An Emanation is a divine hypostasis or intermediary that a system of thought holds to have proceeded from a single higher principle, carrying part of that principle's nature outward into a graded structure rather than existing independently beside it. The category covers the Aeons of the Gnostic Pleroma, Barbelo and the Sethian hypostases, and comparable figures from Neoplatonic and related emanationist systems. An Emanation is not a Deity: a Deity is venerated in its own right by a living or historical cult, while an Emanation is a structural position in a genealogy of procession, and many Emanations were never objects of worship at all. An Emanation is not a Being or Creature: that category holds inhabitants of a cosmology encountered within the world, while an Emanation stands at or before the world's own origin, prior to and productive of the cosmology a Being or Creature inhabits. And an Emanation is not an Age: the word Aeon is used both for a span of cosmic or mythic time and, in Gnostic sources, for exactly this kind of hypostasis, and the two senses were being conflated under one type before this category existed. This category exists to keep the person separate from the period.
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