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THE GNOSTIC MAGIC OF EGYPT.
Having given quotations which illustrate the various aspects of Magic as it was taught and practised at the best period of Ancient Egypt, we may now pass on to the consideration of the later forms of the higher magic existing in Alexandria during the second and third centuries of our era. Mr. G. R. S. Mead has given us a translation of the Pistis Sophia which is regarded as the most precious and perfect relic of the followers of the Gnosis; as this volume is now in circulation I shall not allude to it further; but I propose to give considerable extracts from a Coptic papyrus of much the same date, which was found by Mr. Bruce in Upper Egypt: it has never before been translated into English.
The magical words and formulae of this papyrus give some idea of the kind of sounds understood by initiates to be concealed under such symbols as the" I H V H " of the Hebrews, and the Hieroglyphic word groups of the Egyptians. Unfortunately we can never discover the secrets of the Egyptian vowels through the study of Hieroglyphs for the consonants alone are noted, as in Hebrew; and no system analogous to pointing was adopted by the later Egyptians. It is only then in the study of Coptic papyri that we can hope to discover some traces of the real ancient pronunciation of Magical Names.
This Coptic text resembles the dialect of the Said. Woide the original transcriber declares the origin of the papyrus to be Theban. But M. E. Amelineau considers that the original work was written in Greek. The date is probably the second or third century of our era. Basilides and Valentinus, the two greatest Egyptian Gnostics, did all they could to gain adherents in Egypt and probably produced several works of the kind. I have given a translation of the most interesting parts of the papyrus, and will here remark that the greater part of it consists of Sigils, Keys and numbers, and the names of watchers and guardians, which at once remind the student of the Book of the Dead, notably of the eighteenth chapter in which the formulas of the various localities have to be known; also of the hundred and forty-sixth chapter treating of the twenty-one Pylons (gates) with their guardians and watchers; and, finally, of the hundred and forty-seventh chapter giving the names of the door-keepers, the watchers, and the heralds.
In these portions we have a distinct analogy with the Egyptian Esoteric Methods of Initiation. But the present ignorance of the real way in which to use "Secret Formulae" makes these portions of ancient Gnostic tracts uninteresting to the generality of occult students. For this reason one formula only will be given as an example; this specimen is general in its nature, but it is one of which it was said that" if performed with arcane knowledge, it would suffice to open all the gates, unto which the soul could aspire." Let us first, however, consider the essential principles of Gnosticism, which are briefly as follows:
First-A denial of the dogma of a personal supreme God, and the assertion of a Supreme Divine Essence, consisting of the purest Light, and pervading that boundless space of perfected matter which the Greeks called the Pleroma. This Light called into existence the Great Father and the Great Mother whose children were the Aeons or God-spirits. That is to say from the Supreme issues the Nous or Divine Mind; and thence successive emanations, each less sublime than the preceding. The Divine Life in each becoming less intense until the boundary of the Pleroma, or the Fulness of God is reached. From thence there comes into being a taint of imperfection, an abortive and defective evolution, the source of materiality and the origin of a created universe, illuminated by the Divine.. but far removed from its infinitude and perfection. (The Little Thought of the text quoted below.)
Now the Gnostics considered that the actual ruler and fashioner of this created universe and its beings good and evil, was the Demiurgos, a power issuant from Sophia or Wisdom. By some it was said that the desire of souls for progression caused the origin of a Universe in which they might evolve and rise to the divine.
The Gnostics definitely believed in the theory of Cycles of Ascent and return in the evolutionary progress of worlds, ages, and man; the ascents and descents of the soul; the pre-existence of all human -souls now in worldly life and the surety that all souls that desire the highest must descend to matter and be born of it. They were the Philosophical Christians.
The Rule of the Christian Church however fell into the hands of those who encouraged an emotional religion, destitute of philosophy; whose members should be bound together by personal ties of human sympathy with an exalted sufferer and preacher, rather than by an intellectual acceptance of high truth.
The Gnostics dissented from the creed then being defined, on the ground of the inferiority of the Hero worship of Christ, to the spiritual knowledge of the supernal mind, which they considered He taught.
The Gnostics were almost universally deeply imbued with the doctrines of Socrates and Plato; and a religion of emotion and reverence, combined with moral platitudes, did not seem to them of a sublimity sufficiently intense to be worthy to replace the Religious Mysteries of Egypt, India, and Persia, the Theocracy of the Jews, or the sublime truths hidden in the myths of Greece.
The Gnostic doctors were men who before all had received Hellenic culture. Their systems prove that they knew the works of the philosophers and had united them with the purely oriental ideas flowing from the ancient religions of Egypt, Chaldea, Persia and India. Their aim was to amalgamate the ideas of the East and the Philosophy of the Greeks with the inborn potency of the Christian faith.
The important formulas of the Three Baptisms I have given in full, so that the student may observe the link they create between the Magical Ceremonies of Initiation and the sacraments of the Roman and especially the Greek Christian Church. For in the ceremonies of the Greek Church there is an even closer adherence to the formulas of ancient wisdom than is found in the Roman Church. A chart of the Pleroma is given by Valentinus, which may be described as follows:
First, is the Point, the Monad. (The Great Deep.) Then the Triangle, the union of the point with the line. (The great Deep, Mind, and Truth.) Then the Square, two vertical and two horizontal lines. (The Word, The Life, Man and the Assembly.) Finally, the Pentagram and Hexad which with their reflected emanations count as ten and twelve, these together form the twenty-eight emanations or ideas of the Divine mind.
The Pleroma is bounded by a circumference emanating from the point or Monad, this is called the Horus or boundary, Stauros or cross, and etcecheus or participator.
Without this circumference is the emanation of the " Sophia" sometimes called the " abortion," sometimes as in our text the" Little Thought," which is the universe as we know it.
I will end this introduction with one quotation from the Pistis Sophia:
"The spirit of the Saviour was moved in him, and he cried, 'How long shall I bear with you? how long shall I suffer you? Do ye still not: know, and are ye ignorant? Know ye not and do ye not understand, that ye are all Angels, and all Archangels, and Gods and Lords, and all Rulers. . . . That ye are from all; of yourselves and in yourselves in turn, from one mass, and one matter, and one essence.' "
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