Aion

Definition

The Greek and Hellenistic personification of unbounded time, eternity considered as a living being. Distinct from Chronos, which names sequential time. Aion names time as duration without measure, the long age that contains the cycles.

Literal meaning

From Greek aiōn, lifetime, age, eternity. The word names both an abstract span and a divine person who embodies it. In Plato's Timaeus 37d, aion is the eternal pattern of which sequential time is the moving image.

Esoteric meaning

Aion is invoked at the threshold where the practitioner steps out of clock-time and into the long pattern. The Mithraic Aion of late antiquity, the lion-headed figure with serpent coiled around the body, names this same crossing as a being one meets at initiation. Netism uses Aion when teaching needs to mark the difference between calendar duration and the cosmic cycle that calendars sit inside.

Extended meaning

Late-Roman mosaics at Sentinum and the Aion of Eleusis in Pausanias depict him at the center of the zodiacal ring, the figure who turns the wheel without himself turning. Gnostic literature absorbs aion as the name for the great emanations between the unknowable source and the lower cosmos, the aiōnes through which spirit descends.

Comparative tradition

Greek Aiōn personified in Mithraic and Orphic traditions. Sanskrit kāla in its broader sense as the time-being of cosmic duration. Egyptian Heh, the god of millions of years, holding the notched palm-rib that counts the ages.