Ritual in Gnosticism
RITUAL IN GNOSTICISM
John D. Turner
University Of Nebraska-Lincoln
SBL 1994 Book of Seminar Papers, 136-181
An action divorced from its primary practical context, ritual bears
a symbolic or semiotic character. It usually serves to promote group formation
and social solidarity and to negotiate understanding among members of the
species. Such actions are religious when they signal a turning towards
something extra-human or super-human; indeed the very act of turning away
from the human context has an eminently social function. Usually this something
is described as the sacred, something experienced as powerful, overwhelming,
majestic, solemn, enchanting. This experience is portrayed symbolically
by the juxtaposition of things threatening and alluring (pain, entrapment,
exclusion, death, and sterility on the one hand, and nourishment, liberation,
inclusion, life, and sexuality on the other); by gestures of submissiveness
alongside displays of power; and by sudden alterations of darkness and
light, covering and uncovering, stability and movement, sound and silence.
This quasi-language signals and creates situations of anxiety in order
to overcome them and leads from isolation and fear of abandonment to the
establishment of solidarity and the reinforcement of status. Ritual helps
to overcome situations of crisis by replacing the apathy of ordinary everyday
experience with focused activity. Although religious ritual borders on
magic (in the sense of the non-salvific coercion of a particular outcome
apart from divine sanction), particularly when consciously practiced by
an individual, its primary character is social and collective, a way of
participating in the often traditional framework of social communication,
and its strongest motive is the fear of isolation from the greater whole.[1]
Although both Gnostics and Platonists seemed to
have sought this sense of integration and well-being primarily through
conceptual means--the interpretation of texts and traditions, the use of
analogy, argumentation, speculation, and mythical narrative--they also
engaged in ritual activity, repeated patterns of behavior, both as individuals
and groups.
Gnostics share with Platonists the notion that salvation
is the ultimate extrication of the soul or inner person from the bodily
realm coupled with an ascent to its point of origin in the divine world.
After the example of Plato, many Platonists until the time of Plotinus
and Porphyry could use visionary terminology associated with the mystery
religions to characterize this ascent, but there is no evidence from this
period that it was to be effected by ritual means. After the time of Plotinus,
however, many Platonists adopted a form of ritual known as theurgy, in
which embodied souls were brought into a sympathetic resonance with the
divine Logoi that informed the natural world; divine powers were
invoked to enter the phenomenal world in the form of purified souls intended
to reveal their divine source in the body and other physical objects, so
as to assist the ascent of the practitioner's soul during this life and
as well as its final ascent.[2]
In apparent contrast to this late Platonic theurgical ritual, the salvific
rites offered in Gnostic sources of the same period continue to appear
as symbolic enactments of the more typically Neopythagorean and Plotinian
goal of extricating every soul from the physical world altogether, even
when one can detect in these sources a quite positive valorization of the
psychic and spiritual cosmos.
This paper surveys ritual acts described or alluded
to in various Gnostic sources, original and heresiological, and where appropriate,
to comment upon their relation to Platonic doctrine and ritual. These will
include rites of lustration, investiture, chrismation, the sacral meal,
sacral marriage, sexual sacramentalism, ritual verbal performances, and
ascensional and contemplative practices in both individual and group endeavor.
The paper will concentrate mostly on Sethian and Valentinian sources, adducing
other material when appropriate.
The rituals practiced by the Gnostics, most of which they share with--and
sometimes derived from--Christians, are the result of transferring rather
simple, everyday acts, such as washing, applying salves and balms, changing
clothes, eating and sharing a meal, arising upon awakening, and engaging
in sexual intercourse, into a symbolic setting and discourse. The main
preoccupation of the Gnostics seems to have been the overcoming of an experience
of alienation and isolation, and they developed a number of elaborate myths
in which they, like other groups, elevated these otherwise rather common
acts into rites which had the power to overcome this alienation, and achieve
a sense of solidarity and authenticity by realistic enactments of personal
transformation and integration into a larger whole. Compared with non-Gnostic
Platonists, they subjected a wider range of these ordinary acts to symbolic
enactment, no doubt because they inherited many such enactments from other
religious movements known to them, such as Judaism, Christianity and the
mysteries, or simply because many Gnostics were already adherents of those
movements and were merely applying a Gnostic twist to them.
For Gnostics as well as Jews and Christians of various
stripes, the loss and recovery of a sense of integration and solidarity--personal,
social, and cosmic--were expressed in two basic myths. One was the myth
of a vertiginous fall from the heights, in which the human soul, like a
bird having lost its wings, had plummeted to earth, loosing direct contact
with its native element; its only hope of return was the acquisition of
a new set of wings, a task hindered by the beguiling conditions of its
new environment, which led to a gradual forgetfulness of its homing instinct.
The other basic myth was that of the primal androgyne, the supposed ultimate,
bisexual progenitor of all of humanity, who underwent the primeval experience
of being sundered in two, into male and female, thus creating an elementary
crisis of estrangement and loss of the divine image, and the need to heal
this split by the reunion of the two sexes. This myth was extremely widespread.
Platonists possessed a version of it in Aristophanes' famous encomium on
Eros in Plato's Symposium, portraying Zeus' sundering and weakening
of the original humans, creating their urge to reunite.[3]
Jews and Christians read Gen 1:26-27 as portraying a masculofeminine Adam,
made in the true image of the God who transcended gender altogether, an
image which was lost in the fateful division into a separate male and female
(Gen 2:21-22). These myths of division and alienation underlie many of
the traces of Gnostic ritual known to us, in particular the rites of baptism,
investiture, chrismation, and sacral marriage. These rites serve to reverse
that alienation: when the soul regains its wings and homing instinct, it
is no longer a captive. When the primal image of God is restored, man is
no longer divided--not even by the most fundamental division of all, male
and female.[4]
Of these four fundamental rites, baptism, though
its origins lie in the sphere of repeatable acts of lustration and purification,
seems to be an initiatory rite generally practiced only once as the initial
break with one's flawed past and an entrance into a new state of reunification,
while the other three seem to be repeatable acts of celebration and intensification
of one's awareness of that reunification. Closely associated with baptism
are the act of chrismation and investiture, which early Christian texts
often treat as a postlude to baptism; indeed baptism and chrismation were
both called "seals," marking one as reborn and belonging to God. While
these rites appear to be unrepeatable acts of initiation, the sacral meal,
the eucharist, though often following baptism, was repeatable. The sacral
marriage known as the "bridal chamber," though its origins lie in biblical
metaphor, seems to be a peculiarly Gnostic ritual; although it usually
had an eschatological reference, it could become repeatable, particularly
when enacted as an explicitly sexual sacrament.
Besides these major rituals, Gnostics share with
all groups the ritual use of speech, especially prayer formulas (doxologies,
aretalogies, petitions, etc.), hymns, aretalogies, recognition formulas,
and ecstatic utterances (chants, syllables of power, glossalalia, etc.).
Particularly intriguing is the rite of contemplative, visionary ascension;
although one tends to think of this as the practice of isolated individuals,
it acquired the status of a rite, not only among the devotees of Hermes
Trismegistus, but especially among the Sethian Gnostics, probably because
it was originally developed in a baptismal context. Other forms of ritual
behavior not easily characterized as specific rites may include certain
explicit life-styles clearly separating an individual or community from
the norm, mostly of an encratitic sort, which include fasting, heremitic
withdrawal, celibacy, or the erection of images, statues, and cultic buildings.
Because of its foundational significance for several associated rites
and its widespread attestation in Gnostic texts, I begin this survey with
the baptismal rite as practiced by various Gnostic groups.
BAPTISM
Sethian Baptism
The Sethian gnostic treatises from the Nag Hammadi Library contain not
only numerous accounts of visions of the transcendental world and its contents,
but also numerous references to baptisms, washings, anointings and sealings,
and numerous instances of various prayers, doxologies and hymns mentioning
or directed to a rather fixed set of divine beings. Such references generally
occur in stanzaic, even hymnic, passages to be found especially in the
Gospel of the Egyptians, Apocalypse
of Adam, Melchizedek, Zostrianos, Apocryphon
of John, and Trimorphic Protennoia. They apparently
refer to a sequence of ritual acts involving a kind of baptism, which the
texts often designate by the term "the Five Seals." The Sethian texts providing
the most detail about the Five Seals are the Gospel of the Egyptians
and the Trimorphic Protennoia, but they do not reveal the precise
ritual character of these Five Seals, with the result that the rite must
be reconstructed from their rather allusive allusions to it. The texts
contain no liturgical rubrics. Baptism is an extremely well-attested rite
in the early Christian world, where it and the various symbolic acts that
comprise this rite are commonly called "seals." So the basic puzzle is
the meaning of the term "five": does it refer to a single act performed
five times, e.g. a quintuple immersion in contrast to the typically triple
immersion of Christian baptism, or does it refer to five ritual acts comprising
the rite, or to some mysterious transcendental Pentad of names (Trimorphic
Protennoia NHC XIII,1: 49,28-32) or aeons (Apocryphon of
John NHC II,1: 6,2-10)?[5]
The texts do not tell us. By way of comparison, the normal Christian baptismal
rite contained at least four procedures : removal
of outer garments and renunciation of the devil, removal of all garments
and anointing with oil, baptismal immersion, and reclothing in white garments;
often this was supplemented by a fifth, the chrismation.[6]
The Sethian texts are unusual in that, perhaps to
a greater degree than is the case with the corpora of other Gnostic groups,
they conceive the baptismal rite as a series of visionary experiences resulting
in complete enlightenment and therefore total salvation. In spite of the
allusions to ritual acts that could indeed be enacted by ordinary human
beings, the importance of the rite lay primarily in the spiritual plane,
an emphasis characteristic of Christian and probably non-Christian baptizing
circles throughout the first century. The Sethian baptismal water was understood
to be of a celestial nature, a Living Water identical with light or enlightenment.
Although in earlier Sethian treatises this rite is usually said to be "received,"
later treatises portray a self-performable contemplative technique that
could be enacted either by means of--or independently of--outward ritual
actions. Terms that ordinarily refer to ritual acts, such as "baptism,"
"immersion," "disrobing," "enrobing," "stripping off," "putting on," "sealing,"
and the like, also designate acts of mental transformation, conceptual
refinement and abstraction from the world of psychic and sensible experience,
abstention from previous behavioral dispositions, "unlearning" of older
and adoption of new perceptions of self and world, and entrance into a
higher state of enlightenment. It is natural to assume that such a mental
transformation arose out of the individual experience of actual cultic
and ritual praxis of a sort that could be taught and enacted either while
participating in the physical setting and associated gestures of the rite
or quite apart from them.[7]
We do not know whether this rite was a once-for-all initiation, as it appears
to be in earlier Sethian treatises, or was administered repeatedly; later
treatises witness what seems to be a gradual extraction of the clearly
repeatable visionary component from the baptismal setting.
In the earlier Sethian texts which portray the advent
of salvation as coincident with the third and final manifestation in this
world (the first two occur in primordial times)[8]
of the divine mother Barbelo, she confers the gift of salvation in the
form of a baptismal rite called the Five Seals. According to the so-called
Gospel of the Egyptians, on the third and final descent of the heavenly
Seth into the world to save his progeny ("seed"), he is equipped with a
Logos-begotten body prepared for him "by the virgin" (the "male virgin"
Barbelo), the Providence of the supreme deity, in order to "establish the
holy baptism" (a reference to the inaugural baptism of Jesus?) and "put
on" Jesus, through whose crucifixion he defeats the powers of the thirteen
aeons. According to the Trimorphic Protennoia, Protennoia (Barbelo)
descends for the third time as the Logos, confers the Five Seals, and finally
puts on Jesus, removes him form the cross, and bears him and her seed aloft
into the holy light. Similarly, the Pronoia aretalogy concluding the longer
version of the Apocryphon of John (NHC II,1: 30,11-31,25) depicts
the figure of Pronoia (Barbelo) as conferring the Five Seals on her third
and final descent. The primary actor behind the scenes is the divine Mother
Barbelo, who appears to be a higher, unfallen double of Sophia, the divine
wisdom. The imagery of water, light, ascent and descent found in the Pronoia
hymn and in the Trimorphic Protennoia seems heavily indebted to
the Hellenized Jewish wisdom tradition.[9]
These two works appear to be old, likely contemporaneous with the Johannine
prologue with which they share a common vocabulary and mythological structure,
suggesting an early date for these works, perhaps the early second century
CE.
The Sethian text most replete with data for the
reconstruction of the ritual acts that comprise Sethian baptism is the
Gospel of the Egyptians (NHC III,2 and IV,1). In it,
this baptism involves the begetting of the saints through invisible secret
symbols, the "killing" (Coptic hôtb, IV,2: 75,3-4;
III,2: 63,3-12 has hôtp, "reconciliation") and renunciation
of both the world and the "god of the thirteen aeons," and the invoked
(epiklêtoi) presence of certain of holy, ineffable beings
along with the light of the Father. Although Seth is said to have appeared
in the primeval world to deliver his race from the Archon's destructive
acts (the flood and conflagration), the Mother now sends him for a third
time. At his appearance along with certain divine beings or angels who
are to guard the incorruptible race until the consummation of the age,
the "great men of the great Seth" receive a vision of various spiritual
beings whose names occur repeatedly in the baptismal sections of the Sethian
treatises.[10]
Evidence of ritual activity abounds in this text.
In NHC III, 2: 65,26-66,8 it is said that through the incorruptible
man Poimael, those "who are worthy of (the) invocation (epiklêtos),
the renunciations (apotaxeis) of the Five Seals[11]
in the spring-baptism will know their receivers (paralêmptores)
as they are instructed about them." In III,2 66,9-68,1 there follows
a long prayer in which the baptizand praises the Living Water "Yesseus
Mazareus Yessedekeus" as the eternal Jesus who truly is, the glorious name
that is now upon and within him, granting him immutability and the armor
of light. Stretching out his hands while yet folded, the baptizand apparently
symbolically portrays the containment of the inner light or the circle
of all those who have received enlightenment, and praises the man (Seth?)
who raises up the man (Jesus?) in whose name the baptizand will be purified.
Having received the incense of life (the Holy Spirit?), the baptizand has
mixed it with "water after the model of the archons" (presumably the earthly
water of his baptism), now to live with the savior in the peace of the
saints.
Here one has a series of references to certain gestures
and verbal performances capable of ritual enactment: renunciation, invocation,
naming of holy powers, doxological prayer to the living water, receipt
of incense, manual gestures, as well as baptismal immersion itself. Whether
any of these acts, and if so, which ones, comprise the Five Seals is difficult
to tell; certainly renunciation, invocation, and the extension of the arms
were frequently part of the baptismal rite in the wider church.[12]Throughout,
the use of the passive voice for ritual actions and the use of plural references
to the saints begotten "through instruction" suggests a community ritual
in which there were initiates and officiants, as well as a tradition of
prescribed actions and declarations.
What is more, it may be that the entire Gospel
of the Egyptians and not just its conclusion has a ritual or liturgical
function. There are five doxologies (IV,2: 59,13-29; III,2:
49,22-50,17; 53,12-54,11; 55,16-56,3; 61,23-62,13) punctuating the completion
of various stages of its cosmology, which invoke a fixed set of beings.[12]
This doxological inventory has the fixity of a liturgical formula. If the
term "Five Seals" originally designated a fivefold or five-stage baptismal
procedure, it may be that the Gospel of the Egyptians was read aloud
during the administration of each phase of the ritual: after the reading
of each of the five sections of the cosmology, the baptizand might have
repeated this doxology as a way of affirming the receipt of each of the
Five Seals. A similar correlation between baptismal sealings and depictions
of the structure and deployment of the transcendent world occurs also in
Zostrianos, although there the sealings are clearly given a celestial,
rather than earthly, setting.
Furthermore, in both the Gospel of the Egyptians
and the Trimorphic Protennoia, the final act of salvation is the
descent of Seth in the form of the Logos or of the Logos in the form of
Christ, who "puts on," that is, appears in the form of, Jesus. The salvation
of Jesus implied in these two texts certainly reflects Christian influence,
but of an extremely polemical sort, since rather than being the savior,
Jesus becomes the one saved. In view of this Sethian Christological reinterpretation,
one would characterize the present form of these two texts as reacting
to rather than merely submitting to Christian influence.
The Apocalypse of Adam contains a dream vision revealed to Adam
by three glorious men who narrate a third saving mission conducted by an
illuminator whose origin is unknown to the evil powers. Thirteen opinions
of his origins are rejected; in reality he comes from a great aeon to enlighten
his elect. The illuminator experiences neither birth nor generation, nor
does he receive nourishment, glory and power in the beyond and then "come
(down) to the water." The Illuminator is not first born into the world
and then baptized in the waters of the Jordan, which the author or redactor
regards as polluted and chaotic.[14]
Instead, the Illuminator remains above in the light where he resides with
the three imperishable illuminators Yesseus, Mazareus, Yessedekeus, the
Living Water, and first appears in the world not at his own "birth" or
baptism, but at the time he baptizes his "seed," who receive his name on
the water.[15]
At some point, angelic beings will bring the truth to the earthly Sethians
in a way independent of the written word of the evil creator, a truth that
is communicated by a holy baptism through a logos-begotten illuminator
who descends to the water during baptism. Thus there is a distinction between
the holy baptism with Living Water and a baptism ordained by the creator
and practiced by his servants who have polluted the water of life.
Using nomenclature reminiscent of that found in
the Apocryphon of John, the Trimorphic Protennoia identifies
the initiator and bringer of salvation, conferred on her third descent
in the form of the Five Seals, as Protennoia or Barbelo, the First Thought
of the Invisible Spirit.[16]
At various points throughout the Trimorphic Protennoia, the triple
descent of Protennoia and the various forms in which she appears, namely
as Voice, Speech and Word, are interpreted by means of concepts which are
drawn from the Sethian baptismal terminology: the Voice is said to be the
unpolluted spring from which flows Living Water, characterized as radiant
light.[17]
Rather than designating a fivefold immersion in
the Living Water, the Five Seals are interpreted as a five-stage ritual
of ascension, which serves to strip the inner spirit of its chaotic psychic
and material garments and reclothe it with shining light. The spirit is
invested with the robes of light, enthroned, baptized by Micheus, Michar
and Mnesinous in the spring of Living Water, glorified with the Fatherhood,
and raptured into the light (perhaps the Four Lights) by the servants of
the Four Lights Kamaliel, [..]anen and Samblo (48, 15-35). Clearly the
rapture into the light is the equivalent of the baptismal phôtismos
spoke of by Justin, Cyril and other patristic authors. The five stages
of this ascensional rite do not seem to follow in an intuitively obvious
sequence (e.g., in 45, 13-20 one has the following sequence: glorification,
enthronement, investiture, baptism and becoming Light). Indeed, since most
cults practiced naked baptism, one might expect the order: baptism, investiture,
enthronement, glorification and final rapture (see above, note 6).
In the concluding section of the Trimorphic Protennoia,
the Five Seals are equated with the "ineffable ordinances of the Father,"
taught by Protennoia to her "members," "the brethren." The Five Seals are
said to be "complete by means of Nous." Whoever possesses the Five Seals
"of these particular names"[18]
has stripped away all ignorance and darkness and has put on a shining light,
permanently free from ignorance and the power of the hostile archontic
forces, and experiencing a mutual indwelling with Protennoia until the
time when she gathers all her members into her eternal kingdom. Here the
Five Seals are connected with communicable doctrine and the ability to
name and experience the presence of certain spiritual beings, a doctrine
which entails the stripping away of the ignorance of common perception
and the adoption (putting on) of an appropriate way of seeing things. The
rite is the dramatization of this process, and the Sethian myth its narratization.
The fact that this text refers to the recipients of the baptismal ascent
ritual in the first person plural and as "brethren" suggests a (Sethian)
community with a well-established tradition of water baptism that has been
conceived as a mystery of celestial ascent, and which brings Gnosis (NHC
XIII,1: 48,33-34) and total salvation.
In many ways, the Sethian text that most abounds
with baptismal imagery is Zostrianos, although the extant remains
do not mention the Five Seals, and the imagery has been divorced from any
actual water rite. Throughout the first sixty or so pages, it seems that
Zostrianos is baptized at least twenty times in the course of his ascent,
once at the airy earth (the atmosphere below the moon), seven times in
the copies of the aeons (the planetary spheres), once in the Transmigration
(paroikêsis, probably the sphere of the fixed stars), and
four times in the Repentance (once for each of the Four Lights), for a
subtotal of thirteen. At the level of the Self-begotten Ones he is baptized
four times by the traditional Sethian baptizers and purifiers, each time
standing as an angel upon the level of each of the Four Lights, and again
for a fifth time at the level of Autogenes, where he becomes divine and
enters the aeon of Barbelo. In a further baptism at the level of the Triple
Male Child, he becomes truly existing, and lastly, it seems that he is
baptized once again at the level of Protophanes, where he becomes perfect,
for a subtotal of seven, and a grand total of some twenty or more baptisms,
washings and sealings. Although the fragmentary state of the text precludes
certainty on the total number of baptisms or their precise significance,
here baptism here has become interpreted as a metaphor for the process
by which a visionary becomes assimilated to the being and nature of each
level of the transcendent realm to which he ascends.
Zostrianos portrays a visionary and auditory
experience which has no explicit ritual setting. Terms which may once have
had a ritual reference now serve only as means to articulate the various
stages of a visionary ascent. Celestial baptisms denote stages of increasing
spiritual enlightenment, while the earthly experience of the non-spiritual
mass of humanity is regarded as a "baptism with death" (NHC VIII,1:
131,2). Perhaps Zostrianos lies at the terminus of a process of
development in which a traditional practice of visionary ascent that originally
arose in the context of Sethian baptismal practice as it is reflected in
the Apocryphon of John, the Trimorphic Protennoia, and the
Gospel of the Egyptians was subsequently transformed from an original
practice of water baptism into a self-contained and self-performable contemplative
practice engaged in either by lone individuals or by groups (as the
Three Steles of Seth, NHC VII,5: 126,31-127,22 makes clear).
Perhaps it is merely a later expression of an original but alternative
trajectory of visionary practices that developed alongside but independently
of the Sethian communal water rites. Knowledge of the nature of the Sethian
encounter with both Platonism and Christian forms of gnostic Sethianism
would certainly help to resolve this puzzle.
As an immersion in water, baptism may also have
a negative connotation, especially when it signifies immersion in materiality,
symbolized by the chaotic waters underlying the natural cosmos. Gnostics
applied this negative connotation to what they considered to be the lower
baptism undergone by non-Gnostic Christians. Like the Apocalypse of
Adam (NHC V, 5: 84,4-85,30) and Zostrianos (NHC VIII,1:
131,2-5), the Paraphrase of Shem (NHC VII, 1: 30,21-27; 37,19-38,6)
speaks also of an impure baptism in a dark water that enslaves, evidently
a polemic against ordinary water baptism. The Archontics, whom Epiphanius
(Panarion 40.2.6-8) presents as an offshoot of the Sethians, reject
completely the baptism and sacraments of the Church as deriving from the
inferior law-giver Sabaoth; to shun baptism is to enhance the prospect
of acquiring of the gnosis enabling their return to the Mother-Father of
the All.
Valentinian Baptism
The patristic accounts of the Valentinian baptismal practices agree on
three basic features of Valentinian baptismal practice.[19]
The first is the presence of two separate baptisms among the Valentinians.
The "psychics" had access the "normal" Christian one, while the "pneumatics"
could gain closer contact with the divine by second rite which Irenaeus
and Hippolytus called the "redemption." Rather than devaluing the standard,
psychic baptism, as Irenaeus thinks, both the Nag Hammadi sources and patristic
sources, such as Clement of Alexandria's Excerpta ex Theodoto, demonstrate
great concern for the psychics. Secondly, patristic accounts all agree
that these rituals were salvific sacraments, and thirdly, they associate
baptism (perhaps both baptisms) with the remission of sins. The Excerpta
ex Theodoto (76-86) characterize the first, water baptism as a "sealing"
done in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, which gives
psychic Christians power over sin, allowing them to be reborn, control
the impure spirits, and gain entry to the marriage feast in the End Times.
Baptism affords access to saving knowledge, as Excerpta ex Theodoto
78 states:
Until baptism, they say, Fate is effective, but after it the
astrologers no longer speak the truth. It is not the washing alone that
makes us free, but also the knowledge of who we were, what we have we become,
where we were, into what place we have we been cast, whither we are hastening,
from what we are delivered, what birth is, and what rebirth.
According to Hippolytus, (Refutatio VI,41), Marcus taught that a
second washing or baptism, called the "redemption" (apolutrôsis),
was available to Christians through him. It normally required special and
extensive instructions beforehand, but a bishop could also administer it
to those who were on their deathbed. Anyone undergoing the rite of redemption
belonged to "the perfect power and inconceivable authority," and was no
longer affected by sin. According to Irenaeus (Haereses I, 21.2),
psychic baptism is said to have been inaugurated by John the Baptist with
a view to repentance, and instituted by the visible Jesus for the remission
of sins. Redemption, on the other hand was brought by Christ descending
on Jesus, with a view to perfection; this is another instance of the widespread
Gnostic adoption of the traditions about Jesus' inaugural baptism, in which
he sees the heavens opened, and receives both the Spirit and adoption as
Son of God. Hippolytus (Refutatio VI, 35.5) attests that the Italian
Valentinians considered Jesus' body to be psychic, but made pneumatic and
raised from the dead at his baptism by the Spirit, said to be the Logos
of his mother Sophia. As in the Sethian treatises, traditions about the
descent of the Spirit upon Jesus at his baptism justify the distinction;
indeed Irenaeus speaks of the Valentinian tendency to gather gospel allusions
(e.g. Lk 12:50; Mat 20:20) to support the necessity of another baptism.
The remission of sins is linked to baptism, and thence to repentance, the
psychics, and the ministries of John and the visible Jesus. Redemption,
on the other hand, is linked to pneumatics, perfection, and Christ descending
on Jesus.
According to the Clement of Alexandria's Excerpta
ex Theodoto (22.1), the male angelic counterparts of Valentinian Christians
are themselves baptized through the redemption of the same name which descended
to redeem Jesus at his own baptism. These angels are baptized "for the
dead," that is, for the earthly Valentinians, imparting to them the name
of the son by which they are enabled to pass through the Limit into the
Pleroma. The imposition of hands, apparently in connection with the baptismal
rite, confers the angelic redemption, tantamount to being baptized in the
same name as was one's angelic counterpart.
For the Tripartite Tractate (NHC I,5: 127,25), Valentinian
baptism is equivalent to the redemption, the second baptism (the baptism
"in the fullest sense" as opposed to "the baptism which we previously mentioned").
Redemption occurs when one confesses faith in the names of the Trinity
and is equivalent to entering a state of tranquillity, enlightenment and
immortality; it is the bridal chamber. It is the ritual which above all
others that functioned as the seal of the union between the author's community
and the Father, who grants knowledge of himself in exchange for the believer's
confession of faith.
According to the Gospel of Philip, becoming
perfect by acquiring the spiritual resurrection while yet on earth enables
Christians to bypass post-mortem suffering in the Middle (mesotês)
and proceed directly to the Father and his rest. Such perfection is enabled
by no less than five sacraments.[20]
In baptism, one strips off the old self and puts on a spiritual body; the
chrism confers the Holy Spirit, creating the spiritual or pneumatic person;
the eucharist does the same, except using the symbols of bread and a cup
of wine mixed with water, probably on a repeated basis. The redemption
seems to be an oil rite, perhaps a sort of confession or extreme unction
(like the Mandaean Masiqta), or perhaps a post-baptismal chrismation
as was customary in the western (but not Syrian) church. The bridal chamber
seems to be a proleptic enactment of one's final entrance into the Pleroma,
perhaps symbolized by a ritual kiss (cf. the kiss of peace in the Apostolic
Constitutions and the ritual handshake [ku[sinvcircumflex]ta]
in the Mandaean Mabuta).
The Gospel of Philip (NHC II,3: 67,28-30) names these
five sacraments, evidently in order of importance, although their distinctiveness
is often blurred, perhaps because they are understood as being all interdependent. As
Meeks observes, it illustrates the tendency of motifs originally connected
with baptism to become distinct rituals, as the mythical context of these
motifs also becomes more elaborate.[21]
Thus, while the receiving of the garment or body of light is still connected
with baptism in some of the sayings in the Gospel of Philip (75,21-24,
cf. 76,25-30), in others the clothing with light is effected by the chrism
(74,12-22) or the bridal chamber (78,5-9). These rites are arranged in
an ascending order (69,14-29), e.g. the chrism is superior to the baptism
(74,12-13), yet baptism can include redemption (69,25-26), and chrism the
eucharist (74,36-75,11), although the supreme rite is the bridal chamber
(64,31-70,22).[22]
Because of this overlapping, it is really impossible to tell whether these
were enacted separately, or in combination.
It seems likely that the first three rites (baptism, chrism, and eucharist,
perhaps unrepeatable) were included in same initiation ceremony, while
the redemption and bridal chamber constituted a sort of second baptism
(cf. 75,1-2), and were capable of repetition. According to Desjardins,[23]
Baptism, reinforced by chrism (the "second baptism" done with
olive oil--73,17-18), actually provides immortality. In these two rites,
purification occurs visibly through water and invisibly through fire and
light (57,22-28). Jesus has purified and perfected the water at baptism
(77,7-9) and God has "dyed it" (63,25-30), yet it is still possible for
someone to emerge from the water baptism without having received the Holy
Spirit 64,22-31). So, "it is fitting to baptize in the two, in the light
and the water. Now the light is the chrism" (69,11-13). This dual baptism
provides the resurrection (69,25-26) and perfection: "He who has been anointed
possesses everything. He possesses the resurrection, the light, the cross,
the Holy Spirit; the Father gave him this in the bridal chamber" (74,18-22).
In turn, this resurrection requires a spiritual flesh, which the eucharist
provides (56,26-57,22; cf. also 75,14-24).
According to 69,14-70,4, just as the Jerusalem temple supposedly consisted
of a succession of enclosing chambers, the Holy enclosing the Holy of the
Holy which in turn encloses the Holy of the Holies, so also baptism includes
the resurrection and the redemption, which latter occurs in the bridal
chamber. In turn, this resurrection requires a spiritual flesh, which the
eucharist provides (56,26-57,22; cf. 75,14-24).
In agreement with he Gospel of Philip, the liturgical supplements
to A Valentinian Exposition (esp. 41,21-38) clearly distinguish
a second baptism differing from the ordinary Christian baptism, though
it does not describe it. Like the Gospel of Philip, A Valentinian
Exposition understands the first baptism as the forgiveness of sins,
but whose effect seems to be the same as the "redemption" or second baptism
described in patristic sources: it elevates the recipient out of the world
into the aeon. In both treatises the first baptism seems to be connected
with an anointing and a eucharist, although the significance of the latter
seems to be attenuated. In the Gospel of Philip, which seems to
refer to the rites of redemption and bridal chamber as a sort of second
baptism, the chrism becomes the central part of the baptismal rite, overshadowing
the eucharist altogether.
Just the treatise Zostrianos portrays Sethian
practice of visionary ascent as a series of baptisms, washings and sealings,
the Gospel of Philip (69,4-14) draws an explicit connection not
only between vision and baptism, but also vision and the chrism, and further
associates both with rebirth and the restoration to the condition of the
primal androgyne: "Through the holy spirit we are indeed begotten again,
but we are begotten through Christ in the two. We are anointed through
the spirit. When we were begotten we were united. None can see himself
either in water or in a mirror without light. Nor again can you see in
light without water or mirror. For this reason it is fitting to baptize
in the two, in the light and the water. Now the light is the chrism."
Other Testimony concerning Gnostic Baptism
Many other Gnostic groups practiced baptism. According to Irenaeus (Adversus
Haereses I, 23.5), Menander's disciples were baptized into his own
name, receiving resurrection in the form of aglessness and physical immortality.
According to Clement of Alexandria (Stromateis I, 21.146,1-4), the
disciples of Basilides calculated the date of Jesus' baptism, on which
they celebrated on the fifteenth of Tybi (January 6) by spending the previous
night in scripture readings; it is possible that this sect witnesses the
first known instance of a 365 day lectionary year that began with the Epiphany
celebration of Jesus' baptismal enlightenment (phôtismos)
at the Jordan.[24]
The Naasenes (Hippolytus, Refutatio V, 7.19 7.40; 9.18) understood
baptism as a spiritual birth ("from water and the spirit," Jn 3:5) and
entrance into immortality through Jesus the "true gate" (cf. Jn 10:9);
it included washing in "living water" (the water above the firmament) and
an anointing from a horn "at the third gate."[25]
The gnostic Justin's book of Baruch (apud Hippolytus Refutatio
V, 27.1-4) distinguishes between the water below the firmament belonging
to the evil creation and the springing well of living water above the firmament
belonging to the Good one; only pneumatic persons drink of, that is wash
in, the latter, while the psychic and material wash in the former. Here
the sapiental metaphor of drinking from the water of wisdom is interpreted
as baptism,[26]
yet one notes again the strong distinction between ordinary Christian baptism
and pneumatic baptism as expressed in the dual baptism of the Valentinians
and the harsh polemic against water baptism in the Apocalypse of Adam
(NHC V,5: 84,4-85,30; cf. Zostrianos, NHC VIII,1:
131,2-5). In the second Book of Jeu (chs. 45-52) one finds a most
elaborate baptismal rite that affords entry into the Treasury of Light.
In a ritual setting featuring a table set with bread, pitchers of wine
and water, herbs, and incense, the disciples of Jesus don linen robes and
myrtle crowns to receive a sequence of three baptisms (in living water,
fire, and the Holy Spirit) in which they acquire certain ciphers and names
as "seals" allowing them to ascend through the aeons. Unfortunately, the
manuscript ends before Jesus reveals the great "mystery of the forgiveness
of sins" required for ultimate entrance into the Treasury of Light.
Simonian Gnosticism illustrates the central role
of the ritual recovery of the androgynous image (here called the undifferentiated
"root" power, Hippolytus, Refutatio VI, 18.2, 18.4). The separation
and reunion of the male and female elements in mankind underlies the legend
of Simon and his consort Helen which was already known before the time
of Justin Martyr.[27]
The late Apophasis Megale quoted by Hippolytus (Refutatio
V, 17.1)suggests that it may have taken the form of a baptismal ritual:
According to Simon, then, that blessed and incorruptible being
lies hidden in every being potentially (dunamei), not actually (energeia);
that is he who stands, took his stand, and will stand (ho hestôs,
stas, stêsomenos): who stands on high in the unbegotten power,
who took his stand below in the chaos of waters when he was begotten in
an image (eikôn), who will stand on high with the blessed
infinite power if he be fully formed (exeikonisthêi). For,
he says, there are three that stand, the [un]originate being, who (they
say hovers over the water [cf. 6.14.4], is not set in order, the perfect
heavenly being who is recreated according to the likeness, who becomes
in no respect inferior to the unoriginate power. This is the meaning of
their saying, 'I and thou are one, thou art before me, and I am after thee.'
This, he says, is one power, divided as being above (as infinite) and below
(as logos?), self-generating, ... its own mother, its own father,
its own sister, its own consort, its own daughter, its own son,... unity,
the root of all things.
Being (re)-formed in the image, equated with "being begotten" and occurring
"in the stream of waters," suggests a cultic act like baptism, as in Excerpta
ex Theodoto 68: "As long as we were children of the female only, as
of a dishonorable union, we were incomplete, childish, without understanding,
weak, and without form, brought forth like abortions, in short, we were
children of the woman (i.e., Sophia). But having been given form (morphôthentas)
by the Savior, we are the children of the man (husband) and of the bride-chamber."[28]
In fact, Hippolytus (Refutatio VI, 19.5) says the Simonians called
a rite of apparent sexual promiscuity in imitation of Simon (and Helen)
"the holy of holies," the same metaphor used for the rite of the bridal
chamber in Gospel of Philip 69,14-70,4. It therefore likely that
the Simonians possessed rituals analogous to the Valentinian baptism and
bridal chamber, which might account for the report in pseudo-Clement (Homilies
2, 23-24) that Simon was a disciple of John the Baptist.
A striking parallel to the Simonian legend is the
myth of the soul's abuse, transformation, and joining to her heavenly "bridegroom"
found in the Nag Hammadi treatise the Exegesis on the Soul, which
seems to have Simonian affinities. It regards what seems to be the vehicle
of the soul as its womb, surrounding it as a dirty and polluted garment
(cf. esp. NHC II,6: 131,13-132,2). The restoration of the soul's
former nature, which it possessed before it had fallen into the body and
prostituted itself to the materialistic life, is called the baptism of
the soul; the "womb of the soul" is on the outside like male genitals until
purified by baptism, when it is "turned inward" to regain the freshness
of its former nature.[29]
Among the Sethians, Simonians, and especially the
Valentinians, the sacramental means of restoring the androgynous wholeness
of the inner person through ritual acts centered on baptism presupposes
a cultic community with a strong sense of corporate identity. In other
gnostic circles, however, the same quest and its mythical justification
could be focused exclusively upon a subjective transformation of consciousness
leading away from sect formation and toward a radical isolation of the
individual. Within Sethianism, the exclusive concentration on the singular
experience of an individual visionary like Allogenes or Zostrianos or Marsanes
in the Platonizing Sethian treatises might lend itself to such a development,
although the Three Steles of Seth, apart from Seth's initial praise
of his father Geradamas, is explicitly cast in the first person plural
as a communal exercise in contemplative ascent.
The trend towards individual isolation is evident
in the Gospel of Thomas and in the encratite Christianity of eastern
Syria, where most scholars locate the Thomas tradition. The theme of "making
the two one" in the Gospel of Thomas likely derives from baptismal
liturgies, particularly Syrian ones.[30]
But its ideal of "singleness," expressed in the Coptic oua ouwt
or the Greek monachos, signifies celibacy and isolation from society.
Indeed, the Hag Hammadi Testimony of Truth (esp. 69,8-24) specifies
that true baptism is the renunciation of the world, rather than a the ritual
sealing of one entering the faith administered by the (defiled!) fathers
of the world: the Son of Man baptized no disciples.
Jesus' Inaugural Baptism as a Paradigm for Visionary
Enlightenment
The baptismal lore of many of the foregoing groups, especially the Sethians
and those associated with Valentinus and Basilides, make a good deal out
of the traditions of Jesus' inaugural baptism.[31]
Within the NT, visionary experience is connected not only with heavenly
ascensions, but also with baptism, especially the inaugural baptism of
Jesus; outside the NT, it is also connected with the manifestation of light
(e.g., frg. 4 of the Gospel of the Ebionites, Epiphanius, Panarion
30.13.7; Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 88.3 [fire]). The widespread
attestation of this phenomenon suggests that the feast of Epiphany originally
celebrated the incarnation in context of Jesus' baptism rather than his
virginal birth; unlike the passion, this was an event that could be shared
by almost all Christians, including Gnostic Christians.
As we have seen, with its awesome associations with
death and rebirth, baptism becomes a principal occasion for visionary experience.
A notable instance is the baptismal vision of king Gundaphorus in the Acts
of Thomas. According to the Syriac version (20), when the
baptismal party enters the bathhouse, Jesus appears, but only his voice
was heard "since they had not yet been baptized." After the initial anointing,
the invocation of the Name and the Spirit, and baptism proper, as the participants
were emerging from the water, there appeared a luminous youth carrying
a blazing torch whose light overpowers the illumination afforded by the
many oil lamps illuminating the proceedings. The Greek version (26-27)
does not explicitly mention the baptism proper: during the night, before
the anointing and baptism of Gundaphorus, the participants received an
audition from the Lord, but not a vision "not having received the added
sealing of the seal." When Gundaphorus receives the chrism in oil, Christ,
the Holy Spirit, Wisdom and the five rational faculties are invoked, whereupon
the Lord appears briefly as a luminous youth with a burning torch. In both
versions, upon daybreak, after the candidate was again clothed, the apostle
celebrated the eucharist. The Syriac version makes it clear that the occasion
was the nocturnal baptism of Gundaphorus, and that the audition came prior
to baptism, while the vision of the Lord occurred immediately upon their
emergence from the water.[32]
INVESTITURE
Investiture typically follows upon naked baptism. The metaphor of replacing
an old garment with a new one, which occurs repeatedly in Gnostic baptismal
contexts, can signify several religious acts: a shift from a life of vice
to one of virtue, religious conversion, a change of life-style, and initiation,
where it signifies the death and rebirth of the initiate and assimilation
of divine power.[33]
In baptismal contexts, the garment that is discarded (cf. the "garments
of skin," Gen 3:21) signifies the physical body, while donning the "robe
of light" signifies the restoration of the lost Image of God.[34]
The "Paraphrase of Seth," which Hippolytus (Refutatio
V, 19.22) attributes to the Sethians, understands baptism as washing in
and drinking from a cup of living, springing water by which the believer,
like the savior, puts on the form of a servant, escapes earthy ties and
is reclothed with a heavenly garment.
The Trimorphic Protennoia also applies the
motif of putting on garments to the savior's salvific descent. On her third
descent as the divine Logos, when Protennoia reveals herself to her members
in human likeness ("in their tents," NHC XIII,1: 47,13-25; cf. Jn
1: 9-4), she makes herself invisible to and unrecognized by all the celestial
powers by wearing their "garments" until she reveals herself to her brethren
by conferring the Five Seals. Similarly in the
Gospel of the Egyptians (NHC III,2: 63,23-64,3), Pronoia causes
Seth to establish the holy baptism of the Five Seals through a "logos-begotten"
body, Jesus the living one, whom Seth put on. To be compared is the depiction
of the descent of the initially unrecognized Logos in Johannine prologue,
which may have arisen in a baptismal context.
Likewise, in the Second Treatise of the Great
Seth (NHC VII,2: 56,20-59,18), the revealer undergoes an incognito
descent (changing his likeness at each cosmic level), his "third baptism
in a revealed image," in which he appears in the form of Jesus in order
to defeat the cosmic powers through their ignorant attempt to crucify him.
The Docetics (according to Hippolytus, Refutatio VIII, 10.6-8) considered
Jesus to have two bodies, his fleshly body acquired through his human parent
Mary, and another body, received at his baptism in the Jordan as the type
of the former; the former body was nailed to the cross, deceiving the archons
and powers, yet his nakedness was covered by his baptismal body, perhaps
to be understood as an ethereal garment or subtle body rather like the
vehicle (ochêma) of the soul. Even the Gospel of Truth
(20,28-28) proclaims that Jesus, although clothed with eternal life,
died on the cross, nevertheless stripped himself of the "perishable
rags," put on imperishability, and ascended to heaven, invulnerable to
the powers stripped naked by forgetfulness.
Putting on clothes appropriate to the cosmic level
one occupies so as to make one invulnerable or invisible to the powers
applies not only to the descending revealer, but also to an enlightened
being as it ascends into the aeonic world. A fine example is the royal
garment sent to the revealer in the "Hymn of the Pearl" (Acts of Thomas
108-113). The new garment is often so luminous and brilliant that it blinds
the cosmic powers that oppose the soul's ascent (Pistis Sophia ch.
59 [p. 74 Schmidt]). According to the Gospel of Philip (58,15-16;
70,5-9; 76,22-28), in the union of the bridal chamber, one sacramentally
acquires a garment of light that makes one invisible to the hostile powers;
unlike earthly garments, such heavenly garments put on "by water and fire"
(baptism and chrism) are better than those who put them on (57, 19-23.
In Allogenes (NHC XI,3: 50,10-34; 58,26-37), the metaphor of changing
clothes is applied to Allogenes ecstatic removal from the fleshly (and
psychic?) garment of ignorance and investiture with a "great power," enabling
him to know things unknown to the multitude and obtain a vision of the
Luminaries of the Aeon of Barbelo. A non-Sethian example of stripping and
reclothing in the context of an ascent is offered by the Authoritative
Teaching (NHC VI,3: 31,24-64,3), where the soul, come to her
senses, strips off this world, replacing it with her true garment, her
bridal clothing, in which she enters the fold and unites with her true
shepherd.
Alongside the metaphor of being invested with a
new garment, one sometimes finds the royal image of being crowned. In Zostrianos
(NHC VIII,1: 129,12-16; cf. 57,13-24), when Zostrianos descends
from the Kalyptos the Protophanes level in the Aeon of Barbelo, he joins
"those who are unified" blesses the higher powers, becomes panteleios,
is written in glory, sealed, and receives a perfect crown. In chapters
11 and 12 of the untitled text of the Bruce Codex, Setheus, by means of
a logos dêmiourgikos (i.e. Christ), sends forth ray-emitting
crowns, which are awarded to believers; they are crowned with a seal of
glory on the right and a triple-powered fount (pêgê)
in their midst. In a non-ritual context, the royal image of investiture,
coronation and enthronement occur side-by-side in the Teachings of Silvanus
(NHC VII,4: 87,11-13; 89,10-34; 112,10-27), where one is urged to
put on the shining robe of wisdom and holy teaching, the crown of Paideia,
and sit on the throne of perception; those who contend well will gain dominion,
unlike the fools, who are invested with folly, crowned with ignorance and
sit on the throne of nescience.
CHRISMATION
The Sethians
Although the Sethians do not appear to have had a ritual of chrismation,
they used the term as a metaphor in two basic contexts. The first is that
of the anointing of the third member of the Sethian Trinity of Father,
Mother and Son with the "goodness" (chrêstia, a pun on christos
and chrisma) of the Father, the Invisible Spirit immediately after
his conception by the Mother Barbelo, found in the Apocryphon of John
(NHC II,1: 6,23-26 and parallels), the Gospel of the Egyptians
(NHC III,2: 44,22-24), and the Trimorphic Protennoia (NHC
XIII,1: 37,30-35). This is probably based on an interpretation of
the Gospel accounts of Jesus' baptism, when he is established as Son of
God. The second occurs in the conclusion of Eleleth's revelation to Norea,
wife-sister of Seth in the Hypostasis of the Archons (NHC II,4:
97,1-5), where it is promised that the Father will send the "true man,"
probably Seth, within three generations to anoint the souls of his progeny,
the undominated generation, with the unction of eternal life.
Valentinian Chrismation
The relation of the Valentinian chrism to the baptismal rite has been discussed
above. The Gospel of Philip (57,22-28; 67,2-9; 69,5-14; 78,1-10;
85,21-86,18) understands the chrism as fire, in the sense of intense light
which gives form and beauty. One is begotten again (reborn) by baptism
in water and anointing with the chrism through the Holy Spirit as a sort
of "baptism" in light. It seems that this is the same light that is kindled
in the bridal chamber. The doxology of A Valentinian Exposition
(XI, 2A: 40,1-29 refers to the Valentinian rite of anointing, which
was performed either before the first baptism or simultaneously with it,
enabling the recipient to overcome the power of the devil, who dominates
the flesh and struggles against God.
Marcus (Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses 1.21.5)
also practiced a rite of unction by pouring ointment or a mixture water
and oil of balsam upon the heads of his flock, which had the effect of
making one invulnerable to the powers and authorities, allowing the inner
man to ascend to the invisible by sloughing off the soul (to be delivered
to the Demiurge), and the body (to be left behind on earth). Evidently
some Valentinians perform the unction in connection with baptism, while
others claim that going to the water is unnecessary. Irenaeus calls this
casting away of the chain of the soul the redemption. Epiphanius (Panarion
36.2.4-8) adds that the followers of Heracleon perform this unction upon
the dying so that the "inner man" of those who receive it will become invisible
to and untouchable by the principalities and authorities on high as they
ascend, leaving the body on earth and consigning the soul to the Demiurge.
The inner man, a son of the pre-existent Father, appeals to the motherless
mother Sophia, the mother of Achamoth, as its source, while the inferior
powers and the Demiurge know nothing higher than Achamoth, a female created
from a female.
SACRAL MEAL
The Valentinian Eucharist
In the Gospel of Philip (NHC II,3: 75,15-24), it is said
that the eucharistic cup of water and wine contains the Holy Spirit; to
drink it conveys the perfect man; in 53,21-24, the eucharist is identified
with the crucified Jesus (who brought bread from heaven, 55,6-15), which
may explain why this rite seems underplayed in the Gospel of Philip
(e.g., 74,1-2). In the act of baptism, the living water is a body that
replaces the body stripped off in the act of pre-baptismal disrobing.
The Valentinian Marcus (Irenaeus, Adversus
Haereses I, 13.1-5 ) celebrated a eucharist with a cup mixed with
a wine that was understood to be the purple and red blood of Grace and
was repeatedly administered in large doses to wealthy women, making them
deranged. Moreover, Marcus is said to have proclaimed himself to be this
Grace as well as the bridegroom whose luminous seed a woman, as bride,
is to receive "in her bridal chamber" in order to enter together with him
into the One. Women are induced to acts of prophesy by being allowed to
babble nonsense spontaneously, supposedly repaying this gift of prophesy
by granting their possessions and bodies to Marcus.
Other Instances of the Eucharist: Ophites, Carpocratians,
and Borborites
Epiphanius (Panarion 37.5,6-7) describes a curious ritual meal practiced
by the Ophites in which they worship a snake (Irenaeus says they identified
the paradisical snake with the Devil!) as a royal source of knowledge by
offering it bread:
For they have an actual snake, and keep it in a sort of basket.
When it is time for their mysteries they bring it out of the den, spread
loaves around on a table, and call the snake to come; and when the den
is opened it comes out. And then the snake ...crawls onto the table and
coils up on the loaves. And this is what they call a perfect sacrifice.
And so, someone has told me, not only do they break the loaves the snake
has coiled on and distribute them to the recipients, but they each kiss
the snake besides ... and they offer a hymn to the Father on high-again,
as they say, through the snake--and so conclude their mysteries.
Finally, Clement of Alexandria (Stromateis III, 2.10.1) reports
that the Carpocratians celebrate an apparently nocturnal common meal that
he calls a "love feast," after which they extinguish the lamps and command
the women present to engage in sexual intercourse as a divine duty. Epiphanius
reports similar activity on the part of the Borborites, whom he connects
with the Sethians (see below on sexual sacramentalism); in particular,
he mentions two communal meals of theirs: a eucharist consisting of offering
up and consuming menstrual blood and spent semen withheld from intercourse
as the blood and body of Christ, and a Passover meal devoted to the consumption
of a mangled fetus extracted from any woman who accidentally happens to
become pregnant during such sexual exchange (Panarion 26.4.5-5.6).
SACRAL MARRIAGE
The metaphor of marriage and the bridal chamber in Gnostic usage can refer
both to the experience of spiritual reunification as well as to overtly
sexual union. In either case, the underlying myth is that of the recreation
of the primal androgyne through the union of male and female, whether that
be taken as man and woman, intellect and soul, or the earthly seed and
its angelic counterpart. As enlightened beings, the Gnostics generally
considered themselves alone capable of understanding the true significance
of sexual union, considering the non-Gnostic as worldly and animalistic,
experiencing not love, but only lust: "A bridal chamber is not for the
animals, nor is it for the slaves, nor for defiled women; but it is for
free men and virgins" (Gospel of Philip 69,1-3; cf. Irenaeus, Adversus
Haereses I 6.3; Excerpta ex Theodoto 68). While
the question of Gnostic sexual practices will be discussed under the heading
of sexual sacramentalism, here I want to comment on its use as a metaphor
for spiritual unification.[35]
The application of the concept of human marriage
to the achievement of unity with a transcendent reality is frequent in
classical Judaism, where God is the husband of his bride Israel; the metaphor
of marriage also appears in the New Testament, not only where Jesus refers
to himself as the bridegroom, but especially in the Pauline corpus (1 Cor
6:15-17, 2 Cor 11:1-2; Eph 5:22-23) as a symbol for the relation of Christ
and the Church. Although Christian Gnostics likewise draw on these biblical
concepts, uppermost in their minds as well as those of Jewish Gnostics
was the notion of the primordial unity of humankind as expressed in Gen
1:26-27, according to which Adam was created as a single masculofeminine
being in the image of God.
The primordial sin or fault underlying human existence that had to
be overcome was the creator's ignorant act of separating this originally
androgynous into separate male and female persons. In the act of physical
union, the offspring was thought to receive the human form from the male,
while its physical and emotional essence was provided by the female. The
same held for the spiritual world as well; spiritual perfection lay in
androgyny, so when a spiritual being such as Sophia undertakes to produce
offspring without a male consort, the result is defective, a formless abortion
lacking the male element of form. This being the character of her offspring,
both her son, creator of the natural world, and his cosmic product are
likewise defective. The rectification of the creation depends on introducing
into it a potential source of its reunification.
The Sethian myth conceives this to be accomplished
when the image of God (Adamas), the original human androgyne, is primordially
projected as the archetype upon which the creator unwittingly bases his
own human copy. Once he realizes that his androgynous copy is superior
to him, he splits it into male and female, but it is too late. In spite
of the creator's attempts to subvert the primal couple, by reuniting themselves
they can now recreate their original androgyny, which they do in the birth
of Seth, the "other seed." Like the divine Adamas, he is a true ("triple,"
i.e., androgynous) male Child, as is the "immovable race" he engenders.
While a few Gnostic groups such as the late Sethian Borborites sought
to replicate this primeval union through non-reproductive sexual union,
most, like the earlier Sethians eschewed sexual union, which the they considered
to typify the adulterous race of Cain. One might therefore effect a symbolic
union on the transcendent plane through ritual means, the Sethians through
baptismal ascension, and the Valentinians by an eschatological sacred marriage,
the bridal chamber.[36]
In the latter act, recourse was had not only to the myth of the primal
androgyne and the NT notions of the marriage of Christ and the church,
but also to Neo-Pythagorean speculation on the properties of unity.[37]
In the Valentinian view, having abandoned her male
consort, Sophia's ultimate human offspring from Adam and Eve onward, both
males and females, were regarded as weak female seed lacking the element
of form which could only be restored by an ascent to the Pleroma and marriage
with the male angels which the savior had prepared for them. In this way
they could eternally enjoy the harmonious syzygetic union experienced by
all the undescended aeons there. As in the metaphysics of the Platonic
psychology of the individual, every human was a split personality. One's
higher rational, active--and thus masculine--aspect of the self, had been
primordially sundered from one's emotional, passional, receptive, and thus
essentially feminine aspect of the self. The natural link with the divine
world, the intellect or highest part of the soul was still resident in
the transcendent world, although cut off from the soul and body now that
formed one's link with the everyday physical world. The goal of life was
therefore to recover this lost unity, which would involve detaching a soul
overly enamored of its bodily vehicle from the body, or detaching the rational
part of the soul from its irrational and impassioned psychic vehicle, so
as to effect its reunion with the higher intelligence.
For the Gnostics who appropriated such views, the
reunion of the psyche with one's intellect was thus tantamount to coming
together in an act of marriage, whether enacted through contemplative union,
symbolic rites, or actual physical union. The following Valentinian citations
make the point clear:
As long as we were children of the female only, as of a dishonorable
union, we were incomplete, childish, without understanding, weak, and without
form, brought forth like abortions, in short, we were children of the woman.
But having been given form by the Savior, we are the children of the man
(husband) and of the bride-chamber (Excerpta ex Theodoto 68). If
the woman had not separated from the man, she would not die with the man.
His separation became the beginning of death. Because of this Christ came
to repair the separation which was from the beginning and again unite the
two, and to give life to those who died as a result of the separation and
unite them. But the woman is united to her husband in the bridal chamber.
Indeed those who have united in the bridal chamber will no longer be separated.
Thus Eve separated from Adam because it was not in the bridal chamber that
she united with him (Gospel of Philip 70,9-22).
In the Exegesis on the Soul (NHC II,6: 132,2-133,9), which
seems to have certain Simonian affinities, the restoration of the helpless
female soul wallowing apart from her spiritual home in the brothels of
materiality is effected by the advent of the marriage of the female soul
with her intellectual masculine counterpart, her true husband. The reunification
of the irrational, passionate aspect of the soul with her celestial, intellectual
component as her true husband and master, from whom physical embodiment
has separated her, is interpreted as a reversal of the primordial separation
of Eve from Adam in the Garden of Eden: "They will become a single flesh"
(Gen 2:24, 3:16; cf. 1 Cor 6:15, 11:1; Eph 5:23). The Testimony of Truth
(NHC IX,3: 31,24-32,16; 34,32-35,23), which also seems to have certain
Simonian affinities, likewise uses the imagery of the soul as the bride
who strips off this world and learns from the evangelists about the inscrutable
One, adorning herself for this her true shepherd with her bridal clothing
"in beauty of mind," whereupon:
She found her rising. She came to rest in him who is at rest.
She reclined in the bride-chamber. She ate of the banquet for which she
had hungered. She partook of the immortal food. She found what she had
sought after. She received rest from her labors (NHC IX,3: 35,8-16).
The image of entrance into the bridal chamber and receipt of the new, imperishable
wedding robe occurs also in the Second Treatise of the Great Seth
(NHC VII,2: 57,7-58,4) as a metaphor for the soul's receipt of Intellect
and entry into the heavens. It is called a "mystery" effected by the revealer's
incognito descent (changing his likeness at each cosmic level), his "third
baptism in a revealed image," to defeat the cosmic powers through the crucifixion
and resurrection of Jesus.
The Valentinian Mystery of the Bridal Chamber
Of course, it was the Valentinians who made the most extensive use of the
metaphor of marriage as a designation for the eschatological reunion of
the Savior Jesus with Sophia and of her spiritual seed with the male angels
of the Savior:[38]
When the whole seed is perfected, then, they say, will the
mother, Achamoth leave the place of the Middle, enter into the Pleroma,
and receive her bridegroom, the Savior, who came into being from all (the
aeons), with result that the Savior and Sophia, who is Achamoth, form a
pair (syzygy These then are said to be bridegroom and bride, but the bridal
chamber is the entire Pleroma. The spiritual beings will divest themselves
of their souls and become intelligent spirits, and, without being hindered
or seen, they will enter into the Pleroma, and will be bestowed as brides
on the angels around the Savior. The Demiurge passes into the place of
his mother Sophia, that is, into the Middle. The souls of the righteous
will also repose in the place of the Middle, for nothing psychic enters
the Pleroma. When this has taken place, then (they assert) the fire that
is hidden in the world will blaze forth and burn: when it has consumed
all matter it will be consumed with it and pass into non-existence. According
to them the Demiurge knew none of these things before the advent of the
Savior (Ptolemaeus, apud Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses I, 1.7.1;
cf. Excerpta ex Theodoto 63-65).
The Savior and Sophia are interpreted as the bridegroom and bride, and
the place of their union is the "bridal chamber," the divine realm of the
Pleroma of spiritual aeons. Thus the Pauline metaphors of the Church as
bride and Christ as bridegroom are combined with the story of the fall
and restoration of Wisdom, the cosmic soul, and the restoration of the
individual psychic beings created by her. As Christians, the Valentinians
maintained the Christian rites of baptism, eucharist, and the chrism, but
seem to have developed their own ritual enactment of their expected eschatological
marriage to their celestial angelic counterparts.
In Adversus Haereses I, 13.1-21.5,
Irenaeus describes some of the Valentinian rituals known to him. In so
doing he polemically contrasts the disagreement among the Gnostics with
the supposed unified practice of his own church. They include a mystic
rite with certain invocations designed to effect a spiritual marriage,
mirroring the syzygetic union of the pleromatic aeons, in a bridal chamber
prepared beforehand. Others perform a water baptism in the name of the
Father of All, Truth the Mother of All, and the Christ who descended on
Jesus. Some utilize Hebrew invocations of Achamoth to effect redemption
as a communion with the pleromatic powers, and others replace this with
a "redemption" in which a mixture of oil and water is poured on the head
with certain invocations. Some boast an angelic redemption or restitution
(apokatastasis) featuring an anointing with balsam oil in the names
of Iao (Yahu) and Jesus of Nazareth that frees one's soul from the powers
of this age. Still others, he says, reject all such tangible symbolic acts
involving the body or soul which derive from deficiency, claiming that
the true redemption occurs only through inner, spiritual man's knowledge
of the ineffable Greatness.
In the Nag Hammadi corpus, the Tripartite Tractate
(NHC I,5: 122,12) portrays the Pleroma as the bridal chamber
in which the elect spiritual beings will experience ultimate restoration
as the bride of the savior, while the "called" psychic humans, the "men
of the Church," will serve as attendants outside the pleroma in the aeon
of "images," until they receive instruction, upon which all will receive
the restoration together; in Irenaeus' account of the Ptolemaic theology
(Adversus Haereses I, 7.1), the lower Sophia, Achamoth, enters the
Pleroma or bridal chamber as the bride of the Savior, while the spiritual
ones put off their souls, enter the Pleroma and unite with the savior's
angels. In the Tripartite Tractate (NHC I,5: 128,30), the
bridal chamber is also identified with baptism, as another expression of
the agreement and indivisible union of the knower (the Valentinian gnostic)
with the known (the Savior).
In the Gospel of Philip, the sacral marriage
has multiple symbolic referents. The fundamental mythical motif of the
restoration of the broken unity of Adam is still present (NHC II,3:
68,22-26, 70,9-22), but, as in the introductory quote from Irenaeus, the
biblical legend is now overshadowed by theogonic myths of the Valentinian
school. The sacramental union in the Bridal Chamber has its archetype in
the union of the Savior with the previously barren Sophia. According to
71,3-15, the body of Jesus the Savior was produced in the pleromatic bridal
chamber from the union of the Father of the All with the "virgin who came
down," presumably the higher Sophia before her fall from the Pleroma; from
this origin, it descended to establish this union of bride and bridegroom
as the way for his true disciples to enter into his pleromatic rest.[39]
This union is perhaps represented on another level by the legends of Christ's
association with Mary Magdalene,[40]
and its fulfillment in the eschatological union of the Gnostic's true self
(the female bride, or "seed," or eikôn) with its corresponding
male "angel" as bridegroom (58,10-14; 65,23-25: cf. 78,33-127,5). According
to the Gospel of Philip 86,1-18, becoming a son of the bridal chamber
is the only means to receive the light. Although in this world it is present
only as an image of the truth, this light grants absolute imperturbability
throughout the rest of this life as though he were already living in the
Pleroma. The theme of restoration of man's primeval unity is thereby projected
onto the macrocosmic plane, where it symbolizes the reintegration of the
Pleroma to its precosmic state. The Gospel of Philip (84,14-85,21)
represents the bridal chamber or Pleroma, Christ, and the spiritual elect
with the imagery of the heavenly temple and high priesthood similar to
that found in the NT Letter to the Hebrews (6:19-20; 9:2-5). The reality
of the Pleroma, symbolized as the Holy of Holies, has been concealed from
those inhabiting the outer courts of the cosmos from the time that the
inferior creator fashioned the world, available to those outside only in
types and images. But now the veil separating the Holy of holies from the
outer courts of the cosmos has been rent, and these outer courts of the
temple-like cosmos will be destroyed. Their creator, the demiurge, will
not enter the Holy of holies, but will ascend to the Hebdomad below Horos,
the lower boundary of the Pleroma. When the outer precincts of the cosmic
temple are destroyed, the merely psychic members of the Valentinian community
will be saved by the church, symbolized by the ark, while the truly pneumatic
members, those belonging to the priesthood, will be able to go through
the veil into the Pleroma in the company of the high priest, the Savior.
The actual ritual involved in the sacred marriage of the Valentinians
cannot be determined with certainty. Given its eschatological reference,
Gaffron considers it to have been the believer's last sacrament, a "death
sacrament" rather like the Mandaean Masiqta.[41]
As one might expect of any mystery rite, the Gospel
of Philip (NHC II,3: 82,7-26 makes it clear that the mystery
of the bride chamber is reserved for the pneumatic members of the Valentinian
community alone. The intercourse of bride and bridegroom is private, pure
and undefiled; the pneumatic bride may reveal her true nature only to those
who may enter the bridal chamber every day: her father, mother, and the
friend and sons of the bridegroom. The Gospel of Philip (69.1-5)
specifies that "a bridal chamber is not for the animals, nor is it for
the slaves, nor is it for defiled women; but it is for free men and virgins."
Meeks notes the parallel in Gospel of Thomas logion 75: "The monachoi
are the [only] ones who will enter the bridal chamber," but here the bridal
chamber seems only a metaphor, rather than a cultic anticipation, of "the
kingdom."[42]
Although no cultic acts are described in the Gospel
of Thomas, baptism is presumably presupposed. "Male and female" are
to be made "one," but it is an unequal union, since the female must become
male if she is to become a "living spirit" (logion 114).[43]
As Meeks notes, the monachos in the Gospel of Thomas is beyond sexuality,
"like a little child" (Gos. Thom. 22), whose innocence of
sexuality is portrayed in the removal of clothing without shame--like Adam
before the Fall (logion 37, cf. logion 21).[44]
The heresiologists, most of whose information about
ritual details was likely inferred from reading Gnostic treatises, concluded,
sometimes correctly, that the rite of the bride chamber involved physical
sex relations.[45]
The Gospel of Philip disparages actual cohabitation, even though
it is an "image" of the true union "in the Aiôn."[46]
As early as 1959, H.-M. Schenke speculated that the outward symbol of the
Valentinian rite of the bridal chamber was the "holy kiss," on the basis
of the Gospel of Philip 59,2-6 ("For it is by a kiss that the perfect
conceive and give birth. For this reason we also kiss one another. We receive
conception from the grace which is in one another"), and 63,30-64,2 naming
Mary Magdalene as Christ's most beloved disciple, whom he often used to
kiss.[47]
The popular practice of the wider church tends to confirm that the kiss
did have an important place.[48]
As Meeks concludes, "whatever the Gnostics did in the marriage sacrament,
it clearly distinguished them, in their opinion, from those who were merely
baptized and anointed. It was the sacrament of the elite, the teleioi".[49]
SEXUAL SACRAMENTALISM
The Simonians and Valentinians
While many gnostic groups of the second and third century advocated and
practiced a sexual and dietary encratism approaching a true demonization
of sexuality, other groups rejected such as practice as ineffective and
deceptive, transforming the moral indifference typical of its libertine
opposite, free sexual exchange, into sacred ritual. According to Irenaeus
(Adversus Haereses I, 23.4), the Simonians worship images of Simon
Magus and Helen, as well as engage in various occult practices, including
exorcisms, incantations, philters, and erotic magic. Hippolytus, (Refutatio
VI, 19.5) specifies further specifies that this erotic magic took the form
of sexual intercourse as a means of experiencing spiritual union. In Adversus
Haereses I, 13.1-5, Irenaeus indicates that the Valentinian Marcus
interpreted the rite of the bride-chamber in a sexually explicit way, claiming
himself to be the Grace whose luminous seed should be deposited "in her
bridal chamber" as a way of imitating the pleromatic syzygetic union of
male and female aeons, thus entering into the One together with him.
A Sethian Offshoot: the Borborites
According to Epiphanius (Panarion 26.3-12), the later Sethians,
whom he calls Borborites, Barbelites, Phibionites, Stratiotici and Coddians,
engaged in a thorough-going sexual sacramentalism. Their symbolic actions
included a ritual handshake (featuring tickling beneath the palms of joined
hands), a love feast in which spouses were exchanged, homosexual intercourse
on the part of a special class called Levites, naked prayer featuring the
elevation to the 365 Archons (e.g., Iao, Saklas, Seth, Daveithai, Eloaeus,
Yaldabaoth, Sabaoth, Barbelo, the Autogenes Christ, and the supreme Autopater)
of hands smeared with semen and menstrual blood (apparently symbolizing
the elevation of the host and wine commemorating the "passion" of Christ),
and consumption of the same as a form of eucharist. If one of the women
accidentally conceived, the fetus was extracted and sacramentally consumed
to prevent the further dispersal of the divine spirit in another human
body.
According to Stephen Gero,[50]
"the central, distinguishing feature of the sect, its devotion to the so-called
sperma cult, described by [Epiphanius] in vivid detail, can hardly
be dismissed as a prurient invention. In the simplest of terms it involved
the extraction, collection and solemn, sacramental consecration and consumption
of bodily fluids, male and female, which contributed to the further propagation
of the human race, and thus to the continued entrapment of the divine substance
by the evil archons. In these fluids is concentrated the spiritual element,
found scattered in the world, in particular in food-stuffs (including meat!),
of which the initiates can and should partake. The mythology proper is
a version of the Barbelo-gnostic myth, as known from Irenaeus and the Apocryphon
of John." Although Epiphanius does not say that they called this rather
unrestrained ritual sex a "mystery" or rite of the bridal chamber, it seems
clear that its intent was the same, effecting a restoration of the lost
primordial unity by physical coupling and attempting to reverse the natural
course of the propagation of the species.
VERBAL PERFORMANCES
A large and varied class of ritual expression can be loosely gathered under
the head of ritual speech, which can include glossalalia, traditional verbal
formulae, spells, oaths, conjuration, invocations, evocations, voces
mysticae, sunthêmata, and prayers of various sorts addressed
to transcendent powers, good and evil alike.
The Basilideans (Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses I, 24.4) are said
to engage in magic, conjuring of the dead, spells, calling up of spirits,
and the invocation by name of each of the angelic beings belonging to the
365 heavens: "The person who has learnt these things, and knows all the
angels and their origins, becomes invisible and incomprehensible to all
the angels and powers." In his Contra Celsum (VI, 31), Origen describes
numerous verbal formulae employed by the Ophites as passwords used by the
ascending soul to mollify the hostility of the heavenly rulers blocking
their entrance into the divine world. These formulas bear a striking resemblance
to the first person self-predicatory recognition formulas attributed to
the Gnostic revealer who likewise used them in the course of his own descent
and reascent to disarm the hostile cosmic powers. As the ascending soul
traverses the spheres of the powers (the solitary king, Yaldabaoth/Saturn,
Iao, Sabaoth, Astaphaios, Ailoaios, Horaios), it announces to the respective
rulers its special status as purified and freed from the archontic powers,
possessing the divine light and life, imbued with the power of the Mother.
Thus:
But you, archon Yaldabaoth, to whom power belongs as first
and seventh, I go with confidence as a ruling Logos of pure Nous, as a
perfect work for the Son and the Father, bearing by the imprint of a stamp
the symbol of life, having opened for the world the gate which you had
by your aeon closed; as a free man I go past your power. Grace be with
me, yes, Father, be it with me (Contra Celsum VI, 31).
Irenaeus (Adversus Haereses I, 21.5) also attributes similar formulas
to Valentinians who, in the context of a death-bed anointing are provided
with recognition formulas by which they identify themselves to the demiurge
as a son of the pre-existent Father who invokes the higher Sophia as the
supreme Mother whose power greatly transcends that of the demiurge's mother,
the lower Sophia Achamoth.
The ultimate ancestor of this genre of passwords
seems to be found either in the dialogues of Egyptian Book of the Dead,
or, more likely, in the Orphic-Bacchic gold leaves inscribed with
hexameter instructions to the dead about the path to be followed in the
other world, such as this one from Hipponion:
In the house of Hades there is a spring [i.e. Lethe, of forgetfulness]
to the right; by it stands a white cypress. Here the souls, descending,
are cooled. Do not approach this spring! Further you will find cool water
flowing from the lake of recollection. Guardians stand over it who will
ask you in their sensible mind why you are wandering through the darkness
of corruptible Hades. Answer: "I am a son of the earth and of the starry
sky, but I am desiccated with thirst and am perishing; therefore quickly
give me cool water flowing from the lake of recollection." And then the
subjects of the Chthonic King (?) will have pity and will give you to drink
from the lake of recollection.... And indeed you are going a long, sacred
way which also other mystai and bacchoi gloriously walk.
In Gnostic literature, one finds verbal formulae, often in the context
of ecstatic prayer and praise, which are clearly intended as syllables
of power. Sometimes these syllables are enigmatic abbreviations for articulate
utterances, sometimes they have nearly the character of Hindu mantras,
as in the chanting of strings of vowels in semi-numerical groupings, where
the emphasis seems to lie in the sonority and repetitiveness of the verbal
performance. In this regard, the following passage from the Gospel of
the Egyptians (NHC III,2: 66,9-68,1) is exemplary:
IH IEUS HW OU HW WUA! Really truly, O Yesseus Mazareus Yessedekeus,
O living water, O child of the child, O glorious name, really truly AIWN
O WN (i.e., 'O existing aeon'), IIII HHHH EEEE OOOO UUUU WWWW AAAA{A},
really truly, HI AAAA WWWW, O existing one who sees the aeons! Really truly,
AEE HHH IIII UUUUUU WWWWWWW, who is eternally eternal, really truly, IHA
AIW, in the heart, who exists, U AEI EIS AEI, EI O EI, EI OS EI (or: Son
forever, Thou art what Thou art, Thou art who Thou art)! This great name
of thine is upon me, O self-begotten Perfect one, who art not outside me.
I see thee, O thou who art visible to everyone. For who will be able to
comprehend thee in another tongue? Now that I have known thee, I have mixed
myself with the immutable. I have armed myself with an armor of light,
I have become light. For the Mother was at that place because of the splendid
beauty of grace. Therefore I have stretched out my hands while they were
folded. I was shaped in the circle of the riches of the light which is
in my bosom, which gives shape to the many begotten ones in the light into
which no complaint reaches. I shall declare thy glory truly, for I have
comprehended thee, SOU IHS IDE AEIW AEIE OIS, O aeon, aeon, O God of silence!
I honor thee completely. Thou art my place of rest, O son HS HS O E, the
formless one who exists in the formless ones, who exists, raising up the
man in whom thou wilt purify me into thy life, according to thine imperishable
name. Therefore the incense of life is in me. I mixed it with water after
the model of all archons, in order that I may live with thee in the peace
of the saints, thou who existeth really truly for ever.
This presentation of ecstatic prayer is notable in that it mentions the
bodily gesture, rather like a Hindu mudra,[51]
of extending ones hands in the act of prayer (cf. 3 Mac 2:2; in Odes
of Solomon 21, 27, 37, 42 a sign of the crucifixion), indeed while
they are folded, forming a circle to symbolize one's containment of the
inner light. The prayer also contains an apparent reference to water baptism,
in which ordinary physical water ("in the type of the archons") is converted
into living water by mixing it with the spirit ("incense of life") possessed
by the baptizand; rather than being purified prior to of baptism by invocation
of the Spirit or by holy oil, the baptismal water is here purified by the
one undergoing baptism, since he has already received the light.
In the Gnostic treatises one finds also extended
doxologies in praise of the aeonic powers. In the Sethian treatises, there
are the four particularly striking parallel doxologies in Allogenes
(XI,3: 53,32-54,37), the Three Steles of Seth (VII,5:
126,5-13), and Zostrianos (VIII,1: 51,6-52,25 and 88,9-25).
They recite a traditional list of nomina barbara designating divine
beings invoked in the course of the mystical ascent through the Aeon of
Barbelo.[52]
In fact the entire Three Steles of Seth is essentially an extended
doxology in praise of the Sethian Father, Mother, and Son triad, praising
the powers and deeds of Autogenes, Barbelo and the supreme Invisible Spirit;
it appears to have been composed for use in a community-oriented practice
of contemplative ascent.
Aretalogical doxologies also are found in the Hermetic
Corpus. In the Nag Hammadi library, the Prayer of Thanksgiving (NHC
VI,7), which occurs also in Greek (Papyrus Mimaut) and at the end
of the Latin Asclepius, is a combination of petitions with doxological
praise , which is concluded by a mutual embrace (aspazesthai, cf.
the "kiss of peace) and a communal meal of "sacred food that has no blood
in it" (65,3-7). This prayer follows the Hermetic treatise The Discourse
on the Eighth and the Ninth, which itself contains the extended prayer
of an unnamed initiate to his spiritual father Hermes Trismegistus. Having
attained Hebdomad, Hermes guides the initiate towards the Ogdoad and Ennead,
where he sees that his guide is Intellect itself and, along with other
angels and souls, he sings a hymn of praise to the Father in silence. The
prayer seems to be regarded as "spiritual sacrifice" (cf. Rom 12:1), and
contains petition, aretalogical doxology, and ecstatic chanting of vowels
spoken in the first person plural; it is followed later by a hymn with
a similar chant in the first person singular (NHC VI,6: 55,23-61,18).
Taken with other Hermetic prayers (Corpus Hermeticum I, 31-32; XIII,
16-20; Asclepius 41), these prayers indicate an established community
ritual in which visionary experience is expressed in prayers of praise,
thanksgiving and ecstatic formulae, and celebrated in a meal.
There is also the very similar doxological Prayer
of the Apostle Paul included in the front of the Jung Codex (NHC I,1).[53]
Three of the five supplements A Valentinian Exposition (NHC XI,2a,
XI,2d, and XI,2e) are prayers, separated by two short catacheses
on the nature of baptism. The first is a pre-baptismal invocation of Christ
to anoint baptismal candidates with the power to "trample on the heads
of snakes and scorpions and all the power of the Devil" (Lk 10:19; cf.
Excerpta ex Theodoto 76); this is very similar to the pre-baptismal
practice of exorcising the devil through the acts of anointing with oil
and penitence by standing on sackcloth or goatskin.[54]
The other two prayers are pre-eucharistic thanksgivings. Although not part
of a ritual setting, two other prayers might be mentioned, which are petitions
for release form the troubles of this life, one at the conclusion of the
Book of Thomas the Contender (NHC II,7: 145,8-16), and James'
prayer for a speedy death at the conclusion of the Second Apocalypse
of James (NHC V,3: 62,13-63,29).
The frequent use of nomina barbara, syllables
of power, and phrases in languages other than one's own (cf. the Aramaic
baptismal formulae quoted in Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses I, 21.3)
is succinctly explained in Corpus Hermeticum XVI,2 (Asclepius to
King Ammon):
Expressed in our own native (Egyptian) tongue, the discourse
(logos) keeps clear the meaning (nous) of the words (logoi)
[at any rate], for its very quality of sound, the very intonation of the
Egyptian names, have in themselves the actuality (energeia) of what
is said. So as far as you can, O King--and you can do all things--keep
this our discourse from translation, in order that such mighty mysteries
may not come to the Greeks, and the disdainful speech of Greece with all
its looseness and its surface beauty, so to speak, take all the strength
out of the solemn and the strong--the energetic speech of Names. The Greeks,
O King, have novel words, effecting demonstration only; and thus is the
philosophizing of the Greeks--the noise of words. But we do not use words;
we rather use sounds filled full with deeds.
As Socrates says in the Cratylus (439a; 424bc), "names rightly given
are the likenesses and images of the things they name." He who would imitate
the essence of things in speech must give them a name; to analyze them,
one must "separate" the syllables and letters, "first the vowels, and then
the consonants and mutes, into classes according to the traditional distinctions
of the learned, also the semivowels, which are neither vowels nor yet mutes,
and distinguish into classes the vowels themselves." Of course, more desirable
is a kind of knowledge that grasps reality directly, without names.
The most striking instance of Gnostic texts containing
words and symbols of power is the Books of Jeu in the Bruce Codex.
Nearly every page portrays tables and lists of divine names, powers and
attributes in the form of voces mysticae et barbara intended to
be pronounced, as well as numerous graphic images that were perhaps intended
to be gazed upon until a trance-like state resulted. The graphic sunthêmata
(tokens), appearing as they do on the pages of a codex, seem to presuppose
private appropriation on the part of the reader rather than communal recitation,
and thus approach the phenomenon of the "reading mystery" (Lesemysterium),
a term coined by Reitzenstein to characterize the gradated reading of the
Corpus Hermeticum.
Although apparently independent of ritual contexts,
the alphabet mysticism and magic scattered throughout the pages of Gnostic
literature are to be used as words of power.[55]
It consists of mysterious combinations of letters, syllables, the seven
vowels and seventeen consonants of the Greek alphabet, and the 22 letters
of the Hebrew alphabet which are arranged in various sequences and patterns
(klimata), where each permutation of order is significant, as is
the pronouncing of these sounds. Particularly important is the use of names,
especially the Tetragrammaton and other Semitic formations such as Sabaoth
and Abrasax, names for the daimones of the planetary Hebdomad, as
well as a multitude of phtikta onomata and onomata asêma
kai barbara, whose significance is hard to ascertain.[56]
The primary example of these is of course the Greek magical papyri. Although
space and complexity forbids treating these phenomena here, perhaps the
most extensive Gnostic examples are Irenaeus' account (Adversus Haereses
I, 13-22) of the alphabetic and numerical speculations of the Valentinian
Marcus, and the unfortunately very fragmentary phonological, arithmological,
and astral speculations on the shape of the soul in the Sethian treatise
Marsanes (NHC X,1).
ASCENSIONAL AND CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICES
The Sethian Platonizing Treatises
In the treatises Allogenes, Three Steles of Seth, Zostrianos
and Marsanes, salvation is not brought from above to below
by divine visitations, but rather occurs through the Gnostic's contemplative
ascent through ever higher levels of the divine realm. Here one finds an
exemplary visionary, Allogenes or Marsanes (probably alternative designations
for Seth), utilizing a self-performable technique of successive stages
of mental detachment from the world of multiplicity, and a corresponding
assimilation of the self to the evermore refined levels of being to which
one's contemplation ascends, until one achieves an absolute stasis and
cognitive vacancy characteristic of deification. The Three Steles of
Seth presupposes a three-stage ascent to the Autogenes, the aeon of
Barbelo, and the supreme One. Allogenes depicts a similar three-stage
ascent, but begins at the aeon of Barbelo, and adds an ascent through the
supra-intelligible levels of the Triple-Powered One of the Invisible Spirit,
culminating in a "primary revelation" of the Unknowable One. A similar
ascent is portrayed in Zostrianos, except that it has been supplemented
by a series of initial stages within the sense-perceptible realm, and each
successive stage of ascent after these is associated with a certain baptismal
sealings. Marsanes merely comments on certain features of the ascent,
which its author claims to have already undergone.
The text that most warrants the treatment of this
contemplative ascent as an established ritual is the Three Steles of
Seth, in which the aretalogical doxologies of Seth in honor of his
father Geradamas, the Aeon of Barbelo, and the ultimate pre-existent One
are provided for the use of both individuals and a community: "Whoever
remembers these and always glorifies shall be perfect among those who are
perfect and impassive beyond all things; for individually and collectively
they all praise these: and afterward they shall be silent. And just as
it has been ordained for them, they will ascend. After silence, they will
descend from the third, they will bless the second, and afterward, the
first. The way of ascent is the way of descent" (NHC VII,5: 127,
6-21). In the first Stele, Seth praises his father Geradamas as his intellect,
as Autogenes (self-begotten), the "Mirotheid" (Mirothea is the mother of
Adamas in the Gospel of the Egyptians, NHC III,2: 49,1-12)
who presides over Seth's "alien" seed, the immovable race; then Seth and
Geradamas praise the thrice-masculine aeon Barbelo who came forth to the
middle to empower and bestow crowns and perfection upon them. The second
Stele is directed by the "perfect individuals" to Barbelo as their three-in-one
source, the source of all multiplicity, the projected image ("shadow")
of the "first pre-existent One," the bestower of divinity, goodness and
blessing; the "individuals" petition her to save them by uniting them.
The third Stele is directed to the pre-existent One, the only and living
Spirit, the Existence, Life and Mind of the All, whom they entreat to present
a "command" that they might be saved; at that point, the petitioners recognize
that they have been saved, and therefore offer praise and glory. Each stele
marks a stage on the contemplative ascent to the One. Just as Seth, spiritual
ancestor of the Sethians, praised and joined his father Adamas in the praise
of the Mother Barbelo, and of her source, the pre-existent One, so the
members of the Sethian community are to follow the same pattern in their
own ascent to the aeon of Barbelo and receive the revelation of the Invisible
Spirit.
The treatise that most likely contains the key to
the ritual origins of the Sethian ascensional rite is Zostrianos,
since, as noted above, it marks the various stages of Zostrianos' visionary
ascent with certain baptisms, sealings, washings in various "waters." It
is perhaps also significant that Marsanes (NHC X,1: 2,12-4,24)
enumerates the entire sequence of the ontological levels underlying these
treatises as thirteen "seals." Of these texts, it is Allogenes that
most clearly portrays the method of this ascent, so it will form the basis
of the following exposition, even though it narrates the ascent as that
of an individual, and enumerates the levels of ascent slightly differently
than the others.
The cosmology of these treatises is tripartite,
but belongs to the four-level ontology of Speusippus, the Neopythagoreans
and Plotinus, which posits a highest realm beyond even being itself, below
which one finds an atemporal, intelligible realm of pure being, followed
by a psychic realm, characterized by time and motion, and finally a physical
realm at the bottom of the scale. The following summary of the ontology
of Allogenes will suffice to indicate the ontological structure
of the entire group:
The highest being, corresponding the Plotinian One,
is the Unknowable One or Invisible Spirit, characterized by non-being existence,
silence and stillness; he is not an existing thing and is completely unknowable
(XI,3: 62,23-64,14). Marsanes (X,1: 2,12-23)appears
to add yet another level, the "unknown, silent One" beyond even the Invisible
Spirit.
The second major level is that of the Aeon of Barbelo,
the First Thought of the Invisible Spirit, characterized as a non-discriminating,
incorporeal, [timeless] knowledge (XI,3: 51,10-11). The Barbelo
Aeon is subdivided into three levels which correspond to aspects of the
Plotinian hypostases of Intellect and Soul: 1) the domain of "the authentic
existents" (ta ontôs onta, the noêta) presided
over by Kalyptos (the Hidden One, a sort of nous noêtos) rather
like the Plotinian Intellect; 2) the domain of "those who are unified"
(i.e. "exist together," cf. Ennead IV.1.1: ekei [en tôi
nôi] homou men pas mous ... homou de pasai psychaiv) presided
over by Protophanes (the First Appearing One, a sort of nous theôrêtikos),
rather like the Plotinian cosmic Soul; and 3) the domain of the "(perfect)
individuals" (perhaps individual souls) presided over by Autogenes (the
Self-begotten One, a sort of demiurgic nous dianooumenos) who operates
to rectify the realm of Nature, rather like the Plotinian individuated
soul.
The third level, Nature, is merely mentioned in
passing as a realm whose defects are continually rectified by Autogenes,
and appears to hold no interest for the author of Allogenes, although
the treatise Marsanes (X,1: 5,23-26) regards this realm as
entirely worthy of salvation.
The mediator between the Invisible Spirit and the Aeon of Barbelo is
an entity called the Triple-Powered One. This being is mentioned sometimes
independently, and sometimes in conjunction with the Invisible Spirit.[57]
By a static self-extension, the Invisible Spirit through his Triple-Powered
One becomes the Aeon of Barbelo (XI,3: 45,21-30; cf. Zostrianos
VIII,1: 76,7-19; 78,10-81,20; Three Steles VII, 5:
121,20-122,8; Marsanes X, 1: 8,18-9,28). Thus the Triple-Powered
One is the potency (dunamis) of the Unknown One and/or Invisible
Spirit by which he unfolds himself into the world of Being and Intellect.
It is said to consist of three modalities or phases: That-which-is (Being
or Existence), Vitality, and Mentality (XI,3: 49,26-38)
In Allogenes, the Triple-Powered One is identical with the Invisible
Spirit in its Existence-phase, discontinuous with the Invisible
Spirit but identical with Barbelo in its Mentality-phase, and in its emanative
or Vitality-phase, it is simultaneously continuous and discontinuous with
both the Invisible Spirit and Barbelo. Allogenes attributes also
to the Unknowable One / Invisible Spirit a similar triad of attributes,
but characterizes them as acts rather than qualities or substances: "he
exists, lives and knows without mind, life or existence" (61, 32-39).
Bearing in mind that the Aeon of Barbelo is considered
to be 1) the "knowledge" or "first thought" of the Invisible Spirit (51,
8-32), that 2) it contains the perfect Mind Protophanes, and 3) contains
in its Kalyptos-level the realm of pure being (to ontôs onta),
one arrives at an enneadic structure for the metaphysical ontology of Allogenes.
At the level of the Invisible Spirit, the Being-Life-Mind triad is present
as the pure activity of existing, living, and thinking (expressed as verbal
infinitives); on the level of the Triple-Powered One, it is present as
a triad of abstract qualities (existence, vitality, mentality), and on
the level of the Barbelo Aeon, as a triad of substantial realities: being,
life and mind (Kalyptos as Being and Protophanes as Mind, although its
life-component is not given a distinct identification).
In reality, all three levels are only separate phases
of the unfolding of the Invisible Spirit by means of its Triple-Powered
One into the Aeon of Barbelo. Rather than being a triad of principles distributed
vertically among different planes of reality, the Existence, Life, Intellect
triad is seen as a dynamic three-in-one principle in which each phase of
the triad, while containing the other two, is named by the phase of the
triad that predominates at each stage of its unfolding. In the accompanying
diagram, the underlined term indicates the relative predominance of one
of the three modalities. The first phase coincides with the Invisible Spirit
and the third phase with the Aeon of Barbelo, in effect giving rise to
a median phase in which the Triple-Powered One is discontinuous with both
the Invisible Spirit and Barbelo, having a quasi-hypostatic character of
its own.
| Unknowable One / Invisible Spirit |
Exists |
Lives |
Knows |
| Triple-Powered One / Eternal Life |
Existence |
Vitality |
Mentality |
| Barbelo / First Thought |
Being |
(Life) |
Mind |
The Visionary Ascent
Allogenes (XI, 3: 58,26-61,21) tripartitions the contemplative
ascent into separate but successive stages in accord with the tripartitioning
of its general ontology, since the object of the ascent is to become assimilated
with each higher level of being through which one passes. Each stage of
the ascent is prefaced by instruction from a revealer. The technique of
the initial ascent through the lowest level of the intelligible realm,
the Aeon of Barbelo is revealed by the "male virgin" Youel (57,29-58,26).
The technique of the culminating ascent through the Triple-Powered One
is revealed by the three "luminaries of the Aeon of Barbelo" (58,26-61,22),
and is structured in terms of the tripartite nomenclature previously applied
to the Triple-Powered One in 49,26-38. The technique of the final union
with the Unknowable One, however, cannot be conveyed by a positive descriptive
revelation, but only by a "primary revelation of the Unknowable One"; this
turns out to be the long negative theology in 61,32-64,36, by which one
acquires the saving gift of learned ignorance. On completion of the ascent
and revelation, Allogenes' appropriate response will be to record and safeguard
the revelation (68,16-23) and entrust its proclamation to his confidant
Messos (68,26-end).
Stage 1: The Ascent through the Aeon of Barbelo
The revealer Youel instructs Allogenes concerning the initial part of the
ascent to "the God who truly [pre-exists]," which requires a perfect seeking
of the Good within oneself, by which one knows oneself as one who exists
with the pre-existent God. According to 50,10-36, the wisdom conveyed by
Youel's initial revelation of the Aeon of Barbelo and of the Triple-Powered
One will restore Allogenes to his primordial, unfallen condition. It will
invest Allogenes' "thought" with the power requisite to distinguish between
"immeasurable and unknowable" things, the contents of the Barbelo Aeon
and the principles beyond it, causing Allogenes to fear that his learning
has exceeded normal limits. One notes again the metaphor of putting on
a garment.
In 52,7-21, after Youel's initial revelation of
the contents of the Aeon of Barbelo, Allogenes reports that his soul went
slack with disturbance. Turning to himself, he sees the light surrounding
him and the Good within him and becomes divine, which Youel interprets
as a completion of wisdom sufficient to receive a revelation of the Triple-Powered
One.
Interpreted in the light of the ontology of the
treatise, it seems as if Allogenes has become successively assimilated
to the various levels of the Barbelo Aeon: first, to the level of the "individuals"
within Autogenes, and second, to the level of "those who are unified" within
Protophanes, and third, to "those who truly exist" in Kalyptos.
In her fifth discourse (55,33-57,24), Youel promises
Allogenes that, after an incubation period of a "hundred years" (during
which he presumably is to engage in self-contemplation, experiencing "a
great light and a blessed path," 57,27-58,7), he will receive a revelation
from the "luminaries of the Aeon of Barbelo." This revelation will convey
only so much as is necessary to know without Allogenes forfeiting his own
kind. If Allogenes is successful in this, he will receive a conception
(ennoia) of the pre-existent One and know himself as one "who exists
with the God who truly pre-exists" (56,18-36), which will make him divine
and perfect.
At the conclusion of the "hundred years" of preparation, Allogenes
reports that he saw Autogenes, the Triple Male, Protophanes, Kalyptos,
the Aeon of Barbelo, and the "primal origin of the of the One without origin,"
that is, the Triple-Powered One of the Invisible Spirit (57,29-58,26).
One should probably understand this as Allogenes' ascent through the various
levels of the Aeon of Barbelo up to and including the lowest aspect ("blessedness"
or Mentality) of the Triple-Powered One, which would be identical with
the entirety of the Aeon of Barbelo itself. Up to this point, Allogenes
still bears his earthly "garment" (58,29-30).
This initial vision culminates with Allogenes' receipt of a luminous
garment by which he is taken up to "a pure place" (58,31), where he transcends
("stands upon") his knowledge (characterized by blessedness and self-knowledge)
of the individual constituents of the Barbelo-Aeon. He is now ready for
"holy powers" revealed to him by the "luminaries of the Aeon of Barbelo"
to encourage him to "strive for" an even higher knowledge toward which
he had already "inclined," namely "the knowledge of the Universal Ones,"
that is, of the Triple-Powered One and the Invisible Spirit (59,2-3).
Stage 2: The Ascent through the Triple-Powered
One
The ascent beyond the Aeon of Barbelo to the Unknowable One is first revealed
to Allogenes by holy powers (59,4-60,12) and then actually narrated (60,12-61,22)
by Allogenes in a way quite similar to the revelation, yielding what amounts
to two accounts of the ascent. Having surpassed his active, earthly knowledge
and inclining toward the passive knowledge of the Universal Ones (the Triple-Powered
One and the Invisible Spirit, 59,2-3), Allogenes attains first the level
of blessedness (i.e., Mentality), at which one knows one's proper self,
sees the good in oneself and becomes divine (59,9-13; 60,14-18). Next,
as he "seeks himself," he ascends (anachôrein) to the level
of Vitality, characterized by an undivided, eternal, intellectual motion,
a supra-eidetic realm, where one achieves partial stability (he stands
not firmly but quietly, 59,14-16; 60,19-28). Finally Allogenes achieves
the level of Existence, characterized by a completely inactive "stillness"
and "standing" (59,19-26; 60,28-37). He is filled with a "primary revelation
of the unknowable One" that empowers and permanently strengthens him, enabling
him to receive an incognizant knowledge of the unknowable One.
At this point, having assimilated himself to the
primal modality of the Triple-Powered One, Allogenes can no longer ascend
to any higher level; only in the case that he becomes afraid can he further
withdraw, and that only "to the rear because of the activities" (59,34-35;
cf. Plotinus, Ennead III,8.9,29-40; VI,9.3,1-13). He must not "seek
incomprehensible matters," but must avoid any further effort lest he dissipate
his inactivity and fall away from the passivity, concentratedness, and
instantaneousness of the primary revelation to follow (59,26-60,12; cf.
64,14-26; 67,22-38). Allogenes is told be "incognizant" ("ignorant" or
"non-knowing") of the Unknowable One, that is, not to exercise any faculties
of the active intellect, lest this activity initiate a movement that would
destroy the stability he has achieved. Even to fear this extreme inertness
is such a mental activity, and necessitates a withdrawal to a previous
level of contemplation. Once he receives the primary revelation, he must
therefore "still himself" and remain completely self-concentrated ("do
not further dissipate") and refrain from any exercise of the active intellect,
even if it should be a "luminous ennoia," which might replace and
therefore destroy the inactivity conveyed to him by the Unknowable One.[58]
In a state of utter passivity, Allogenes receives a "primary revelation
of the Unknowable One" (59,28-29; 60,39-61,1) characterized as a cognitively
vacant knowledge of the Unknowable One (59,30-32; 60,8-12; 61,1-4). This
knowledge can be articulated only by an extensive negative theology (61,32-62,13;
supplemented by a more affirmative theology, 62,14-67,20).
The sequence of Allogenes' mental states therefore
moves from relative to permanent stability, and from self-knowledge to
mental vacancy: 1) At the level of Mentality, characterized by silent stillness,
he "hears" the Blessedness of true self-knowledge. 2) At the level of Vitality,
characterized by the eternal circular ("undivided") motion of the supra-eidetic
realm, and still seeking himself, he achieves partial stability. 3) At
the level of Existence, characterized by total stability and inactivity,
he achieves a complete stability, permanently strengthened by the indwelling
of the Triple-Powered One. 4) Allogenes is filled with the "primary revelation
of the Unknowable One," which allows him to know the Unknowable One and
his Triple-Powered One insofar as he maintains a state of complete incognizance
and mental vacuity.
The sequence of Allogenes' mental states is also
the reverse of the sequence of the dominant phases or ontological modalities
in which the Triple Powered One unfolds into the Aeon of Barbelo. His initial
state is called Blessedness, a condition associated with a silent (non-discursive?)
self-contemplation characteristic of "Mentality," which designates also
the lowest phase of the Triple-Powered One's three phases of Mentality,
Vitality and Existence. He is then instructed to move from this state to
a less stable state, that of "Vitality," which is characterized by an eternal
circular motion that still includes a "seeking of oneself." Then, in order
to gain a state of ultimate stability, he is to move on to the level of
Existence, the phase in which the Triple-Powered One is identical with
the Invisible Spirit, who is absolutely at rest and contains all in total
silence and inactivity. In each case, the contemplation of entities on
ever higher ontological levels is characterized as a form of the contemplator's
self-knowledge, suggesting that the consciousness of the knowing subject
is actually assimilated to the ontological character of the level that
one intelligizes at any given point.
Allogenes thus presents two levels of knowing:
One is achievable in the world, and is characterized by the actual vision
of what was communicated in the auditory revelations imparted by the emissary-revealer
Youel; it suffices to have a vision of each of the beings comprising the
Aeon of Barbelo up to and including the lower aspect of the Triple-Powered
One. The other is achievable, not in the world, but only after elevation
to a pure place, and is to be imparted by an apophatic "primary revelation"
from the Luminaries of Barbelo's Aeon; it enables one to exp