THE GNOSTIC CRUCIFIXION
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ECHOES FROM THE GNOSIS
BY G. R. S.
MEAD
VOL. VII.
THE GNOSTIC CRUCIFIXION
THE
THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY LONDON AND
BENARES 1907
PRINTED IN GREAT
BRITAIN
ECHOES FROM THE GNOSIS.
Under this general
title is now being published a series of small volumes, drawn from, or based
upon, the mystic, theosophic and gnostic writings of the ancients, so as to
make more easily audible for the ever-widening circle of those who love such
things, some echoes of the mystic experiences and initiatory lore of their
spiritual ancestry. There are many who love the life of the spirit, and who
long for the light of gnostic illumination, but who are not sufficiently
equipped to study the writings of the ancients at first hand, or to follow
unaided the labours of scholars. These little volumes are therefore intended
to serve as introduction to the study of the more difficult literature of the
subject; and it is hoped that at the same time they may become for some, who
have, as yet, not even heard of the Gnosis, stepping-stones to higher
things.
G. R. S. M.
THE GNOSTIC
CRUCIFIXION
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE 9
THE VISION OF THE
CROSS 12
COMMENTS
20
POSTCRIPT 69
TEXTS
Bonnet (M.),
_Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha_ (Leipzig, 1898).
James (M. R.), _Apocrypha
Anecdota, T. & S._, v. i. (Cambridge, 1897).
_F._ = _Fragments of
a Faith Forgotten_, 2nd. ed. (London, 1906).
_H._ = _Thrice Greatest
Hermes_ (London, 1906).
ECHOES FROM THE
GNOSIS
VOL. I. THE GNOSIS OF THE MIND. VOL. II. THE HYMNS
OF HERMES. VOL. III. THE VISION OF ARIDÆUS. VOL. IV. THE HYMN OF
JESUS. VOL. V. THE MYSTERIES OF MITHRA. VOL. VI. A MITHRIAC
RITUAL. VOL. VII. THE GNOSTIC CRUCIFIXION.
SOME PROPOSED
SUBJECTS FOR FORTHCOMING VOLUMES
THE CHALDÆAN ORACLES. THE HYMN OF
THE PRODIGAL. SOME ORPHIC FRAGMENTS.
THE GNOSTIC
CRUCIFIXION.
PREFACE.
The Gnostic Mystery of the
Crucifixion is most clearly set forth in the new-found fragments of _The Acts
of John_, and follows immediately on the Sacred Dance and Ritual of
Initiation which we endeavoured to elucidate in Vol. IV. of these little
books, in treating of _The Hymn of Jesus_.
The reader is, therefore,
referred to the "Preamble" of that volume for a short introduction concerning
the nature of the Gnostic Acts in general and of the Leucian _Acts of John_
in particular. I would, however, add a point of interest bearing on the date
which was forgotten, though I have frequently remarked upon it when lecturing
on the subject.
The strongest proof that we have in our fragment very
early material is found in the text itself, when it relates the following
simple form of the miracle of the loaves.
"Now if at any time He were
invited by one of the Pharisees and went to the bidding, we used to go with
Him. And before each was set a single loaf by the host; and of them He
Himself also received one. Then He would give thanks and divide His loaf
among us; and from this little each had enough, and our own loaves were saved
whole, so that those who bade Him were amazed."
If the marvellous
narratives of the feeding of the five thousand had been already in
circulation, it is incredible that this simple story, which we may so easily
believe, should have been invented. Of what use, when the minds of the
hearers had been strung to the pitch of faith which had already accepted the
feeding of the five thousand as an actual physical occurrence, would it have
been to invent comparatively so small a wonder? On the other hand, it is easy
to believe that from similar simple stories of the power of the Master, which
were first of all circulated in the inner circles, the popular narratives of
the multitude-feeding miracles could be developed. We, therefore, conclude,
with every probability, that we have here an indication of material of very
early date.
Nevertheless when we come to the Mystery of the Crucifixion
as set forth in our fragment, we are not entitled to argue that the popular
history was developed from it in a similar fashion. The problem it raises is
of another order, and to it we will return when the reader has been put
in possession of the narrative, as translated from Bonnet's text. John
is supposed to be the narrator.
(The Arabic figures and the Roman
figures in square brackets refer respectively to Bonnet's and James' texts. I
have added the side figures for convenience of reference in the
comments.)
THE VISION OF THE CROSS.
1. [97 (xii.)]
And having danced these things with us, Beloved, the Lord went out. And we,
as though beside ourselves, or wakened out of sleep, fled each our several
ways.
2. I, however, though I saw the beginning of His passion could not
stay to the end, but fled unto the Mount of Olives weeping over that which
had befallen.
3. And when He was hung on the tree of the cross, at the
sixth hour of the day darkness came over the whole earth.
And my Lord
stood in the midst of the Cave, and filled it with light, and said:
4.
"John, to the multitude below, in Jerusalem, I am being crucified,
and pierced with spears and reeds, and vinegar and gall is being given Me
to drink. To thee now I speak, and give ear to what I say. 'Twas I who put
it in thy heart to ascend this Mount, that thou mightest hear what
disciple should learn from Master, and man from God."
5. [98 (xiii.)]
And having thus spoken, He showed me a Cross of Light set up, and round the
Cross a vast multitude, and therein one form and a similar appearance, and in
the Cross another multitude not having one form.
6. And I beheld the
Lord Himself above the Cross. He had, however, no shape, but only as it were
a voice--not, however, this voice to which we are accustomed, but one of its
own kind and beneficent and truly of God, saying unto me:
7. "John,
one there needs must be to hear those things, from Me; for I long for one who
will hear.
8. "This Cross of Light is called by Me for your sakes
sometimes Word (Logos), sometimes Mind, sometimes Jesus, sometimes Christ,
sometimes Door, sometimes Way, sometimes Bread, sometimes Seed,
sometimes Resurrection, sometimes Son, sometimes Father, sometimes Spirit,
sometimes Life, sometimes Truth, sometimes Faith, sometimes Grace.
9.
"Now those things [it is called] as towards men; but as to what it is in
truth, itself in its own meaning to itself, and declared unto Us, [it is] the
defining (or delimitation) of all things, both the firm necessity of things
fixed from things unstable, and the 'harmony' of Wisdom.
10. "And as it
is Wisdom in 'harmony,' there are those on the Right and those on the
Left--powers, authorities, principalities, and dæmons, energies, threats,
powers of wrath, slanderings--and the Lower Root from which hath come forth
the things in genesis.
11 [99]. "This, then, is the Cross which by the
Word (Logos) hath been the means of 'cross-beaming' all things--at the same
time separating off the things that proceed from genesis and those below it
[from those above], and also compacting them all into one.
12. "But
this is not the cross of wood which thou shalt see when thou descendest
hence; nor am I he that is upon the cross--[I] whom now thou seest not, but
only hearest a voice.
13. "I was held [to be] what I am not, not being
what I was to many others; nay, they will call Me something else, abject and
not worthy of Me. As, then, the Place of Rest is neither seen nor spoken of,
much more shall I, the Lord of it, be neither seen [nor spoken
of].
14. [100 (xiv.)] "Now the multitude of one appearance round the
Cross is the Lower Nature. And as to those whom thou seest in the Cross, if
they have not also one form, [it is because] the whole Race (or every Limb)
of Him who descended hath not yet been gathered together.
15. "But
when the Upper Nature, yea, the Race that is coming unto Me, in obedience to
My Voice, is taken up, then thou who now hearkenest to Me, shalt become it,
and it shall no longer be what it is now, but above them as I am
now.
16. "For so long as thou callest not thyself Mine, I am not what I
am. But if thou hearkenest unto Me, hearing, thou, too, shalt be as I [am],
and I shall be what I was, when thou [art] as I am with Myself; for from
this thou art.
17. "Pay no attention, then, to the many, and them that
are without the mystery think little of; for know that I am wholly with the
Father and the Father with Me.
18. [101 (xv.)] "Nothing, then, of the
things which they will say of Me have I suffered; nay that Passion as well
which I showed unto thee and the rest, by dancing [it], I will that it be
called a mystery.
19. "What thou art, thou seest; this did I show unto
thee. But what I am, this I alone know, [and] none else.
20. "What,
then, is Mine suffer Me to keep; but what is thine see thou through Me. To
see Me as I really am I said is not possible, but only what thou art able to
recognise, as being kin [to Me] (or of the same Race).
21. "Thou hearest
that I suffered; yet I did not suffer: that I suffered not; yet I did suffer:
that I was pierced; yet was I not smitten: that I was hanged; yet I was not
hanged: that blood flowed from me; yet it did not flow: and in a word the
things they say about Me I had not, and the things they do not say those I
suffered. Now what they are I will riddle for thee; for I know that thou wilt
understand.
22. "Understand, therefore, in Me, the slaying of a Word
(Logos), the piercing of a Word, the blood of a Word, the wounding of a Word,
the hanging of a Word, the passion of a Word, the nailing (or
putting together) of a Word, the death of a Word.
23. "And thus I
speak separating off the man. First, then, understand the Word, then shalt
thou understand the Lord, and in the third place [only] the man and what he
suffered."
24. [102 (xvi.)] And having said these things to me, and
others which I know not how to say as He Himself would have it, He was taken
up, no one of the multitude beholding Him.
25. And when I descended I
laughed at them all, when they told Me what they did concerning Him, firmly
possessed in myself of this [truth] only, that the Lord contrived all things
symbolically, and according to [His] dispensation for the conversion and
salvation of man.
COMMENTS.
The translation is
frequently a matter of difficulty, for the text has been copied in a most
careless and unintelligent fashion, so that the ingenuity of the editors has
often been taxed to the utmost and has not infrequently completely broken
down. It is of course quite natural that orthodox scribes should blunder when
transcribing Gnostic documents, owing to their ignorance of the subject and
their strangeness to the ideas; but this particular copyist is at times quite
barbarous, and as the subject is deeply mystical and deals with the
unexpected, the reconstruction of the original reading is a matter of great
difficulty. With a number of passages I am still unsatisfied, though I hope
they are somewhat nearer the spirit of the original than other
reconstructions which have been attempted.
It is always a matter of
difficulty for the rigidly objective mind to understand the point of view of
the Gnostic scripture-writers. One thing, however, is certain: they lived in
times when the rigid orthodoxy of the canon was not yet established. They
were in the closest touch with the living tradition of scripture-writing, and
they knew the manner of it.
The probability is that paragraphs 1-3 are
from the pen of the redactor or compiler of the _Acts_, and that the
narrative, beginning with the words "And my Lord stood in the midst of the
Cave," is incorporated from prior material--a mystic vision or apocalypse
circulated in the inner circles.
The compiler knows the general
Gospel-story, and seems prepared to admit its historical basis; at the same
time he knows well that the story circulated among the people is but the
outer veil of the mystery, and so he hands on what we may well believe was
but one of many visions of the mystic crucifixion.
The gentle contempt
of those who had entered into the mystery, for those unknowing ones who would
fain limit the crucifixion to one brief historic event, is brought out
strongly, and savours, though mildly, of the bitterness of the struggle
between the two great forces of the inner and spiritualizing and the outer
and materializing traditions.
1. The disciples flee after beholding the
inner mystery of the Passion and At-one-ment as set forth in the initiating
drama of the Mystic Dance which formed the subject of our fourth
volume.
2. Yet even John the Beloved, in spite of this initiation, cannot
yet bear the thought that his Master did actually suffer historically as
a malefactor on the physical cross. In his distress he flees unto the
Mount of Olives, above Jerusalem.
But to the Gnostic the Mount of
Olives was no physical hill, though it was a mount in the physical, and
Jerusalem no physical city, though a city in the physical. The Mount, however
it might be distinguished locally, was the Height of Contemplation, and the
bringing into activity of a certain inner consciousness; even as Jerusalem
here was the Jerusalem below, the physical consciousness.
3. The
sentence "when He was hung on the tree of the Cross" contains a great puzzle.
The word for "tree" in the original is _batos_; this may mean the "bush" or
"tree" of the cross. But the Cross for the Gnostics was a living symbol. It
was not only the cross of dead wood, or the dead trunk of a tree lopped of
its branches--a symbol of Osiris in death; it was also the Tree of Life, and
was equated with the "Fiery Bush" out of which the Angel of God spake to
Moses--that is the Tree of Fiery Life, in the Paradise of man's inner nature,
whence the Word of God expresses itself to one who is worthy to hear. And
this Tree of Life was also, as the Cross, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and
Evil; indeed, both are but one Tree, for the fruit of the Tree of Life is the
knowledge of good and evil, the cross of the opposites.
But seeing
that the word _batos_ in Greek had also another meaning, the Gnostics, by
their method of mystical word-play, based on the power of sound, brought this
further meaning into use for the expansion of the idea. The difference of
accentuation and of gender (though the reading of the Septuagint is masculine
and not feminine as is usual with _batos_ in the sense of bush or tree)
presented no difficulty to the word-alchemy of these
allegorists.
Hippolytus, in his _Refutation of all Heretics_, attempts to
summarize a system of the Christianized Gnosis which is assigned to the
Docetæ; and Docetism is precisely the chief characteristic of our _Acts of
John_, as we have already pointed out in Vol. IV. In this unsympathetic
summary there is a passage which throws some light on our puzzle. It would,
of course, require a detailed analysis of our hæresiologist's "refutation"
of the Docetic system to make the passage to which we refer (_op.
cit._, viii., 9) fully comprehensible; but as this would be too lengthy
an undertaking for these short comments, we must content ourselves with
a bald statement.
The pure spiritual emanations or ideas or
intelligences of the Light descend into the lowest Darkness of matter. For
the moulding of vehicles or bodies for them it is necessary to call in the
aid of the God of Fire, the creative or rather formative Power, who is
"Living Fire begotten of Light."
Hippolytus summarizes, doubtless
imperfectly, from the Docetic document that lay before him, as
follows:
"Moses refers to this God as the Fiery God who spake from the
_Batos_, that is to say, from the Dark Air; for _Batos_ is all the Air
subjected to Darkness."
That is, presumably, the material Air, Air of
the Darkness, as compared with the spiritual Air or Air of the Light. The
Docetic writer, Hippolytus says, explained the use of the term as
follows:
"Moses called it _Batos_, because, in their passing from Above,
Below, all the Ideas of the Light [that is, the Light-sparks or spirits of
men] used the Air as their means of passage (_batos_)."
In other words
_Batos_, as Air, was the link between Light and Darkness, which Darkness was
regarded as essentially a flowing or Watery chaos. The Batos was the Way Down
and the Way Up of souls.
We are not, however, to suppose that the origin
of this idea was the text of _Exodus_. By no means; the idea came first,
indeed was fundamental with the Gnosis; the mystic exegesis of the "burning
bush" passage was an exercise in ingenuity. For the Gnosis, the that which at
once separated and united the Light and the Darkness was the Cross. The Angel
of God speaking to Moses out of the Fiery Batos was for the Christian
Gnostics one of the most striking apocalypses of ancient Jewish scripture;
and it was primarily one of the chief functions of the Gnosis to throw light
on the under-meaning. This the Docetic exegete does in his own fashion,
using the reading of the Greek Targum or Translation of the Seventy, in
this wise: "_Batos?_ _Batos_ does not mean 'bush' really, but 'medium
of transmission,'" It is by means of this that the Word of God comes
unto us--namely, by the mystery of the uniter-separator in one, which
was called by many names.
For instance, in setting forth the
Sophia-mythus, or Wisdom-story, or mystery of cosmogenesis, of the
Valentinian school, Hippolytus (_op. cit._, vi. 3), treats of the Cross as
the final mystery of all. With original documents before him, he
writes:
"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 (or
Stock) because it hath been fixed immovably and unchangeably, so that nothing
of the Deficiency should be able to approach the eternities within
the Fullness."
Here it is useless to tie oneself to the physical
symbol of a cross. The Stauros (Cross) in its true self is a living idea, a
reality or root-principle. It is the principle of separation and limit,
dividing entity from non-entity, being from non-being, perfection
from imperfection, fullness or sufficiency from deficiency
or insufficiency--Light from Darkness. It is the that which causes
all opposites. At the same time it shares in all opposites, for it is
the immediate emanation of the Father Himself, and therefore unites
while separating. It is, therefore, the principle of participation or
sharing in, sharing in both the Fullness and the Deficiency. Finally, it is
the Stock or Pillar as that which "has stood, stands and will
stand"--the principle of immobility, as the energy of the Father in His
aspect of the supreme Individuality that changes not, because he is Lord of
the ever-changing.
That such a master-idea is difficult to grasp goes
without saying; it was confessedly the supreme mystery. From it the mind, the
formal mind of man, "falls back unable to grasp it"; for it is precisely this
personal mind that creates duality, and insinuates itself between cause and
effect. The spiritual Mind alone can embrace the opposites.
But to
return to our text. "When He was hung on the _batos_ of the Cross"--when He
had reached the state of balance, was in the mystic centre--then at the sixth
hour, that is mid-day, when there was greatest light, there was also greatest
darkness.
And then when the Lord, the Higher Self of the man, was
balanced and justified, the man, the disciple, became conscious, in the cave
of his heart--that is to say, in his inmost substantial nature--of the
Presence of Light.
4. Thereon follow the illumination and the
explanation of the familiar drama of appearance taught to those "without the
mystery."
"The multitude below in Jerusalem" is the lower nature of the
man, his unillumined mind. "Jerusalem Below" is set over against "Jerusalem
Above," the City of God. Jerusalem Below is that nature in him that is
still unordered and unpurified; while Jerusalem Above is that ordered
and purified portion of his substance that can respond to the
immediate shining of the Light, which further orders it according to the
Ordering of Heaven.
And yet the drama below is real enough; there are
ever crucifixion and piercing and the drinking of vinegar and gall, before
the triumphant Christ is born. It is by such means that His Body is
conformed; it is the mystery of the transformation of what we call evil into
good. The Body of the Christ is perfected by the absorption of the impersonal
evil of the world, which He transmutes into blessing.
"'Twas I who put
it in thy heart to ascend this Mount." I am thy Self, thy true God; 'twas I
energizing in thee who enabled thee to rise to the height of contemplation,
where thou canst "hear what disciple should learn from Master and man from
God." The man has now reached the stage of Hearer in the Spiritual
Mysteries.
5. There then follows the vision of the great Cross of Light,
fixed firm, and stretching from earth to heaven. Round its foot on earth is a
vast multitude of all the nations of the world; they resemble one another
in that they are configured according to the Darkness, their "Spark
burns low." On the Cross, or in it, for doubtless the seer saw within as well
as without, was another multitude of various grades of light, being
formed into some marvellous Image like unto the Divine, but not yet
completed--as it might be the Rose on the Cross, in the famous symbol of
the Rosicrucians.
6. And above the Cross, lost in the dazzling
brilliancy of the Fullness, John beheld the Lord; he _beheld_ but could not
_see_, because of the Great Light, as we are told in another great vision of
the Master in the _Pistis Sophia_. He can hear only a Voice. But this Voice
is no voice of man, but one "truly of God"--a Bath-kol or "Heavenly Voice,"
as the Rabbis called it--a Voice of sweetest reasonableness, using no words,
but of a higher order of utterance, that can make the man speak to himself in
his own language, using his own terms.
7. The sentence "I long for one
who will hear," is instinct with the yearning of the Divine Love, the
eagerness to bestow, the longing to speak if only there be one to
hear.
8. There then follows a list of synonyms of the Cross, every one of
which shows that the Cross, if a symbol, must be taken to denote
the master-symbol of all symbols. It is the key to the chief nomenclature
of the Gnosis and the greatest terms of the Gospel. These terms, it
is stated, are used by the Wisdom "for your sakes," that is, to bring home
in many ways to the hearts of men the intuition of the mystery.
As is
explained later on in the text, the mystery of the Cross is the mystery of
the Word, the Spiritual Man, or Great Man, the Divine Individuality.
Therefore is it called Word or Reason, Mind, Jesus and Christ. Son and
Father; for Jesus is the Christ, both as human and divine, the two natures
uniting in one in the Cross; and the Son is the Father in a still more divine
meaning of the mystery; for both Son and Cross are of the Father alone, they
are Himself manifesting Himself to Himself. The whole is the mystery of Ātman
or the Self.
The Door is the Door of the Two in One, the state of
equilibrium of the opposites which opens out into the all-embracing
consciousness and understanding of all oppositions.
The Cross is the
Way on which there is no travelling, for it perpetually enters into itself;
it is the true Meth-od, not so much in the sense of the Way-between or the
Medium or Mediator, as in the sense of the Means of Gnosis.
It is also
called Seed because it is the mystery of the power of growth and development;
it is self-initiative.
And if the Cross be Son and Father in separation
and union, or as simultaneously Cause and Result, it is likewise Spirit or
Ātman, and therefore Life.
It is also Truth or the Perpetual Paradox,
distinguishing and uniting in itself all pros and cons, and all analysis and
synthesis in simultaneous operation.
Therefore also is it called
Faith, because it is the that which is stable and unchanging amid perpetual
change. Faith in its true mystic meaning seems to denote the power of
withdrawing the personal consciousness from between the pairs of opposites,
where these appear external and other than oneself, and embracing the
opposites within the greater consciousness, when they are within oneself and
appear as natural processes in the great economy.
Faith is of the
contemplative mind; it embraces, it includes. It is therefore of the Great
Mother, as the life and substance of the Cross; so also is it of Grace,
elsewhere called Wisdom.
Finally, the Cross regarded from this point of
view is called Bread, the substance of Life.
In a remarkable paper in
_The Theosophical Review_, Nov., 1907, E. R. Innes speaks of a vision of a
great drama of those Powers beyond the mind-spheres, which in the Indian
scriptures are called Food and Eater--that is to say, the mystical union
between the Not-self and the Self.
In the _Chhāndogyopaniṣhad_, for
instance, we read of one who had passed into the heaven-world possessing a
knowledge of the identity of the Self and Not-self. The transformations of
his vehicles that thus occur in the inner states or worlds become as it were
processes of natural digestion in his Great Body, for we read:
"Having
what food he wills, what form he wills, this song he singing sits:
"'O
wonder, wonder, wonder! Food I; food I; food I! Food-eater I;
food-eater I; food-eater I!'"
(See my _World-Mystery_, 2nd ed., p.
179.)
Our author in similar fashion writes of a soul watching the
processes of its own substance in the heaven-world.
"She watched the
interaction of those two great currents of the One Great Life-Force--the
Life-Force as Supporter, the Life-Force as Sustainer. She watched the great
transfiguration of the crossing over of the surface-forms as life met life in
perfect mystic union. As the currents crossed the forms changed, but without
loss of life or consciousness. The Powers crossed and recrossed; and with
each appearance of that sacred symbol there was further expansion and
intensification of the Life-Force. At each piercing or insinuation of the one
into the other, that which had been two became one, yet there still remained
the two. She watched the great mystery of that Cross on which the Heavenly
Man dies in order to live again.
"In heaven you do not demolish forms
in order to sustain life, you daily insinuate yourself into all the forms you
meet, and thus by supplying them with food, the food of your own greater
life, you become each separate object, and gain in power and expansiveness.
Thus in heaven by sacrifice do you grow and live, and slowly become the
world. Thus in heaven do you give life to others in order to live yourself;
thus do the many rebecome the One. The Great Mystery of the Bread of Life
which must be partaken of by all before the Day of Triumph was acted out
before her eyes."
And it might be added that as heaven is a state and not
a place, the mystery can be consummated on earth, and that this is the true
sacrifice of the Christ and the Way to become a Christ.
9. Ideas of
this or a similar order may be held not rashly to underlie the words of our
text. The Cross of Life may well be called the Harmony--or articulation, or
joining-together--of Wisdom, for it is by means of Wisdom that all the
contraries are joined together, and this Articulation constitutes the "firm
necessity" of Fate, which was also called in the Gnostic schools the Harmony.
And if it is a Cross of Life, it is also a Cross of Light, for Life and Light
are the eternally united twin-natures, female and male, of the Logos, the
Good. Life is Passion and Light is Understanding. The Logos divides Himself
to experience and know Himself.
10. All opposites unite in Wisdom as a
ground; she is the pure substance in which all the powers play. It is only
when the Cross is regarded as a separator, that it may be said to have a
right and a left, with good forces on the one hand and evil on the other. The
forces are in reality in themselves the same forces; it is the personality of
the man (represented by the upright of the Cross), which refers all things to
its incomplete self, that regards them as good and evil.
This
personality is rooted in the Lower Root or lower nature, and stretches upward
towards the Above.
But in reality there are roots above and branches
below, or roots below and branches above, of the trunk of this Tree of Life
and Light. Though the nomenclature is somewhat different, I cannot refrain
from quoting a striking passage from a Gnostic scripture to give the reader
some idea of the lofty region of thought to which the Gnosis accustomed its
disciples.
It is taken from _The Great Announcement_, a document ascribed
by Hippolytus to the very beginning of the Christianized Gnosis.
Strong efforts have been made to question this ascription, and to prove
the document to be of a later date, but I think I have established a
high probability that it may be even a pre-Christian writing (see _H._,
i. 184).
The text is to be found in Hippolytus' _Refutation of all
Heresies_ (vi., 18):
"To you, therefore, I say what I say and write
what I write. And the writing is this:
"Of the universal Æons
(Eternities) there are two Branchings, without beginning or end, from one
Root, which is the Power unseeable, incomprehensible Silence.
"Of
these Branchings one is manifested from Above--the Great Power, Mind of the
universals, ordering all things, male; and the other from Below--Great
Thought, female, generating all things.
"Thence partnering one another
they pair (lit. have union--_syzygia_), and bring into manifestation the
Middle Distance, incomprehensible Air without beginning or end.
"In
this is that Father, who supports and nourishes the things which
have beginning and end.
"This is He who has stood, stands and shall
stand--a male-female Power in accordance with the transcendent Boundless
Power, which hath neither beginning nor end, subsisting in
onlyness.
"It was by emanating from this Power (_sci._, Incomprehensible
Silence) that Thought-in-onlyness became two.
"Yet was He, (the
Supernal Father) one; for having her (_sci._ Thought) in Himself He was alone
[that is, all-one, or only, that is one-ly]. He was not, however, [in this
state] 'first,' although transcendent; it was only in manifesting Himself
from Himself that He became 'second' [that is to say, as He who stands]. Nay,
He was not even called 'Father' till Thought named Him 'Father.'
"As,
therefore, Himself pro-ducing Himself by means of Himself, He manifested to
Himself His own Thought; so also His Thought on manifesting did not make
[Him], but beholding Him, she concealed the Father, that is the Power, in
Herself, and is [thus] male-female, Power and Thought.
"Thence is it that
they partner one another (for Power in no way differs from Thought) and yet are
one. From the things Above is discovered Power, and from those Below Thought. |
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