sophiaserpentia | Entries tagged with gnosticism

From time to time I have pondered whether there is an older "messianic monologue" in the Gospel of John, around which narrative material was spliced to construct the final text. Consider this:

( John 10:1-30 )

The parts of the passage which I bolded flow seamlessly one into the next, even though these are supposedly different conversations from different days. Sure, it's entirely possible that Jesus picked up exactly where he left off a day or so later, but the monologue makes more sense as a single, unspliced whole. When we read this chapter of John's Gospel, the discontinuity gets glossed because this is obviously a written work rather than a recounting of a literal conversation that took place.

If you take the first-person messianic monologue out of the gospel, it resembles very strongly texts like The Thunder: Perfect Mind and Primary Thought in Three Forms, not to mention some of the Montanist prophesies.

In short, my opinion is that the messianic monologues of the Gospel of John are, like these other exampls, the product of an esoteric/visionary process whereby a person speaks for the divine in first person as a way of connecting with the divine and making the divine more personal and immediate.

Edit. This previous discussion on the possibility that John was originally a Gnostic document bears strong relevance here.

The working title of my book is The Serpent's Wisdom: Radicalism in Early Christianity.

I decided against using the word Gnosticism for various reasons. For one thing, the phrase "serpent's wisdom" implies it. It will also be obvious in the contents that much of the material strongly involves Gnosticism.

But also, many scholars of Gnosticism and early Christianity are moving away from the appellation "Gnostic," because the movements which were labelled "Gnostic" by Irenaeus and Tertullian and the other heresiologists have very little actual common ground. It would be like lumping Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism together and calling them by the same name.

On top of that, the appellation "Gnostic" makes it seem as though there was a more strongly polemic give-and-take between diverse Christian groups in the early stages (pre-Irenaeus) than there perhaps actually was. Much of the theology which came out of the "gnostic" groups shaped and strongly influenced the eventual "orthodox" theology that resulted.

So IMO the strongest axis of actual disagreement between early Christian groups was over the element of political and economic radicalism in the movement. Debates over doctrine were piggybacked on the "carrier wave" of debates over egalitarianism and anti-imperialism. Underlying theological discourse was a dispute between comfortable middle-class people who wanted to be nominally "Christian" without taking on the austerity and wealth-sharing which characterized the movement from the beginning (when it was made up of mostly poor and disenfranchised Galileans), and those who promoted a radical rejection of institutional trappings.

The term "thrice-male" occurs in at least three of the Sethian Nag Hammadi texts, see the search here for details.

Similarly, the term "thrice-great" is a translation of Trismegistus, an honorific used to relate to Hermes of the Hermetic tradition.

Does anyone know the significance of these terms? I mean, why thrice and not four times, or twelve times, or something else? Or are they just ancient ways of saying "double-plus good"?

Edit. It seems important for some reason to mention that this is on my mind because I woke this morning from dreaming about meeting someone who was, uh, graphically "thrice-male." I don't remember much more than that (and, gulp, might not say anything even if if I did).

An alternate Eucharist tradition is preserved in the Didache and is hinted at in the Valentinian Gnostic teachings.

Didache chapter 9 says this:

Now concerning the Eucharist, give thanks this way. First, concerning the cup:
We thank thee, our Father, for the holy vine of David Thy servant, which You madest known to us through Jesus Thy Servant; to Thee be the glory for ever.

And concerning the broken bread:
We thank Thee, our Father, for the life and knowledge which You madest known to us through Jesus Thy Servant; to Thee be the glory for ever. Even as this broken bread was scattered over the hills, and was gathered together and became one, so let Thy Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into Thy kingdom; for Thine is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ for ever.

The Didache is an interesting text which has confounded scholars. Some date it earlier even than Paul's writings, circa 50 AD. Others place it after the Gospel of Matthew, and therefore circa 100 AD. It seems to me that there are sections with a clear dependence on Matthew, but these are delineated and were probably (IMO) redactions. Much of the text feels "independent" as it describes a form of Christianity free of the stylizations of Paul and the Gospels. It is hard to imagine a Christian tradition after Paul or the Gospels not drawing from them (though as I explain below there may have been some reason for this, in the case of the Eucharist) -- so the bulk of it most likely predates other Christian writings.

The Didache is the product of an "Ebionite" community -- one of several strains of early Christianity who held strongly to Jewish tradition and worldview. As I have held before, the Gnostics grew largely out of the Jewish tradition and seem to have been allied with the Ebionites on this matter. For example, consider this:

We give thanks to you and we celebrate the eucharist, O Father, remembering for the sake of thy Son, Jesus Christ that they come forth [...] invisible [...] thy [Son....] his [love...] to [knowledge ......] they are doing thy will through the name of Jesus Christ and will do thy will now and always. They are complete in every spiritual gift and every purity. Glory be to thee through thy Son and they offspring Jesus Christ from now and forever. Amen.

This is from a fragment titled "On the Eucharist A". It seems to me to have a couple of similarities to the Didache ritual, notably that the breaking of bread is done in memory of Jesus but in praise to the Father.

The Gospel of Philip also contains a passage that seems to speak to this alternate Eucharist tradition:

The eucharist is Jesus. For he is called in Syriac "Pharisatha," which is "the one who is spread out," for Jesus came to crucify the world.

This brings to mind the description of the church as "gathered together from the ends of the earth into Thy kingdom," and reflects our understanding of the agape feast (the center of early Christian life) as fostering of community and togetherness. Bread, it was pointed out to me by

lady_babalon, requires an entire community to make and therefore represents the fruit of working together.

Likewise, the "Prayer of Thanksgiving" focuses on the Father and gives no mention to Jesus or Christ at all.

"We give thanks to You! Every soul and heart is lifted up to You, undisturbed name, honored with the name 'God' and praised with the name 'Father', for to everyone and everything (comes) the fatherly kindness and affection and love, and any teaching there may be that is sweet and plain, giving us mind, speech, (and) knowledge: mind, so that we may understand You, speech, so that we may expound You, knowledge, so that we may know You. We rejoice, having been illuminated by Your knowledge. We rejoice because You have shown us Yourself. We rejoice because while we were in (the) body, You have made us divine through Your knowledge.

"The thanksgiving of the man who attains to You is one thing: that we know You. ..."

When they had said these things in the prayer, they embraced each other and they went to eat their holy food, which has no blood in it.

So how did it come to be about Jesus? The answer to that is Paul. It is interesting that the Valentinians, who otherwise drew heavily from Paul, did not use his Eucharist. This may be because the Pauline Eucharist ritual had already become a divisive issue for Gnostics and Ebionites. (John, interestingly, did not mention the Eucharist at all, but instead described a sacrament of foot-washing at the last supper. Could this be another piece of evidence that John was the product of a Gnostic-leaning or "proto-Gnostic" community?)

As I have written before, Paul seems to have believed that the people of the church made up literally the body of the resurrected Christ -- the "pneumatic body," or "body made of spirit/breath/air," contrasted with the "psychic body," or "body made of flesh and bone." If Paul took the Church to be the resurrected body of Christ, then it might be thought of as a body made of bread and wine -- the elements of the agape feast where the church, made of people once scattered but now brought together, met and celebrated their unity. ("Where there are two or three gathered in my name, there I am" Matthew 18:20).

When Paul described the Eucharist in I Corinthians 11, it was in the context of it as a feast of sharing. In this passage, allowing a fellow Christian to go hungry during this feast was characterized as a sin against the "body and blood of Christ:"

[I Corinthians 11:20] When you come together, it is not the Lord's Supper you eat,
[21] for as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else. One remains hungry, another gets drunk.
[22] Don't you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? Certainly not!
[23] For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread,
[24] and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me."
[25] In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me."
[26] For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
[27] Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord.
[28] A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup.
[29] For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself.

The gospels touch on this, because the betrayal of Judas is revealed at the last supper, after he has taken bread broken by Jesus. In fact, the Gospel of John tells that Satan entered Judas after he ate the bread given to him by Jesus. Thus Judas betrayed not just Jesus but the community as a whole.

Alan 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:

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.

A lot of the occultists I know think of themselves as bold innovators, taking unchanging and ancient esoteric traditions and creating a personal variation on a theme.

The only real problem with this image is that esotericism is nothing but innovation. If you dig into the history of esoterica, you see that there has been constant evolution. Virtually everyone who's written anything in this field has left some personal mark on it.

What causes this impression of "unchanging ancient tradition" is the written word. To see a text and know it was written 1500 years ago gives a sense of long-term unchanging solidness. Esoteric orders, seeking to appear rooted and authoritative, do their part to encourage this impression.

The written record itself, though, belies this idea of unchanging esoteric tradition. The Gnostic library includes almost a dozen variations on the theme of Genesis alone; and as Irenaeus wrote, the Gnostic sects saw and encouraged ongoing innovation (although his way of putting it was that the Gnostics created a new heresy every day). The history of alchemical writing, too, shows this trend as well. Anyone who thinks that kabbalah has come to us from millenia of unchanging tradition should have a peek at Gershom Scholem's Kabbalah, which is dedicated to kabbalah's evolution over the centuries.

Even within a magician's own record there can be considerable evolution. See for example the record of Dee and Kelly, which goes on and on and on, stuff building on top of other stuff. My own record shows the same -- which is one of the reasons I took a long break from esoteric work; I didn't feel as though I was really making any progress, though I now believe that the real power of esoteric innovation is not in the content one receives, but in the effects of the method itself on the unconscious parts of the brain.

Innovation can include the revival of ancient traditions with no clear line of esoteric succession to the present, also called reconstructionism. The written and anthropological record includes many gaps which have to be filled in, and there are many aspects of modern society which cannot be matched one-for-one with assumptions underlying the old traditons, and this is where innovation plays a role.

So esoteric innovators are not doing anything special. In fact I daresay that if you aren't innovating, you aren't doing it right.

The following is a rudimentary statement of the thesis which I am developing for my book, tentatively titled The Serpent's Wisdom: Gnosticism and Radicalism within the Early Christian Movement.

In ancient thought, theology was not divorced from politics or economics; and so, what survives today of early Christian literature and which appears primarily or even solely theological is dripping with economic and political overtones. The history and scriptures of the early Christians cannot be properly understood without considering these "mundane" aspects which shaped the course of events and which drove much of the theology.

The environment in which Christianity and Gnosticism were born was one of extreme political and social turmoil. The Roman Empire imposed a political and cultural rulership and had co-opted the Judean leadership, imposing hand-picked kings and high priests, and Hellenizing the culture. There was economic upheaval too; peasants were being displaced and wealth was shifting away from the poor to the wealthy, away from the region and to Rome.

The Jewish religion had a long-standing and unique tradition of speaking up for the poor and down-trodden, in the form of the prophetic literature. Prophets, assuming the tone of divine righteousness, berated the ruling class in times past for oppression and exploitation. So the Judeans used the prophetic voice to express their displeasure with their situation. Suppression of dissidents became more and more extreme; dissidents fled to the desert or to places like Qumran to separate themselves, as much as they could, from the regime they hated.

The Gnostics took an extreme view, demonstrating their contempt for the status quo by depicting the God of the high priest as an insane and arrogant demigod imposing a sleep on people -- the sleep of complacency. They saw the religion of the Hasmoneans as a pacifier, keeping the Jews from seeing what the Romans were doing to them, economically, culturally, and spiritually.

The Christian movement got its start as an egalitarian social aid network in Galilee -- displaced peasants working together to feed their orphans and widows, and tend to their sick. While they were at it, they began to criticize the Romans and their Judean conspirators in Jerusalem and Tiberias. Some within the social aid network took a radical and defiant tone, and the movement was persecuted for it.

Early on, some of the Gnostics saw Jesus as one of their own -- a radical iconoclast and prophet in the old tradition of protest. Many Gnostics joined the Christian movement and portrayed Jesus as a practitioner of their own radical, egalitarian, individualistic, and feminist views. Others within the movement were influenced by Apocalyptic mysticism common at the time.

Many within the early movement were users of mystical and esoteric methods which have been demonstrated to bring about changes in emotion and awareness. A major thrust of the movement sought to find ways to achieve connection with the divine, and with the rhythms of the cosmos, without reliance on the earthly edifice of temples and rites and priests, since these could become corrupted. Hence Jesus was seen as consecrator of a "heavenly" temple much greater than the earthly temple of Jerusalem, which at the time of the early movement was a puppet of the Roman imperial machine.

The peasant movement engaged the attention and interest of a few scribes and others within the educated and privileged classes -- people such as Paul. These people developed a communications network and facilitated the spread and development of ideas. They wrote the gospels and episles. (Some have argued that no peasant movement has ever achieved any degree of success without involvement from a few literates in the upper classes.)

Over the next two centuries, the movement was transformed. The current of radicalism within the movement was not compatible with the structure that evolved as the movement grew. By the latter part of the Second Century, elements of teaching and practice which were seen as threats to the structure -- individualism, egalitarianism, feminism -- were rooted out.

During the second and third centuries, the Christian movement grew, and the Empire declined, to the point where the Empire needed to adopt the social infrastructure of the Christian church for its continued survival. It became increasingly a movement of the middle and upper classes, a movement which supported the Imperial status quo instead of challenging it. This co-opting was completed in the Fifth Century AD when the church became an official instrument of the Imperial edifice.

An essay in Karen L. King's (ed.) book, Images of the Feminine in Gnosticism has me thinking about this passage in I Corinthians:

( 1 Cor. 11:3-16 )

It's been argued that the proper way to read this, is that Paul was rebuking the Corinthian congregation for practices and theology which he felt was inappropriate. But what was it that the Corinthians were doing and teaching?

Well, it seems that some of the men were growing their hair long and/or covering their heads for worship, while some of the women were cutting their hair short and/or uncovering their heads for worship.

The argument of Dennis MacDonald is that the Corinthians had instituted a practice, in reflection of neo-platonic or Gnostic teaching, which involved denying or transcending one's gender and working to become an embodiment of the primal androgyne. The primal androgyne, in his understanding of neo-platonic myth, is fundamentally masculine, and so therefore women are still being denegrated in concept, even though the practice of removing their veils ostensibly makes them more free.

Such a practice might explain why women would remove the veil which marks their gender socially. However, he ignores and cannot explain why certain Corinthian Christian men would have veiled themselves, which they seem to have been doing. He also doesn't present any evidence that ritual androgynous dress was employed in ritual by any Gnostic or neo-platonic group at any time. He seems driven to devise an argument designed to make Paul look more like a feminist than the Corinthians or the Gnostics. (Edit: some of this is addressed in the rebuttal by Bernadette Brooten.)

The popular theory (such as that espoused by Elisabeth Shussler Fiorenza) is that the Corinthians were employing ritual transvestism as a way of incorporating Pagan ecstatic practices into their worship. If so, then Paul's main goal is to "de-ecstasize" Corinthian worship -- which idea is further supported by the fact that Paul follows this discussion with a chapter delimiting the idea of "gifts of the spirit."

I didn't have a chance to participate in the discussion which took place in my journal a few days ago about the presence or absense of divine femininity in Christianity, but I wanted to comment on a few of the things which came up.

First, regarding the issue of Adam and Eve in Paul, and which it was that Paul held to be responsible for "the Fall:" it may be true that Paul faults Adam for directly bringing sin into the world. However, Paul uses the Genesis story as an excuse to prevent women from preaching or teaching in church. If in Paul's view, men as a gender held the largest fault, then it does not make sense for him to have given men exclusive access to positions of education and power within the church.

Secondly, there was some discussion about whether the Holy Spirit is female. In some denominations apparently the Holy Spirit is revered as female, or even as divine Mother. This is in my opinion a positive development, but it can't really be described as common practice within any of the major denominations. There is some linguistic confusion, since the Hebrew word ruach is feminine, the Greek word pneuma is neuter, and the Latin word spiritus is masculine. The Catholic Church is pretty clear in its position that the Holy Spirit is male or perhaps neuter, but not feminine, following from the pronoun use in the Nicene Creed, and Latin scriptures which gender the Holy Spirit as male. I'm unsure about the Orthodox denominations, but I'm pretty sure that most Protestant groups deny the Holy Spirit as feminine (except for some of the liberal or mainline denominations).

Among ancient Christian writings, it is only among the Gnostic texts where the Holy Spirit is clearly described as female or Mother. Several Gnostic texts describe the Trinity as Father, Mother, and Son. In the Gospel of the Hebrews and the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus calls the Spirit his Mother. The Valentinians gave reverence to a goddess they described as the wife of the Root, which they named Silence or Grace.

The scriptural sources demonstrate a fierce debate in the early church over the politics of gender and the participation of women in the church. The evidence of 1 Timothy 2:11-15 is that within the orthodox/catholic church, the eventual outcome of this debate was the denial of access to positions of instruction and decision-making to women. Part of this outcome appears to be linked to the fact that women played key role in various un-orthodox sects, Gnostic and otherwise (the Montanists being a strong anti-Gnostic example).

Current Music: Bjork "Pleasure is All Mine"

This is modified from a comment I just posted in

challenging_god.

Elaine Pagels, in The Gnostic Gospels, argued that there was at one time talk of divine femininity in Christianity, but that early-on it became associated with the schools of thought later known as Gnosticism. The Gnostics did have many things to say about divine femininity. As Gnosticism was cut from the Christian community, so too was the idea of the divine feminine.

In Pagels's analysis, the theological debate was intertwined with a political debate about the role of women in the church. A vivid account of this debate was recorded in the Gospel of Mary Magdalene.

Some remnants of divine femininity can be found in the Bible, primarily pieces and bits of the Jewish Sophia tradition (from Hellenic Alexandria): Proverbs 8 contains a monologue from the viewpoint of Sophia, and the books "Wisdom of Solomon" and "Wisdom of Jesus Son of Baruch" (both in the Catholic Bible) contain bits about Sophia as well. In this scripture, Sophia (Wisdom) is portrayed as a goddess-figure who played a role in the creation of the cosmos.

Current Music: Cocteau Twins "A Kissed Out Red Floatboat"

The chief [of the archons] is blind; because of his power and his ignorance and his arrogance he said, with his power, "It is I who am God; there is none apart from me." [cf. the decalogue -- SS] When he said this, he sinned against the entirety. And this speech got up to incorruptibility; then there was a voice that came forth from incorruptibility, saying, "You are mistaken, Samael" - which is, "god of the blind."

His thoughts became blind. And, having expelled his power - that is, the blasphemy he had spoken - he pursued it down to chaos and the abyss, his mother, at the instigation of Pistis Sophia. And she established each of his offspring in conformity with its power - after the pattern of the realms that are above, for by starting from the invisible world the visible world was invented.

As incorruptibility looked down into the region of the waters, her image appeared in the waters; and the authorities of the darkness became enamored of her. But they could not lay hold of that image, which had appeared to them in the waters, because of their weakness - since beings that merely possess a soul cannot lay hold of those that possess a spirit - for they were from below, while it was from above. This is the reason why "incorruptibility looked down into the region (etc.)": so that, by the father's will, she might bring the entirety into union with the light.

from The Hypostasis of the Archons

This is an obvious parallel to the opening of Genesis:
[Genesis 1:2] Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

Though it is an obvious parallel, there are important distinctions. Note for example that the Gnostic text presumes that the Incorruptble Divine Spirit is female. In fact, throughout the entire text, wisdom is revealed from female to female -- in the Valentinian scheme, females are the primary bearers and receivers of wisdom. The Archons lust after Sophia's reflection in a possessive way -- wanting to make it their own and contain it. You cannot possess, however, the reflection of light on water; it comes as it does, and you must simply receive it as it presents itself.

The "Hypostasis of the Archons" is a Valentinian text, and as such, assumes a distinction between the soul-natured (or psychikoi) and the spirit-natured (or pneumatikoi). That distinction comes into play in the above, in that the soul-natured and spirit-natured react differently to the reflections of spirit 'in the formless waters'.

What isn't explicitly stated, is that for a reflection to be visible on the surface of water, the surface of the water must first be still.

This is a depiction of the way in which the Divine presense touches us. Its touch is so subtle and so light that we see only a reflection of it in the waters of our soul during moments of stillness.

There are those who see the reflection and try to capture spirit and wrap it up in words and concepts, so that it will always be with us. This is depicted in the Hypostasis graphically as the gang-rape of Eve by the Archons.

There are those instead who seek to maintain inner stillness so that the reflection will appear more often and with more clarity.

Today is the Feast of the Epiphany, the holiest day in the Gnostic calendar and the start of Carnival (in those places where it is celebrated).

"Epiphany" comes from a Greek word for "revelation," theologically meaning the revelation of God -- which presumes of course a dualistic separation between divine and mundane. If one experiences a gulf between the human and divine, then the bridging of that gulf must be an occasion for reassurance and hope.

But even if one does not believe in such a divide, then unless one is an atheist one must acknowledge at least the appearance of a divide -- a veil that separates mundane consciousness from moments of awareness or gnosis. An epiphany then is a parting of the veil, the removal of our pre-occupations that prevent us from awareness of higher states of potential.

If there is only a veil between us and gnosis, then all one has to do is reach out and part the veil.

tat tvam asi... now remember!

My previous entries marking the Feast of Epiphany can be read here:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sophiaserpentia/107424.html
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sophiaserpentia/329818.html

I have belatedly gotten around to reading The Da Vinci Code, in part because I'm a cheapskate and I was waiting for it to come out in paperback (it never occurred to me that I could borrow a copy), but also because I have a tendency (not always justified) to avoid things that are popular simply because they are popular. So I approached this book as "my duty" as a dedicated researcher of all-things Gnostic. Though at one point I had some grumpiness and anticipated that my review would be scathing, by the end my opinion mellowed and I am glad I read it.

Since it is common knowledge what the book deals with, I feel that it isn't necessarily a spoiler to discuss the material in the book, because I can do so and leave the plot points undiscussed. Even so, I will put things behind lj-cuts because I believe in informed consent.

Characterization: ( B- )

Plot: ( A- )

Readability: ( A )

I want to give a few thoughts on the material and research covered as well, because this is what is most interesting to me in the subject matter of the book.

Symbols of the Sacred Feminine: ( A- )

Sacred Sex and Hieros Gamos: ( A+ )

The Priory of Sion and the "holy bloodline of Jesus" claim: ( C )

The Gnostic Gospels and Dead Sea Scrolls: ( F )

Overall: B+. If one overlooks the places where his argument gets thin, Brown has written a very accesible and thought-provoking book. It brings many important topics to mainstream attention and opens a conversation on the meaning of the divine feminine's absence from Western religion.

"Tiphareth droppings" is the derisive phrase I coined a few years ago to describe the kinds of mystical revelations that appear in the form of words, ideas, or concepts.

About six years ago, I did a series of magickal workings which frequently involved automatic writing and astral visions. I would take these automatic writings and attempt to interpret them using all of the occult tools at my disposal -- mostly word and letter tools appropriated by occultists from Kabbalah.

One day I woke up and came to the conclusion that I'd allowed myself to be stuck in a self-feeding loop; one set of visions and automatic writings would presage the next. Each set would hint at big revelations to come, but this was never forthcoming. It was just hints on top of suggestions on top of glances of something sublime.

It was addictive, though, and exciting; it felt like I was doing something important. Only I really wasn't; I was writing down nonsense which came from some uncharted non-linear part of my brain and pushing symbols around on paper. Not long after I finally gave myself permission to step off the tiphareth-dropping merry-go-round was not long before the day I started studying Gnosticism much more seriously.

I haven't totally discounted the possibility that the primary purpose of this was to effect changes in the subconscious parts of my mind, or that it was needed to counter the linear, logical, overly-rational parts of my mind that tended to dominate most of the time. Learning how to circumvent the logical parts of the mind and cultivate creativity seems to be a part of the individuation process. Parallels to dream-diary work might be considered too.

There are also those who believe that the Gnostic writings were accounts of similar kinds of workings. The Nag Hammadi library contains several varations on the theme of the Gnostic interpretation of Genesis -- at least half a dozen, differing mostly in details and nuances. Irenaeus wrote that his opponents judged one of their number mature if they were capable of generating new "heresy."

So it could be that the process of opening your mind and allowing what wants to flow is a useful stage in the process of spiritual growth.

Tuesday's visit to the MFA also brought to my attention a Mayan permutation of the Gnostic myth. It's long been my belief that the Gnostic mythology points to such a fundamentally universal aspect of the human condition that some form of it will almost inevitably appear in any mythological scheme. In Greek mythology, for example, Zeus overthrew the arrogant and overblown Chronos.

In Mayan mythology the overblown arrogant deity is Itzam-Yeh, which translates as "Seven-Macaw." The image shown above is Itzam-Yeh sitting in a World Tree which represents the Milky Way, and the interloper-hero Hunahpu (associated variously with the sun and with the morning star).

I found a synopsis of the myth here:

Seven Macaw is a character in the Mayan epic The Popul Vuh. In the darkness before the world's dawn, Seven Macaw was helpful to humanity, guiding them with his light. However, arrogance leads him to brag that he is more important than the sun and the moon. One day the twin heroes of the The Popul Vuh [Hunahpu and Ixbalanque] teach him a lesson. They hide beneath the fruit tree where he feeds and hit him with a blowgun dart, knocking him over the tree top and down the other side. In the latitude of Guatemala where the Mayans lived, this describes the trajectory of the constellation [the Big Dipper] through the sky — once a day making an arc up through the sky and descending to the horizon. Anthropologist Dennis Tedlock also thinks that Seven Macaw must be shot because he offends the Hurricane god. In July, the constellation is out of sight in those latitudes, and mythologically speaking, this clears the way for Hurricane to bring the summer rains.

Compare this to the Gnostic myth of the demiurge, Yaldabaoth, who is in some ways a good and helpful god, but who becomes arrogant with his power and declares there is no god before him.

Hunahpu and Ixbalanque are described as heroic brothers who, because of their good deeds, were deified and became the sun and moon. As a deity, though, Ixbalanque seems to have become female, at least partially, because they are described as the parents of the first humans. They seem therefore to be similar in concept to a syzygy.

Current Music: Enigma "Silence Must Be Heard"

The more I read of The Meme Machine, the more convinced I am in my conclusion that Gnostic myths about the Archons reflect an early understanding of memetics, and that mysticism is a practice aimed at undermining the control of memes and culture over the individual.

More later...

Current Mood: happy

In 1913 Carl Gustav Jung developed a procedure for inducing visions that he termed "active imagination." He combined hypnagogic states with visualization techniques in order to induce waking imaginations that were autonomous, as are dreams, and not consciously directed, as are daydreams. Jung's procedure has since had a variety of successors. ...

The significance of active imagination for the history of religion remains to be assessed. Several intriguing speculations have been offered. Jung alleged the use of active imagination in gnosticism, alchemy, The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, and Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra. Henry Corbin made a case for active imagination in the Islamic gnosis of medieval Isma'ilism, Avicenna's Neo-Aristotelean mysticism, and theosophical Sufism. Antoine Favre has suggested that a blend of gnosis and active imagination has been part of Western esotericism since its systemization in the Italian Renaissance.

The present study is, to my knowledge, the first systematic history of active imagination in Western culture. ... It is my thesis that a paired use of visionary and unitive experiences, dependent for the most part on active imagination, constituted the gnosis, "knowledge," at the mystical core of the gnostic trajectory in Western esotericism from late antiquity to modern times.

from the Preface of Dan Merkur's Gnosis: An Esoteric Tradition of Mystical Visions and Unions

I have been re-reading Elaine Pagels' book Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, and this stood out to me:

Justin, like many Jews and many of his fellow [contemporary] Christians, tended to interpret the difficulties of human life less in terms of the fall of Adam and Eve (Genesis 2-3) than in terms of the fall of the angels (Genesis 6:1-4). According to Genesis 6, the great and famous men of ancient times -- those called giants -- were the result of a hybrid union between God's angels and human women:

The sons of God [angels] saw that the daughters of men were fair; and they took to wife such of them as they chose... There were giants on the earth in those days... when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them, the mighty men of renown. (Genesis 6:2-4)

Justin explained that some of the angels whom God had entrusted to administer the universe betrayed their trust by seducing women and corrupting boys (so Justin amplified the story of Genesis 6), they "begot children, who are called demons."

... The majority of humankind fell under their power, and only an exceptional few, like Socrates and Jesus, escaped demonically induced mental slavery. This invisible network of supernatural energies proceeded, then, to promote the fortunes of their henchmen. "Taking as their ally the desire for evil in everyone," Justin explained, the demons became the patrons of powerful and ruthless men, and "instituted private and public rites in honor of those who are most powerful."

Justin saw the result at every turn -- above all in the vast panoply of imperial propaganda, which claimed for the Roman emperors and their governors, magistrates, and armies the power and protection of the gods. The injustice that dominated the law courts indisputably proved, according to Justin, that they were controlled by demons, who manipulated the judges to destroy anyone, from Socrates to Jesus to the present-day Christians [sic], who opposed the demons or threatened to expose them....

As I was reading this, it struck me that Justin's interpretation of the Pagan gods as demons, related to fallen angels, is strongly reminiscent of the Gnostic account of the Archons. Compare the above, for example, to this, from the Hypostasis of the Archons:

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.

Later in the account we see that Cain, the firstborn to Eve, is the descendant of the Archons. So, structurally, the myth is different from the Genesis account in its details. However, the Gnostics understood their version of the myth as related to the existence of human evildoers.

They also understood the Archons as "rulers of this world" in a sense that is very similar to Justin's description of the Pagan gods and the imperial authorities associated with them: Gnosticism and Christianity both represented, at this stage, a radical revolt against the imperial order in every way -- in religious, political, economic, and cultural terms.

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This article in Christianity Today, linked to by Frater AMPH, concerns the role of Gnosticism in the early formation of Christian doctrine.

It is embarrasing to see an article like this from an accomplished scholar like Ben Witherington III. It is particularly puzzling that Witherington chose to cloud his arguments in a disingenous and misleading way instead of simply acknowledging the truth about these matters, since the truth of what happened is not inherently damaging to Christian doctrine.

He starts by quoting from the The Da Vinci Code, a popular work of fiction which suggests that bishops changed Christian doctrine at the Council of Nicea and then instituted a massive cover-up. He uses this clearly fictional scenario to muddy the issues at hand:

( Read more... )

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Current Mood: calm
Current Music: Dead Can Dance "Cantara"

The Letter of Ptolemy to Flora, preserved word-for-word by Epiphanius in his tome Against Heresies, describes the Valentinian position regarding the Law of Moses. In the early church, this text was popular as an "introductory pamphlet" to Valentinian teaching; the positions given herein, and the supporting exegesis, are sophisticated and reasonable. In this examination I am going to use Layton's translation as offered in The Gnostic Scriptures.

The Law established by Moses, my dear sister Flora, has in the past been misunderstood by many people, for they were not closely acquainted with the one who established it or with its commandments. I think you will see this at once if you study their discordant opinions on this topic.

For some say that this law has been ordained by God the Father; while others, following the opposite course, stoutly contend that it has been established by the adversary, the pernicious devil; and so the latter school attributes the craftsmanship of the world to the devil, saying that he is "father and maker of the universe."

Ptolemy instead lays out a position that differs with both the mainstream Christian interpretation of the Law of Moses as coming from God, and with the "Sethian" Gnostic position that the Law of Moses was produced by the devil.

( Read more... )

While this represents a legalistic and exegetical argument, like all of the Valentinian literature there is an undertone of "deconstruction" which hints at even deeper levels of self-deconstruction. To understand the fullest meaning of the analysis given in this text, it must be applied to the text itself. If the Law of Moses is understood as an "instance" of divine justice, then every religious instruction must itself have the same limitations -- if there is any divine element at all in the teaching, it is covered over by human interpolation and human lack of understanding.

The Valentinians understood Yahweh to be the Lord of the Jews, but not, in probable accord with Deuteronomy 32, the supreme Father or Root of All. In this way we can analyze in Valentinian teaching a hint that the Lord is taken to be perhaps the collective "higher self" or "angel" of the nation of the Jews. Its wisdom is thus the lower wisdom of the human race, not the divine wisdom which can only be learned by gnosis (acquaintance with the Root of All).

Much of the Valentinian literature in this way contains implicit warnings (discernable only to initiates) against allowing Christianity to become yet another legalistic "Law of Moses" representing the work of another Lord, another "collective higher self" offering distilled human -- not divine -- wisdom. Many later Gnostics, in their criticisms of the church, implied that this is in fact what happened.

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The Serpent's Wisdom

Eat of this fruit; your eyes shall be opened, and you will be as Gods.

Entries tagged with gnosticism

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thrice-male and thrice-great

an exposition on the eucharist

reflecting some thoughts back and forth: Promethea and Hypostasis of the Archons

a new heresy every day

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Veiled men and unveiled women in Corinth

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Why is there no divine feminine in Christianity?

Epiphany: Sophia's reflection in the waters

Epiphany: Parting the Veil

Review: The Da Vinci Code

"Tiphareth Droppings"

Seven-Macaw the arrogant god

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I keep forgetting, and then remembering, why this is one of the most important books in my library.

Genesis 6 and the Archons

So which is it?: a rebuttal of Witherington's "Why the 'Lost Gospels' Lost Out"

The Letter of Ptolemy to Flora

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