chapter 10 the monism of darkness and the dualism of limit and ...

56 CHAPTER 10
Wind now belongs to the Second Principle as passion for the
conception of luminous spirit. The Wind as principle of motion in the
Second Principle is aroused, to be sure, by virtue of the desire for the
first principle and its measured mobility, but is, nonetheless, the
proximate creative cause of the World’s order. The Wind is not,
however, an intrinsic factor of the Second Principle per se.
5. In contrast to such a view, Greek Dualism in its early phase
considered the root of mobility to belong intrinsically to the disorderly
that is peculiar to the Unlimited principle (Indeterminacy). This is, for
instance, the eternal motion of Anaximander’s Unbounded (12 A9
and 12 DK), its essential character that renders it in itself fertile: the
basic pairs of opposites that constitute the World are secreted
therefrom (cf. below, Chapter 12, n. 41). We meet with a similar
problematic, albeit undecisive or rather hospitable to opposite
directions, in the Hermoupolitic Cosmogony. The situation that is
prior to cosmic creation is expressed by the Ogdoad (the very first
deity and group of deities), i.e. four couples of divinities which denote,
by means of the polarity between the male and the female, four
fundamental aspects of the pre-universe: Nun and Naunet (primordial
water), Heh and Hehet (spatial unlimitedness followed by the
determinative ‘water’), Kek and Keket (Darkness’ abyss with the
determinative ‘night’), Amun and Amaunet (the latent, the Hidden,
the unknown); v. e.g. Schwabl, Weltschoepfung in PW col. 1501; M.
Eliade (ed.) Die Schoepfungsmythen pp. 72-73 15 . According to later
Egyptian sources, the last couple was substituted by Niu and Nit (the
nothing, negation, void). V. Bonnet, Reallexicon der Aegyptischen
Religionsgeschichte, s.v. Achtheit, p. 5. In this case, the couple Amun-
Amaunet was conceived of as the synthetic hypostasis of primordial
Odgoad (a fact that satisfied simultaneously both the religious feeling
and the political importance and royal significance of Thebes after the
ascent of the local deity to the supreme rank). Furthermore, Amun
(who was known as Ammon in the Greek world and was indentified
with Zeus) was regarded, when identified with Ptah of the Memphitic
Theology, as the Procreator of the primordial Ogdoad, but also, in his
hypostatic identification with the Sun, as the Son and Semen of the
Ogdoad (v. Bonnet op. cit. s.v. Amun pp. 34-5). Amun’s fundamental
attribute consists in hiddenness: he is the god that lies hidden and