Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email
Answers.com

Ogdoad

 
Dictionary: og·do·ad
 

n. (ŏg"dō̍*ăd)

[Gr. 'ogdoa`s, 'ogdoa`dos, from 'oktw` eight.]
A thing made up of eight parts. Milman.


Search unanswered questions...
Enter a word or phrase...
All Community Q&A Reference topics
 
Word Tutor: ogdoad
Top
pronunciation

IN BRIEF: n. - (Gnosticism) The cardinal number that is the sum of seven and one.

 
WordNet: ogdoad
Top
Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: the cardinal number that is the sum of seven and one
  Synonyms: eight, 8, VIII, eighter, eighter from Decatur, octad, octonary, octet


 
Wikipedia: Ogdoad
Top

In Egyptian mythology, the Ogdoad (Greek "ογδοάς", the eight-fold) were eight deities worshipped in Hermopolis during what is called the Old Kingdom, the third through sixth dynasties, dated between 2686 to 2134 B.C. First it was a cult having Hathor and Ra; later changing to a cult where Hathor and Thoth were the main deities over a much larger number of deities; and even later, Ra was assimilated into Atum-Ra through a merger with Atum of the Ennead cosmogony.

Contents

Membership and worship

The eight deities were arranged in four female-male pairs, the females were associated with snakes and the males were associated with frogs: Naunet and Nu, Amaunet and Amun, Kauket and Kuk, Huh and Hauhet. Apart from their gender, there was little to distinguish the female goddess from the male god in a pair; indeed, the names of the females are merely the female forms of the male name and vice versa. Essentially, each pair represents the female and male aspect of one of four concepts, namely the primordial waters (Naunet and Nu), air or invisibility (Amunet and Amun), darkness (Kauket and Kuk), and eternity or infinite space (Hauhet and Huh).

Together the four concepts represent the primal, fundamental state of the beginning, they are what always was. In the myth, however, their interaction ultimately proved to be unbalanced, resulting in the arising of a new entity. When the entity opened, it revealed Ra, the fiery sun, inside. After a long interval of rest, Ra, together with the other deities, created all other things.

An Ogdoad was also developed by the Gnostic theologian Valentinus who lived in the second century AD.

Variants

There are two main variations on the nature of the entity containing Ra:

Egg variant

The first version of the myth has the entity arising from the waters after the interaction as a mound of dirt, the Milky Way, which was deified as Hathor. In the myth an egg was laid upon this mound by a celestial bird. The egg contained Ra. In the original version of this variant, the egg is laid by a cosmic goose. However, after the rise of the cult of Thoth, the egg was said to have been a gift from Thoth, and laid by an ibis, the bird with which he was associated.

Lotus variant

Later, when Atum had become assimilated into Ra as Atum-Ra, the belief that Atum emerged from a (blue) lotus bud, in the Ennead cosmogeny, was adopted and attached to Ra. The lotus was said to have arisen from the waters after the explosive interaction as a bud, which floated on the surface, and slowly opened its petals to reveal the beetle, Khepri, inside. Khepri, an aspect of Ra representing the rising sun, immediately turns into a weeping boy - Nefertum (young Atum), whose tears form the creatures of the earth. In later Egyptian history, as the god Khepri became totally absorbed into Ra, the lotus was said to have revealed Ra, the boy, straight away, rather than Ra being Khepri temporarily. Sometimes the boy is identified as Horus, although this is due to the merging of the myths of Horus and Ra into the one god Ra-Herakty, later in Egyptian history.

Ogdoad in Valentinian gnosticism

The ogdoad described by Gnostic Valentinus in the 2nc century AD (with the first two named Propator and Ennoia)

In the creation myth which the Gnostic early church father Valentinus taught the emanation of the Ogdoad takes form as follows: The ultimate conception of God, named the Ineffable Father and who has existed since before the beginning, is described as Depth or Profundity (Bythos). All around him exists a female power that has been named Silence (Sige). These two deities, Depth and Silence, become the cause, through a process of emanation, of the other archetypal beings or Aeons. The Aeons are always born in male-female pairs (as syzygies), each of which is in itself a divine principle but at the same time represents one aspect of the Ineffable Father, whom otherwise could not be described nor comprehended as he is beyond all names. The emanation takes place in the following manner: Depth-and-Silence gives birth to Mind-and-Truth (Nous and Aletheia), who gives birth to Word-and-Life (Logos and Zoë), who gives birth to Man-and-Church (Anthropos and Ecclesia). These aeonnic pairs comprise the Fullness of Godhead (Pleroma), and the first eight Aeons that have been expounded here are the Valentinian Ogdoad.[1]

References

  1. ^ David, Fideler (1993). Jesus Christ, Sun of God: Ancient Cosmology and Early Christian Symbolism. Quest Books. p. 128. ISBN 978-0835606967. 
  1. # Encyclopedie van de Mythologie. van Reeth, Dr. A. Tirion, Baarn: 1994 ISBN 9051213042
  2. Ewa Wasilewska Creation Stories of the Middle East, Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2000, pp.60ff.
  3. George Hart The Routledge Dictionary Of Egyptian Gods And Goddesses, Routledge 2005, p.113
  4. Françoise Dunand, Christiane Zivie-Coche Gods and Men in Egypt: 3.000 BCE to 395 CE, Cornell University Press 2004
  5. John D. Baines, Byron Esely Shafer, David P. Silverman, Leonard H. Lesko Religion in Ancient Egypt: Gods, Myths, and Personal Practice, Cornell University Press 1991


 
 
Learn More
Nun (West Asian mythology)
Nu (mythology)
Huh

Post a question - any question - to the WikiAnswers community:

 

Copyrights:

Dictionary. Webster 1913 Dictionary edited by Patrick J. Cassidy  Read more
Word Tutor. Copyright © 2004-present by eSpindle Learning, a 501(c) nonprofit organization. All rights reserved.
eSpindle provides personalized spelling and vocabulary tutoring online; free trial Read more
WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Ogdoad" Read more