Zeir Anpin

The condition of Being is emanated from non-Being, usually in a number of steps involving dyads and triads. A dyad is usually depicted as a male-female pair, the triad as a male-female pair with a child as offspring. Some Gnostic systems contain a large number of dyadic emanations. In Kabbalah the first point of becoming/emanation is called Kether, and it emanates a dyad called Chokhmah and Binah, which are often known by the titles Father (Abba) and Mother (Imma). This primordial dyad is depicted as being in eternal conjugal coupling, and produce a child, the Zeir Anpin.

Zeir Anpin is the intermediary between Earth and Heaven. In Christianity he is the Christ. In Egyptian myth he is Horus. In Greek philosophy he is the Anthropos, the primordial archetype of Man, or the Platonic demiurge who crafts the Kosmos. In most systems there is a strong identification with the Sun (this is true also in Kabbalah – Zeir Anpin is centered in Tipheret, which associated with the sphere of the Sun.

The exiled female can be depicted as being the partner of the male figure. In apocryphal Christianity she is Mary Magdalen. In Kabbalah she is Nukva Zeir, the Shekhinah, the spirit of God in creation. In many Gnostic systems she is Sophia Achamoth. In Egypt she was Isis, mourning her lost husband. In Kabbalah she was also the matriarch Rachel mourning her lost children, identified with the sephira Malkuth. The exiled female is strongly identified with the substance of existence, and she is the soul of the world, the Anima Mundi..

The outsider figure is often the twin of the intermediary, so that in some legends Lucifer is the twin of Jesus and also a son of God. In many Gnostic schemes the demiurge is evil – Ialdebaoth, Saklas, Samael – and creates the world in ignorance of true being. Christ is a messenger from a higher reality who enables the Gnostic to escape this world of illusion and error. In Egypt this outsider entity was Set, twin of Horus.