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sophiaserpentiaAlan Moore's Promethea series centers around a woman -- appropriately named Sophia -- who becomes the newest in a chain of women who channel a goddess-like heroine named Promethea.
The character-entity Promethea represents a chain of instruction passed from one woman to another woman, regarding a struggle to free humankind from a limiting blindness. This is a theme about which I have commented here before -- though not explicitly. It has much in common with the scheme depicted in the ancient Gnostic text Hypostasis of the Archons.
In this text, a Valentinian Gnostic reading of the Genesis myth, Adam and Eve are oppressed by rulers (archons) who impose a sleeplike fugue and create a false garden to keep them imprisoned. This false garden is a gilded cage which distracts humankind from seeing the fullness of reality.
The Archons represent the forces which shape us as individuals; but they also represent the forces that limit and oppress. They are parents or husbands who feed us but also beat and terrorize. They are kings and senators who promise prosperity at the cost of our sons and daughters sacrificed to the war machine. They represent also the consumerist mentality which provides us with immediate creature comfort gratification in exchange for a lifetime of wage slavery. These are not invaders, enemies outside of our lives or our reality; they are the spectres from within, the enemies we create, the enemies we become, the enemies which shape us and mold our reality. In short, the Archons represent what I call Cannibal.
The Gnostic teaching is one manifestation of a perennial mystical reaction to and rebellion against the self-imposed trap of the Archons, and the power dynamics they impose upon the human race. The parallels between mystical teachings of many different (unconnected) traditions have been commented upon at length (see for example the work of Aldous Huxley) -- but what has usually been left unsaid is that the spiritual well from which these teachings spring is our fundamental humanity reacting in horror to the fundamental inhumanity of Cannibal. This is why the same themes crop up in mystical teachings over and over, no matter how brutally "heretics" or "blasphemers" or "infidels" are suppressed.
A powerful analysis is presented in this passage:
On a literal level, one tool whereby a lower class is oppressed is rape. This is not just a tool for the oppression of women (though it is that surely) but also, when done by an invading army or a member of the upper class (for example the tradition of prima noctae), a act to demoralize and dehumanize an entire community. This passage contains a particularly vivid image of oral rape as an act of silencing, "defiling" the "stamp of her voice."
But the indefeatable spirit thwarts the Archons, by creating an image for them to defile. The "true" Eve does not reside within the clay image which is raped by the Archons -- just as Promethea's father gives himself to the persecuting Christians to save Promethea, manipulating them with magic the whole time -- and just as Jesus was said to give himself as a Passover lamb (and, according to one Gnostic text, to stand laughing while the Romans beat and crucified an empty shell that looked like him).
The chain of wisdom, beauty and eternal truth in Hypostasis goes as follows:
Every link in the chain starts with a woman, and most of the wisdom is passed from woman to woman. This is also what we see in the Promethea series; a chain of initiation whereby the liberating truth is passed from woman to woman. I believe this was to underscore a point: that Truth and spirit are on the side of the oppressed, and that those who are oppressed have wisdom to share which should not be overlooked or devalued.
Perhaps children are more oppressed than women; and so the statement could have just as effectively been made by saying something like, oh, "Only the one who is as a child shall enter the kingdom of heaven."
On another level, I think Alan Moore intended Promethea to represent the Gnostic library discovered at Nag Hammadi and the effect he feels it will eventually have on the world. After all, like Promethea, the library was sent out from Alexandria into the desert, entrusted to the care of Tahuti and Hermes, just before destruction at the hands of zealous Christians.
Edit. I feel compelled to mention that I was inspired to write this post in part by a conversation I had recently with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
queenofhalves. She mentioned a more than passing interest in Promethea and, coincidentally, I had just started to read the first book of the series. To an extent, then, this post is intended as something of a gift.
The character-entity Promethea represents a chain of instruction passed from one woman to another woman, regarding a struggle to free humankind from a limiting blindness. This is a theme about which I have commented here before -- though not explicitly. It has much in common with the scheme depicted in the ancient Gnostic text Hypostasis of the Archons.
In this text, a Valentinian Gnostic reading of the Genesis myth, Adam and Eve are oppressed by rulers (archons) who impose a sleeplike fugue and create a false garden to keep them imprisoned. This false garden is a gilded cage which distracts humankind from seeing the fullness of reality.
The Archons represent the forces which shape us as individuals; but they also represent the forces that limit and oppress. They are parents or husbands who feed us but also beat and terrorize. They are kings and senators who promise prosperity at the cost of our sons and daughters sacrificed to the war machine. They represent also the consumerist mentality which provides us with immediate creature comfort gratification in exchange for a lifetime of wage slavery. These are not invaders, enemies outside of our lives or our reality; they are the spectres from within, the enemies we create, the enemies we become, the enemies which shape us and mold our reality. In short, the Archons represent what I call Cannibal.
The Gnostic teaching is one manifestation of a perennial mystical reaction to and rebellion against the self-imposed trap of the Archons, and the power dynamics they impose upon the human race. The parallels between mystical teachings of many different (unconnected) traditions have been commented upon at length (see for example the work of Aldous Huxley) -- but what has usually been left unsaid is that the spiritual well from which these teachings spring is our fundamental humanity reacting in horror to the fundamental inhumanity of Cannibal. This is why the same themes crop up in mystical teachings over and over, no matter how brutally "heretics" or "blasphemers" or "infidels" are suppressed.
A powerful analysis is presented in this passage:
Then the authorities came up to their Adam. And when they saw his female counterpart speaking with him, they became agitated with great agitation; and they became enamored of her. They said to one another, "Come, let us sow our seed in her," and they pursued her. And she laughed at them for their witlessness and their blindness; and in their clutches she became a tree, and left before them her shadowy reflection resembling herself; and they defiled it foully. - And they defiled the stamp of her voice, so that by the form they had modeled, together with their (own) image, they made themselves liable to condemnation.
On a literal level, one tool whereby a lower class is oppressed is rape. This is not just a tool for the oppression of women (though it is that surely) but also, when done by an invading army or a member of the upper class (for example the tradition of prima noctae), a act to demoralize and dehumanize an entire community. This passage contains a particularly vivid image of oral rape as an act of silencing, "defiling" the "stamp of her voice."
But the indefeatable spirit thwarts the Archons, by creating an image for them to defile. The "true" Eve does not reside within the clay image which is raped by the Archons -- just as Promethea's father gives himself to the persecuting Christians to save Promethea, manipulating them with magic the whole time -- and just as Jesus was said to give himself as a Passover lamb (and, according to one Gnostic text, to stand laughing while the Romans beat and crucified an empty shell that looked like him).
The chain of wisdom, beauty and eternal truth in Hypostasis goes as follows:
- It begins with "Incorruptibility," whose reflection on the waters inspires the Archons to make humankind.
- Then we see "the spirit-endowed woman" who rouses the clay spiritless form of Adam from his inability to stand and speak -- prompting Adam to say of her, "It is you who have given me life; you will be called 'mother of the living'. - For it is she who is my mother. It is she who is the physician, and the woman, and she who has given birth."
- Then the "female spiritual principle" fills the snake and convinces "the carnal woman" to eat of the forbidden fruit. Then the carnal Eve convinces Adam to eat the fruit as well. The chief Archon curses the snake and the woman before cursing the man -- depicting a chain of oppression which puts women under men.
- Then Norea, a daughter of Adam and Eve (not mentioned in Genesis) is excluded from Noah's ark but is approached by the great angel Eleleth (whose name is reminiscent of Lilith) who saves her from the flood and teaches her how to defy the Archons.
Every link in the chain starts with a woman, and most of the wisdom is passed from woman to woman. This is also what we see in the Promethea series; a chain of initiation whereby the liberating truth is passed from woman to woman. I believe this was to underscore a point: that Truth and spirit are on the side of the oppressed, and that those who are oppressed have wisdom to share which should not be overlooked or devalued.
Perhaps children are more oppressed than women; and so the statement could have just as effectively been made by saying something like, oh, "Only the one who is as a child shall enter the kingdom of heaven."
On another level, I think Alan Moore intended Promethea to represent the Gnostic library discovered at Nag Hammadi and the effect he feels it will eventually have on the world. After all, like Promethea, the library was sent out from Alexandria into the desert, entrusted to the care of Tahuti and Hermes, just before destruction at the hands of zealous Christians.
Edit. I feel compelled to mention that I was inspired to write this post in part by a conversation I had recently with
queenofhalves. She mentioned a more than passing interest in Promethea and, coincidentally, I had just started to read the first book of the series. To an extent, then, this post is intended as something of a gift.
