Related Texts • The Gospel of Marcion • The Book of the Eight Aeons • The Gospel of Mary • The Book of John the Evangelist Related Subjects • Gnosticism • Mandeism • Hermeticism • Alchemy

Alternative Religion/ Library

 If, then, we have before us not a hymn, but the remains of a mystery-ritual, there must have been two people in the circle. One of them was the Master, the Initiator. Who was the other? Manifestly, the one to be initiated.

Now the ultimate end of all Gnosis was the at-one-ment or union of the little man with the Great Man, of the human soul with the Divine Soul.

In the great Wisdom-myth, the human soul was regarded as the "lost sheep," the erring and suffering Sophia fallen into generation, from which she was saved by the Christ, her true Lord and Spouse.

On the side of the Great Descent we have the most wonderful attempts made by the Gnostics to pierce the veil of the mysteries of cosmogony--to catch some glimpse of how the Cosmos came into existence, and was fashioned by the creative power of the Logos, the Supernal Christ. This was called the "enformation according to substance"--the "substance" being the Sophia or Wisdom Herself as viewed in Her self-isolation from the Plêrôma or Fullness of Divine Being, the Transcendent Presence.

On the way of the Great Ascent or Return, the Gnosis attempted to raise the veil of the mysteries of soteriology, or of the rescue of the separated human soul, and its restoration to the Bosom of the Divine. This was called the "enformation according to gnosis"--that is, Self-consciousness.

The duologue is therefore carried on by those who are acting out the mystery of the Sophia and the Christ; through we should never forget that they are in reality or essentially one and the same Person,the lower and higher self in the Presence of the Great Self.

The twelve disciples are the representatives of the powers of the Master, sent forth (apostles) into the outer worlds, corresponding with the Great Twelve of the Presence,the Twelve Above; and they dance to the dancing or cosmic motions of the Twelve, even as the candidate, or neophyte, the Sophia below, dances to the cosmic motion of the Charis or Grace or Sophia Above.

And if this rite be duly consummated, the Presence that enwraps the doers of the mystery is Divine. The Presence is that of the Father Himself, who has no human form, but is as it were a "Heart" or "Head," a "Face," a Shekinah or Glory. How the seers of the Gnosis conceived this marvel of the Godhead may perhaps be seized dimly in the following passages from the "Untitled Apocalypse" of the Bruce Codex ( F.F.F., p. 548):

"The Outline of His Face is beyond all possibility of knowing in the Outer Worlds--those Worlds that ever seek His Face, desiring to know it; for His Word has gone forth into them, and they long to see Him.

"The Light of His Eyes penetrates the Spaces of the Outer Plêrôma; and the Word that comes forth from His Mouth penetrates the Above and the Below.

"The Hairs of His Head is the number of the Hidden Worlds, and the Outline of his Face is the type of the Æons [ i.e., Perfect Spheres and Eternities].

"The Hair of His Face are the number of the Outer Worlds, and the Outspreading of His Hands is the manifestation of the Cross. . . .

"The Source of the Cross is the Man [Logos] whom no man can comprehend.

"He is the Father; He is the Source from which the Silence [the Mother of the Æons] wells."

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