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 Astroeidês in which the "Adept"
can cross the "Fate-Sphere," the "Midst," the regions of consciousness
where mechanical cause and effect prevail and contact the Plêrôma, 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
Astroeidês. 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 Gnôstic 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
Gnôsis. 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."
"Gnôsis," 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 Plêrôma"). 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
Prôtogennêtôr (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
Prôtogennêtôr, 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 (Barbêlô) 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 Propatôr, 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
Autopatôr, 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 Prôtogennêtôr, 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 Plêrôma,
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 Prôtogennêtôr" 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 Gnôsis to others,
becoming thereby their spiritual parent. So he is called Son
Prôtogennêtôr. 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 Propatôr
and Autopatôr would seem to represent different aspects of this claim.
"Gnôsis" 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.
"Gnôsis" 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
Gnôstics 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 Gnôsis, 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,"
"Barbêlô" (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, Gnôsis, and Peace, the
herald of the Perfect Dawn of a New Birth.
Possibly "Propatôr," "Autopatôr" and "Prôtogennêtôr" 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 Plêrôma 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 Plêrôma 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 "Gnôstic 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, A+Ô+ and A+Ô+. The meaning of XMI
is unknown. It has been suggested that it is (with EIC +THEOS+) 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 Autogênes, the Self-begotten,
was the first station of the journey of the Light-Spark without the
Plêrôma, 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 Autogênes. Their names are Harmozel, Ôroiaêl,
Daveithi, and Èlêlêth. 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 Barbêlô. 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 Barbêlô, "the Virginal Spirit," the
Image seen in the "pure water of Light"? If so, then we have in all
probability an allusion to the Gnôstic 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 "Autogênes," 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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