"And in that day the country (Egypt) that was more pious than all countries will become impious. No longer will it be full of temples, but it will be full of tombs. Neither will it be full of gods but it will be full of corpses. Egypt! Egypt will become like the fables." (Asclepius, Gnostic papyri)
Egypt - The symbol of Matter in the ancient world. When the Israelites escaped from Egypt, it was interpreted to mean they escaped the bondage of matter and their involvement in it. The distinctive qualities of certain Gnostic ideas passed over into Egypt about 120 CE. The Egyptian concept of time probably influenced Gnostic doctrine, and the sciences of astrology, alchemy, and magic were highly developed there. Egyptian religion, since the earliest pharaonic ages, possessed a mystical astrology and distributed its divinities among the stars and heavenly bodies. And, it has always been well-known throughout the world that the Egyptian priests practiced magic.
The Hermetic treatises authored by Hermes Trismegistus are part of Egypt's contribution to the Gnostic manuscripts. Alexandria, Egypt was a center for Gnosticism during the time of Hadrian (110-38 CE), where Basilides, Carpocrates and Valentinus were influential Gnostics. Alexandria soon became a world center for the occult sciences, offering instruction in magical practices. John of Apamea, for one, went there to get occult instruction from the magicians and returned home with Gnostic teachings he had received (about 6th c. CE). From Egypt, Gnosticism spread to Rome where, because of its threat to the newly established Church, the Christian leaders branded it heretical and placed Gnostic books on the Index. The Christian mobs also flayed alive the astronomer and philosopher Hypatia with oyster shells after dragging her from her carriage. And they topped that off with the burning of the great library in Alexandria, Egypt, and lost were the majority of the great writings from the ancient world, all the way back to no telling when. So, we were obliged to start over with a lot of restraints.
El - The oldest deity of Canaan, considered to be creator of creatures and father of mankind. Other Canaanite gods were Baal, who struggled to earn the favors of El, Baal-Zebub (Lord of the Flies), Anath, Yam (Sea), Mot (Death), Astarte, Shapash, Kothar, Baalat, and Asherah whose cults were in the Phoenician Ports of Tyre and Sidon. The Israelites struggled to establish their monotheistic cult of Yahweh in this Canaanite, multi-god environment. The name El was carried forward by Judaism as a prefix and suffix god-name (Micha-el. Gabri-el, Auri-el, Rapha-el, El-ohim. Sama-el, Emmanu-el, etc.) El is also found as "Al."
Elohim - Composed of male and female elements, Elohim, who lacks prescience, is the second of the three uncreated principles and the father of all born beings. From Elohim and the prescient third principle, Eden, also called Israel, were born the angels of the lower heavens who constituted Paradise. One of these angels is Baruch, the Tree of Life, and another is Naas, the Serpent and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The angels of Elohim took the good earth from the upper half of the body of Eden and made Adam.
Elohim ascended to higher regions and saw a perfect light which he had not created. He invoked it and the supreme divinity, whom Elohim had no knowledge of before this, allowed him to attain to his presence. But Eden (Israel), feeling deserted by Elohim, avenged herself on Elohim's creation, humanity. She sent the serpent Naas to cause unrest. Naas seduced Eve and made Adam his minion. Elohim then sent Baruch, the Tree of Life, to instruct men, the Jews, so that they might turn towards the Good. To the uncircumcised pagans he sent Hercules to deliver them from the unrighteous angels of Eden's creation. When Elohim discovered his ignorance of a higher divinity, he desired to attain to its presence, unlike Ialdabaoth who was foolishly proud and became corrupt. In this account, ignorance alone does not lead to corruption. Desire for gnosis of the higher things conquers ignorance. It is pride that "goeth before the fall."
Elohim (god) is distinguishable from Jehovah (lord). In the Old Testament there are two Jewish people, the Hebrews and the Israelites, two Moseses, and two gods, Jehovah and Elohim. Most Gnostic sects considered Jehovah to be the unrighteous creator of the corrupt world. Moses of the Exodus united the duality expressed by Jehovah and Elohim into the unity of Jehovah Elohim, the Lord God.
Enki - Some elements of Gnosticism originated in Sumer in Babylon. In Sumerian belief, the ruler of Wisdom is the third principle, Enki, also called "lil," meaning spirit. From this probably came the mythology of Lillith, Adam's first wife. This domestic drama was undoubtedly deemed unworthy for the Bible. One really shouldn't start a world religion with a story of how Adam divorced Lillith in order to have a new, younger wife, Eve, although you have to admit it's a not-so-hidden pattern in our world. The god Enki reigned over the part of this creation in which grew the Tree of Life and out of which came the legend of Lillith.
The Sumerians believed the structure of man parallels that of the universe, with the universe as the magnified image of a person - a Pre-Gnostic elucidation of macrocosm and microcosm. The knowledge of the existence of seven planets, counting the sun and the moon, is very ancient. Medallions from ancient Babylon feature seven Archons crowned with astral symbols.
Enoch - In Jewish beliefs, Enoch is an astrologer who founded the astrological traditions expressed in the Great Hekhaloth. In that system of astrology, the Lord Sabaoth, seated on the Merkaba, the chariot-throne, is the Pole Star, now Polaris. The circumpolar stars and planets, hosts of angels and powers, revolve around him.
I think is evident on the Phaistos Disk in the hidden pattern of what appears the North Star surrounded by the circumplar stars.
Enoch is said to have written the Books of Jeou in Paradise, as dictated to him by Jesus. With Seth and Hermes, he is credited as Author of Egyptian and Jewish literature, and cited by the Gnostic Sabian sect as a prophet who did not die, but was permanently caught up into heaven, as was Elijah. This belief, a kind of "carnal resurrection, "accounts for the second question of the ancient religious riddle: "Who died, but was never born?
Of course, UFOlogists interpret this as clearly an instance of "Beam me up, Scotty." How else would you explain someone dematerializing? Speaking of which, been there, done that.
Enoch, Book of the Secrets of - Contained in this book is a description of the cosmic veil, the curtain around the Merkaba. The cosmic veil separates the images of all pre-existing things from the vision of the material world of forms. The story of King Solomon's khalkhydras is told in Book of the Secrets of Enoch. Enoch is caught up into heaven, which has ten levels. At the tenth level is God, with whom Enoch converses.
The UFOlogists interpret this as a very good vision of the Mothership, all the different levels and of course, God/Alien Being.
Essenes - One of the four important Jewish sects during and after the life of Jesus Christ. Jesus was baptised by John the Baptist, who was probably an Essene as he preached and baptised in the area where the Essenes had their largest community. The celibate Essenes were apolitical, withdrawing completely from the political issues in which two other important sects, the Sadduces and Pharisees, who Jesus criticized, were deeply involved. The Essenes were established at Sodom and Gomorrha, and it has been suggested that Qumran was, in fact, Gomorrha. Sodom and Gomorrha, at one time, had a reputation for sanctity owing to the presence of the ascetic Essenes.
Jesus may have been an Essene, suggested because it is believed he spent some time in an Essene monastery. There is a long period of time in his life when nothing about him was known. It has been theorized he spent this time in an Essene monastery. Also theorized is that he spent this time in India. He also advanced personal beliefs nearly identical with the Essenes. They believed in the immortality of the soul, the advent of the Messiah to come, heaven and hell, and purification by baptism. They had a protocol for seating almost identical to that of the Last Supper, and a ritual identical to a Christian communion. They believed in a divinely sent Messiah whom they called the "Teacher of Righteousness" and who had died violently at the hands of the Sons of Darkness.
It's my impression, from reading all this literature like this, that nearly all the religious sects wanted to own Jesus as their own, but when they did so they imbued him with all kinds of qualities and powers that were distinct to their sect, so that the literature about Jesus is very interesting and even bizarre.
"And I was not like them, but I clothed myself with everything of theirs." (Jesus to James, The First Apocalypse of James, Gnostic papyri)
The first Teacher of Righteousness died 65-53 BCE. Jesus is the new Messiah who rekindled the faith, concentrated on himself the adoration of men, and died violently at the hands of the Sons of Darkness, the Romans.
In 30 CE, Jesus founded the fourth Jewish sect, the Christians. He may have established his sect because the Essenes did not accept him as messiah, because the Essenes, who may have been the sect that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls, were not acceptable to him as disciples, or for other reasons known only to Jesus who, perhaps, "was not like them.''
Eugnostos - An important Gnostic thinker, transcriber of the Sacred Book of the Invisible Great Spirit, also known as The Gospel of the Egyptians, a book Eugnostos said he channeled ("a book written from God.") He authored the Epistle of Eugnostos the Blessed. His spiritual name is Eugnostos "the well-known," a name attached to five Gnostic manuscripts. He took the surname, "the Agapite." His secular name of Goggessos means "the murmurer," because he murmured his texts to his followers and because he murmured his prayers. Zoroastrian sects also murmured their texts and prayers.
I love the philosophy of Emanationism that Eugnostos taught, even if he was a strange guy sitting there murmuring. Maybe he murmured because what he was teaching was so beautiful that he was concerned he would be overhead by the Unworthy. That's my guess, anyway. As usual with Gnosticism and just about all over historical religions, his worldview involves a man giving birth to the entire universe as something like thought-babies, since any other kind of birth is not possible. What sets Eugnostos apart from most others is his concept of chaos as having hidden patterns. This really is a philosophy evident on the Phaistos Disk in about 1,600 BCE. The idea of chaos being chaotic, as dependant upon your perspective, is quite an advance for Gnosticism and is really interesting to me as well as, apparently, to the creator(s) of the Phaistos Disk.
He taught that the universe and the Father of the universe are unbegotten. The Father, called Pro-Father, and the universe are both intelligent, immortal, without beginning, and inconceivable. That is the first principle of Gnosis. Eugnostos instructed that the hidden things, the unmanifest, are to be considered first, that it is these invisible things which give rise to all things physical, and it is Faith in the unmanifest which brings it manifest. Therefore, Eugnostos taught, the unmanifest is always contained in the manifest. This means that all things corruptible are born of incorruptibility and indestructibility. Eugnostos said he channeled the following information.
Pro-Father saw himself as if in a mirror. This image of his took on life just by Pro-Father having seen it, so powerful is his creativity. This emanation, Father, is the embodiment of Pro-Father manifesting himself as Father of himself and Generator of himself. Father is equal in duration with Pro-Father, but unequal in power. Pro-Father emanated a generation of such powers, the Sons of the unbegotten Fathers who trust in him. These are the infinite, begotten powers.
In the infinite, the Father emanated by himself an androgynous person whose feminine name is Sophia-Pansophos. This androgyne created Aeons of Powers, with gods and archangels, called God of Gods and King of Kings. This creation also possesses intelligence and is a living, thinking entity. The androgynous person united its masculine self with its feminine self to engender a hermaphrodite son, named First Father who Begets. This is the Son of Man, also called Adam of the Light. Adam creates an aeon peopled with angels called the Church of the Holy Lights, and unites with his feminine self and produces a bisexual luminary who is both Savior-Creator of all things and Sophia Generator of All, also called Pistis.
From these are engendered six couples of spiritual hermaphrodites who produce 72 more, as well as 360 other beings who are modeled on the patterns of eternity; the eras, the years, the months, the days, the hours and the instants. Eugnostos taught that every second that ticks by is sacred, and that nothing, not even Chaos, exists without its guardian deity and its hidden patterns. The Savior, Immortal Man, and Sophia, his companion, create for the six couples 12 aeons and 12 angels, six heavens in each aeon and five levels in each heaven. From them, all things, even Chaos, take their patterns.
Seems he is attempting to describe a hologram while using math that is very similar to the Phaistos Disk, which has 24 line segments on the outside spiral, 12 on each side, and the spiral has five levels. Perhaps telling it while murmuring causes the hearer to focus on the vision rather than on the voice.
"She taught me a word of knowledge of the eternal god." (Adam to Seth about Eve, The Apocalypse of Adam, Gnostic papyri)
Eve - In Revelation of Adam to his Son Seth, Adam, at age 700, tells Seth that the Archons created him and Eve from Earth. In this account, Eve, while in communication with angels, teaches Adam what she has learned of the everlasting God and tells him that the angels are intervening on their behalf. When the Archons who created them heard her tell this to Adam, they became angry and cut them off from the Aeons of the Powers, thus creating two aeons. Adam and Eve lost their glory and their primordial knowledge and learned mortal things like man learns. This is why, Adam tells Seth, that he was named Seth, meaning man. Adam then prophesies the Great Flood, Noah and his ark, the redemption of the Perfect, and a succession of Saviors.
Audius, in the Book of Strangers, relates that Eve conceived with God, not Adam. In some accounts, it is the Archons, entranced by her beauty, who seduce her. They create Adam from earth in the image of the supreme divinity, but Adam cannot stand upright. The demiurge breathes strength into him, places him in Paradise, and warns him never to eat of the Tree of Life. The Archons then create Eve out of Adam's side. Eve is so spiritual that her birth causes Adam to become ensouled. He names her "Mother of the Living.'' But the Archons are so dazzled by her beauty that they pursue her while she laughs at their stupidity. The son of the Demiurge, the Serpent, suggests to her that she eat of the Tree of Life. She does so and, as expected, the creator then expels the naked couple from Paradise and away from Eve's pursuers. (I guess that's the upside of being expelled from Paradise. At least you no longer have Archons stalking you.)
In Baruch, Eve is seduced by the serpent. In Diagram, she is seduced by the Archons and begets some who are angels. Also in Diagram, an Aeon, the Mother, takes on the appearance of the serpent and induces Adam and Eve to eat of the fruit which the unrighteous creator, Ialdabaoth, has forbidden them. They do so and acquire knowledge (Gnosis) of the virtue above all things, and turn away from Ialdabaoth, who expels them from Paradise along with his son the serpent. The serpent begets six sons, and together they become the seven heads of the Dragon of chaos and injustice, who are secretly at war with the human race. It was this Dragon who caused Cain to kill Abel. In biblical terminology, these seducers of Eve would be called fallen angels, which does not truly describe then and what they represent, but is the closest biblical approximation or point of reference.
The stories of Adam and Eve tie two times together: the time when knowledge of human life was utterly lost and the time when the human mind could express itself in literature. The stories also embody the basic duality of human life; the existence of the subjective inner world, more real to some of us than the objective outer world.
For proof that the creator of the physical world is a second-class god, the Gnostics relied heavily on the scriptures of the Old Testament.
"But what sort of God? First he maliciously refused Adam from eating of the tree of knowledge. And secondly he said, 'Adam. where are you?' God does not have foreknowledge; otherwise would he not know from the beginning? And afterwards he said, 'Let us cast him out of this place, lest he eat of the tree of life and live for ever.' Surely he has shown himself to be a malicious grudger. And what kind of a God is this? For great is the blindness of those who read, and they did not know him. And he said, 'I am the jealous God; I will bring the sins of the fathers upon the children until three and four generations.' And he said, 'I will make their heart thick, and I will cause their mind to become blind, that they might not know nor comprehend the things that are said.' But these things he has said to those who believe in him and serve him!"
God says, "I am a jealous god." Jealous of whom? God asked Adam, "Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree...?" Is this God not omniscient? Eve tells Adam, "I have gotten a man from the Lord." How did this happen? Eve says, "God hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel." Seth must be of a superior generation to Cain and Abel. In the Book of Job, God abuses Job but learns a humbling lesson from that great man. To the Gnostic interpreters of the Old Testament, these incidents and others were an overwhelming indictment against Jehovah, the God of the Jews, who they considered infamous for not sharing his knowledge with humanity.
In Gospel of Eve are written the words:
"I was standing upon a high mountain, when lo! I saw one person of tall stature and another who was lame. Then I heard a voice like thunder...I drew near...and the vision addressed me in those words: 'I am identical with thee, and thou are identical with me; wherever thou art, there am I, for I am known in all things; wherever thou wilt thou reapest me; but in reaping me it is thyself that thou reapest."'
"There are many animals in the world which are in human form." (The Gospel of Philip, Gnostic papyri)
Evil - Of necessity, the opposite of Good. The concept of Evil as pre-existing the birth of humanity is bequeathed to us straight out of Dualism. Battai of the Kantean sect taught that, before the beginning, the supreme divinity divided Himself into two, and from the two issued Good and Evil, the light and the dark. Evil gained understanding of its position and waged retaliatory war on the supreme divinity who, in defense, uttered a word from which the Lord God (Jehovah Elohim) was created. The Lord God uttered seven words which engendered seven powers, and Evil engendered seven demons in response. The seven demons overcame the seven good powers and stole Adam. The Lord God destroyed Adam and remade him.
"Good cannot result from evil." (On the Origin of the World, Gnostic papyri)
In Gnostic doctrine, a human serves two gods, one good and one evil, and has two souls, one heavenly and one material. Salvation is the uplifting of a person who is good, but fallen. The universe of sensory experience is defined as evil (corrupt).
It is not hard to understand how these stories gained ground in the time of the world in which they were created. After all, polarity or positive and negative poles is the basis of our physics in this part of the universe, so naturally we would see things in this dualistic way. Also, during that time, these writers had to deal with the Romans breathing down their necks about every little thing and killing whoever they pleased whenever they pleased. Just like repression engenders neurosis, this kind of reality engenders escapism.
Perhaps it is not escapism but intense creativity that results from intense pressure of life. I have had, in my own life, people accuse me of escapism via this website, claiming it's a much better dimension than the world in which we live. But I disagree that escapism is my motive or the motive of the Gnostics or the highest power escaping eternal solitude. Well, that was the theory of many Gnostic sects, that we are here because the Father got lonely and created for himself some company and some drama for entertainment. But I think we are here because the highest power is not the Father or the Mother or the Monad but is Creativity, and the highest value is Art. It's easy to think this way when Roman soldiers are not chasing me to kill me, or any other thugs, because how will creativity and art save me from that? In that instance, I will definitely need a higher power to help me but how will the Father or the Mother or the Monad save me? That's why guns were invented.
Fate - In Gnosticism, Fate is determined by great celestial figures and, above all, by the planets that dispense fatality. The sphere of Heimarmene (Fatality) separates the 12 aeons from the terrestrial world.
Fate instigates against Adam (Phos). In pre-Gnosticism, Adam is freed from Fate. Humanity is enslaved by Fate, imprisoned in the chains of the material and the temporal. The physical body is the body of fatality because it is formed from the four elements, fire, water, air, and earth. Humanity longs to escape from Fate and return to its original form and to the spiritual from which it has fallen. Jesus is said to have changed the course of Fate by reversing the rotation of the spheres.
Fatality is inherent in the cyclic Time of the created world. Between the temporal world and the timeless world there is a frontier, a Limit (Horos), which is absolute and impassable. In Chaldaean astrology, after death the soul re-ascends into heaven, escaping at last from Time and Fate. On re-ascent. the soul successively discards the clothing of Time and Fate, the physical body, layer by layer, as it passes by the spheres.
"And he almost regretted that he had created the world." (A Valentinian Exposition, Gnostic papyri)
And that was written after the Crucifixion of Jesus but before World War I, World War II, Hiroshima, Bubonic Plague, Vietnam War, the Holocaust, French Revolution, burning of the Cathars, Spanish Inquisition, Jack the Ripper, the movie "Psycho", Twin Towers, Pearl Harbor, War of the Roses, Spanish Civil War, and the Crusades. Wonder if he has any regrets now?
Father - The name of God, the supreme divinity existing as the existence that is nonexistence, or negative existence. The supreme divinity is "the one who encircles all spaces while there is none that encircles him." (The Gospel of Truth). In other words, The Uncontained that Contains. Principle of Containment is an ancient philosophy seen on the Phaistos Disk.
He "stretched himself out and it was that which he stretched out which gave a foundation and a space and a dwelling for the universe." He is "unfathomable in his sweetness." "He is the one who projects himself thus, as generation..." "He is the fullness of paternity." He is also shaped like doughnut, according to some Gnostics: "They wear him while he wears them." (The Tripartite Tractate)
The Aeons are silent about the Father, his form and his nature and his greatness. The Father exists in many names. He is a unity, yet is innumerable in his Properties and names.
In Gnosticism, God is undoubtedly a man, and that much hasn't changed about how the Christians and nearly all the rest think about God. Here are nineteen Gnostic names for God that include "Father." Father of All (Barbelognostic); Father of the Universe, First Father, Pro-Father, Father of Himself, Unbegotten Father (Eugnostos); Invisible Father (Gnosticism); Living Father, Kingdom of the Father (Gospel of Thomas); Father on High (Ophite); Immobile Father (Peratean); Nous the Father, Androgyne Father (Poimandres); The Fatherhood (Revelation by Dostheus); Father of the Universe (Sophia of Jesus); Everlasting Father (Sacred Book of the Invisible Great Spirit); Amon-Re, Father of Fathers (Egyptian); Father of Greatness (Kantean); Fathers in the Heights (Manichaean).
"Ignorance is the mother of all evil." (The Gospel of Philip, the Gnostic papyri)
Gnosis - The Greek word meaning knowledge, also intended to mean spiritual elevation. The Gnostic position is the root of all occult philosophy (mostly because of Hermeticism, I would imagine). Gnosis, with Wisdom (Sophia), are the highest virtues and the path to immortality. Gnosis is the revelation of the higher world, not so much a knowing as a remembering of one's original nature, superior to matter, a remembering of one's identity and position, original purpose and origin. Through gnosis, a person knows that spiritual origin and destination are the same. The result of gnosis is a restoration to the everlasting part of one's self beyond the powers of Fate and Time. The Saviors, Divine Messengers who bring this revelation, remain strangers in this world of Time.
I personally know this to be true but whether these strangers won't identify themselves or can't identify themselves I'm not sure about. I asked them one time to explain to me the nature of their consciousness and they replied, "You go first." I think that can be interpreted in a couple ways, one of which is that no one can explain the nature of their consciousness and the other way is that my consciousness is the apriori condition to theirs. That agrees with some Gnostic tenets regarding the spirit that accompanies the human into birth as a helper or guide through life's journey. This accompaniment makes the individual Thrice-Blessed or Trismegistus. Socrates had these Divine Messengers, whom he called Daimons, and he said they kept him from making mistakes but they never told him what to do. That is an accurate description of their method of guidance.
Gnostics venerated the serpent because a Divine Messenger, disguised as a serpent, brought gnosis to Adam and Eve and taught them complete knowledge of the mysteries from on high.
A human soul is composed of three elements; hylic, psychic and spiritual. The spiritual element of a human can be perfected through gnosis. Hermeticism defined itself as a gnosis.
Gnosticism - "Lord, whence have thy disciples come, whither are they going, and what will they do down there?" This is the fundamental question which begins all Gnostic meditations. Gnosticism is an eclectic, mystical, religious and philosophical doctrine of early Christian times, at its height during the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE. The Gnostics were the first mystics within the Christian environment who appear in the history of religions under the names of Gnostics and Hermeticists.
At the root of Gnosticism is Dualism, the concept that the creation of the universe is brought about by the interplay of opposites; Light and Darkness, Male and Female, Truth and Error. Some Gnostics maintained that this interplay creates a kind of womb from which is born creation, and that built into creation are equal proportions of its parents, the opposites. From this comes the philosophy of the "middle ways." It is in the best interest of all created things to keep to the middle way, not favoring one opposite over the other. This also is Gnosis.
The Gnostics are known for their professed belief that all things become the greater besmirched the closer they get to Earth. Their initiates received the Gnostic sacraments in order to escape the corrupt influences of the planets and to return to the heavenly origin.
In an important Gnostic belief, this world of Time and Fate is accompanied by a parallel dimension of Timelessness. The temporal and the timeless are interactive opposites. The denial of the timeless, the unmanifest world, amounts to polarization toward a belief in death everlasting. The Gnostic Eugnostos taught that it is Faith in the invisible things which brings them manifest. Gnostics, especially Eugnostos, developed the theory that everything which exists in matter comes into being first as an idea or template upon which matter then patterns and substantiates itself. I loved this idea so much I wrote Forms and Archetypes of the World Soul.
Everything that exists is composed of the corrupt and the incorruptible, the destructible and the indestructible, the spiritual and the material. The opposite of a Gnostic is an Agnostic (a-gnostic), a person who believes that nothing can be known first-hand about the existence of the spiritual world or about things outside of human physical experience. That's because they've never had that experience. It's like how people never believe in UFO's until they see one, and then they do. Same thing with invisible beings.
Because the Gnostics believed in a direct, personal experience of the spiritual realms, and because many of their books were channeled, their literature is passionately subjective and richly diverse. They professed knowledge (gnosis), rather than Faith, to be the key to life's mysteries, and that such knowledge comes from spiritual insight gained through the inner mystical experience. Gnostics are the "sons of interior knowledge." Gnosis takes religion out of the realm of Faith and places it in the realm of personal experience. Gnosis brings a state of wakefulness contrasted with the nightmarish existence of those in ignorance. Christianity was an added element in the Gnostic religious environment.
The Gnostics were true eclectics. The Tomb of Aurelii, a burial tomb for Gnostics in Rome, unearthed in the early 20th century, is a testamonial to their eclecticism. On the walls of this tomb are scenes of the Last Supper juxtaposed to Odysseus, Penelope and Suiters; the Apostles John, James and Matthew are near the figures of Sophia and Mariamne. Adam and Eve receive gnosis from the Serpent near the Triad of the Pleroma.
The Gnostics appreciated any literature which expressed their beliefs. Because of their eclecticism and the subjectivity of their literature, and because of the appeal of their religious philosophy to the populations of the Mediterranean world, the Christian doctors branded them heretics and placed their books on the Index.
The Gnostics posed a serious throat to the Church that St. Paul had worked so hard to establish, a Church the Gnostics inadvertently established by spreading the name of Jesus throughout the ancient world. The Christian heresiologists furiously refuted Gnosticism, solidifying Christian theology into orthodoxy. Many Christian leaders of that time had been Gnostics and had abandoned that philosophical position. The Phoenix is one of the most important symbols of that era, and it probably represents both resurrection from death and resurrection of the Christian leaders from their own Gnostic ashes.
It was not until the Gnostic manuscripts were discovered that historians and scholars gained a good knowledge of the subject. Although there was a quantity of Christian writings refuting Gnosticism, these were deemed unreliable because it was believed they lacked objectivity.
Gnosticism was wide-spread during a period of time which is described as an important age in the development of human consciousness, that period in history before and after the birth and crucifixion of Jesus, when Rome ruled most of the civilized world. As far as the Gnostics, people of conscience, were concerned, the Sons of Darkness, the tyrannical Romans, were installed upon the throne of the world. Gnostics were people who were very sensitive to the problems of human destiny.
One of the main doctrines of Gnosticism relates that the Invisible Father emanated a Thought, which became the Mother. She fell into Matter from which she had to be rescued. The Gnostics conceived of the visible world as being the corrupt creation of unrighteous powers whose activity is recorded in Genesis, but meaning the opposite of its customary meaning. The Old Testament thus represents the doctrine of the falsity of the god of the Old Testament and of the Law to which humanity is subjected. Some Christian doctors expressed their belief that Mosaic Law was unfortunate, but necessary because humanity, by its deeds and thoughts, placed itself in need of subjugation to such laws.
In modern times, Albert Einstein expressed such a belief when he said, about the atom bomb, "Since I do not foresee that atomic energy is to be a great boon for a long time, I have to say that for the present it is a menace. Perhaps it is well that it should be. It may intimidate the human race into bringing order into its international affairs, which without the pressure of fear, it would not do."
Gnosticism makes an important contribution to the history of religion and to the history of philosophy by bringing ancient beliefs out of the dim corridors of time and infusing them with life. In Gnosticism, the Aeons of the Powers, ancient entities of the supernal universe as old as time, strive against each other to create the physical world, and by their very striving do so. Their continued striving keeps the world in motion. These eternal beings of the Light and the Darkness are emanations from the Supreme Unknowable Divinity. They are God's Victory, Knowledge, Understanding, Wisdom, Will, Thought and Word. They co-exist in beauty and harmony as a philosophical system. They are the occult forces of the universe.
Hebdomad - The lower heavens of the material world. The Ogdoad is the higher world and the Ennead is a still higher world above. These are the three levels or categories of the universe. The Hebdomad, as the lower heavens of the material world, refers to the seven planets and their respective heavens. The Hebdomad also refers to the seventh heaven.
Hermes - Historically identified with Thoth (Tat). Hermes is the only Egyptian deity to be recognized as a prophet in Gnostic literature. The Sabians, a baptist sect of Mandaeans of Lower Mesopotamia, recognized Hermes as a prophet of the same stature and importance as Enoch, Seth, and Asclepius. Hermes wrote The Wing. He is also the spirit whom Tat channels in the Authentic Discourse of Hermes to Tat. In these traditions of the teachings of Tat by Hermes, Tat receives the teachings "upon the mountain," like Moses on Mt. Sinai. Scholars suggest that some Jewish myths were stolen by the Egyptians and stamped as written by Hermes.
In the Hermetic literature of alchemy and astrology, there is a predilection for themes touching on the miraculous discovery of secret texts inscribed on stone. In the Roman catacombs, there is the frequent occurrence of Hermes as the last name of those entombed there.
Hermes Trismegistus - Long considered the "Father of Alchemy" and the most important figure of alchemy through the ages. Many have researched the real identify of Hermes Trismegistus. The name may signify an ideology or school of thought rather then one single person. In Popular Hermeticism, Hermes Trismegistus is identical to the Egyptian god Thoth (Tat). This Hermes is also thought to be Hermes Mercurius of alchemy.
Trismegistus in translated variously to mean "Thrice-greatest","Thrice-engendered","Thrice-blessed," and "three parts of the philosophy of the whole world, poet, prince and philosopher." The Gnostic Naasenes venerated Hermes as the Word (Logos), who has expressed and fashioned the things that have been, that are, and that will be. Trismegistus may mean, as the Naasenes defined it, "the things that have been, that are and that will be." Trismegistus may mean 'born, born again, and reborn."
The writings under the name of Hermes Trismegistus bear little relation to Gnosticism, yet the eclectic Gnostics included several Hermetic treatises in their buried library for future generations to find. In Authentic Discourse of Hermes to Tat, Hermes, the Nous (Mind), tells his son Tat that he has seen that speech is impotent to reveal the mysteries and that the entire hierarchy of heaven sings the hymn in silence. The Gnostics may have liked this treatise in particular because it records the telepathic conversation of spirit guide and physical person, and because Hermes prophesies to Tat that the world (earth) will subside into disorder, marked by three seals - atheism, dishonor and unreason. The world will then end by calamity and be restored for a new cycle. (I think we might be getting there :(
Historically, Hermes and Tat are considered to be the same person. Alchemically, they are symbolized as Mercurius, the Divine Messenger who is half-human and half-divine. It may be that the Hermes/Tat duality represents an instance of two souls occupying one body, that of Tat's.
The Hermes Trismegistus literature expresses a clear and tranquil Hellenic philosophy, Greek Hermeticism. This philosophy, to which Plotinus, for one, was devoted, regards creation as a beautiful, good and ordered universe. Gnosticism, tempered by Hellenism, becomes an expression of the sheer beauty of the world.
"He is not manifest, but invisible to those remaining with Limit. And he possesses four powers: a separator and a confirmer, a form-provider and a substance-producer." (A Valentinian Exposition, the Gnostic papyri)
Hermeticism - There is a distinction between Greek Hermeticism of Hermes Trismegistus and popular Hermeticism of astrology, magic and alchemy, elements of Fate and the occult. Greek Hermeticism sees the universe as a beautiful creation-in-progress. Hermeticism, of Egyptian appearance, is typified more by abstract reasoning than cosmogonies or evocation of prophets living at the dawn of human history. The Hermetic manuscripts, widely influential in the 3rd century CE, know nothing of the unrighteous creators or corrupt demiurge of early Common Era Gnosticism.
In modern times, popular Hermeticism is not traceable to Gnosticism, with its Persian and Chaldaean ideologies, but to alchemical literature and Jewish cabalistic sources of relatively easy access. An extensive alchemical iconography developed in the Western world from the 14th to the 18th centuries.
In Poimandres, a Hermetic treatise most like Gnosticism, the Nous (Mind, Intellect, Divine Genius) channels information on Dualism to the anonymous narrator. The Light is on high, the Darkness in below, coiled into spirals like a serpent. The Darkness is a moist abyss out of which fire arises. The Light sends a holy Word to cover up the lower inferior abyss where the fire flames up over the waters. The Nous, Poimandres, explains to the narrator the meaning of this vision of the Light and Dark and the place of transformation between them.
Out of the Light, the supreme Nous, came forth the Word, his son Nous the Father. Nous the Father, an androgyne, created with Life and Light a second Nous, the demiurge, god of fire and wind. The demiurge formed the seven rulers of the planetary circles, the masters of Fate. Through the association of the Word with the demiurge, the seven circles were made to revolve, and their rotation produced the lower elements and caused the birth of various animals.
Then, the first Nous created a primordial man in his own image. This newly created Anthropos saw his own reflection in the water and on earth. Admiring it, he was lured into the abyss by an illusion and ensnared by matter. Thenceforth, humanity is a duality; mortal in body, immortal in soul. Nature then gave birth to seven terrestrial hermaphrodites. The divinity began to separate all the creatures which are bisexual into males and females. Thus began the humanity to which we belong. At death, the material body is abandoned and the soul re-ascends through the planetary circles, discarding layers of passions as though layers of clothing. These layers of passions had been taken on by the soul during its descent to the body that it was to animate at birth. The soul attains to the Ogdoad and becomes one with God, the goal to which Hermetic gnosis aspired.
"The holy spirit is in the revealed: it is below. It is in the concealed: it is above." (The Gospel of Philip, Gnostic papyri)
Holy Spirit - The heavenly partner with whom a union, a marriage, is formed. The Holy Spirit delivers its human partner from death and seals that soul so that it will no longer be capturable by the lower powers (Archons). Holy Baptism, a ritual much older than Christianity, is a purification by fire and by water to assist one to receive the heavenly partner, the Spirit.
"We rejoice because while we were in the body, You have made us divine through Your knowledge." (The Prayer of Thanksgiving, Gnostic papyri)
Isaac Luria, the 16th century cabalist, defined the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of God that was left behind as an essence when God withdrew from the Creation, so that the universe would be free to follow the Process of Creation. The Holy Spirit is also named at-Taum (twin). In the Pistis-Sophia, the Holy Spirit visited Jesus while he was a child and mysteriously merged with him. The Holy Spirit is also called Zoe, Mother of the Living, and is sometimes described as feminine, and often symbolized as a dove.
In the The Gospel according to Thomas, a Gnostic manuscript, Jesus says, "He who has blasphemed the Father will be forgiven, and he who has blasphemed the Son will be forgiven: but he who has blasphemed the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven either on earth or in heaven."
Homer - Homeric texts were fashionable during the first centuries of our era. Homer's images of Hades have influenced Christian and Jewish concepts of hell. The Odyssey attracted the attention of the Gnostics, particularly the episodes of Odysseus and Calypso, and Odysseus, Penelope, and the Suitors. The Greeks interpreted Homer's poems as allegorical. The Gnostics applied a mystical interpretation to The Odyssey: the experiences of Odysseus were interpreted as the soul wandering through the world here below; Calypso was interpreted to be the imprisoning body from which Odysseus did, and did not, want to escape; Penelope represented Philosophy, which Odysseus regained after Reason (Hermes) had secured his release from Calypso.
"And the great Demon began to produce aeons in the likeness of the real Aeons, except that he produced them out of his own power." (Trimorphic Protennoia, Gnostic papyri)
"For this reason error became powerful; it worked on its own matter foolishly, not having known the truth. It set about with a creation, preparing with power and beauty the substitute for the truth." (The Gospel of Truth, Gnostic papyri)
Ialdabaoth - (Ariel, Samael, Sacla) Modeled after Khnum of Elephantine, the Egyptian supernal being with the body of a serpent and a lion's head surrounded by rays, Ialdabaoth means "the child who traverses places." This meaning may be related to the Persian Mithra, the intermediate principle between two opposing principles. Ialdabaoth is often portrayed as lion-headed and serpent-bodied, like Mithraic Aeon. The account of Ialdabaoth as being dethroned and replaced by Sabaoth, his son, may be related to the Greek Kronos dethroned by his son, Zeus. Ialdabaoth is the Demiurge, the Cronocrater, and sometimes the son of the Demiurge.
In one account of the creation of Ialdabaoth, Sophia tested her creative abilities, but ineptly emanated Chaos which, sensing something greater than itself, was filled with jealousy, causing the abyss of Chaos to be filled with water. Sophia saw her creation, a place devoid of Spirit, and became terrified at what she had done. Her terror evoked an apparition upon the waters, a male-female Archon with the face of a lion whom she named Ialdabaoth. This being had seen Sophia's image on the water but knew nothing of her powers and virtues. He thought he alone existed and so he created for himself seven sons, one of whom is Sabaoth.
Ialdabaoth built heavens for each of them, with myriads of angels, archangels, chariots, spirits, thrones, and temples. Then he proclaimed himself the only god. Sophia spoke and told him he was mistaken, that an immortal of Light existed before him and has power over him. She then showed herself to him and his sons. Ialdabaoth's son, Sabaoth, upon hearing her voice and seeing her, sent up a hymn to her. In return, he was rewarded with honors and powers, and he rejected his parentage and family. Chaos, his mother, envied his new position and prepared to wage war against him. Sophia sent aid to Sabaoth in the form of her daughter Zoe and ten archangels who, together with Sabaoth, create every living thing in the Ogdoad. There they made a throne erected upon a chariot surrounded by cherubims with faces like a lion, a bull, a man, and an eagle. Ialdabaoth, still in the abyss, was tortured by jealousy. He created Death, which he established in the 6th heaven.
Basilides described Ialdabaoth as the head of the created world. Gnostics identified Ialdabaoth with the God of Genesis and the unrighteous creator who proclaimed there was no other god but him and that he was a jealous god. Ialdabaoth is identified with Saturn, which is malefic while Jupiter is benefic.
In another account of Ialdabaoth, the serpent son of Ialdabaoth brings gnosis to Adam and Eve and is cast down to Earth in punishment for this by his father, who originally created Eve to compete with Adam. Ialdabaoth is said to have caused the Great Flood out of anger because no one worshipped him. Sophia intervened to save humanity by helping Noah and his family with the ark. Ialdabaoth is said to have chosen Abraham as his own and to have promised him Earth for his descendants. He also led Moses out of Egypt and tried to have Jesus crucified. One text relates it was Ialdabaoth, not Jesus, who wore a crown of thorns and purple robes and was nailed to the cross.
In another text, Ialdabaoth lures Sophia to Earth by an illusion of light and traps her in the bondage of matter from which she is rescued by Jesus. As the unrighteous creator, Ialdabaoth keeps humanity bound and in prison. The ancients described him as having the face of an ass or a lion.
"And it has fettered them with its chains and bound all their limbs with the bitterness of the bondage of lust for those visible things that will decay and change and swerve by impulse. They have always been attracted downwards..." (The Book of Thomas the Contender, Gnostic papyri)
Islam - Founded by Mohammed (569-632 CE), who claimed all Arabs were descended from the biblical Abraham. According to a writer I read somewhere in the midst of this, the "Gnostic impact on Islam can be seen in the copius Islamized Hermeticism writings with alchemical, astrological, and cosmological themes. In the early 13th century, the mystical currents that inspired it were joined to those of Sufism, the mysticism of Islam."
The Gnostic Isma'ilites believed Melchezidek, after resurrection, will act as a judge and revealor of divine mysteries kept secret by the prophets from humanity because, while incarnate, humanity is subject to religious law rather than divine law. This is obviously an important tenant of Islam today. Upon death and resurrection, one learns of a different, and inconceivable, spiritual reality.
The Bektashis were an Islamic Gnostic sect of the 13th century. The Shi'ites have been erroneously classed as Gnostic because of their world-view regarding the Western world as evil and as being in direct opposition to their world.
"See, Father." said Jesus, "how, pursued by evil, (the soul) is wandering far from thy spirit over the earth. She tries to flee from hateful chaos; she knows not how to emerge from it. To that end, Father, send me! I will descend, bearing the seals. I will pass through all the aeons; I will unveil every mystery; I will denounce the appearances of the gods and, under the name of Gnosis, I will
transmit the secrets of the holy way." ("Hymn of the Soul," Naasenes Gnostics, Philosophumena, V, 10.2)
In one Gnostic account of the crucifixion of Jesus, the world stood still for an entire day. The higher planets continued to revolve, but the lower ones stopped. The sun traveled backwards as the moon occulted it.
Jesus, as Savior, has little bearing on the structure of Gnostic philosophy, but his life and crucifixion invigorated the system. Many Gnostics adapted Jesus into their system expressly to advance it. As Gnosticism spread throughout the Mediterranean world, it became the unintentional medium for the message of Jesus, spreading the news of his life, his teachings, and his crucifixion.
Gnostic manuscripts contain information regarding Jesus not found in ecclesiastical records. The Gnostic interpretation of the meaning of the life of Jesus varies from that of the Bible. Jesus is a divinized human who underwent Christification when his body was put on by the Cosmic Christ force, an Aeon that had put on other bodies as well. In one account, Jesus only looked human but was spirit. In another, Jesus is an aeon who magically implanted the seed of himself in the body of Mary. In another text, his body was spiritual because already the Holy Spirit had descended on Mary. In another manuscript, the body of Jesus is said to be psychic (a body may be material, psychic or spiritual) and was awakened by the Holy Spirit who descended in the form of a dove. In another account, when Jesus was 12 years old the angel Baruch mysteriously merged with him. Some Gnostics believed that Jesus came to Earth at the age of seven with his senses already organized, that he materialized like Melchizedek.
Jesus made Adam to stand upright and to taste of the Tree of Life. He caused Enoch in Paradise to write the Books of Jeou because, he said, one must gain knowledge of them in order to be saved from the abyss and its punishments. Jesus preached in favor of celebacy. Jesus said, "Ye worship ye know not what; we know what we worship." Jesus made the river Jordan flow backwards.
Jesus is sent down into the world to save humanity by reminding people of their heavenly origin. The powers of error have imprisoned man in a body and created woman and sexual desire to spread the particles of light and make it more difficult for the Divine Sparks of the supreme divinity to escape. Error grew angry at Jesus and his salvific work and had him nailed to the tree because he enlightened people and showed then truth. At his crucifixion, Jesus changed his own appearance and metamorphosed Simon of Cyrene to look like him to fool the Romans, who crucified Simon by mistake.
"For I was altering my shapes, changing from form to form. And therefore, when I was at their gates I assumed their likenesses." (The Second Treatise of the Great Seth, Gnostic papyri)
In The First Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ, a manuscript said to be Gnostic, Jesus begins his work as Savior by exorcising demons and counteracting the deeds of sorcerers. A young man had been turned into a mule. Jesus reversed the spell. A bridegroom, because of sorcerers, cannot enjoy his new wife. Jesus put the marriage right. He cured a female leper. The man who had been turned into a mule and then back again marries her.
Jesus and his family sojourned in Egypt for three years and saw the pharaoh. Jesus met two of his disciples, Bartholomew and Judas, as children. Judas was possessed by Satan and tried to bite Jesus. He struck him on the same side which "the Jews" pierced with a spear at his crucifixion. Jesus brought clay animals to life. He was falsely accused of causing a young boy to die. Jesus resurrected him so that the child could testify that it was not Jesus who caused his death. A young boy bumped into him, so Jesus, in a temper, caused the boy to die.
Gnostics said they got their teachings from the resurrected Jesus and that he is superior to the God of the Old Testament. Jesus entrusted his most precious teachings to be written down by his disciples Philip, Matthias, and Thomas his twin, the Twin of Christ. Jesus said heaven and earth were produced for the sake of the Apostle James the Just.
"And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables: That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them." (Mark IV; 11-12)
In Pistis-Sophia Jesus returns to earth eleven years after his resurrection to continue to teach the disciples about the Treasury of the Light. He said the true cross, the cross of light was in heaven. At the Mount of Olives, a light descended to him, enveloped him and took him away to a fantastic heaven. He came down again robed in brilliant light and told the disciples he had overthrown the unrighteous rulers of the spheres, abolished the course of Fate, and changed the rotation of the spheres into an alternating movement so that they can no longer exert their powers over humanity and so that the astrologers' forecasts have lost all meaning. Jesus transports himself and his disciples into the heavens that open as he pronounces a prayer. There they see ships of the sun and moon manned by fantastic beings. One manuscript relates that Jesus is seated at the right hand of the unknowing Ialdabaoth where he helps the souls escape from the unrighteous creator's domain. The Mandaean Gnostics said Jesus is a prophet of falsehood.
In Book of the Treatise according to the Mystery, Jesus and the disciples participate in a ceremonial ritual that might be patterned on Egyptian magic ceremonies. Jesus inducts the disciples as initiates, by baptism of water, fire, and spirit, into the secrets of the Treasury of the Light. An altar is prepared with vessels of wine, plants, branches, and aromatics, each especially positioned in certain places. The disciples hold appropriate plants in their hands, which are marked with magic numbers. Jesus says a magical prayer in which he invokes the powers to come and baptize the disciples into the kingdom of Melchizedek. When he asks for a sign from the powers, the wine changes into water and Jesus baptizes them with it, a baptism of Fire and of the Holy Spirit. Then he teaches them the passwords and signs for their use when they are ascending the spheres. There is also an account of Jesus and his disciples dancing to a hymn.
In Gnostic manuscripts, Jesus tells of the Place of Life that was before heaven and earth, and where there is no darkness. He says the Earth does not move: if it did it would fall. He says the Kingdom of Heaven is "within man," as an interior kingdom. He teaches that image does not die and does not show itself. He tells the disciples that the feminine must become male before it can enter the kingdom. Jesus says let there be a union of the opposites and a complete reversal of everything, of all values, cosmic and human. Jesus will one day abolish Fatality by reversing the rotation of the spheres (planets), counteracting their effects.
In Nicodemus, written sometime before 400 CE by an orthodox Christian writer (not Nicodemus), Jesus descends into hell. The devils there, who are preparing for this moment foretold, are horrified and afraid. Every person who ever lived is there, with the three exceptions of Enoch, Elijah, and Dimas, the thief crucified on the cross to the right of Jesus. When Jesus descends to hell, enlightening the whole place by his luminous presence, he releases the dead from their bondage. Beelzebub, subordinate of Satan and prince of hell, rebukes Satan, ruler of hell, for causing Jesus, an innocent and pure man, to be wrongfully crucified. Because of Satan, Jesus has come down to them to release all their inmates. Jesus rewards Beelzebub by raising him above Satan, just as Sabaoth was raised above Ialdabaoth. Jesus takes all the truly worthy up to Paradise. Those whom he leaves behind cause the devils much aggravation because no longer do they wail and gnash their teeth, but instead are merry. In 600 CE, the words, "He descended into hell..." were added to the Apostle's Creed.
The Gnostic believed the Cosmic Christ force, which they called an Aeon, is empowered to upend and reverse everything, especially the rotation of the spheres, so that death is escapable. The Cosmic Christ force sacrifices itself through incarnations and the involution of physical death (a descent into hell), so that evolution of human souls can continue.
"After we went forth from our home, and came down to this world in bodies, we were hated and persecuted.'' (The Second Treatise of the Great Seth, Gnostic papyri)
John the Baptist - In a Gnostic manuscript, Jesus says there was none greater than John the Baptist. As a child, John's name was Yohanna and he was taught by Anosh-Uthra on the Mountain of Lights. In another account of him. Sophia contrived, without Ialdabaoth's assent, to bring about the births of John the Baptist and Jesus.
Judaism - Infused with religious beliefs from various civilizations, Judaism incorporated into its theology many foreign elements. From Persia came ideas regarding salvation, resurrection, apocalypse, archangels, angels, and demons, and the belief in the enmity between the Light and the Darkness. From Greece and Pythagoras came the mystical meanings of numbers that the Jews entitled Gematria. The Jews believed, like the Gnostics and the Persians before them, that perfect teachers were caught up into heaven. The early Common Era mystics were the Gnostics, but Judaism has mystics an well, known as Kabalists.
The medieval literature of the Jews is heavy with Gnostic elements. The Zohar of Kabalistic Gnosticism elucidates a dualistic Tree of Life composed of 10 spheres called Sephiroth, abstract powers which are emanations of the hidden and infinite God. The Book of Formation and the Zohar combined constitute the Kabala, a body of mystic and occult thought. A diagram referred to as the Kabala Tree of Life is a diagram of 10 spheres and 22 paths, which are the 32 avenues to wisdom. In the Sepher Yetsira, Teli the Dragon turns these spheres. The Judaic Kabala Tree of Life is pre-dated by nearly 1000 years by the Tree of Life found described almost exactly as above in the Gnostic text entitled Diagram. The Kabala Tree of Life probably owes its origin to this Tree of Life diagram found in the Gnostic text Diagram.
Joseph Gikatila and Moses de Leon wrote material reminiscent of the Gnostic Ophites and Naassenes, which they could not have known. Hebrew mystics believed Good and Evil were at one time linked together on the Tree of Life until disturbed by Eve, the Old Testament equivalent of the Greek Pandora. The mystics wrote of Adam Qadmon, the Primordial Adam. They described the Tree of Life as representing Archetypal Man, an Aeon. The favorite image of Jewish mysticism is the Merkaba, the chariot-throne.
There is a strong Egyptian influence on Judaism, and evidence of their having stolen each other's manuscripts back and forth, especially the Hermetic texts. Although the Egyptians and the Jews had two different sciences and two different wisdoms, they were competitive with each other and interested in each other.
According to the Bible, Moses of the Exodus was versed in the knowledge of the Egyptians. The Greek historian, Manetho, states that Moses was a priest of Osiris in Egypt. It has been suggested that Moses broke away from the Egyptian community because they would not adopt his own personal ideas regarding God. Then, with the magic he had learned from the Egyptians, he successfully challenged the Egyptian magicians, Jannes and Jambres, and liberated the Israelites so he could found a civilization that would believe in his theology.
King Solomon, reputed to be a powerful magician, is said to have captured seven demons, placed then in bronze vases, and sent them from Jerusalem to Egypt for safe keeping. He entrusted the care of the demons to the Egyptian priests who used a book against them called The Seven Heavens, supposedly written by Solomon.
There are Ptolemaic Books written in Greek which combine the Egyptian theology with the Hebrew. According to legend, in 250 BCE, King Ptolemy Philadephus employed 72 Jewish scholars to translate the Old Testament into Greek, so that the Old Testament came to be known as the Septuagint, the Seventy. In an historical account of this event, the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew into Greek by the Jewish scholars because the Diaspora Jews had forgotten how to speak Hebrew.
The Letter of Aristeas describes in detail the events leading up to the creation of the Septuagint. Ptolemy Philadelphus, dedicated to creating in Alexandria the greatest library ever known (which the Christians later torched), learned from his librarian the need to acquire an accurate copy of the Old Testament. He released 100,000 Jewish slaves and lavished exorbitant gifts upon the Jewish community in Jerusalem. In return, he asked Eleazar to send to Egypt the best scholars available for the great translation. When the scholars arrived, Philadelphus entertained them lavishly and set out to learn as much wisdom from them as he could. He plied them with questions as they dined.
"The king asked the next, how he could be free from disturbing thoughts in his sleep? And he replied, "You have asked me a question which is very difficult to answer, for we cannot bring our true selves into play during the hours for sleep, but are held fast in these by imaginations that cannot be controlled by reason. For our souls possess the feeling that they actually see the things that enter into our consciousness during sleep...We suppose that we are actually sailing on the sea in boats or flying through the air or traveling to other regions or anything else of the kind...He who has all his thoughts and actions set towards the noblest ends establishes himself in righteousness both when he is awake and when he is asleep."
As these examples show, the ancient ties of the Jews and the Egyptians are strong. Infused in all of Judaic mystic beliefs are the mystic beliefs of all the major civilizations of the ancient worlds of the Mediterranean and Near East, due in large part to the Diaspora Jews, who were exiled from civilization to civilization and who arrived in one part of the world carrying with them the wisdom and spiritual beliefs of the part of the world from which they just were banished. The result of this was that Judaism became a melting pot of beliefs from various non-Judaic civilizations. The Jews themselves were people strongly versed in their own beliefs and so also they spread these around as well. Were it not for the Jews, the Gnostics probably would not have known of the Messiah concept and the Christians would never have had a Messiah by the name of Jesus, a Jew and fellow believer in Gnostic thought.
Jung Codex - Part of the Chenoboskion Manuscripts presented to C.G. Jung as a gift. Jung had an intense and lifelong interest in Gnosticism and Hermetic literature and sometimes wrote under the name "Basilides." Jung bequeathed Gnostic thought to the modern world when he founded 20th century psychology. Under the name Basilides, Jung wrote "The Seven Sermons to the Dead." Later, while under attack from Martin Buber for having breached professional ethic by overstepping psychology into religion, Jung apologized for this poem.
Jung was more attuned to the ancient world in which there was no overstepping but a fusion of perspectives. But in the modern world, there are specialties rather than fusions. And academicians don't like their specialties fused!
Kanteans - A Gnostic sect of the Sassanid empire (formerly Babylon), which existed until the time of King Yezdegerd II (442-57 CE). Their prophet was the slave Battai (459-84 CE) who had knowledge of the Manichaean beliefs. Battai taught that before the beginning, the supreme divinity divided himself in half, producing Good and Evil. Good ruled over light and Evil over darkness. Evil made war on the supreme divinity, who spoke a word creating the Lord God. The Lord God then spoke seven words engendering seven powers called "Seven Lords who Wander" (planets). Seven demons originating from Evil conquered the seven powers, stole the idea of the soul from the supreme divinity and proceeded to create Adam. The supreme divinity destroyed their creation and recreated Adam.
The Kantean sect is described as being half-way between the Mandaeans and the Manichaeans. The Kanteans considered Abel a prophet and cited him as the dispenser of their doctrine. They viewed the Savior as the Son of the Light who came to free humanity from the persecution of the world
Each Kantean, and also the Yazuqeans, always carried a barsum with them wherever they went. A barsum is a Persian sacramental bundle of branches symbolizing Horos, the secret of the absolute and impassable Limit between the supreme divinity and the lower Earth. The barsum also symbolized the Spirit trapped in the burden of the flesh and earthly labor.
"Moreover they throw mankind into great distraction and into a life of toll, so that their mankind might be occupied by worldly affairs, and might not have the opportunity of being devoted to the holy spirit." (The Hypostasis of the Archons, Gnostic papyri)
Key to Hydromancy, The - Hydromancy is divination by means of water, an early system of divination similar to Runes. "The Key to Hydromancy" is a text describing the influences of the planets and of the angels and demons at each hour of each day of the week. The text gives indications for the "characters" to be inscribed on stone amulets and for the plants it is appropriate to associate with them.
Kukeans - A Gnostic sect (middle of the 4th century) which taught that without oppositional forces, without duality, there can be no physical universe. The Kukeans believed God was born from the Awakened Sea situated in the World of Light, both older than god. He saw his image on the water and took it to be his companion. Together, God and the image engendered all the gods and goddesses, called the Mother of the Life. Close to the god born of the awakoned Sea was an inert statue. God did not feel threatened by its ability to make war on him, so he refused to cast it out; instead, he breathed life into it so it could make war on him. The living statue made war on god, and every time they fought they engendered the birth of carnal forces: Â animals, beasts, reptiles, which multiplied.
So far as I've read, the Kukeans theory of creation is totally original in Gnostic concepts. Where did the inert statue come from that God noticed standing close by? And then he was so bored he breathed life into so it could attack him? And from that action we came into existence? How odd. Is this where the word "Kuku" came from?
"Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness." (Psalm 74)
Leviathan - The great Serpent of Evil, with each of its heads having the name and crown of one of the Edomite kings. The Gnostic second Adam broke the heads of Leviathan in pieces. There is an account of Leviathan in the Ophite Diagram. Ouroboros of alchemical writings, the serpent with his tail in his mouth, is erroneously called Leviathan.
Limit-Cross - Horos-Stauros. The horizontal bar of the cross is Horos (Limit), the vertical bar is Stauros (Cross). Crosses are the symbol of Horos-Stauros, the absolute and impassable frontier of separation between the upper realms of the timeless world, and the temporal realms of the lower, visible universe. The location of the horizontal bar of the cross indicates the location of the Limit. The Greek Tau cross, with the horizontal bar resting atop the vertical bar, shows the highest Limit. The equal arms cross, which shows the horizontal bar exactly in the middle of the length of the vertical bar, indicates a lower Limit. The Christian cross and the Coptic cross, with the horizontal bars higher up, show a raised Limit, meaning that by gnosis and wisdom, the visible universe has raised itself closer to the higher realms where the supreme divinity resides. When humanity fell from Eden, the Limit lowered. The Egyptian Ankh is a Tau cross with a raised Limit that touches on the Pleroma, the sphere above the horizontal bar of that cross.
The part of the Universe known as the Intermediate Zone is the impassable frontier of the Limit-Cross wherein is the "Portal of Life.'' Below that is defined the limit of the abyss.
The Romans crucified their "criminals" on a cross with a high horizontal bar. When Jesus allowed himself to be nailed to the cross, or allowed the world to think he had been nailed to the cross, he was using the cross to make the statement that he had raised the Limit by lifting humanity closer to the divine realms (his "saved" us). Jesus would have known that Horos-Stauros is symbolized by a cross, the foremost symbol of religious groups then as now. Perhaps that is why the Romans chose that method of execution besides that its shape so perfectly suited their method of their favorite form of torture. Also, the irony of crucifying citizens on their own religious symbol may have appealed to their aberrated sense of humor. Jesus, by his sacrificial action, made Horos-Stauros the central symbol of Christianity. From ancient Persia comes this idea of the "Savior Saved." By saving others through sacrifice and involution, the Savior saves himself.
Plato wrote that the power which comes next to the highest God has been marked with a cross upon the universe. The Gnostics admired Plato and incorporated much of his thinking into their religious Philosophy. The cross symbol may have been adopted from him. In Gnostic manuscripts Jesus describes the true cross, the great Cross of Light, as being in heaven. The Gnostics envisioned this astral cross as traced upon the celestial dome of the skies.
Luria, Isaac - A Kabalist of the 16th century CE, whose writings express Gnostic ideas and who learned of the Kabala while in Egypt. Luria, in his cosmology, assumes the real existence of evil in a kingdom of its own. He tells of the fall of the portions of the light of the Pleroma down into the lowest depths. He writes of the "tsintsin," the withdrawal of God from His creation, vacating a portion of himself so creation can take place, and leaving a "reshimu," a residue of his divine light from which creation emerged. This parallels Basilides' teaching of the residue from which the Holy Spirit emerges. In the Books of Jeou, which Jesus of Gnosticism says must be mastered before salvation can occur, all primordial spaces came into being because of this little idea that God had left behind when He withdrew into Himself. I explore this idea in my book The Shadow Breakers.
Themes such as these found in the medieval writings of the Jewish mystics are either a holdover from Gnosticism or a re-emergence of Gnostic thought. Expressing similar views were the medieval Kabalists, Moses de Leon and Joseph Gikatila. These Kabalistss (Cabalists) came up with a system of correspondences for the structure and creation of the universe that was later expanded by Jewish mystics into an elaborate system. Other mystical societies adopted their system diagram, the Kabala Tree of Life, (below left) and used it for their own purposes, in some instances, Magica, to forward their own versions of universal realities. I borrowed it myself and extended it to create my own version involving universal field fabric and Interstellar Flight Portals.
It really does lend itself to this type of "borrowing" and continued construction of the ideas involved. I found it to be universal, renaming it the "World Soul," the concept borrowed from Plato, and discovered it all over the place in art throughout geography and history and so wrote another book about it entitled Forms and Archetypes of the World Soul.
Mandaeans - In the legends of the anti-Christian, Gnostic Mandaeans, a late Gnosticism sect, 60,000 Mandaeans were established by King Ardavan in the land of Medes, where the White Mountain (Mountain of Lights) is widely renown. On that mountain, Anosh-Uthra gave guidance and instruction to the child Yohanna, who is John the Baptist.
The Mandaean prophets were Enoch (Idris), Hermes and Seth, the son of Adam who they identified with Agathodaimon of Greek Hermetic literature. They called Shem Shum-Kushta and wrote of the ships of the sun and the moon. They believed Norea, the wife of Noah to be the mother of Shem. The eagle was the Mandaean symbol of the soul (from Plato). Some Mandaeans were of Jewish origin. The baptist sect of the Mandeans, Christians of St. John, still exists today in Lower Mesopotamia.
The Mandaeans taught that the planets were distributed among seven aeons (seven cycles), each reigning for 1,000 years. ÂThey said the Mountain of Lights had seven Guardians, a serpent with seven heads. They taught of the Limit, the frontier separating the temporal world from the timeless world. The Mandeans refuted the Old Testament and the teachings of Jesus, saying that their prophet Anosh-Uthra denounced the falsehoods of Jesus. They believed instead in the mystical union with the heavenly partner, the Holy Spirit. The Sabian Mandaeans taught the doctrine of the descent of the soul into Matter and the subsequent re-ascent of the soul to the spiritual world.
The Mandaeans espoused this next philsophy that really resonates with me and I'm not sure why, whether it's actually true or whether it expresses a symmetry that appeals to me. When the soul saw Matter she fell in love with it and burned with desire to experience bodily pleasures. Thus, the world was born to fulfill her desires. The soul forgot herself, her original dwelling, her true center, her everlasting life. But God would not abandon the soul to the degradations of Matter and gifted the soul with understanding and the faculty of perception; these would remind her of her high origin, the spiritual world, and would restore to her consciousness of herself, would make her see she is a stranger here below.
As soon as the soul gains realization of these things, she feels an exile in a strange land and longs for her spiritual home. As the first step to re-obtaining her spiritual heritage, she denounces the bonds of the material. Then, and perhaps this is the part that I really resonant with, having had this experience myself personally, a mystical union with a heavenly partner, the Holy Spirit (because it is invisible and remains so and because it gives access to heavenly realms and it involves an angelic choir that I call the Magi Chorus), occurs and lifts the soul from wandering alone to wandering with an enlightened, fully participating invisible entourage. My book, Heavenly Partners, describes my experience of this divine intervention.
Manes - (215-275 CE) The founder of the Gnostic Manichaean sect. Manes equated himself to Buddha of India, Zoroaster of Persia and Jesus, because he had a "twin spirit," a spirit guide named at-Taum (Twin) whom he called a messenger of God. Manes had a controversy with the Bishop of Kashqar in Mesopotamia and left to establish believers in his own teachings. He was crucified. At his death, Manes is said to have left Egypt (Matter).
According to the legend surrounding Manes, a 2nd century Saracen believed in the ideology of the two opposing principles of creation. He married a slave, a prostitute, in Upper Egypt and she persuaded him to live in her native country, the Thebais, where he learned the wisdom of the Egyptians and dictated four books to his disciple, Terebinth. The Saracen went to Judea but died there, and Terebinth took refuge in Babylon, saying he was born of a virgin, fed by angels on the mountains and that his name was Buddha. A wealthy woman believed in him and took him in, but Terebinth died by falling off the roof of her house. The woman later bought a child named Corbicius, had him educated, and gave him Terebinth's books dictated by the Saracen. Enriched by these revelations, Corbicius changed his name to Manes and began his career as a great Gnostic teacher.
Manichaeism - A dualist mysticism of Gnostic derivation taught by the sect founded by Manes. Manichaeism lasted for 15 centuries. Battai, the Kantean prophet, once lived among the Manichaeans. Manichaean monks were strict ascetics, depriving themselves of all comfort and eating only fruit and that which had not been killed to become food for humans. The Manichaeans did not require all their devotees to practice strict asceticism, but established a second level group of devotees called "hearers." St. Augustine was a Manichaean "hearer" for nine years. Drawing upon Christianity and Gnosticism, the Manichaeans developed a large following, threatening the Church with loss of membership by conversion to Manichaeism. The Church responded by persecuting them.
They believed in Ialdabaoth-Sacla, the trees of Paradise, including the Tree of Death, the creation of Adam, member by member, by the Archons, and the vain attempt of the Archons to stand Adam upright. They believed in a succession of enlighteners and saviors including Shem, Seth and Nicotheus. According to the Manichaeans, Nicotheus was caught up into heaven. Nicotheus called the supreme divinity the Monogene (the only begotten), who cannot be described with words. The Monogene is hidden in the abyss radiating light, and surrounded by 12 powers, each of whom has three aspects. Above these are 12 more powers.
The Manichaeans taught reincarnation, saying the salvation of souls was affected by transmigration through the world of spheres, by the Sun and the Moon, and by the Virgin of Light, who purifies souls and raises them up into the heavenly Treasury. They believed in the final consummation of the Universe and the end of the world, and that Jesus had come to earth at age seven with his senses already organized. The Manichaeans said Eve was pursued by the creators, that the planets were perverse while the sun and the moon were good, and that powers came out of the ships of the sun and the moon to seduce the Archons. The Manichaeans said the Archons had been flayed, their outstretched skins used to form the sky.
They believed the earth's shape to be that of a rectangular parallelepiped enclosed by walls of crystal, above which three domes rose one above another (ancient Chaldaean cosmogony). Their beliefs spread to the eastern limits of Asia and to western Europe. The Albigensians were their last successors. I believe, from my research, the Minoans in 1600 BCE thought the universe was shaped like a horizontal figure 8 composed of two disks, on on top of the other, inside two pyramids, one of them upside-down (right) and on top of the other.
It is interesting to me how knowledge of geometry inspired theories about the shape of the planet and the universe. In fact, the centuries during which time we were required to believe the earth was flat probably was a holdover from the Mediterranean Bronze Age in which the idea of the planets as spheres lost out to the idea of the planets as disks, hence the flat earth belief and the title of this website, Disk of the World. This conclusion most likely resulted from the perspective of distance, the ancients observing how the Moon is obviously a disk.
The Manichaeans did not write pseudonymously, but under Manes and his disciples. Their writings are of an intensified Persian dualism used by Gnostics before them. They wrote a Theory of Three Phases of the history of the Universe: Phase One is the Anterior Phase, when the two opposing principles exist separately; Phase Two is the Middle Phase, wherein light is attacked by darkness, creating a muddle; Phase Three is the Conclusive Phase, involving the restoration of the primordial principles. The Three Phases (Ohrmazd-Ahriman-Mithra), of Persian Bundahisn origin, underlie all Gnostic systems. The Manichaeans taught that St. Michael had been substituted for Satan.
"Have I not told you that like a visible voice and flash of lightning will the good be taken up to the light?" (The Dialogue of the Savior, Gnostic papyri) [Perhaps where the concept came from of what is called "The Rapture"]
Marcus - A disciple of Valentinus who borrowed from Pythagoras mystical numerology, a method of attaching numerical values to letters. The numerical values describe the relations and harmonies of the letters to the name. Marcus used the system to comment on each entity of the supernal universe and its function according to the numbers. In Hebrew Gematria, a system incorporated into tarot divination, numerical values are attached to Hebrew letters.
The mysticism of numbers is evidenced throughout the Bible and ecclesiastical literature. On the 40th day of the birth of Jesus, he was presented in the temple. When he was 40 years old, he fasted for 40 days in the desert. After his resurrection, he told Joseph of Arimethea to stay inside his home for the next 40 days. During the Great Deluge, it rained for 40 days and 40 nights. Moses and the Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 days. Seth was taken up into heaven for 40 days.
When Ptolemy Philadelphus commissioned the Septuagint, 72 scholars translated 72 pages in 72 days. Jesus said the Aeons have 72 powers. Jesus mixed 72 colors in a dyer's vat.
Mariamne - Mary, the mother of Jesus, or Mary Magdalene. The Mariamne of Gnosticism conversed often with the resurrected Jesus. James the Just, "brother of Jesus," passed along the sayings of Jesus to Mariamne.
In one Gnostic account, Mary, mother of Jesus, was born without father or mother, like Melchizedek. In another, her parents are Jaochim and Anna. Mary tells Jesus of an episode in his life which occurred when he was little. When the Spirit came to their home asking for Jesus, Mary seized the spirit, tied him to the foot of the bed, and went into the vineyard where Joseph was making a fence. As she told Joseph about the Spirit, Jesus overheard her and joyously ran inside the house. He untied the Spirit, who was his twin, and they hugged and kissed and became as one.
Mary - The Gnostic Gospel According to Thomas relates that Mary (Mary Magdalene) told the Apostle Peter that Jesus told her the soul, during its ascension from heaven to heaven, is questioned by Darkness, Concupiscence, Ignorance, and others trying to detain the soul. Peter, in a temper, accuses Mary of having imagined all of it, causing Mary to burst into tears, and Levi to intervene to defend her. Then they all disperse to preach the Gospel.
In the Gospel according to Thomas Mary questions the resurrected Jesus as though he is not her son, leading one to believe she is Mary Magdalene, the unconfirmed female disciple of Jesus. Simon Peter tried to exclude her from their midst as they received the gnosis, saying women are not worthy of Life (after death). Jesus responds that he "will draw her so as to make her male so that she also may become a living spirit like you males, for every woman who has become male will enter the kingdom of Heaven."
Matter - Gnostics believed that Matter is something from which to be liberated. In Marsanes, the descent of the soul into matter is not regarded as a fall but as a demiurgic function, a doctrine based on Plato's discussion of the soul and its descent. In Marcionism, Matter is one of three heavens: The first heaven, highest and inaccessible, is the habitation of the God of Salvation, unknowable until the revelation of the Now Testament; the second heaven contains the God of Genesis and of the Law, who looks like the devil; the third heaven is the world of Matter, of the Earth and their powers.
Matter is the mother of the four demons of the body; heat, cold, wetness, and dryness. These are Aristotle's four qualities shared by the four elements. Each element possesses two qualities. Fire is hot and dry with heat predominating. Air is hot and moist with moistness predominating. Water is moist and cold with cold predominating. Earth is cold and dry with dryness predominating. When the qualities intermingle and an action results, transmutation, the changing of one element into another, becomes possible. The study of transmutation is the basis of alchemy.
Matter allows the God of Genesis to borrow some of its earth to make Adam. Pleased with his creation, God tries to steal Adam away from Matter, and Adam turns away from it. In retaliation, Matter distracts humanity, represented by Adam, by multiplying innumerable gods around him to confuse him so he cannot recognize which of them is his master. Enraged by this, the God of Genesis thrusts primitive mankind down into hell. In another account, the universe is composed of the holy trinity of the Father, the Son, and Matter. The Son, the median principle between the unmoved mover, the Father and moveable Matter, receives templates of forms from the Father to give to Matter to make manifest.
Melchizedek - The priest-king of the Old Testament born without mother or father. Four biblical personalities were born this way: Melchizedek, Adam, the Virgin Mary and, sometimes, Eve. Of the four, only Melchizedek did not experience physical death but was taken up into heaven. The Melchizedekians were a non-Gnostic sect. Melchizedek is important in Judaism, Gnosticism and Christianity, with all three naming him as a prophet. He is also recognized as a prophet in Islam, in the Mohammedan Middle Ages among the Ishmaelites, who taught a Gnostic doctrine. Melchizedek is also called the mysterious King of Salem and Zorokothora. In the Haggada, Shem is identified with Melchizedek.
Melchizedek resides in the heaven with Sabaoth the Good. He intervened on behalf of Abraham, who had fallen from his heavenly position. Melchizedek appealed to the Father of Greatness and had Abraham reinstated.
"His resemblance in kind is within what is his own. He can see it, understand it, enter it, and take a resemblance from it." (Zostrianos, Gnostic papyri)
Messenger, Divine - Humanity will receive "angels as guides." (The Tripartite Tractate, Gnostic papyri) The Divine Messenger is a celestial being in whom divine and human qualities are combined; an angel or spirit guide. First described in the ancient Persian religion, the Divine Messenger is the entity upon whom the Egyptian Hermes, the Roman Mercury and the alchemical Mercurius are based. The Gnostic Jesus said there is forgiveness for those who blaspheme the Savior and/or God, but none for those who blaspheme the Holy Spirit.
In ancient accounts of them, the Messengers appear as beings with multiple forms, not as pluralities but as single representations of multiplicities. By experiencing the Divine Messenger, a person receives a foretaste and assurance of ultimate union with an angelic, heavenly counterpart. I call them shapeshifters because of this ability of theirs to be multiplicities. But according to them they are the Atlanteans, the Reptile Race who are always in the "process of becoming," and so they acquire the Reptilian nature because it gives them the best chance to instantly shift into what they are becoming in the moment.
From our perspective of "stuck human," we cannot imagine such an ability, and my first reaction to it was to flee. But since that time, and after 24 years of companionship with these beings, I have seen them "stuck" and I am informed by them that they can hold a shape indefinately. So, they have an additional abillity that we certainly do not have but would probably like to have except it would cause incredible confusion and havoc if we could shapeshift instantly and continuously. But we are dense matter so that's not even remotely possible, thank goodness, although there are supposed to be people on the planet right now who can dematerialize and rematerialize at will but I have never personally encountered them. I do know from my own experiences and from reading about the Australian Aboriginals and seeing a movie about it, The Last Wave, that this can be accomplished in the Dreamtime.
"We live under the ocean beneath the planetary crust, but we are not reptiles in the sense of lizards or amphibians. We are Reptiles in the sense of beingness. We are focused more on becoming than on being, and so therefore we are presenting ourselves as beings with the possibility of changing or altering our shapes. By this we mean we are always in the process of becoming and we are always in the position of being able to change suddenly with our circumstances. And this is the purpose of being Reptilian because only a reptile can remain in an essentially loose position for the purpose of responding very suddenly to stimuli. For this reason we choose the reptilian form because it allows for the most alteration of shape when the need or challenge arises. We are therefore not afraid of saying we are Reptiles because we have found a way to become what we wish to become in the shortest space of time possible, and that way is reptilian." (Atlantis - How I Connected)
The Persians believed in a parallelism between the macrocosm and the microcosm, in which the Divine Messenger is significant. The Supreme Divinity on high rediscovers itself scattered among the population and throughout the universe. At the same time, an analogous relationship develops between the heavenly primordial Man and the Divine Messenger, who functions as a savior.
"I am a mute who does not speak, and great is my multitude of words." (The Thunder: Perfect Mind, Gnostic papyri)
Mithra - A Persian god whose mysterious sanctuaries appeared all over the Mediterranean world. Mithra is the Intermediate Principle between the two opposite Principles of Ohrmazd (The Endless Light) and Ahriman (Endless Darkness), from an old Persian belief in Three Principles. In the Persian theology elucidated in Bundahisn (the Good Religion), Mithraism, the philosophy of the "Middle Way" is accepted by a large population and eventually exported to the rest of the Mediterranean world.
"They (the Jews) espoused the middle course - and this is always the best course to pursue." (Letter of Aristeas, 250 BCE)
Based on a concept of the macrocosm and microcosm, the Persian theology described the human body as composed of the elements of the planets. In the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE, Mithraism, which glorified the biblical Adam, spread into Rome.
Moses - The Moses of the Exodus, a patriarch of Judaism. Early Jews claimed Moses was the same person as Musaeus, from whom Plato and Pythagoras derived their doctrines, and of whom Orpheus was a disciple. The Greek historian Manetho said Moses had been a priest of Osiris in Egypt. One Gnostic text says Moses was wrong about his account of the withdrawal of Noah and his family into the Ark. They were, instead, protected from the Deluge by being taken up into a cloud of light.
Mountain of Lights - The legendary holy place of Persian and Gnostic religions, the mystic mount of the Zoroastrian revelations. Mountain of Lights is the most mystic and secret spot in the universe, the mountain on which the sun has not risen, nor is it possible. In this mountain, also called the Mountain of Seir, is the Cave of the Magi, also called the Cave of Adam and Cave of Treasures, where Adam deposited his treasures for the Magi, and where Adam and his successors are buried. The holy mountain, also called the Mountain of Victories and Mount of the Lord, is said to be in Persia (Iran). Also called the White Mountain, Svetaparvata, it is situated in the regions beyond the darkness of this world and guarded by seven Guardians, serpents with seven heads.
The resurrected Jesus took his disciples onto another mystic mountain, called "Divination and Joy," in Galilee. There they questioned him about the underlying reality of the universe and the divine plan.
"Then a great light appeared so that the mountain shone from the sight of him who had appeared." (The Letter of Peter to Philip, Gnostic papyri)
Nassenes - A Gnostic sect which takes its name from Naas, meaning Serpent in Hebrew. The Naassenes were against carnal intercourse but believed it necessary to become initiated first into the "lesser Mysteries - those of the "carnal generation" Âand then into the "greater mysteries," the heavenly mysteries. This gains a descendant in Tarot, with its deck divided into the lesser mysteries and the great mysteries. The Nassenes believed the Exodus to be symbolic, rather than actual, that the Israelites symbolized humanity's attempt to extricate itself from involvement in matter (Egypt). They believed that Jesus made the river Jordan flow backwards
The Naassenes professed a strong belief that the Kingdom of God is always present, though invisible, and that it is both inside and outside of a person. As an extension of this idea, they thought every part of the human body had its correspondence on earth somewhere, that the physical body of a person is patterned on a larger reality. They taught that the brain corresponds to Eden; the membranes of the brain to the heavens; the head to Paradise; the river Phison is the eye; the river Geon is the ear; Tigris is the nostrils.
The Naassenes practiced the ritual of Baptism and boasted of possessing the doctrine Jesus revealed to James, passed on by him to Mariamne. The Naassenes believed Adam was originally lifeless and inert, like a statue. They wrote "Hermes is the Word who has expressed and fashioned the things that have been, that are and that will be." This is probably another interpretation of the word Trismegistus - what was, what is, what shall be. They made use of the Odyssey as their allegorical literature.
Nicolaitans - A Gnostic sect established by the deacon Nicolas, who is considered to be a founder of Gnosticism. The Nicolaitans taught that in the beginning there was Darkness and the abyss and the waters. The unbegotten, primordial Spirit cast out the Darkness, the abyss and the waters by showing its face. In anger, the Darkness rose up to attack the Spirit, creating a womb out of which was born four aeons, which in turn engendered fourteen others. This was followed by the formation of the "right" and the "left," the light and the dark. The Spirit then emanated Barbelo, the Celestial Mother who gave birth to Ialdabaoth by emanation. She repented this act of birth and this brought about the first salvation of the lower world. Barbelo seduced the Archons, powers of the lower heavens, and robbed them of their light. The Nicolaitans believed in the three primordial principles: Light, Darkness, and Intermediate Spirit.
Noah - Also called Deucalion, Noah built the Ark on the mystic Mountain of Seir (Shyr). In one account of the deluge, it was Sophia who saved Noah, his wife Norea, and their family. Another text relates that Noah and his family did not withdraw but were taken up into a cloud of light. Noah took into the Ark the books handed down to him from Adam through Seth. Noah received from the angels secrets which he gave to his son, Shem.
Norea - Also Horea. The mystical sister of Seth, and daughter of Adam and Eve, who became the wife of Noah. Norea means "fiery." Ialdabaoth had set about to destroy the superior generation of Seth and Norea. When Noah was building the Ark, Ialdabaoth became determined that Norea would not survive the flood, so he caused her to set fire to the Ark three times. She burned it by blowing on the hull while the Ark was under construction.
In some accounts, Norea is the wife of Seth or of Shem (Seth). ÂThe Mandaeans called her Nuraitha or Nhuraita, wife of Noah and mother of Shem. There is an account of the creation of Time involving Norea. She is said to have quarreled with the Archons, causing the descent of the great angel Heleleth, who is the color of pure gold and whose robes are as white as snow. He created Time so that the Archons would be subjected to it and thus be subdued.
Norea is another female luminary who was omitted from the "sacred" texts of the Bible and sacred books of the other historical religions. Women just didn't make the cut in the same way men did, and that probably did more than anything to establish the archtype of our planetary history - or His Story. Because it really is his story, with women in most cases as a footnote to the men. They seem to be always misleading the men or seducing the men or birthing the men, and until it ever becomes Herstory we will have to be content with it. But, we certainly don't have to be ignorant of it, do we?
Ogdoad - The higher world between the Hebdomad and the Ennead, also called the Thirteenth Aeon. The Ogdoad is the eighth heaven and has an interior realm. Sophia dwells there, as does Ialdabaoth. The fixed stars above all the seven heavens of the planets were considered to be the Ogdoad, also defined as one of the three planes of the lower world, itself the highest, but lying immediately below the world of light, which is the dwelling of the Mother who generates the spiritual substance. The idea of the Ogdoad (a Greek word) may be of Egyptian origin. Hermes Trismegistus states that adepts will enter into immortality and come to understand the Ogdoad, which reveals, in its turn, the Ennead.
The Ogdoad in said to be the destination of souls after death. The material body is abandoned, and the soul re-ascends the planetary spheres, shedding astral bodies and becoming lighter and lighter, finally attaining to the Ogdoad to become one of its powers. There, the soul enters into God and merges.
In Gospel of the Egyptians, there are three powers which emerged from the invisible great spirit as emanations; the Father, Mother, and Son. Then three Ogdoads formed themselves. The emanations continued, one after another, producing Mirothea, Adamas-Light, Harmozel, Oroiael, Daueithe, Heleleth, Grace, Sensibility, Comprehension, Reflection, Gamaliel, Gabriel, Samlo, Abrasax, Memory, Charity, Peace, and Life Everlasting.
Ophites - A Gnostic sect which taught that the creation of the world came from the cosmic egg (possibly the Philosopher's Egg of the alchemists of the later centuries). The Diagram was their central text. They believed in Anthropos, the gigantic primordial man in the Universe. The Ophites believed that each part of the body has its correspondence in a larger physical reality, the geography of the Mediterranean world. They thought the God of Genesis to be identical with laldabaoth, and that Samael was blind.
The Ophites venerated the serpent as the bringer of gnosis and the principle of all movement, wherein no being is formed without the serpent. They believed the bowels correspond to the serpent, and they held snakes to their breasts and caressed them. They kept and fed snakes in baskets and held their meetings close to the holes in which the snakes lived. With food they tempted the snakes from their holes, and using incantations they enticed them from baskets, kissing the snakes muzzles which they had charmed. They called it the True Eucharist because the snake is the anointed one.
The Pentecostal snake handlers is a holdover from this ancient Gnostic religion, even though they think they originated it when it appeared simultaneously and miraculously, according to them, all over the United States at the same time in various locations. The Pentecostals also have a history of dying of snake bites but no such deaths were mentioned in the Gnostic scripts, so maybe the ancients knew better how to handle the snakes or perhaps the Pentecostals do not revere or feed or sleep next to them in the same way. Who knows what respect a snake feels is its due or what goes on the mind of a snake before it decides to bite someone?
Ousiarchs - The rulers of the essence of Matter. In an Hermetic treatise, Hermes tells Tat to swear an oath "by the heaven and the earth, fire and water." These four elements represent the constituent principles of Matter, not their chemistry.
"Like a salamander, it goes into the flaming fire which burns exceedingly; it slithers into the furnace." (The Testimony of Truth, Gnostic papyri)
Paul, The Apocalypse of - A Coptic manuscript describing St. Paul's ascent into the heavens in the company of his angel guide who takes him on a tour of hell and heaven. When in hell, Paul sees the torments of the inferno. Heaven has seven levels, the first containing angels with frightening faces and who use something like cattle prods (ox goads) to drive the condemned to their punishment after their souls have been interrogated and found wanting. Paul rises through the levels of heavens until he is met by the apostles. He continues to rise to reach the seventh heaven where he converses with an old man who gives him a sign. Literature such as The Apocalypse of Paul inspired Dante's The Divine Comedy and Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling.
Perfect, The - Those who have received the gnosis. The Perfect are guided by certain powers sent from the Father. The first Perfect person was Seth, and the seed of the great Seth, the human race, are the Perfect. The Imperishable Generation of the Perfect are descended also from Seth's sister Norea. Abraham is the head of the Generation of the Perfect, which included Zoroaster in Isma'ilite belief. Time was created to protect the Incorruptible Generation of the Perfect from the Archons, and all the celestial beings are devoted to the redemption of the Perfect. Jesus dictated to the Apostle Thomas Book of Thomas the Athlete for the Perfect, who call laldabaoth Ariael, because he looks like a lion.
In rabbinical literature, The Perfect one, at the completion of his ascension, becomes a little Iao, who reins with Iao the Great over the intermediate region of the lower zone. The "Portal of Life" opens onto the lower zone. When the lower universe is consummated, it becomes Perfect. The Christian Gnostics believed that before a Hebrew may become Perfect, he/she must first become Christian. In Gnostic and rabbinical literature, the perfect teachers are caught up into heaven, in the body and out of the body.
Great rewards await those who strive to become spiritually Perfect. The hidden Mysteries are reserved for the race of the Perfect and the Gates of Heaven are opened for them. The Generation of the Perfect will attain to the supreme Ogdoad, the holy place of the Father, and come to rest. The Perfect unite with the angels or are absorbed into Jesus, who sits at the right hand of Ialdabaoth helping the souls of the Perfect escape by conducting them up through the spheres. Celestial baptism assures the salvation of the Perfect by sealing the souls against the power of the Archons. Thus, the Perfect ascend the spheres freely and without hindrance, and attain to the Treasury of the Light.
"The Wisdom of God became a type of fool for you so that it might take you up, 0 foolish one, and make you a wise man." (The Teachings of Silvanus, Gnostic papyri)
Then the sun will become dark. And the moon will cause its light to cease. The stars of the sky will cancel their circuits. (On the Origin of the World, Gnostic papyri)
Persia - In the Hellenistic age, the religions of ancient Persia were diffused under different forms all over the Orient, especially Asia Minor through the Maguseans. Gnosticism may have been, in part, a continuation of the Magusaeans. The importance of ancient Persian thought in the Mediterranean world is evidenced by the advent of the Magi (Maguseans) to the crib in Bethlehem, representing the bringing-on-board of the Persians to Christianity. Mithraism, with sanctuaries to Mithra all over the Mediterranean world, was born in Persia.
The Persians conceived of the universe as having been formed by the interaction of the two opposing principles, Light and Darkness.
The Persians believed in the sending down of a savior for the redemption of humanity, and in the savior saved: the higher light-power at work freeing the sparks of his own light which are dispersed throughout the lower creation. They believed in a celestial goal, thought of as a Treasury, and taught that the most mystic and secret spot in the universe is on the dark shores of the eastern ocean, the Mountain of Lights containing The Cave of the Magi. The Zurvanist idea of two souls pre-dated the Gnostic idea of the counterfeiting spirit.
First Babylon, then Hellenic and Judaic conceptions, superimposed themselves on Persian beliefs. The Gnostics reinterpreted the teachings of Zoroaster (600 BCE) and claimed, anachronistically, that Zoroaster was the biblical Abraham's astrology student. In the Sethian books, the elements of Persia are the Three Primordial Principles - the highest, infinite god; the supreme tetrad; and all-powerful Wisdom. The ancient Persians detailed ascensions through the spheres and the creation of body parts by them. As the soul passed through the spheres, it was dispensed Fate and Fortune by the planets.
The Persians, like the Gnostics after them, refuted the Old Testament, giving it an anti-biblical interpretation. They thought the God of the Old Testament not from Light because he admires it so much (Genesis 1,4). They criticized God for not sharing out his knowledge with Adam and Eve. Judaism received from Persian religion the themes of salvation and apocalypse, eschatology of archangels, angels and demons, belief in the enmity between light and dark, and holy man caught up into heaven. The Apocalypses of Adam is a group of Gnostic texts containing concepts believed to be of Persian origin during the time (44 CE) when Judaism became infused the Persian beliefs.
Philo - (20 BC - 40 CE) Some Gnostic concepts began with the Greek Philo; the counterfeiting spirit, the transcendent deity, and the idea of the earth and the heavens as existing in Darkness. Philo wrote Questiones in Exodum. Philosophy means love (philo) of wisdom (sophia).
Philosophers, Akhmim - In 370 CE, these Gnostics from the town of Akhmim, Egypt, on the Upper Nile, foolishly challenged Theodore the Coptic Monk to prove his knowledge of the spiritual world. This challenge provided Theodore's followers with such an exciting story to tell that it is repeated even today.
By giving Theodore a riddle to solve, the Akhmim Philosophers challenged him to prove his knowledge and understanding of the scriptures. They asked him, "Who died, but was never born? Who did not die, but was born? Who died, but never putrified?" Telling them they had minds like leaky casks, Theodore answered to the first question, "Adam", to the second question, he answered, "Enoch"; to the last questions he answered, "Lot's wife, who became a pillar of salt to season the foolish such as these philosophers who glorify themselves." The philosophers did not realize the riddle was widely known, just as today the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx is well known. "Who walked first on four legs, then on two legs, and then on three legs?"
In 1886, an archeologist excavated the grave of a monk in Akhmim. In the grave he found a parchment codex that came to be known as The Lost Gospel According to Peter. The codex seems to be an objective, factual account of the crucifixion of Jesus. Claimed as a Christian document by the early heresiologists, it may be Gnostic because it contains a description of the sepulcher affixed by seven deals, it identifies Mary Magdelene as a disciple of Jesus, its tone and quality of writing is that of the Gnostics, its burial location is in the Gnostic community of Akhmim, and it is a parchment codex. If it was written by Peter, when he was a Christian Gnostic, just as the Gnostics claimed. If not by Peter, then perhaps it was written by a Christian Gnostic and attributed to Peter.
Plato - (427-347 BCE) - The Greek philosopher had a wide influence on Gnosticism, Judaism, and Christianity. Plato spent much time speculating on the destiny of souls and formulating theories regarding the afterlife. Expressed in the Republic is his concept of the reincarnation of souls into the bodies of men or animals. He believed that spirits first drink the waters of Lethe before returning to this world reincarnated. That explains why we can't remember our past lives. A mystical process is designed to prevent it.
Plato wrote of the architecture of heaven in which there are "ways of the right" leading upward and "ways of the left" leading downward. He wrote of the accidental fall of the soul, causing it to be cast out of the supra-sensible world into the materiality of the body, and conceived of the soul as having fallen into a corpse. The fallen soul retains memories of the absolute realities it had contemplated at its beginning. In Platonic Dualism, there is a distinction between a world of being (including the Good) and the sphere of becoming and corruption, as well as between an "intelligible world" and a sensible world.''
Plato espoused a Doctrine of Images, also called Theory of Ideas. He believed that images here below are designed on models or primordial unattainable ideas which exist in the mind of God (Theory of Ideas). This doctrine includes souls, which he envisioned as being pre-existent. He wrote of the veil of the supreme divinity. He said the admiration of the divinity leads to a complete knowledge of it, and knowledge of it leads to the royalty promised to the Elect. The idea of "the Limit" comes from Plato. He wrote of the need to practice for dying.
"But when they are 'perfected' with a martyr's death, this is the thought that they have within them. 'If we deliver ourselves over to death for the sake of the Name we will be saved.' These matters are not settled in this way." (The Testimony of Truth, the Gnostic papyri)
Pleiades - Considered by the ancients to be the hub of the universe. The hidden, central axis of the universe is thought to be in the Pleiades, the world of the Thirteenth Aeon, called the world of the Thirteen. When Shem (Seth) travels out of his body during sleep, he passes through the clouds of the Pleiades, which he describes as being colors of beryl, emerald, amaranth and hyacinth. In the Pleiades may be located a world which has experienced a full planetary ascension, where all beings there live in a dimension of reality inconceivable to humanity of Earth.
"The pleromatic congregation...is a single representation although many...They are minds of minds, which are found to be words of words, elders of elders, degrees of degrees, which are exalted above one another. Each one of those who give glory has his place and his exaltation and his dwelling and his rest, which consists of the glory which he brings forth." (The Tripartite Tractate, Gnostic papyri)
Pleroma - The Plentitude, the fullness of deity, the shining sphere of the divinity with all its powers, its aeons, Archons and denominations. The Pleroma is to the Greek mystics and to the Gnostics what the Merkaba is to the Jewish mystic. The Pleroma, with thirty aeons and Wisdom as the intermediate plane, has portals, monads, guardians and powers, and there dwells Aphredon with the twelve Just Ones, Adam-Light with 365 Aeons, and the abyss where the only-begotten is hidden. In another abyss there are three Paternities; one is the hidden God; one has the Five Trees; one, in which are the Five Seals, encloses a Silence and a Source in which the twelve Just Ones behold themselves.
The Pleroma goes in search of the Elect in the abysses of Matter to offer salvation. The Gnostics believed that feminine elements must become masculine in order to unite themselves with the angels and enter into the Pleroma. It was from the Pleroma that Sophia fell when she desired the Treasury of the Light. The Pleroma is strengthened by Horos, the Limit, and Stauros, the Cross. The sphere atop the Tau cross, the Limit-Cross, of the Egyptian probably represents the Pleroma.
Plotinus - Devoted to the conception of a beautiful, good and ordered universe, Plotinus was a defender of Hellenic philosophy and accused the Gnostics of having departed from it. Opposing the belief in a corrupt terrestrial and celestial world, he directed criticisms against Gnostic dualism in his text, Ennead, written between 263-276 CE. He said the Gnostics had supplanted the authentically philosophic writings of Alexander of Libya, Philocomus and Demostratus of Libya with some apocalypses attributed to Zoroaster, Zostrian, Nicotheus, Allogenes, Mesos, and other Magi.
Plotinus had no patience with the Gnostics whom he said conceived of soulless celestial regions, devoid of all but the demiurge upon whom they heaped their abuse, but at the same time these Gnostics, whose hearts were filled, he said, with vice, desire and anger, pretended to be capable of contact with an intelligibility higher than the heavens. He said their use of incantations and hymns were meant to bewitch and charm the heavenly powers. According to Plotinus, the Gnostics possessed an absurd hatred of our physical nature but at the same time borrowed what they liked from Greek philosophy which espoused the opposite. The School of Plotinus refers to the followers of Plotinus. (I have to concur with Plotinus and, besides, he is one of my favorite writers. I am one of his followers.)
Porphyry - A disciple of Plotinus who wrote Life of Plotinus and Nymph's Grotto. Porphyry refuted Gnosticism, saying the Gnostics had departed from the ancient philosophy and that they had made up the Book of Zoroaster to make people think the dogmas therein are those of the ancient Zoroastor. Porphyry also wrote Philosophy of the Oracles, in which he translated a Greek hymn describing the beneficent Lord enthroned upon the ethereal Zenith, the Pole, around which the celestial spheres revolve.
"Fight the great fight as long as the fight lasts." (The Teachings of Silvanus, Gnostic papyri)
Principle of Opposites - The philosophy of Dualism is bound up in the idea of two opposing principles, thesis and antithesis, which must be reconciled, synthesized, for unity and harmony to exist. New Age spiritualism is said to be an age in which synthesis is nearer to achievement. The Gnostics believed, as did the Persians, the Hermeticists, and others, that it is the continuous conflict of the opposites, the force of attraction/repulsion of polarity, which results in the physical manifestation of the visible universe and all within.
"They exist in the manner of three...quadrangles - secretly within a silence of the Ineffable One." (Trimorphic Protennoia, Gnostic papyri)
Primordial Principles, Three - In Gnosticism, the three primordial principles are Light, Darkness, and Intermediate Spirit. In Persian religions, they are Endless Light (Ohrmuzd), Endless Darkness (Ahriman), and the Void between also called Vay. In Greek philosophy, they are Light, Dark, and Air or Fate. In Manichaeism, they are Father of Greatness, dwelling in the Light, the impure empire of the King of Darkness, and the Shadow between like a wedge.
Human philosophy began as Dualism, the idea of the tension of two opposing principles as responsible for creation. But polarity is fundamentally static. Before anything can happen, a relationship or interaction must be possible. Man-woman is not a relationship, but man-woman-desire is. In ancient Persia, Dualism is succeeded by the Three Primordial Principles. Three is the number of creativity and self-expression on the planes of the divine and the human. The great Greek philosophers, Pythagoras and Aristotle, realized that a relationship of three remains but potential. Four principles are required to account for the fact of matter, of substance. The Three Primordial Principles is followed by the philosophy of the Four Elements. The meaning of the number four is substantiality.
The Gnostic sects taught Dualism or the Three Principles, or sometimes both. The Sethians, the transcribers of the Chenoboskion manuscripts, taught an advanced philosophy of the Four Elements that included the next stage of evolution, the concourse of the forces. At the level of the five's, that which was stable breaks apart and becomes many-sided. The sixes, sevens and eight's represent the following stages of reformation and complexity.
Pythagoras - Greek mathematician and philosopher who may have originated the mysticism of numbers. Gnostics said the supreme divinity has a numberless name because no one has given him his name. He has not received a "name on loan" because no one proceeded him. Pythagoreanism influenced the Essenes and the Gnostics. The Pythagoreans and the Essenes both used the mason's trowel as their emblem. Pythagoras believed the Sun and the Moon were isles of the Blest, and he wrote of the mystical union by which one receives a heavenly partner, the Spirit. He ascribed an allegorical meaning to the Homeric texts, and thought that women were too weak to resist cosmic powers, that the strength of the male was required. The early Jews said Pythagoras was a student of Moses.
According to Aristotle, Pythagoras said the principle of order in the entire universe is numerical, that the whole universe is number. Pythagoras intellectualized and mathematized ancient concepts regarding god. Pythagoreanism, which captured the imagination of the ancient Mediterranean world and dominated the religious philosophies of that time, is the origin of modern numerology.
The Pythagorean organization and interpretation of numbers 1-9 is compared below to the Kabalistic organization of numbers 1-10.
| Pythagorean Greek | Kabalistic Gnosticism Hebrew |
| 1 = Source | |
| 1=Active | 2=Active |
| 2=Receptive | 3=Receptive |
| 3=Creative | 4=Creative |
| 4=Uncreative | 5=Destructive |
| 5=Adventurous | 6=Balance |
| 6=Stable | 7=Intellect |
| 7=Emotion | 8=Emotion |
| 8=Intellect | 9=Foundation |
| 9=Achievement | 10=Achievement |
An initial duality is expressed in the configuration on the left. The right shows an initial unity, which becomes a duality. The left expresses strict dualism and no hierarchical monism, with the only synthesis being achieved at the 9. In Greek mythology, strict dualism and no hierarchical monism is Zeus and Hera, who are always at odds. The configuration on the right is an expression of an on-going synthesis, with the central area between 1 and 6 containing a hidden synthesis, the area known Kabalistically as Daath. The columns of the configuration on the left are described as left - odd numbers, male, and good; right - even numbers, female and evil. The configuration on the right is interpreted to be the reverse, with the odd-even numbers changing columns at 7 and 8.
When these numbers are connected by lines, the configurations become more meaningful. Numerologically and aesthetically, the figure on the left disproves the theory that a strict dualism is responsible for the creation of the world. The figure on the right, the paradoxical combination of dualism and hierarchical monism, is a crystalline structure, evidenced in all matter.
Queen of Heaven - Usually a reference to Sophia and sometimes to the Virgin Mary.
Right and Left, Places of the - One's soul is composed of three elements; hylic (left), which is perishable, psychic (right), which may choose between mortality and immortality, and spiritual (middle), which is immortal. Left is a path to error. Those of the right are named "those of the calling." (The Tripartite Tractate, the Gnostic papyri)
"They gave him charge of the seventh heaven, below the veil between above and below. And he is called 'God of the forces, Sabaoth,' since he is up above the forces of chaos." (The Hypostasis of the Archons, Gnostic papyri)
Sabaoth - Also called Lord Sabaoth, Sabaoth the Good and Adonaiu. The Gnostic Sabaoth is much wiser than his father, Ialdabaoth. He supplanted his father in the Light and is installed as ruler of the seven heavens by Sophia and Zoe. Ialdabaoth, who is cast down into Chaos, jealously wages war against him.
In Gnostic texts, Jesus tells how the powers of Sabaoth the Adamas (Indomnitable) had been bound by Jeou, "Father of my Father," to the wheel of time. One of these powers, Iabraoth, became converted and was instated higher up, while Sabaoth the Adamas remained obstinately attached to his lower works and was bound to the sphere. According to Jesus, Sabaoth's son is named Taricheas, the god worshipped by certain Gnostic sects who held orgies and practiced impure rituals. Jesus said the god of this sect had the face of a wild boar with tusks, and on the back side of his head is another face, that of a lion.
In Jewish mysticism, Sabaoth is the father of the Serpent, but he is not systematically evil. He was lacking in foreknowledge and is the God of the Bible, the Creator of this universe and of the Mosaic Law. With his armies of angels, he is enthroned upon the constellation of the Chariot and is the Pole Star. By playing on the initial letter of the name of Sabaoth, the Hebrews could turn the Lord "of Hosts" into Lord "of the Seven" (planets).
The ancients believed the Egyptian, astrologers and diviners could predict what Lord Sabaoth would do. The Gnostic Sabaoth guards the "Portal of Life."
"Do not become desirous of gold and silver which are profitless, but clothe yourself with wisdom like a robe, put knowledge on yourself like a crown, and be seated upon the throne of perception." (The Teachings of Silvanus, Gnostic papyri)
"Do not become a sausage made of many things which are useless, and do not become a guide in your blind ignorance." (The Teachings of Sylvanus, Gnostic papyri)
Sacla - Also Soclan. Identified with Ialdabaoth. Sacla is said to be addicted to impure delights and to reign over Hell and Chaos. The name may be derived from the Egyptian Sokar (Sokaris), god of the necropolis of Memphis. The Egyptian religion had undergone the inverted interpretation as had the Old Testament, so that the "good" Osiris becomes Sacla-Ialdabaoth and his enemy Seth becomes good.
Sacla (Ialdabaoth) is the child of Sophia who is engendered when she tries to create as the primordial Father did, alone and without a partner. When Sacla is created, he creates for himself the heavens and hell and 12 great angels. When he announces that he is a jealous god and there is no other god but him, a voice from on high responds that Man exists, and so does the Son of Man. Sacla sees the image of this celestial Man reflected in the waters and creates the first human in imitation of that image. Samael is identified with Sacla and Ialdabaoth. Samael is the blind angel of Death, made blind by Moses when Samael came for him.
Seals - Usually described as five in number, the Seals protect the soul against the power of death and the power of the spheres. The possessor of the Five Seals abides in them and they abide in him/her. The possessor partakes of the mystery of gnosis, stripes off the garments of ignorance, and puts on a shining light. The Five Seals are received from the Light of the Mother, Protennoia.
While Adam was imprisoned in the heavy slumber of the body, the Savior sealed him with five seals of the light and the water of redemption, so that death should henceforth have no power over him. Seth was baptized with five seals to help him and his race escape the impure god of the 13 aeons. The angel Gamaliel watches over the great baptisms of the Seals performed by the Virgin of Light on the souls of the Perfect so they will be beyond the power of the spheres. Imprinted by decans on the hands, skull and body during its formation, the Seals, with passwords, give souls safe conduct through the planetary spaces. Jesus appeared to some of his apostles wrapped in a robe of light which had on it the five seals. The old age of the world will be marked by three seals - Atheism, Dishonor and Unreason.
Sephiroth - Plural for Sephirah. In Sepher Yetsira of Jewish mysticism, the Sepheroth are the ten primary numbers in which are comprised all the elements of the world. In Zohar, they are the world of spheres, the ten emanations proceeding from the hidden and infinite God, similar to the series of abstract powers which are added to the supreme divinity in early Common Era Gnosticism. In Sepher Yetsira, Teli the Dragon moves the spheres and turns them from east to west and north to south.
Seth - The biblical son of Adam and Eve, brother of Cain, Abel, and Norea (sometimes husband or son of Norea), and the spiritual Seth of the Gnostics, often deemed to be the Cosmic Christ force. Gnostics say Seth put on the body of Jesus and led him out of matter past the Watchers (lower angels), so that Jesus is identical with Seth even when he had become Christ, who was sent by the Mother of heaven to dwell among mankind. Jesus also is said to be a descendant of Seth, in a miraculous way and without having been begotten.
Seth, as the son of Adam and Eve, is the first of the race of the Perfect ones, the spiritual as opposed to the material (Cain), and the psychic (Abel). Eve said, "For God hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel." The Gnostics interpreted this to mean that Seth is superior and not of the same carnal and inferior births of Abel and Cain, that he is based on a holy pattern superior to their pattern. Seth appealed to the great Invisible Spirit to obtain guardians for his seed, called the human race of the Perfect or the holy Generation of the Spiritual, so they will awaken from oblivion here below. Seth and his successors are described as foreign or alien, of a particular race separate from the rest of humanity and participating in the world of supreme powers. Seth ascended to the zenith of heaven, and then higher yet towards the world into which he will draw the Elect.
Adam dictated a book to his son Seth, who bequeathed it to his descendants down to Noah, who took it with him on the Ark. The family of Seth erected stelae of brick and stone; brick to resist fire and stone (often thought to be the Egyptian pyramids) to resist flood. Judaism has traditions about the sons of God who were thought to be the children of Seth and to have lived on holy Mt. Harmon at the beginning of human existence. Seth is said to be buried in the Cave of Treasures where the Magi found the gifts left for them by Adam.
Many allogeneous (channeled) Gnostic books are attributed to Seth, the most important of the Gnostic prophets, with "seed of Seth" a reference to Gnostic sectaries. A spirit named Seth is behind the books Jane Roberts trance-channeled in the last few decades. The Melchizedekians raised Melchizedek above Seth, who taken up into heaven for 40 days by the supreme Mother, who imparted to him the supreme secrets of the Mysteries of the Pleroma and told him of the inferiority of the created world. Seth also may have been a real person, a great Gnostic teacher named Seth, or who called himself Seth.
In the pharaonic religion of Seth vs Osiris dualism, Seth was the enemy of the good gods, Osiris, Isis and Horus. Some pharaohs were Sethi, with Seth as the patron of their dynasties. In the magical literature of Egypt, Seth's name is used in magical invocations, and his handbook of incantations spread his name and his cult throughout the Roman world. The Egyptian Seth is identified with the monstrous Greek genie Typhon, who has a serpent's body. The Egyptian god Seth was considered by the Egyptians to be the father of Hierosolymus and Judaeus - the ancestors of the Jews. The Gnostics reversed the good and bad Egyptian gods, so that Seth became good. In Islamic belief, Seth is considered to be the first "Master," assimilated to Agathodaimon of Greek Hermetic literature. Agathodaimon, the Seth of Islam, is well known among the Shi'ite groups in Iran as a prophet. Seth is also identified with Setheus and with Seth, the earthly reflection of the Earth-Shaker.
Sethians - The Sethians were the Egyptian mystics who buried the Chenoboskion Manuscripts in the jar. When they buried the manuscripts, some of them newly transcribed, the Sethians were nearly extinct. They chose 52 of their books as the most important to bequeath to later generations of humanity. The information contained in those manuscripts is the basis of this book.
The Sethians, whose prophet was Seth, were not one of the Gnostic sects most violently opposed to the Old Testament, and they did not revere the accursed therein. They believed in the Three Principles; the two opposites and the intermediate, Wind or Spirit. The Light is on high, the Darkness below, the Spirit or Breath between. The Light (fire) sends rays into the Darkness (water) while the Spirit (air) disperses the Light throughout. The Light and the Spirit exist also in the Darkness and take on the nature of its element, Water. The Darkness cleaves to the Light and Spirit, as these two try to withdraw from it. When the three are in contact they set up a motion which produces an action. The form the action takes is dependent upon the concourse of the forces brought together. Their first encounter caused the creation of heaven and earth, envisioned as a womb. The next encounter created a strong, hissing wind born from water, which created all vegetation. From the hissing wind, thought of as a serpent, generation began. The Light and Darkness entered into contact with Matter (earth) and this resulted in the creation of humanity.
The appearance and construction of each created thing is determined by a specific combination, the concourse of the forces of the four elements. The Sethians believed that all bodies, inert or living, had to have their basic elements separated from each other if they were to rise to the higher world. Because they believed every part of the human body has its correspondence in the larger reality of Earth geography, this separation of the elements is necessary to break the bonds of the soul to the lower world.
The Sethians believed that when the Word of God comes down to the physical world, it comes down in the deceptive form of the Serpent. They attached great importance to Eugnostos the Murmurer. The jar containing the manuscripts contained two copies of Epistle of Eugnostos, and part of it included in The Sophia of Jesus. The Sethians were influenced by Hermeticism and Simonianism. They used the Book of Norea.
Four luminaries were significant to the Sethian theology: Armozel, who contained within him grace, truth, and form; Oriel, who contained within him conception, perception, and memory; Daveithai, who contained within him understanding, love, and idea; and Eleleth, who contained within him perfection, peace, and wisdom.
"My thought which was in my body snatched me away from my race. It took me up to the top of the world, which is close to the light that shone upon the whole area there. I saw no earthly likeness, but there light. And my thought separated from the body of darkness as though in sleep." (The Paraphrase of Shem, Gnostic papyri)
Shem - Also Seem and Seth. Shem is not a god, but a divinized man. The Paraphrase of Shem, the longest of the Chenoboskion manuscripts, opens with a account by Shem of his astral projection, in which his soul separated from his body and he was borne away into the heights of creation where all was light. Shem says he went out of his body in ecstasy, while his intellect remained in the body. As though in a dream, he heard a voice call out to him. The voice told him of the Three Principles, Light, Darkness, and Spirit, the three roots of all things, and how they intermingle. In his astral projection, he passes through the Pleiades, where the clouds are of various colors. Shem continues to ascend and view all the spheres within spheres of the creation. He learns of the Archons and of Ialdabaoth, who thinks he is the one and only god. Finally, Shem becomes the appearance of Jesus and, as Jesus, he says he is the companion of Sophia. Paraphrase of Shem contains a full description of the Pleroma.
When he awakens from his sleep his body is very heavy. Shem ends his account of astral projection by blessing those who know, when they are asleep, into what power their spirit will go after death. Of such mystic experiences as Shem's, Author of Allogenes writes:
"And you become afraid in that place, withdraw to the rear because of the activities. And when you become perfect in that place, still yourself. And in accordance with the pattern that indwells you, know likewise that it is this way in all such matters after this very pattern. And do not further dissipate, so that you may be able to stand, and do not desire to be active lest you fall in any way from the inactivity in you."
The Haggada identifies Shem with Melchizedek and elevates him to special status, as do the Gnostics. The Melchizedekians identify Shem with Melchizedek. Noah received from certain angels secrets he transmitted to Shem. Shem is sometimes said to be the son of Norea. He was called Shum-Kushta by the Mandaeans.
"Does someone have a prophetic gift? Share it without hesitation." (The Interpretation of the Gnosis, Gnostic papyri)
v Simon Magus - The famous magician and Samaritan from Gitta, called "The Magus," who may have been grounded in Hermeticism. Gnostic teachers were "good Samaritans" from Samaria. The sect of Simon Magus was founded after the death of John the Baptist, and they are considered to have established Gnosticism in the same way the apostles established Christianity. Simon Magus regarded himself as an authentic incarnation of the supreme powers, saying the Enlighteners spoke through his mouth (early trance-channeler). As a great and famous magician who drew large crowds in Samaria, he so amazed that country with his magic that the people there venerated his every word. He taught his disciples magical practices and incantations, how to make use of dreams, and how to contact and work with spirit guides.
He was baptized by and a follower of the Apostle Philip, who apparently could perform miracles. Simon Magus believed in reincarnation and wrote Great Revelation, an undiscovered text. In it, he teaches of the one supreme God, alien and superior to the base world. Two emanations have neither beginning nor end, and spring from the Silence invisible and incomprehensible. One, The Spirit of All, which is on high, governs all things, and is masculine. The other is feminine and gives birth to all things. They create the intermediator, the intangible space with no beginning and no end, wherein resides the Father, who is both male and female and who sustains and nourishes all things that have beginning and end.
"I used to dwell in the Pleroma putting forth the Aeons and bearing fruit with my consort." (Words of Sophia, A Valentinian Exposition, Gnostic papyri)
Sophia - Wisdom, also called Pistis, Book of Pistis-Sophia is a Gnostic manuscript dating from the 4th century CE, brought to Europe the second half of the 18 century, and translated in 1851. In the cosmogony elucidated by this manuscript, the universe is crowned by an infinite God, symbolized by the almond, who is a light enclosed within himself and from whose power all things emanate as innumerable, individual entities of God. From God issues the First Mystery surrounded by beings (spirits) who preside over 24 other mysteries. Further below is the Treasury of the Light, with 12 saviors and nine guardians at its three portals. This Treasury of Light is attained by those human souls who have received the Gnosis. Jeou, Melchizedek and Sabaoth are the powers who collect and bring back to the Treasury all the Lights (souls) that have been dispersed throughout the universe. The Virgin of Light judges souls and determines whether they are worthy to be returned to the Treasury of the Light. If they are worthy, they receive from the Virgin the seals, mysteries, and baptisms necessary for their journey into the upper realms.
The Virgin of Light is likened to the Persian divinity Anahita, mistress of the waters that flow from a heavenly source in the region of the stars. The Virgin of Light purifies the souls through baptism, seals the perfect souls, then returns them to the Treasury of the Light in the region of the stars. The sad story of the fall of the Virgin of Light from her exalted position in the celestial realms above is mirrored in the events of humanity below.
"Guard your camp and weapons and spears. Arm yourself and all the soldiers which are the words, and the commanders which are the counsels, and your mind as a guiding principle." (The Teachings of Silvanus, Gnostic papyri)
The Virgin of Light weighs the merits of the soul and dispenses justice according to the soul's spiritual accomplishments, like the Egyptian god Thoth, who placed the human heart on a scale and weighed it against the weight of a feather.
"Truth is the mother, knowledge the father. Those who think that sinning does not apply to them are called 'free' by the world." (The Gospel of Philip, Gnostic papyri)
When Justice finds the souls wanting in spiritual attainment, she sends them into the rotation of the spheres of down through the body of Draco, whose tail descends into the abyss. Draco is formed by the long and winding procession of the souls on the way to the abyss.
The Virgin of Light, as Justice, passes those perfect souls who are to ascend to the upper realms to the Treasure of the Light. Judging them worthy, she releases them from the birth/rebirth cycle, the dance of death, by sealing them against the powers of the spheres.
The Virgin of Light becomes filled with a longing to reunite herself with the Treasury of the Light and the supernal entities of the higher celestial realms. She envies those souls whom she sends upwards to merge with the Light. Her strong emotions of envy and desire weigh her down. She falls from her exalted position as the portal to the upper realms down into the lower heavens to dwell in the 8th sphere, the Ogdoad. When she falls, she becomes Sophia, the "Portal of Life," the door of birth into the Physical world.
"Then Justice created Paradise, being beautiful and being outside the orbit of the moon and the orbit of the sun in the Land of Wantonness, in the East in the midst of the stones." (On the Origin of the World, Gnostic papyri)
Sophia is guarded by Lord Sabaoth.
"Sophia fashioned great luminous bodies and all the stars." (On the Origin of the World, Gnostic papyri)
In Book of Pistis-Sophia, Jesus relates that in his celestial journeys he found Sophia in the 13th Aeon, the Ogdoad, grieving because she had not been reinstated to her former position. He comforts her and tells her that her repentance has been heard on high, and Lord Sabaoth has sent him to lift her out of the Chaos of the lower realms. In another text, she is reinstated to her former position in the lower limit of the 13th Aeon. Another account of Sophia relates she is happily vouchsafed a savior, a spiritual spouse, to join her in her reign as the "Portal of Life" to the material world.
"For without wind and stars, nothing happens upon the earth." (The Paraphrase of Shem, Gnostic papyri)
Thirteenth Aeon - The constellation of the Pleiades. The 13th Aeon, corresponding to the Ogdoad, is said to be located in the Place of the Left and ruled over by the Great Invisible Spirit with Barbelo and the triple powers. Jesus found Sophia sorrowing in the 13th Aeon and reinstated her at its lower limit. This aeon is also said to be ruled by the impure creator.
Tree of Death - Tree of evil. Emanating darkness and existing in Paradise in a dualistic opposition to the Tree of Life that emanates light, the Tree of Death is divided into many trees bearing war and cruelty, all strangers to peace and filled with wickedness and never bearing good fruit. The fruit, which produce parasites, are divided against each other and the tree. The whole tree is perverse, each part corrupting the other; the root is hatred; the trunk is violence; the branches are irritation; the leaves are aversion; the fruits are division and tastelessness; the color of the tree is denigration.
Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil - Acquaintance of Good and Evil. God told Adam and Eve not to disturb this tree because Good and Evil are linked together on it, co-existing in harmony. The Tree of Knowledge has the branches of a fig tree and fruit like dates. Jesus transformed himself into an eagle and lighted in the Tree to teach Adam and Eve the Gnosis. He dictated the Books of Jeou to Enoch while speaking from the Tree of Knowledge which is also called the angel Naas, the Serpent
Adam was killed by the tree of knowledge, called the law, that grows in the man-made garden. The Tree of Knowledge in God's garden makes humans alive.
Tree of Life - Tree of Good. The Tree of Life renders immortal the souls of the Just who are rising above matter. It grows as high as the sky, with branches like Cypress and fruit like bunches of white grapes. The Archons surrounded the Tree of Life with animals of fire, also with a twirling, flaming sword wielded by Cherubim, to defend it from Adam so he would not become immortal. Jesus had Adam taste the Tree of Life so he would realize he was imprisoned in his body. The Tree of Life is located variously in the East, West, and North region, and in the midst of Paradise in the middle of the Garden.
There is a "false" Tree of Life of the Archons that casts a shadow of hatred, has a bitter root, deadly branches, false leaves, perverse sap, sinful fruit, and the seed of desire. This Tree of Life grows from darkness and to taste of it sends one to hell. In another account of the origin of the Books of Jeou, the books were revealed to Enoch by Jesus who spoke from the Tree of Life, which is also called the angel Baruch.
Trees of Paradise - Those are the trees which grow in the Garden of Eden. They are trees, but also abstract entities, the first emanations from the world on high, expressions of the forces of life and death. The five trees of light represent abstract emanations of the Tree of Life; Spirit, Thought, Reflection, Intellect, and Reason. The five trees of darkness represent emanations of the Tree of Death. When the resurrected Jesus came down from heaven to speak with his apostles, he wore luminous vestments patterned with five trees.
There are five trees in Paradise which remain undisturbed summer and winter and whose leaves do not fall. Also, there are two trees; one bears animals and the other bears men. Adam ate from the tree which bears animals. Thus, he became an animal and brought forth animals. Adam and Eve, after eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, hid under the trees of Paradise. There are three phoenixes in Paradise. The first is immortal; the second lives 1,000 years, the third is consumed.
Ur - In Sumer in Babylon. In the Babylonian creation epic of 4,500 BCE, dualism finds its first systematized expression. In this religion, Marduk battles Tiamat (Draco), also the dragon of the sea, an early depiction of the seven-headed hydra of the Gnostics and the Egyptians. In the Babylonian religion, Earth is considered the battleground between Good and Evil, as Marduk and Tiamat struggle for human souls. Marduk, the supreme Babylonian god, vanquishes Tiamat and the forces of chaos. The grateful gods construct for him Babylon and Esagila.
This religion greatly influenced the Jews, who were exiled in Babylon from 597-538 BCE. The dragon, Tiamat, becomes the serpent in Genesis who leads Adam and Eve to enlightenment, and to their Fall. In the Bible, when the serpent convinces Eve to eat of the fruit, and she convinces Adam to do the same, the serpent comes to be identified as Satan. God and Satan then begin their battle for human souls, with Earth as the battleground, just as Marduk and Tiamat had done before them. When the biblical Abraham left Ur at the age of 75 to establish the Hebrew nation in Canaan, he would have been very knowledgeable regarding this religion of dualism.
The great ziggurat at Ur was built by King Ur-nammu (2112-2095 BCE). This ziggurat is thought to be the inspiration behind the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. The chief deity of Ur was Nanna, the moon-god, to whom the king dedicated his oldest daughter as high priestess. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, the Chaldaean (Babylonian) god Nanna entered the ziggurat in person and took his rest upon the bed there. Much later, Berossos, a priest of Bel-Marduk, made Babylonian religion known to the Greeks. Other such priests followed after him, taking with them to Greece the stories of Marduk and Tiamat.
Valentinians - This Gnostic sect, followers of Valentinus, believed the Cross is the secret of the Limit between the Father of Greatness and the lower Earth. The Valentinians practiced rituals and ceremonies intended to render themselves invisible, after death, to the powers of heavens their souls might encounter on ascent towards the Light.
The Valentinians possessed a Gospel of Truth. St. Iraneus accused them of boasting they had more gospels than are actually in existence and that they made them up. Two schools of thought developed within the sect causing a schism. One school believed the body of Jesus is psychic and at baptism the Spirit (the Word of the Mother from on high, Sophia) descended to him in the form of a dove, awakening his psychic element. The other school believed the body of Jesus is spiritual because the holy Spirit, Sophia, had descended to Mary. There was a disagreement as to whether the supreme divinity is a monad or a dyad.
Both schools taught that from the angels, born of the union of Sophia and the Savior, proceed Three Principles - Material, Psychic, and Spiritual. These three correspond to the three races of humanity and their higher and lower destinies. The three races are pre-figured by Cain (material), Abel (psychic), and Seth (spiritual). The Valentinians believed that after the spiritual seed which is dispersed among beings has attained to perfection, the Wisdom (Sophia) will re-enter the Pleroma where she will be espoused to the Savior, with the Pleroma as the heavenly bridal chamber. The spiritual beings will attain to the Pleroma, while the souls of the psychic will attain to the Plane vacated by Sophia, but will be cut off from the Pleroma by Horos-Stauros and become brides of the angels who surround the Savior. Then, the latent heat in the Earth will flame forth, completely destroying matter and the souls of the material. All matter will pass into nothingness.
"It is a faithful person fond of learning who is the worker of truth." (The Sentences of Sextus, Gnostic papyri)
Valentinus - Lived in Alexandria, Egypt (110-36 CE). When he was defeated in his candidature for the bishopric, he broke from the Church and withdrew to Cyprus to found his school there. He taught in Rome from 136-165 CE, and his disciples were Marcus, Ptolemy, Theodotus, Heracleon, Secundus. and Epiphanius.
Valentinus taught that the higher primordial world began as multiple series of emanations issuing from the supreme and invisible Father in successive couples. The origin of all things is a perfect aeon called Pro-Father, described also as the abyss, who is incomprehensible and eternal and dwells in profound repose. Co-existent with the pro-Father is a Thought which is also Silence. Thought and pro-Father unite to emanate the eight pairs of aeons (Ogdoad). Then, ten more are emanated, then 12 more, totaling 30 in all - the Pleroma, or Plentitude. The last Aeon, Wisdom (Sophia), tries to imitate the pro-Father by emanating as he had done, without a partner. The result is a terrible imperfection, the beginning of the created world.
Sophia and her creation are cut off from the Pleroma by the Horos-Stauros, Limit-Cross, and strive to re-ascend (as Malkuth seeks to re-unite with Kether in Kabala). The fallen Sophia, the Hebrew Akhamoth, prays to be readmitted into the Pleroma, and her prayers are heard. After a savior in dispatched to her, they give birth to angels. Among. these angels is the demiurge, who creates the cosmocrator, the devil, who rules over the visible heavens and the Earth. The demiurge, in this account, in not unrighteous. Called Metropator (Mother/Father), the demiurge directs the economy of the universe, and joyfully welcomes the savior and learns from him.
In nearly all these accounts of Sophia and the other names given to the Great Mother, she invariably loses her connection to the Pro-Father by either being attracted downward to the lights or either trying to give birth by herself alone to either an emanation, a sphere, an aeon, or the Savior. She is always fallen and becomes the archetype of the "Fallen Woman." Why this must be the case has to do with, I think, the problem of these men who can't seem to work around the absolute need for a woman in order get any birthing of anything done. The exceptions I can think of are found the mythology of ancient Greece in which the child Dionysus was born from the thigh of Zeus and when the child Athena popped out of the head of Zeus. It just seems to me, and perhaps I am being overly interested since I am female, that having to have an equal partner for procreation, either physically or metaphorically, has always been a problem for the ego of some men, especially these Gnostics who are determined to base spiritual reality upon a hierarchy or linear model. And then that linear model is carried forward throughout time in all the historical religions, that are still insisting on an ultimate deity that is male and is some kind of gaseous vertebrate, a condition that wouldn't require a woman to be involved in production. I mean, God being brought into existence by Goddess? WHAT?? Is that Constantine's Roman Legion I hear banging on my front door?
"Jesus said, 'Become passers-by." (The Gospel of Thomas, Gnostic papyri)
Wheel of Time - The celestial sphere Of Time and Fatality upon which a person is shackled in the temporal world. Sabaoth the Adamas became obstinately attached to his lower works and was bound to the sphere. In Gnostic texts, Jesus says that he has overthrown the unrighteous rulers of the spheres and abolished the course of Fate by changing the rotation of the spheres to an alternating movement, so they can no longer exert their powers over humanity.
"Jesus said, 'The pharisees and the scribes have taken the keys of gnosis and hidden them." (The Gospel of Thomas, Gnostic papyri)
Zoe - The daughter of Sophia. When the impure Archon Samael (Ialdabaoth), was created by mistake by Sophia, he first opens his eyes and sees only dark matter and believes himself to be the one and only god. In his ignorance of the existence of the higher world, he grows proud of his solitude and exclaims he is the one and only god. When a voice answers that he is mistaken, Samael challenges the voice to show itself. He then creates seven androgynous sons to preside over the seven planets, telling them he is the god of the universe. This time Zoe, also called Eve, answers by saying he is mistaken, and breathes upon him. Her breath becomes an angel of fire, who casts Samael into the bottom of the abyss.
Sabaoth, Samael's son, realizes the greatness of Sophia and Zoe and offers them hymns whereupon they raise him up to the seventh heaven above Samael, who smolders with resentment from the abyss. In anger, Samael creates death to reign in the sixth heaven. Death is both male and female with seven sons and seven daughters whose names evoke impure passions and afflictions.
What now do you think of as spirit? (The Interpretation of the Gnosis, Gnostic papyri)
Zoroaster - 628-551 BCE, or possibly 1400 or 1200 BCE. Also Zarathustra. The great Persian religious thinker whose philosophy of the one God, Ahura Mazda, inspired King Vishtaspa to power ancient Persia to dominion over Babylon and Egypt. Zoroaster also spoke Hebrew. The Jews claimed he had been a disciple of the biblical Abraham. He wrote Upon Nature and is identified as a prophet with Seth, Balaam, Ezechiel and Nimrod. The Gnostic elevation of Zoroaster to the status of Seth shows their regard for him and their deference to the Persian origin of many Gnostic beliefs.
Zoroaster also taught Dualism, the Three Principles, the Supreme Tetrad, wrote of the Mountain of Lights, and taught that by knowledge of all the higher things, and, by the magical virtue of the corporeal sense, one averts from oneself all the disasters of Fate, particular or universal. The Persian deity Anahita, mistress of the waters that flow from a heavenly source in the region of the stars, is entrusted with the seed (descendants) of Zoroaster. The Zoroastrians whispered their prayers and murmured their texts. Zostrian, the Persian Magus to whom the Book of Zostrian is attributed, is an ancestor, perhaps uncle, of Zoroaster.
"It is a faithful person fond of learning who is the worker of truth." (The Sentences of Sextus, Gnostic papyri)
"May God dwell in your camp, may his Spirit protect your gates, and may the mind of divinity protect the walls." (The Teachings of Silvanus, Gnostic papyri)
A | Abel | Abraham | Abrasax | Adam | Adamanous | Aeons | Alchemy | Allogeneous Books | Androgyny | Anthropos | Archons | Archontici | Astrology, Classical | Athoth | Audians | Augustine, St.
B | Barbelo | Bardeson of Edessa | Baruch | Basilides | Behemoth | Book of Archangels | Book of Buried Pearls | Book of the Cave of Treasure
C | Cain | Cainites | Carpocrates | Cathars | Celsus | Chaos | Chenoboskion Manuscripts | Christianity | Cosmogony of the Gnostics | Counterfeiting Spirit
D | Death | Decans | Deir Anba-Palamun | Diagram | Dragon, Constellation of | Dualism
E | Egypt | El | Elohim | Enki | Enoch | Enoch, Book of the Secrets of | Essenes | Eugnostos | Eve | Evil
G | Gnosis | Gnosticism
H | Hebdomad | Hermes | Hermes Trismegistus | Hermeticism | Holy Spirit | Homer
I | Ialdabaoth | Islam
J | Jesus Christ | John the Baptist | Judaism | Jung Codex
K | Kanteans | Key to Hydromancy | Kukeans
L | Leviathan | Limit-Cross | Luria, Isaac
M | Mandaeans | Manes | Manichaeism | Marcus | Mariamne | Mary | Matter | Melchizedek | Messenger, Divine | Mithra | Moses | Mountain of Lights
N | Nassenes | Nicolaitans | Noah | Norea
O | Ogdoad | Ophites | Ousiarchs
P | Paul, Apocalypse of | Perfect, The | Persia | Philo | Philosophers, Akhmim | Plato | Pleiades | Pleroma | Plotinus | Porphyry | Principle of Opposites | Primordial Principles, Three | Pythagorus
R | Right and Left, Places of the
S | Sabaoth | Sacla | Seals | Sephiroth | Seth | Sethians | Shem | Simon Magus | Sophia
T | Thirteenth Aeon | Tree of Death | Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil | Tree of Life | Trees of Paradise
V | Valentinians | Valentinus
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