|
This is the Mystery of the concealment of God in Nature, a
mystery that
was sometimes presented under the symbol of a
self-scattering,
sometimes under the symbol of a magical sleep, or mystic
death.
(21) "The Earth that brought forth the God" is the "ground of
the
individual soul," and is also the Sanctum Sanctorum of the
Universe,
the Hidden Sanctuary where the "Man" is raised from mystical death
or
is reborn. No doubt the symbolism is drawn from Egyptian
sources.
(22) This passage might be paraphrased, "Those who have received
Life
and Light in the Concealed Sanctuary of the Soul know, through
this
Crown of Perfection, that the Inheritors of the Kingdom of Light
are
indeed reborn from the Indivisible Body, who is the Mother of us
all.
(23) AAA ΩΩΩ = The Living Space of Spaces, Æon of Æons. See note
18
and _cp._ Rev. 1:8, 17-18: "I am Alpha and Omega ... the First and
the
Last, and the Living One; and I was dead, and, behold, I am alive
unto
the æon of æons."
(24) The Body of Christ, which in its
transcendental aspect is also His
Bride and Mother. _Cp._ 2 Clem. xiv.: "I
do not suppose that you know
not that the living Church is the body of
Christ; for the scripture
saith, 'God made Man, male and female; the male is
Christ, the female
the Church; and the books and the Apostles belong not to
the Church
that now is, but to the Church which is from above. For it
is
spiritual, as is our Jesus, but is manifested in these last days
to
save us. But the Church, being spiritual, is manifested in the
flesh
of Christ.... Great is the Life and Immortality which this flesh
can
partake of--that is, of the Holy Spirit which is joined to it--nor
can
any declare or utter what the Lord has prepared for His
chosen.'"
(25) This extremely interesting and important passage is also
one of
great difficulty, for it is full of technical terms and allusions
which
would need a small treatise to elucidate properly. For example,
it
seems to imply the doctrine of two Logoi that Clement of Alexandria
was
accused of teaching, and which is found in certain
Hellenistic
writings. The "Body of Light" is the Astroeides in which the
"Adept"
can cross the "Fate-Sphere," the "Midst," the regions of
consciousness
where mechanical cause and effect prevail and contact the
Pleroma, or
Universe of Divine Freedom and Fullness. "Charis" or "Grace" is
the
name of the Bride or Body of the Logos, and the use of it
here
symbolises a "raiment" or "Body" still more exalted than
the
Astroeides. It is the Body beyond the Stars, the Monadic Robe or
"Robe
of Glory," into which the "Star-like Body" was transformed at
the
Horos, Limit or Boundary of the Worlds of Difference and of
Sameness.
What kind of Peace was that in which the Alone-begotten dwelt in
the
Monad? A Peace most truly given to those within and those without,
for
in it all things were created. To realise what is meant we
must
remember that "Charis" and "Resurrection" were names of "Staurus,"
the
Pillar that made with Horos the Great Cross referred to more than
once.
"Peace," then, was the state of the Logos in Mystic crucifixion,
the
Peace of God which established, reconciled, justified all
things.
Hence it can be inferred what transformation the Star Body had
to
undergo to become the Robe of Glory. The Cross and the Master
were
one. The Cross of Calvary was to the Gnostic Teacher the outer
and
efficacious sign of this Mystery or Sacrament. So also the
Pentecostal
outpouring recorded in Acts was the outward sign, or sacramental
token,
of the assumption by the Master of the Robe of Glory, the vesture
of
the Monad or Transcendental and Universal Church, which could not
be
assumed here. From thenceforth the band of disciples became a
Church,
the Mystic Body of Christ, the outward sign of concealed mysteries;
and
it will be seen in what manner Jesus was the Father of all
Light-Sparks
and gave resurrection to the body. Such was the teaching of
the
Gnosis. To make the matter clear to readers interested in
mysticism,
but unfamiliar with Hellenistic technical terms, it may be said
that
the "Bodies" so often referred to may be taken as standing for what
may
be called the Life side of various stages of mystical consciousness,
as
"Light" stands for the Mind side; but Life and Light are one.
(26)
"The Gate of God." _Cp._ the Naasene Document in Hippolytus:
"This Mystery
is the Gate of Heaven, and this is the House of God,
where the Good God
dwells alone; into which no impure man shall come,
no psychic, nor fleshly
man, ... but it is kept under watch for the
Spiritual alone--where, when they
come, they must cast away their
garments, and all become bridegrooms,
obtaining their true manhood
through the Virginal Spirit. For this is the
Virgin big with child,
conceiving and bearing a Son--not psychic, not
fleshly, but a blessed
Æon of Æons."
"Gnosis," then, was the Mystery
of Regeneration or Rebirth from above.
It will be observed that the text
shows no hostility to "Faith." This
is an indication of early
date. "Mystery" is often, though not always,
the equivalent to
"Sacrament."
(27) There is then another "Universal Mother," Phanerios or
Phaneia
("Wisdom without the Pleroma"). In the last resort the two Mothers
are
one. Phaneia is the Mother of the manifested world in which there
is
matter, but she does not seem to be in exile, as in the Sophia
Myth.
Like Isis in the Osiris legend, she seems to have gone forth to
gather
together the self-scattered limbs of the Man and to redeem Him
from
captivity through the efforts of the great hierarchs that are given
to
her.
(28) The pre-existence of the soul is taught, also the loss of
the
memory of its true nature owing to its fall into "Matter"
[Hyle]. But
this fall is not regarded as either a sin or a mistake, but as
a
needful step in the mystery of Rebirth or "Re-ordering." The
Overseer
is the "Mind of all Masterhood," the Logos, the Second Father of
all.
It is tempting to connect the Triple-Power with the Triple-Bodied
Man
of the Naasene Document and see in him the symbol of a simple
Universal
Consciousness "polarised" into the three states of Spiritual,
Psychic,
and Material.
(29) This Vision of the Advent of the Creative
Word seems to be in part
a summary and anticipation of things described
otherwise later in the
MS. After it the writer (or writers) goes back and
describes the
"Re-ordering" from the time that "the veils of the æons were
drawn"
from various points of view. Various Cosmic processes are
delineated
symbolically, and their simultaneous working is not
excluded.
(30) The Universal Man had fallen into bondage in the
Fate-Sphere.
(31) I think that what we are to understand is, that the Man
is raised
from His state of Mystical Death or Self-dispersion by
the
Protogennetor (Son, First Parent), crowned with the Lights of Wisdom
by
the Hidden Father "Who has no consort," and robed with cosmic life
by
the Mother. Compare what has already been said about the Robe of
Glory
and the outward signs of its descent at Pentecost. The work of
the
Mantle would seem to symbolise the re-ordering work of the Church,
the
"New Creation," the new impulse on its mystical
side. Is
Protogennetor, then, a cryptic title of Christ? In a sense I think
it
is, but there are other issues which are better discussed at a
later
point.
The Title "Without King" recalls the Naasene Document and
its "One is
the Race without a King which is born Above."
(32) The
Seven Stratelatai, leaders or generals, are perhaps the
seven
Planets.
(33) _Cp._ the Akhmim Codex: "She (Barbelo) is the
First Thought, his
Image, she becometh the First Man; that is the Virginal
Spirit, she of
the triple Manhood, the triple-powered one, the
triple-named,
triple-born, the æon which ages not, the
Man-woman."
34. Who are the Mother and the three great hierarchs? It is
tempting
to connect the three with the three traditional paths of
Purgation,
Illumination and Union, Water, Fire and Spirit. The Propator,
who
desires to turn the World to God, and who is, through the descent of
a
particular power, the Father-Mother of the Spiritual Life to come,
may
symbolise the process of Purgation and the Baptism of Water;
the
Autopator, who utters the promises of Christ and who has the power
of
an Ennead of initiation, may typify the Illuminative Life and
the
Baptism of Fire; while the Protogennetor, robed in
cosmic
consciousness, so that he can walk even the waters of the Primal
Deep
(Noun), who draws forth finally from the material life, may
represent
the inception of the Life of Union and the Baptism of the
Spirit. All
this may be true, but, if I mistake not, there is more behind
the veil
of symbolism, and it is continual allusions to this _more_,
plain
enough to the person for whom it was intended, that renders the MS.
so
peculiarly difficult. Who is Phaneia, the Mother without the
Pleroma,
who owes her position to the descent of the Royal Robe? She stands
for
nature in what may be called its sacramental aspect, and she
also
stands for the Churches, if I mistake not, and more particularly
for
the community or order to which the writer or writers
belonged. This
implies a certain claim to a high mystical self-knowledge on
the part
of that community. Again, the title "Son Protogennetor" is
most
significant. He that bore it must be the Son of the Sacred House,
the
"Son of the Doctrine," and the First Parent, or Father in God, of
those
to come after. He invites comparison not only with the Saviour of
the
Gospels, but also with figures that appear in the myths of the
mystery
cults: with Horos, the son of Isis, with Hermes the Thrice-Great,
with
the "Eagle" or "Father" whose title represented the highest grade
of
the Mithriaca. I suggest that he may represent the ideal candidate
in
the mystery of initiation--that is to say, he who, by entering
into
himself, has attained to the "unio mystica," has raised up the
"Man"
within himself, has been "reborn" as a god in Divine consciousness,
and
so is qualified to hand on the vital processes of the Gnosis to
others,
becoming thereby their spiritual parent. So he is called
Son
Protogennetor. He is Christ in the sense that Galahad of the
"Quest,"
and Parsifal of Wagner's great drama are Christ. The theory
of
initiation as conceived in the early mystical communities seems,
in
part at any rate, to rest upon the proposition that he who has
himself
attained to Union with God is able to "start," to "initiate,"
in
suitable persons, and under certain conditions, those processes
which,
under Providence, result in a like consummation. Thus we appear
to
have a claim in the MS. to a transmitted "Mastership" in the ranks
of
the order going back to Jesus Himself: "For whose sake resurrection
is
given to the body. He is the Father of all Light-Sparks," The
Propator
and Autopator would seem to represent different aspects of this
claim.
"Gnosis" was not the possession of a body of secret Doctrine in
the
sense of having a number of formal propositions containing
occult
information, but a vital knowledge of the processes of
"Regeneration"
or "Apotheosis."
Then, again, we have the idea of a
"Divine Mind" or "Logos" manifesting
Himself through a Body of Universal
Consciousness, represented
sacramentally (that is to say effectually) in the
"physical world" by
the bodies of a body of believers. The rites of this
body symbolised,
again "effectually," the modes and activities of the Body of
Universal
Consciousness of which it was the outward sign, just as its
doctrines
reflected on the plane of mentation and discourse the workings of
the
Divine Mind, which are above mentation and discourse, though
not
contrary to it. The acceptance of these ideas seems to
have
constituted "Pistis"--"the Faith by which we believe in the
Mysteries
of the Man"--a mode of the Divine Energy which resulted in good
works.
"Gnosis" was the knowledge of the processes by which these ideas
passed
from the life of formal belief and intellectual assent into the life
of
realised consciousness. The "Hylics," men in Hyle or "Matter,"
were
"the children of this world," so absorbed in the life of the
senses
five that they lived like "brute beasts without
understanding." [Hyle
as a technical term was not always understood too
literally by the
Gnostics and Platonists (see various passages in Codex
Bruce), but
derived its importance as the symbol of a certain state
of
consciousness.] "Psychics" were those whose consciousness
was
sufficiently aroused to accept a formal belief in viewless
Divine
Energies and to order their social conduct on the basis of that
belief.
The "Spiritual," the "Perfect," those perfected in Gnosis, that
is,
were those that were actually conscious of participating in a Mind
in
common and in a Body of transcendental energy in common. This
Mind
(Logos), Light-Spark, and Body (Monad) constituted a sole Being,
Man,
or the Son of Man, neither male nor female, and yet both, who
enveloped
all things, even those of Hyle (_v._ the Naasene Document) in
His
Infinite Perfections, who manifested all things, who was concealed
in
all things and who was above all things. An ideal Church or
Community
of "Spiritual" men, conscious of the whole Man in each of its
members,
could focus within itself, without any robbery, all the energies of
the
Universe, and by concentrating and applying them in a certain
manner
could give birth to the whole order within the consciousness of
the
called and chosen candidate, who thus became a
"Self-Knowing,"
"Self-Fathered," "Fore-Fathered" god, a "Race without a King
in the
name God." His substance was "enformed" by the Sacraments of
the
Manifested Order (Phaneia), and the substance thus "enformed"
was
finally "assumed," "translated," "transformed," what you will, in
a
mode utterly beyond all symbol and image by the "descent" of the
Divine
"Grace," "First Concept," "Ennead and Monad Without
Seal-Mark,"
"Barbelo" (again what you will), and given final "Re-birth in the
Light
of the Mind." To form an Ideal community of this kind, a community
of
gods in God, by a series of grades or steps, places of "Repentance"
or
"change" slowly taken, was, I believe, the purpose of those
responsible
for the original of the present MS. "They began from the base
upwards
that the building might unite them to their companions"--souls that
in
æonian bliss beheld the Face of God unveiled. Into this building
plan
the Neophyte was initiated to give thereto his soul and body as
a
willing oblation and sacrifice. It seems a reasonable suggestion
to
offer that this document consists of a series of meditations
and
spiritual exercises given to the candidate before one of the
inner
"initiations" or sacramental "starts" that was consummated beyond
the
veil of signs and symbols. For such an end not only Faith, not only
a
reasonable Foundation in an accepted philosophy, that of Plato, but
an
Imagination intensified into intuition was needed. Hence these
strange
hieroglyphs on the expressed veil. The Child of Fire must
behold
rising within himself from the Immeasurable Abyss of Godhead
the
five-rayed morning star of Love, Faith, Hope, Gnosis, and Peace,
the
herald of the Perfect Dawn of a New Birth.
Possibly "Propator,"
"Autopator" and "Protogennetor" may also have been
the official designations
of hierophants in the sacramental side of
some "Mystery" consummated in
solitude, from which the candidate
returned an "Epopt."
(35) _Cp._ Ps.
104:1, 2: "Thou art clothed with honour and majesty: who
coverest thyself
with light as with a garment."
(36) This hymn or prayer seems to be an
invocation to the "Dark Ray" on
behalf of the candidate (and also for the
building up of the "Ideal
Order"). The consummation, beyond all signs and
images, is in the
hands of God alone. A "start" may be effected by duly
qualified
hierophants under certain conditions, but the crown "Pantelos" is
given
by the "Father of all Fatherhood" alone.
(37) This looks as if
in this system the Fruit of the Pleroma was also
the Father of the
Fullnesses. The phrase "He made a world and bore it
into the Temple" seems
to mean that He assumed a body of manifestation.
(38) The veil which
surrounded the Pleroma or World of Divine Ideas was
called "Stauros" (Cross)
and Horos (Boundary). _Cp._ Hippolytus (vi.
3):
"Now it is called
'Boundary' because it bounds off the Deficiency from
the Fullness [so as to
make it] exterior to it. It is called Partaker
because it partakes of the
Deficiency as well; and it is called 'Cross'
because it hath been fixed
immovably and unchangeably, so that nothing
of the Deficiency should be able
to approach the æons within the
Fullness."
See also the "Gnostic
Crucifixion," 9, 10, 11 (Acts of John): "[The
Cross] is the defining (or
delimitation) of all things, both the firm
necessity of things fixed from
things unstable, and the harmony of
wisdom. And as it is Wisdom in Harmony,
there are those on the Right
and those on the Left--powers, authorities,
principalities and daemons,
energies, threats, powers of wrath,
slanderings--and the Lower Root
from which hath come forth the things in
genesis. This, then, is the
Cross which by the Word hath been the means of
'Cross-beaming' all
things--at the same time separating off the things that
proceed from
genesis and those below from those above, and also compacting
them all
into one."
The "Mantle" in which the Man is clad and which
severs and orders all
things is evidently another aspect of the same
idea.
The use of the term "veil" is suggestive, as the term is so
often
employed in Hellenistic Mysticism in connection with
"Initiation."
Finally, it is just worth noting that it is possible that what
Origen
has to say about the self-limitation of God is influenced by
the
tradition concerning the Horos or "Boundary."
(39) This is
undoubtedly a reference to the Mystical Crucifixion so
often mentioned in
previous notes. It is the Master Symbol of the
Unitive State, of the
reconciliation and union of God and Man, and of
the participation of the
individual in the Universal. Its presence at
this point of the text is most
suggestive. The candidate, "the Birth
of Matter," stands, mystically at any
rate, before the Veil at the Foot
of the Cross. To pass the Veil and to
enter into the Fullness means
being united with the Master in His Passion and
Crucifixion.
The Cross is evidently a Tau, and I suggest that the
frontispiece may
represent this Mystery, the Crucifixion of the Æon, O, upon
Staurus,
the Cross and the Master being One, AΩ and AΩ. The meaning of
XMI
is unknown. It has been suggested that it is (with EIC ΘΕΟΣ) a
symbol
of the Trinity in Unity, or a veil of the Divine Name.
(40) The terms I
have translated as "Sole Unstainable," "Sole
[Foundation]-stone of Adamant"
are "Amiantos," "Adamantos." Besides
meaning "unstainable," Amiantos was the
name of a pale green stone.
Readers interested in the legend of the Graal
will recall that the
Graal is represented as a green stone in the "Parzival"
of Von
Eschenbach. "Adamantos" is "diamond." Here and in the account of
the
Monad as the Metropolis of Monogenes, "filled with men of every
race
and with all the statues of the king," there is a curious parallel
to
be found to a happening in the life of Saint Theresa. "Being once
in
prayer," she says, "the Diamond was represented to me like a
flash;
although I saw nothing formed, still, it was a representation with
all
clearness how all things are seen in God, and how all are contained
in
Him.... Let us say that the Divinity is like a very lustrous
Diamond,
larger than all the world, or like a mirror--and all that we do is
seen
in this Diamond, it being so fashioned that it includes
everything
within itself, because there is nothing but what is contained in
this
magnitude."
I have ventured to insert [Foundation] because I
think that there is a
punning allusion to "Adamas." _Cp._ Naasene Document:
"The 'rock'
means Adamas. This is the corner-stone ... which I insert in
the
foundation of Zion. By this he means allegorically the plasm of
man.
For Adamas, who is inserted in the inner Man, and the foundations
of
Zion are ... the wall and palisade (_sc._ Horos) in which is the
inner
Man."
(41) The prayer seems to be for the transmutation of the
members of the
order by mystical marriages with their archetypal "selves,"
that the
mysteries of the Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, and of
the
Descent of the Paraclete may be realised after a certain
manner.
(42) Compare this passage with what has already been said
concerning an
attempt to form an Ideal Order. "A place of Metanoia" implies
here a
radical change of the whole being rather than "repentance"
as
ordinarily understood. The "topos" of Autogenes, the
Self-begotten,
was the first station of the journey of the Light-Spark
without the
Pleroma, and is the last station of the return within.
The
extant "Gospel of Mary" (Codex Akhmim), which was "reviewed" by
Irenaeus, and
was therefore composed before 180 A.D., states that from
the Light of the
Christ and the Incorruptible proceed forth four great
Lights to surround
Autogenes. Their names are Harmozel, Oroiael,
Daveithi, and
Eleleth. Irenaeus says, "Charis [Grace] was conjoined
with the great and
first Luminary, and this they will have to be the
Saviour and call him
Harmogen"--the Harmes-begotten. The name "Harmes"
appears in the present
MS., and is evidently a name for Barbelo. These
things are important for the
date of the Greek original. The allusions
to Pistis-Sophia are probably
interpolated; there seems to be no room
for her adventures in the scheme of
the text. But what are we to make
of the mysterious "Baptism in the name of
Barpharanges"? Does
"Barpharanges" (the meaning of which no one seems to
know) simply =
Harmogenes = the begotten from Barbelo, "the Virginal Spirit,"
the
Image seen in the "pure water of Light"? If so, then we have in
all
probability an allusion to the Gnostic Baptism with the Holy Spirit
or
Light. "Harmogenes" will be the Child of the Mystical Marriage
with
the Virginal Spirit by which the "Spiritual" recover their
true
manhood, a "blessed æon of æons": that is to say, that the
Epopt
himself is mystically "Autogenes," the "Self-begotten," having
been
reborn a god in God.
The rest of the text is
missing.
43. This Hymn to the Light seems to stand in some close
connection
with the text we have been discussing. If what has been
suggested
concerning the contents of the Greek original should prove
correct,
both the nature and position of the Hymn become plain. It consists
of
various acts of the will not altogether unlike some of those
prescribed
in certain Catholic manuals for those in the Unitive way. It is
the
form of Prayer given by the "Director" or "Master" to his disciple,
to
be used together with the MS. as part of his preparation for, what
I
believe to be, the "Baptism of Light." A large part of the Hymn
seems
to be missing owing to the state of the MS., and the order is
uncertain.
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