a.o. (area of operation)
[Polynesian] "Light", as the opposite of Po, "Night". The Polynesian god of the clouds, the first ancestor of the Maori and is sometimes called 'The Father of the Ancestors'. In the Pacific, clouds are not associated with darkness, for they often look like columns of light. He is of vital importance to navigators because they could discern the presence of land from the shape of the clouds on the horizon, and also used them to predict rain. He is also called Ao Toto, "Blood-Red Dawn".
Iao (Gnostic) A three-letter mystery-name, parallel in one sense with the Sanskrit pranava, and reminiscent of triune deities represented by a triplicity of sounds. It occurs in many variations: Io, the Grecian moon goddess; Iaho, Jevo, Jehovah, and other Hebraic forms; Iaso, the possible origin of the name Jesus; Iacchos, the Bacchus of the Mysteries. It is at once threefold, fourfold, and sevenfold in meaning.
Iao Hebdomad (sevenfold) was one of the septenary mystery-gods of the Gnostics, given by Origen as the regent of the moon. The Gnostics had a superior hebdomad, an inferior or celestial one, and the terrestrial one. Iao was regarded as the chief of the superior seven heavens above the earth and is identical with the chief of the lunar pitris (SD 1:448).
Again, Iao Hebdomad is the septenary Iao or the collective seven cosmic rectors, each one representing a heaven, and therefore identifying this Iao Hebdomad at once with the seven mystery-planets of the ancients. Iao, sometimes connected with Yaho, from another standpoint is the collective seven or ten classes of the manasaputras. It is also connected with the Chaldean heptakis. Thus Iao or Iao Hebdomas, according to the point of view, is not only the septenary groups of the lunar dhyanis or pitris, but likewise the seven or ten groups of the manasaputras.
to be continue "
Iao2 "
