According to the Iamblichus’ [1] The Higher Genius is made by the Master of Daemons by the King of the Underworld it is important when trying to contact this Daemon to also contact being. Unfortunately, there was no God named as being the master of daemons and many people think he was Hades, which makes a far amount of sense.
But another candidate could be the Egyptian god Tutu who related to (amongst other things) to the the Higher self of the Pharoah. He was a popular and accessible God to whom people could turn for help in their everyday existence. He was shown in side view but with His head turned to be viewed frontally, emphasising this approachability.
Tutu usually is represented in the form of a striding royal sphinx composed of a lion’s body and a human head, with usually a snake as His tail. In later periods He may be depicted in a pantheistic mode with other elements like a crocodile head or a lion head attached to His body.
Must of Iamblichus’ ideas came from the Hermetic current in Egypt where Tutu was still popular so the idea of the higher self being made by a benign chaotic being makes some sense. Before he is considered as being a minor deity he should be see in his role as the “son of Neith” and “Atum’s God”
Neith is the goddess of the the unseen and limitless sky and a fitting symbol for the underworld of chaos from which all order sprang. The Egyptians said that Neith bought forth from the primeval waters of the Nun the first land.
Being her son, Tutu is the primal force which seeks to know itself and therefore making a human higher genius makes sense.
[1] See Iamblichus’ commentary on Plato’s Sophist, the first fragment, as well as the translator’s notes on that fragment. In Platonis Dialogos Commentariorum Fragmenta. Translated by Dillon, John M. Wiltshire, UK: Prometheus Trust, 2009. {thanks
Jeffrey S. Kupperman)
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