" toward a lower stratum. Here it suggests the PNE "standing out" of the One.

Haplōsis: Ordinarily translated as "simplification," its only other usage in the Enneads (VI.7.1.56) means "expansion" or "unfolding". It refers to the PNE's initial expansive outflow.

Epidosis autou: Typically taken as "self-surrender," its technical sense elsewhere is an "increase" or "augmentation," suggesting the PNE's growth as it leaves its source.

Ephesis pros haphēn: "Longing for contact" characterizes both the returning mystic and the PNE's "desire" (ephesis) which generates thought during its primordial self-reversion.

Stasis: Represents the "motionless state" of the union and the "standing" (stasis) of the PNE once it has acquired definition through its look back at the One.

Perinoēsis: A "thinking around" that suggests the initial, indefinite cognition of the PNE prior to its full realization as Intellect.

Complexity and Intermediaries in the Divine Realm

A major point of contention between Plotinus and the Sethians concerned the number and nature of divine principles. In Ennead II.9.1, Plotinus attacks the Gnostics for "multiplying the hypostases" unnecessarily. Specifically, he rejects their division of the Intellect into one part that knows and another that "knows that it knows". This is a direct target of the Sethian "Barbelo Aeon," which is frequently subdivided into the subaeons Kalyptos (the Hidden), Protophanes (the First-appearing), and Autogenes (the Self-begotten). However, it perhaps is more directly an attack on the Valentinians, who created multiple Aeons (30 at its base.)

However, despite his polemic, Plotinus’s own derivational schema requires complex intermediary states. His frequent use of the Being-Life-Mind triad (Existence-Vitality-Mentality) mirrors the Sethian "Triple Powered One". Mazur argues that Plotinus’s official monism—an absolute One—clashes with his need for an "uncomfortable complexity" to explain how the multiple arises from the simple. The Sethians were merely more explicit in reifying these transitional micro-phases into mythical personalities, whereas Plotinus attempted to keep them as "fluid activities" within his system.

The Role of Beauty as a Liminal Principle

The ontological status of Beauty is similarly fluid in both systems. Plotinus sometimes equates Beauty with the One (the "Flower of Beauty" at VI.7.32.31) and at other times with the Intellect. This ambiguity allows Beauty to serve as the mediator between the intelligible and hypernoetic realms. In the mystical ascent, the soul must make itself "most beautiful" to attract the One, just as the PNE is "beautified" or "impregnated" by its contact with the One during ontogenesis. This auto-erotic attraction between the soul and its own indwelling Beauty is the engine of the Plotinian return.

Socio-Historical Reflections: Alexandria, Rome, and the Polemic

The historical relationship between Plotinus and the Sethians was likely one of shared origins and subsequent divergence. Plotinus’s move to Rome in his 40th year, following the failure of the Gordian expedition, corresponds to the trajectory of several prominent Gnostics, such as Valentinus, in the preceding century. Rome provided an elite milieu where "Hellenic" identity was a valuable social capital.

Plotinus’s Against the Gnostics is Notably elliptical; he never names his opponents and uses "Ockham's Razor" to dismiss their complex myths as "irrational self-assertion". Yet he refers to them as "friends" who "departed from the ancient philosophy". This indicates that the Sethians in Rome were not outsiders but were part of the same intellectual culture, receiving training in Platonic philosophy. Plotinus’s polemic was a "culture war," a desperate attempt to defend the dignity of the cosmos—which the Sethians viewed as a "botched creation"—and the sovereignty of the three Platonic hypostases.

Actionable Conclusions and Historiographical Impact

The recognition of the Platonizing Sethian background of Plotinus's mysticism requires a fundamental shift in our understanding of Ancient Philosophy and the History of Religion.

Sethian Intellectual Agency: The Sethians can no longer be viewed as "magpies" who superficially appropriated philosophical terms, though perhaps he was insinuating the Valentinians. The Sethians were innovative theologians who developed sophisticated derivational schemata and the "mechanism of transcendental apprehension" through a combination of Biblical exegesis and Platonic speculation.

The Continuity of Visionary Praxis: Plotinus was not a "congenital" mystic but the practitioner of a tradition of "contemplative visualization" that he shared with the Sethians and potentially inherited from earlier Jewish mystical sources. This praxis survived in the theurgy of his successors, such as Iamblichus and Proclus.

The Origin of Western Mysticism: The conceptual vocabulary of Western mysticism—unio mystica, ecstasy, annihilation, learned ignorance—is the product of a feedback loop between Neoplatonic metaphysics and Sethian ritual praxis.

Dissolving Categorical Boundaries: The distinction between "discursive philosophy" and "ritualized religion" is a modern construct that obscures the integrated nature of ancient spiritual life.

By re-contextualizing the Enneads within the Sethian milieu of the third century, we gain a more nuanced understanding of Plotinus as a thinker struggling with "intellectual and spiritual ghosts of the past". His mysticism is not an irrational deviation from his philosophy but its deepest ground, a "likely story" (eikos muthos) that attempts to bridge the gap between the dialectical search for the truth and the lived experience of the absolute. This synthesis provides the critical link in the evolution of Western thought from Classical rationalism to the mystical traditions that would define the subsequent millennium.