Ascent to the One

Edward P Butler

The difference between appearance and reality is of the psychical plane, and so one
cannot by saying that the Gods appear to be many, but are really few or one, ascend
beyond the psychical plane.
Sameness and difference, and the sameness within difference and the difference
within sameness, are alike intellective determinations, and so one cannot by saying
that the Gods, in their very difference from one another, are also the same, ascend
beyond the intellective plane.
Principle (archê) is a determination of the intellective plane, and so one cannot by
saying that the Gods share a common principle ascend beyond the intellective plane.
Source (pêgê) is a determination of the intelligible-intellective plane, and so one
cannot by saying that the Gods share a common source ascend beyond the
intelligible-intellective.
Essence (ousia) is a determination of the intelligible plane, and so one cannot by
saying that the Gods share a common essence ascend beyond the intelligible plane.

To say that each God is the One, is to say that each God is Unique. Uniqueness
cannot be a common essence, for then uniqueness would impart non-uniqueness. So
ascent to the One, becoming-one or henosis, requires grasping the nature of
uniqueness, one’s own and that of all things, mutatis mutandis. Things are unique in
peculiar ways, and also different categories of entity have types of uniqueness
appropriate to them. This recognition does not invalidate any of the commonalities
noted in the ascending steps above; rather, it makes them possible, by granting that
there really are things to unify, and that the unifications of them are also real in their
own right.
Someone may say, this God and that God are the same one, appearing differently.
This may indeed be the case, but if it is so, it is because they are the same peculiarly.
What do I mean by "peculiarly"? I mean that if Athena and Saraswati, who have some
similar attributes and many dissimilar ones too, might be the same Goddess, so might

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two deities who have any combination of similar and dissimilar traits whatsoever. For
if a God might choose to appear now in this form, now in that, what will constrain
him? Not, surely, the characteristics we happen to find salient, for what makes only
those characteristics relevant?
For this reason, translatability and syncretism are best seen in general in the Kemetic
(Egyptian) fashion, as molecular fusions, because only this conception can be applied
universally. A peculiar revelation concerning the identity of this deity and that one is a
matter of personal gnosis. I do not discount such a revelation thereby; but it is an
historical matter, and cannot be argued from a priori principles.
Someone may say, within the pantheons there are processes of emergence, and does
this not point to a universal process of emergence for all the Gods? Within the
pantheons there are more and less primordial Gods, and more primordial Gods from
diverse pantheons are generically similar in this respect, but this similarity lies in their
more primordial disposition toward the Cosmos. The alternative is to place the
Cosmos prior to the Gods; but then the Cosmos has no divine origin. Or the Cosmos
is from one God, and all the other Gods likewise, as the causes of partial potencies in
the Cosmos. And this is the conception of some. However, this conception will
obstruct ascending to the One, because one shall have to merely imagine, or conceive
as an empty formality, that there is anything truly unique. It is surely more fitting that
theology should help us to ascend to the highest limits of which philosophy is
capable, rather than that philosophy should exceed it by so far.