It is argued here that the Thunder, Perfect Mind is best conceived, not as an Isis-aretalogy or as a riddle, but as a performative text in which the speaker assumes a series of personae. In contrast to the Coffin texts and magical papyri, where the performance is merely bombastic, the litany of the Thunder is grounded in the metaphysical premises of the Naassene sermon and other Christian texts, according to which the pneumatic believer is, and yet is still to become, identical with Christ in his polymorphic unity.
