- 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. They 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.
- (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.
- 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"]
- 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.
- 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.
- 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."
- 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.
- 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)
- 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) - 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. - 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. - 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)
- 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" and 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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). The 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?
- 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.
- 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?
- 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)
- 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.
- 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)
- 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.
- (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).
- 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.
- (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)
- 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)
- 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.
- 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.)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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.
- 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.
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.
Paul, Apocalypse of | Perfect, The | Persia | Philo | Philosophers, Akhmim | Plato | Pleiades | Pleroma | Plotinus | Porphyry | Principle of Opposites | Primordial Principles, Three | Pythagorus
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 Bookmap
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