Pleroma
Fullness or completion — the state of total completeness, applied to the divine realm in Platonic and Gnostic thought.
The Meaning of Pleroma
Pleroma (fullness) appeared in philosophical and religious contexts to name the state of perfect completeness that the divine possessed and the material world lacked. In Platonic thought, the realm of Forms was a pleroma — everything that could exist was there in its perfect form, lacking nothing. In Stoic physics, the cosmos was a pleroma in the sense that it was full — the Stoics denied the void, maintaining that the cosmos was a continuous plenum of matter and pneuma with no empty space. In Gnostic thought, pleroma became a major technical term for the divine fullness — the totality of aeons (divine beings) that constituted the divine realm, from which fragments of divine light had fallen into the material world and needed to return. Paul's letters use pleroma in what seems like a pre-Gnostic sense: Christ is the pleroma of the divine. The concept expressed the Greek intuition that the highest reality was characterized by fullness and completeness rather than limitation and lack — matter was deficient, spirit full; time was deficient, eternity full.
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Fun Fact
The Gnostic teacher Valentinus developed an elaborate map of divine pleroma consisting of 30 aeons organized in pairs — one of the most intricate theological architectures of antiquity, built on this single Platonic concept.
Words We Inherited
English words and phrases that trace back to this myth. See our full guide to English words from Greek mythology.
Explore Further
Neoplatonism
💭 conceptPhilosophy
A late antique philosophical system teaching that all reality emanates from a transcendent, ineffable One
Chaos
💭 conceptThe primordial void before creation
The first thing to exist — a vast, formless void from which all of creation emerged. Chaos was not disorder but the gap, the yawning emptiness that preceded everything.
Nous
💭 conceptPhilosophy and Mind
The Greek concept of pure intellect or mind, the highest faculty of the soul and the organizing principle of the cosmos.
Kosmos
💭 conceptphilosophy, cosmology
Order, ornament, and the universe — the Greek word that named the world as an ordered whole and gave English the word cosmos.
Logos
💭 conceptWord, reason, and the rational principle of the cosmos
The multifaceted Greek concept meaning word, speech, reason, account, and the rational principle governing the universe.
Palingenesia
💭 conceptphilosophy, religion
Rebirth or regeneration — the renewal of the soul through successive lives or the regeneration of the cosmos at the end of a great cycle.
Polemos
💭 conceptphilosophy, mythology
War or conflict — personified as a deity and understood by Heraclitus as the fundamental generating principle of all existence.
Enthousiasmos
💭 conceptReligion and Inspiration
The state of being possessed by a god, the original meaning of divine inspiration in Greek religion.
Eros
💭 conceptThe primordial force of desire that drives all creation
In Hesiod's cosmogony, Eros was not a cherub but a primordial force — the desire that compels all things to come together and create.
Pythagoreanism
💭 conceptPhilosophy
A philosophical and religious movement founded by Pythagoras centred on mathematics, harmony, and the soul
Hermeticism
💭 conceptPhilosophy
A syncretic philosophical and spiritual tradition attributed to the legendary sage Hermes Trismegistus
Aporia
💭 conceptThe productive state of philosophical puzzlement
The state of intellectual impasse that Socrates deliberately induced — the recognition that you do not know what you thought you knew.