JUNG AND THE LOST GOSPELS

Cover art by Ann Kilgore Illustrations by Jan Saether

STEPHAN A. HOELLER
JUNG
AND THE
LOST GOSPELS
INSIGHTS INTO THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS AND THE NAG
HAMMADI LIBRARY
A publication supported by
THE KERN FOUNDATION
Quest Books
Theosophical Publishing House
Wheaton, Illinois Chennai (Madras), India
Contents
Foreword by June Singer . . . i x
Preface.................................... xvii
Acknowledgments ......... x j x
Prologue: How the West Was Lost: Loss and Recovery of
Psychologj ca i Spirituality................................
1
Part I: The Other Tradition
1. A Tale of the Two Heresies:
Nag Hammadi and Qumran 15

2. Saintly Rebels:
The People of the Scrolls 29
3. Essene Messiah and Gno s tJc Christ:
From Prototype to Archetype.............. 42
4. The Feminine Wisdom and the
Coming of the Knowing Ones ............. 62
5. The Odyssey of Gnosis................... 78
Part II: The Other Reality
6. Errant Wisdom:
The Myth of Sophia..................... 99
7. The Dancing Savior:
The Myth of the Gnostic Christ

.......... 117

8. The Princes of the World:

The Myth of the Tyrant Angels........... 136
9. A Traveler from Heaven:
The Myth of "Song of the Pearl".......... 154
10. And the Myth Goes On:
Some Modern Gnostic Myths ............ 166
Part III: The Other Gospels
11. The Secret Sayings of Jesus:
The Gospel of Thomas.................. 185
12. Means of Transformation:

The Gospel of Philip ................... 202

13. Redemption and Ecstasy:
The Gospel of Truth and
The Gospel of the Egyptians ............. 217
Epilogue: From Hiroshima to the Secret
Gospels: The Alternative Future of
Human History.............................. 232
Notes...................................... 247
Index...................................... 255
Within a matrix of modern depth psychology, Stephan A.
Hoeller shows similarities between secret traditions of the
Essenes and early Gnostic mysticism.
GOSPELS discovered in the 1940s reveal a pre-Christian !
Judaism of Gnostic character. The Dead Sea Scrolls essentially
are mystical documents.lt appears the Scrolls' Essene authors of
130 B.C. 70 A.D., like the Nag Hammadi Gnostic authors of the
Apostolic Age experienced visions of an esoteric nature, and
that the Scrolls posses: an inner, hidden meaning. The Nag
Hammadi Library, discovered by two peasants who unearthe d
clay jars in 1945 in upper Egypt, did noi appear in English for
32 years, because they were knotted in wran-glings among
scholars, politicians, and antique dealers. The Dead Sea Scrolls,
discovered in clay jars in Palestine by a goatherder in 1947,
weathered similar storms. The first team of analysts were most
Christian clergy, since the material frightened church leaders.
As Dr. Hoeller shows in lung and the Lost Gospels, they rightly
feared the documents would reveal information to detract from
unique claims o Christianity. Indeed, the Dead Sea Scrolls and
Nag Hammadi Library I both contradict and complement
accepted Old and New Testaments!

Foreword
June Singer
When the canon of the Bible was closed, those who determined
what should constitute the Holy Writ and stand as a bulwark
against heathenism and heresy had their reasons for excluding
some writings while including others. Surely there were
questions of authenticity and quality, but there was also an
urgency to establish a standard by which all other religious
expressions could be measured in the future. Both Judaism and
Christianity had suffered the necessity of clarifying and
strengthening their doctrines so that their adherents would
have a firm basis for withstanding the opposition they faced
from the pagan world and from Rome. These formulations
necessarily left little room for individual interpretation or
variance from the newly established norms.
Among Jews and also among the early Christians, there were
those dissidents whose points of view differed from that
proclaimed in the Bible concerning what constitutes the
spiritual life and, in Christianity, what was the true nature and
teaching of the Anointed One sent by God to proclaim His
message to humankind. Their writings, contemporary with the
biblical books, were considered dangerous or spurious by the
reigning religious authorities, and the writers of those
extra-canonical works were branded as hereticswhich indeed
they were if heresy means taking a position in opposition to the
orthodoxy of the times. The writings nevertheless became
touchstones for communities whose members sought freedom
of thought and of worship, relief from the imposition of
authority, and an opportunity to experience
5
X
Foreword

God directly without mediation by a churchly hierarchy. Much

of the content of these works had to do with es-chatology. the
portents of the Last Days when God would rain down
destruction upon His people because of their having
capitulated to the forces of evil in the world. Also expresse d in
these works was a hope for eventual redemption, depicted
among Jews as the coming of a Messianic Age and in
Christianity as the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Over the
years many of these works were lost, some were preserved and
continued to be read as more or less esoteric literature, and
some were secreted in caves and other unlikely places awaiting
another time when the world might be more ready to attend to
their messages.
Until 1945, only a few fragments of the lost gospels were
available for reading by the public. Here and there some
scholars and seekers learned of the existence of certain of the
writings and studied them. Among these was the great Swiss
psychiatrist C. G. Jung. It was in 1945, you will remember,
when the United States, in the cause of peace, dropped atomic
bombs upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Curiously enough,
within a year or two of that date, were discovered the two most
important finds of this lost sacred literature in modern history.
One was the Dead Sea Scrolls, the work of the men of the
ascetic Jewish community of Essenes at Qumran, near
Jerusalem; the other was the Nag Hammadi library, a collection
of papyrus books written by members of a Gnostic sect within
two or three hundred years after the time of Jesus and found in
a jar in a cave in upper Egypt. From the time of their discovery
until now, the new-found treasures have kept teams of scholars
occupied in piecing them together, deciphering them, and
attempting to understand them.
Indispensable as the work of these learned men and women has
been, their scholarship is only the vital opening act to a drama
of cosmic proportions. These scholars' contribution in their first
act was to understand the words and then the context from
which they were written before

Foreword
7
any interpretation could be undertaken. The second act would
have to concern apprehending the personal psy chological
significance of this material for people today, and the third
would consist of understanding this mythic material in terms of
its wider, even global, significance. Scholars and translators
working on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi books
have been pursuing their endeavor with the requisite
dedication to objectivity. Consequently one rarely detects in
their work any indication of the degree to which they
themselves are or are not in sympathy with the particular
perspectives that characterize these texts.
If one were to describe these documents in a single word, that
word would be heterodox, in the sense of differing from, or
contrary to, an established religious point of view. These works
are radical departures from the normative Judaism or orthodox
Christianity of their times. The early Church Fathers had no
difficulty declaring the Gnostic Gospels heretical. Scholars
today who undertake the study of religious texts in the ancient
Semitic or Coptic languages as a rule come from fields such as
biblical theology and criticism. The academic rigor of the
translators and editors who worked with these writings
allowed for little overt expression of personal opinion, much
less for a passionate response. As a Jungian analyst, I cannot
help wondering what those exegetes really think, in their
private thoughts, of these works that so dramatically challenge
the accepted doctrines of their day, as well as our own.
It was C. G. Jung who discovered for himself and became
enraptured by the literature of the Jewish and Christian
Gnostics, whose writings included the Lost Gospels. The word
"enraptured" can be used advisedly, for Jung did not come to
these materials as a scholar who relied on the researches and
support of predecessors and colleagues. He encountered the
personifications of the myths directly, through the medium of
the unconsciousas an eruption of mysterious ideas and

images of unknown origin carrying messages about the nature

and workings of the human psyche. The story of how the
Gnostic material revealed
8
Foreword
itself to Jung is found in his autobiographical work Memories,
Dreams, Reflections. Only after meeting with Gnostic ideas, in the
form of dreams or fantasies or active imagination, was Jung
inspired to look to myth and literature for ampli fications of
what he had experienced. Here he detected astonishing
parallels to his own findings in material that was only just
emerging from the translations of the Nag Hammadi Library, as
well as from other Gnostic texts in Jewish and Christian
sources.
As a psychiatrist, Jung was interested in why people think as
they think and believe what they believe. He sought for clues in
mythology, especially for that which gives rise to religious and
spiritual traditions. He understood the spiritual thrust in men
and women as expressive of the human psyche and its yearning
toward the Source of Being. When he became interested in
pursuing the study of the ancient Gnostic texts, it was to
support and amplify his own experience as well as that of
certain of his patients whose orientations were toward the life
of the spirit. Jung did not pretend to be neutral about this
material. He used it freely when it illuminated such issues as
the necessity of reclaiming an interior view of oneself and the
world in which we live. He understood and reframed much of
the Gnostic mythology in psychological terms, recognizing in
the manifold characters of Gnostic mythology the same
archetypal images that reside in the human psyche everywhere,
driving people to love, fear, hate, covet, and all else they would
not do of their own conscious free will. Yet Jung, for all his
awareness of what Gnosticism means and for all his fascination
with its symbolic manifestations, stopped short of identi fying
himself openly as a Gnostic. First and last, he thought of
himself as a psychiatrist and a healer of souls. He ex plored in

great depth the ideas about God and about the gods as they
appear in the human psyche. He insisted that he did not feel
comfortable in saying who or what God isalthough in one
memorable and often quoted interview he revealed, "I do not
need to believe in God; I know." But this is stated with a
twinkle in his eye, as if
Foreword
9
to say to the interviewers that if they do not know what he
means by this, he will not tell them.
Now the time has come for one who is openly a Gnostic to
speak out of his own conviction and commitment. Dr. Stephan
A. Hoeller's exposition of historical Gnosticism and its
contemporary implications brings this ancient discipline out of
the past and into immediate confrontation with the crucial
issues we face today. He finds in the psychology of Jung an
appreciation of the spirit of Gnosticism as well as some answers
to the most vital question: What has Gnosticism to do with the
predicaments in which our world finds itself today? Hoeller
addresses the fundamental concerns of the Gnostic who goes in
search of self-knowledge: Where have we come from? How did
we get to this place? What is our purpose here? Where are we
going? Human beings have been asking these questions since
the dawning of conscious awareness. Based on his own
personal experience of Gnosis and his studies in comparative
religion and philosophy, Hoeller serves as a spiritual teacher,
throwing light on the meaning and significance of these
questions.
The first part of the book graphically portrays that other earlier
time when the traditions of Church and State had lost their
luminosity. In Judea, the once inspired teachings of the kings
and prophets had become rigidified and limiting: legalism
obscured the noble intentions of the commandments; minutiae
hid the sense of the grandeur of the divine; and political
considerations overly occupied the religious leaders. The small

band of Essenes withdrew from what they saw as a corrupt

society and founded their own ascetic community in the Judean
desert. Some suggest that when the Temple in Jerusalem was
destroyed in 70 AD. the Essenes took the Temple treasures,
including some precious scrolls, into the desert for safekeeping
until the time should come when the world would be ready to
receive them. Similarly, in the early days of Christianity, the
presence and the teachings of Jesus and the apostles inspired
10
Foreword
their followers. These men and women were ready to undergo
any privation or martyrdom for the sake of their eternal souls.
But when Christianity had to bolster its defense against the
threat of Rome, the faith became an institution with all the
credos, rules, and strictures that institutionalism implies. There
were those who left the Church to seek spiritual freedom and a
direct personal experience of the holy. These Gnostics took with
them, or created in their self-imposed exiles, the secret
knowledge that came to them from within, from what they
understood to be an immanent God. In a way that enables us to
compare those times to our own, Hoeller tells us how this came
to pass, and he relates the fragmentation of those times to our
own sense of spiritual fragmentation. The quest of those early
seekers for wholeness is shown to be not different from our
own desire to understand how so much evil can exist in the
phenomenal world and how we may take a position with
respect to it.
The major part of Dr. Hoeller's book relates and inter prets the
strange and marvelous mythology of the Gnostics. He presents
the myths in their demonic terror and angelic glory, so that we
are carried by them into the farther reaches of our own
imagination. Then, taking his inspiration from Jung. Hoeller
brings insights from contemporary depth psychology to
interpret each of these legends. Through this process, he makes
it clear that mythology is truly the language of the souland
not only of the ancient soul but of our own.

The Epilogue is surprising and startling. Hoeller reminds us

that the bomb fell on Hiroshima in the very year that the lost
gospels were discovered. This syn-chronicity is doubly striking,
for in 1945, as in the time of the original writing of the lost
gospels, predictions and prognostications of world -wide
catastrophe filled the air. During the past forty years or more
since that time, portents for the future have been looking even
more grave. In the old days people believed that God would
destroy the world because of the evil acts of human
Foreword
11
beings. Today we do not need God for that; we hu ma ns have
become capable of bringing total destruction down upon
ourselves.
As we move ever more swiftly toward the End of Days, Hoeller
seeks and finds in the writings of the Gnostics some hints as to
what we may do to avert the final catastrophe. But he also does
something not many have the courage to doto consider what
if: What if we do not manage to avoid nuclear disaster or the systematic
destruction of earth's atmosphere? What then? Is this material world
all that exists? Or, is there something other? These are
questions we cannot avoid unless we cling desperately to our
ignorance and unconsciousness. Stephan Hoeller addresses the
issues directly. His reflections give us much to ponder.
Preface
The plan of writing this book was first conceived when
following the 1985 Good Friday service of the Los Angeles
Gnostic community, a distinguished visitor, Dr. James
Robinson, the moving spirit behind the translation of the Nag
Hammadi Gnostic scriptures, remarked to me: "We scholars
have completed our work, it is time now for a Gnostic to write
about the Gnostic scriptures."

Since I was a boy I have been powerfully attracted to

Gnosticism and by the time I reached adulthood I had become a
committed practitioner of this ancient faith. My Gnostic
dedications have also led me to modern variations on the
age-old theme of the Gnosis contained in Theosophy, my stical
Christianity, and the psychology of C. G. Jung. The favorable
response elicited by my book. The Gnostic Jung and the Seven
Sermons to the Dead (1982), further served to convince me that our
Western culture was at last ready to take a second, more
sympathetic look at the tradition that has brought me so much
meaning and illumination throughout my life. And so it came
to pass that the present work was written.
Conversations and correspondence with several experts in
Gnostic and related studies have led me to expand the scope of
my work by including in it an evaluation of certain aspects of
the Dead Sea Scrolls of Qumran. Professors Gilles Quispel,
Gershom G. Scholem, and Kurt Rudolph have all impressed
upon me the vital connection joining the Essene and the Gnostic
transmissions, and my own studies have led me to expand upon
their suggestions. Naturally flowing from such
12

12
Preface
considerations there arose my view that Jewish Essenes and
Christian Gnostics were both exponents of the same stream of
spirituality and that the discovery of their long-lost scriptures
augurs well for the revival of a similar spirituality today.
Contact with and study of the work of translators has brought
me another important insight, namely, that knowledge of
Coptic and other arcane tongues does not always coincide with
a sympathetic understanding of the spirit of the documents
translated. As Jungian psychologist Ean Begg has pointed out in

his Myth and Today's Consciousness, there frequently exists a psychological gulf separating the translators from the texts they are
elucidating. Thus, the word Metropator, a Gnostic name for the
Deity, which makes good psychological and Gnostic sense
when rendered as "Mother/Father," was translated instead as
"maternal grandfather" by one scholar. Another translator was
wont to reply to his assistant, who protested that the translation
of a particular passage did not make sense, "This is a Gnostic
text, it is not supposed to make any sense." Such incidents made
me appreciate Dr. Robinson's statement that it is time that a
Gnostic interpret the Gnostic scriptures.
Above all, my work was informed and guided by the thought of
the greatest of modern Gnostics, C. G. Jung. His sympathetic
insight into the myths, symbols, and metaphors of the Gnostics,
whom by his own admission he regarded as his long-lost
friends, continues as the brightest beacon of our day, capable of
illuminating the Gnostic gospels and their precursors, the Dead
Sea Scrolls. Following Jung's lead, I have endeavored to
elucidate the Lost Gospels to a major extent in psychological
terms, albeit using the term "psychological" in a wider sense
than many would understand it. This is a book about Gnosis,
that is, about the true individuation of the human psyche. I
hope that it will be a small contribution toward the goal to
which both Jung and the ancient Gnostics were dedicated,
namely, the redemption of the spirit from the darkness of
limitation and ignorance.
S.A.H.
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to express his appreciation to the following:
the Academy of Creative Education and the Lawrence
Rockefeller Foundation, whose generous financial assistance
made the writing possible; Mr. Roger Weir for encouragement
and advice; Mrs. Roseanna Gartenmann for her devoted work
in typing and correcting the manuscript; Mr. Jan Saether for
generously executing and donating the illustrations in this
book; Dr. James M. Robinson for his kind gift of H. M.

Schenke's German translations of several of the Nag Hammadi

scriptures, greatly facilitating my translation of the passages of
the four gospels from the same collection (included in chapters
11, 12, and 13); Dr. June Singer for her insightful foreword and
her encouraging comments: Mrs. Shirley J. Nicholson for
initially prompting me to undertake the writing of this work,
and also for her excellent work as editor.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Gnosis magazine and
author Dennis Stillings for permission to quote from the article
"Invasion of the Archetypes'" that appeared in the Winter 1989
issue.
Prologue
How the West Was Lost:
Loss and Recovery of Psychological Spirituality
The thought of C. G. Jung is currently receiving an increasing
amount of sympathetic interest in Western culture. A synthesis
of human knowledge seldom before achieved by anyone
discloses itself to those who seriously investigate the work
bequeathed to us by this remarkable man. Beginning as a
physician concerned with the welfare of the mind, he
discovered in his patients and in his own soul the gre at truth of
the reality of the psyche, and he explored its phenomenology at
a depth to which others did not dare venture. His systematic
observation of the workings of the deepest strata of the human
mind in turn enabled him to cast his glance with singula r
insight into the great forces within human culturemyth,
religion, art. philosophy, and literature.
In the course of these observations Jung came to dis cover that
all truly powerful symbols and mythologems experienced and
expressed by humanity arise from a common deep substratum
of the mind, which he called the collective unconscious, with
which every person continues to be connected in the course of
his or her spiritual life. Jung's discovery of the collective
unconscious (today increasingly called the "objective psyche"),

has made it possible to approach experiences and ideas that

hitherto have been conceived as religious or metaphysical, in a
new way: his discoveries have provided a mediating hypothesis
between the traditional belief in metaphysical reality and
modern psychology.
15

15
Prologue
In a certain sense Jung's discoveries are not truly new but are
ancient knowledge; however, his approach to them is new and
differs from the traditional position, which holds that spiritual
truths are revealed manifestations of a different kind of reality
from beyond the human psyche. In contrast with the positions
held by most advocates of the mainstream religious traditions.
Jung's orientation may be fairly characterized as being intrapsychic, that is. based on what is interior to the human psyche.
Thus Jung seldom speaks of God as a person; rather, he affirms
that he is not concerned with a metaphysical God at all. but
with the image of God as it is perceived within the human soul.
This attitude continues to trouble persons who are attached to
the time-worn metaphysical formulations of the mainstream
traditions, but their tribulations are often not as justified as
they might think. When they object to the possibility of God.
angels, demons, or the Virgin Mary being "merely in our
psyches." they fail to apprehend the breadth, scope, and
majesty Jung attributes to the human soul. Jung commented on
such criticisms as follows:
For this is how Western man. whose soul is evidently "of little
worth" speaks and thinks. If much were in his soul he would
speak of it with reverence. But since he does not do so we can
conclude that there is nothing of value in it. Not that this is

necessarily so always and everywhere, but only with people

who put nothing into their souls and have "all God outside." 1
Only those who have allowed their psyches to be de valued by
the extraversion of mind that invaded the religious mainstream
of the West from a certain time onward in history, will consider
the soul an unworthy vehicle for the transcendental archetypes
and symbols. Jung was also heard to say. when responding to
someone who accused him of deifying the soul, that he had
done no such thing, but that the Creator himself had deified it
already!
How the West Was Lost
16
Students of history remember that there certainly was a time
when the dignity and majesty of the soul were recognized by
the leading exponents of spirituality in Western culture. During
the first three centuries of the Christian era there flourished in
the Mediterranean area several schools of spirituality that held
the creative and revelatory potential of the soul in very high
regard indeed. It is interesting to note in this connection that
Jung never claimed credit for the discovery of the concept of
the archetypes, but readily admitted that he had discovered this
idea in the religious philosophical teachings of the Hellenistic
world:
. . . there are present in every psyche forms which are
unconscious but nonetheless activeliving dispositions, ideas
in the Platonic sense, that perform and continually influence
our thoughts and feelings and actions. The term "archetype"
occurs as early as Philo Judaeus. with reference to the Imago
Dei (God-image) in man. It can also be found in Irenaeus. who
says [while quoting a Gnostic sourceS.A.H.]. "The creator of
the world did not fashion these things directly from himself
but copied them from archetypes outside himself." In the
Corpus Hermeticum, God is called . . . "archetypal light" . . . for
our purposes this term . . . tells us that . . . we are dealing with

archaic orI would sayprimordial types, that is. with

universal images that have existed since remotest times."
Unfortunately, the internalist position of early Alexan drian
wisdom was replaced by an institutionalized externalism.
where God and other transcendentally toned archetypal images
were once again conceived as being "all outside." What might
be called the psychological spirituality of the first few centuries of
the Christian era went underground, and the compensating
internalist movements still subsisting within the framework of
Christianity were declared heretical. Thus came about a
transmission of alternative reality that maintained its
psychological or internalist emphasis in opposition to the
externalist mainstream. As we shall demonstrate in the
following chapters, this transmission did not spring
17
Prologue
fully grown from the Hellenistic milieu but had its roots in a
preexisting alternative movement in Judaism, the last surviving
branch of which, just prior to the coming of Christianity, was
the school of the Essenes. The Jewish Essene then gave way to
the Christian Gnostic, whose spiritual progeny were the
monastic Christian mystics within the Church and the
alchemists, ceremonial magicians, Cathars, Rosicrucians,
Kabbalists, and in modern times Theosophists and related
movements of alternative spirituality.
The alternative stream never ceased, but its external
manifestations were spasmodic and never gathered enough
strength to seriously challenge the (self-declared) orthodoxies
of the mainstream. The emphasis of spiritual interiority thus
remained as a muted tradition, frequently repressed and at
times ignored by the dominant religions and by the culture at
large. The growing edge (some might call it the fringe) of the
culture, consisting of artists, visionaries, and unconventional
and alienated thinkers never stopped being attracted to the
alternative stream, and in a few instances significant inroads

were made by certain manifestations of it. One of the major

examples of such an eruption of the alternative spirituality into
the main body of the culture was certainly the phenomenon of
the Renaissance, as historian Frances Yates appears to have
proven to the satisfaction of many in her several impressive
works on this subject.*
Jung believed that the endorsement of the Aristotelian position
in philosophy on the part of Thomas Aquinas, and
subsequently by Western Christendom, had contributed greatly
to the uprooting of spiritual interiority.
*Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1964); The Rosicrucian
Enlightenment (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.. 1972);
The Art of Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966);
Theatre of the World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1969); The Occult Philosophy (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
Ltd.. 1969).
How the West Was Lost
18
He repeatedly stated that the sense of the reality of the psyche
vanished in proportion to the adopting by Western religion and
culture of the Aristotelian slogan: "Nothing in the intellect
except through the senses." On this point Jung agrees with Paul
Tillich, who was wont to say that the Aristotelian orientation of
theology after Aquinas was the single greatest factor that made
atheism possible.
When people cease to experience God, they are forced to
believe in him, implied Tillichand belief is a commodity
subject to loss. The inner sense of God is a quality of the deeper
psyche and not of reason. With the ascendancy of reason over
the psychological awareness of archetypal truth, the way for
rationalism and ultimately for materialism and atheism became
wide open. Thus, says Jung, and agrees Tillich. the West was
lost.

When the West was lost to spiritual interiority, all that

remained was belief, or the religious euphemism for it, faith.
Jung, like the modern Gnostic he was, mercilessly castigated the
prevailing religious emphasis on faith over interior experience.
It is generally agreed, he wrote, that "faith includes a sacrificium
intellectus (sacrifice of the intellect)," and he adds in brackets,
"provided that there is an intellect to sacrifice." At the same
time, he continues, it is usually overlooked that faith also
requires "a sacrifice of feeling." This, he says, is the reason why
"the faithful remain children instead of becoming as children,
and they do not gain life because they have not lost it." What
Jung understands by "sacrifice of feeling" he explains as
follows: "Faith tries to retain a primitive mental condition on
purely sentimental grounds. It is unwilling to give up the
primitive, child-like relationship to hypostasized figures; it
wants to go on enjoying the security and confidence of a world
still presided over by powerful, responsible, kindly parents." 3
Mature spirituality, it would seem, requires more than faith,
especially when faith is comprised of belief grounded in fear.
For the child, faith in the structures of existence is sufficient,
because the child is contained in them. For the adult, the
perception of order and meaning has to be
19
Prologue
achieved afresh in the face of great challenges. Increased
awareness and actual experience of life's vicissitudes conflict
with the faith that was appropriate to the condition of the child.
If there should be a new assurance of meaning, even of security,
it must come about as an achievement, as the arising of a new
kind of certainty wrested from acute insecurity and alienation.
Such a mature spiritual state requires a certain kind of inward
knowledge rooted in experience. This is what in ancient times
was known under the Greek term Gnosis.
Unfortunately, though contemporary Western culture has
outgrown the phase of development that is akin to that of the

child, it has not put away childish things. We in the West still
treat inward apperceptions as if they were merely by -products
of objective facts and no more. (Even certain contemporary
fads, endorsed by the "New Age," such as the shibboleths of left
and right brain, reflect this extraverted one-sidedness.) In this
way, said Jung, the divine "degenerates into an external object
of worship" and "is robbed of its mysterious relation to the
inner man." 4
The question arises, and is being asked by critics of the
alternative spiritual currents, whether the attitude of
inwardness does not open the door to an unlimited sub jectivism
of the kind often encountered among the less discriminating
devotees of fringe spirituality. It is also feared that
preoccupation with the denizens and forces of one's interior
landscape may disrupt the orderly pattern of society. Jung has
replied to such questions and doubts in the following words:
The prominence of the subjective factor does not imply a
personal subjectivism, despite the readiness of the extraverted
attitude to dismiss the subjective factor as "nothing but
subjective." 5
In fact, says Jung, the subjective is not as subjective as we think,
for the deeper we reach into the psychic currents of inner life,
the more we leave behind the merely personal an d touch those
elements of experience that are timeless.
How the West Was Lost
20
unaffected by personalistic factors, and thus in a certain sense
truly objective. Imagination is not arbitrary, as many would
envision it; on the contrary, it is based on the laws of
unconscious apperception, which do not change.
In essence, the Gnosis of old postulates, and Jung also affirms,
that the ideas which form the content of every religion are not
primarily the product of an externally originating revelation,

but of a subjective revelation from within the human psyche. In

Answer to Job he says simply; "Religious statements are psychic
confessions based on unconscious, i.e. transcendental
processes." Do these "psychic confessions" correspond with
metaphysical postulates? Jung does not say, and probably he
neither knew nor cared. To the mind of the believer the objects
of faith are metaphysical realities. To the Gnostic, and thus to
Jung, the phenomena of experience deserve priority over
metaphysical speculation. In Jung's view it is more important to
recognize the subjective root, in the mind, of our ideas about
the Divine than to accept metaphysical and theological
statements. It has been said that theologians know a great deal
about God but very little of God. This is a condition that can be
rectified only by the kind of direct experience advocated by
mystics and Gnostics in every age.
What bestows meaning on life is not the kind of con dition that
was described by William James as "faith in somebody else's
faith." Rather, what is needed in this regard is a particular act
of perception that grips and taxes our entire being because of
its direct impact and numinous quality. Whenever this kind of
perception is absent, the inadequate vision of the human being
turns against him. In every soul there is a hunger for that kind
of direct vision that bestows wholeness and true meaning.
Unless we know how to deal creatively with this hunger, it
projects itself outward, independently of our will, even against
our will, usually upon an unsuitable object.
Aldous Huxley described political ideologies as "sub stitute
mysticism," and a similar definition could be given
21
Prologue
to the numerous projections of humanity evoking fanatical,
unbalanced, and monomaniacal attitudes and allegiances.
Where the real is not present, the unreal intrudes itself as a
substitute, and the results are inevitably disastrous. Jung writes
about this: "Not even the medieval epidemics of bubonic plague

or smallpox killed as many people as certain differences of

opinion in 1914 or certain political 'ideals' in Russia." 6 Only
consciousness, engendered by Gnosis, can prevent the living
out of false projections and the consequent violence and
cruelty.
The age of faith is past or, to say the least, is p assing. The
portentous question facing us today is: What will take its place?
Unless we claim the gift of prophecy we cannot answer this
question with any certainty. What we can say is this: We know
what ought to take its place: namely, an age where the interior,
or psychological, spirituality unwisely discarded long ago may
be able to come into its own once more. Fr. John Dourley writes
of this task from a Jungian and Christian point of view:
One interesting and lively option . . . would be the
re-appropriation and assimilation of those movements of the
spirit which Christianity, in the interest of its own survival, has
historically been forced to declare heretical. With this in mind.
Jung's thought challenges orthodox truths it has hitherto felt
obliged to reject. This is what must be done, in Jung's view, if
Christianity is to come into possession of a conception of
humanity and human spirituality that is more appropriate to
the psychological process of becoming whole. 7
Jung knew that the one and only tradition associated with
Christianity that regarded the human psyche as the container of
the divine-human encounter was that of the Gnostics of the first
three centuries of our era. For this reason he called for a
renewed appreciation of this ancient tradition, and particularly
for a return to the Gnostic sense of God as an inner directing
and transforming presence. Literalism and historicism, so Jung
felt, have trivialized Western spirituality long enough, and the
How the West Was Lost
22
time has come to reverse the process that was initiated by the
church fathers who drove the Gnosis underground after the

third century. In the face of persistent opposition to Gnosticism,

and its disparagement as "dualistic." "world hating," and
"immoral," Jung asserted that
Disparagement and vilification of Gnosticism are an
anachronism. Its obvious psychological symbolism could
serve many people today as a bridge to a more living
appreciation of Christian tradition. 8
The task thus is clear: What must take place, if we accept Jung's
judgment, is a restoration of certain approaches to spirituality
that contain the necessary compensation for the extraverted,
literalist, and one-sided orientation of Western religion. In an
age of desacraliza-tion. trivializing liturgical reforms, and
liberation theologies, Jung points the way toward a restoration
theology and psychology designed to reappropriate the discarded
wisdom of the psychological spirituality known to the Gnostics,
mystics, and alchemists throughout the centuries. The stone
that the builders rejected can and indeed must return to the
structure of our culture if a condition of wholeness is ever to
arise therein.
A drive toward wholeness, operating as a unifying process
bringing together the many disparate components of the soul of
both individual and culture, is one of the great, crucial realities
underlying the collective and individual movement of history.
The process of individuation, or becoming whole, brings with it
the experience of the divine and the perception of
transcendence in the symbolic dimension of life. Our culture
thus must take heed: Psychological fragmentation can
ultimately only lead to dissolution, while potential integration
promises the renewal of life, of meaning, of love and creativity.
The so-called Lost Gospelswhereby with some imaginative
license we mean to describe the Gnostic gospels from Nag
Hammadi and their forerunners, the Scrolls from the caves of
Qumranare our principal collections of documents relating to
the discarded and
23

Prologue
repressed shadow of Western spirituality, and indeed of
Western culture. The present work endeavors to illuminate the
context and content of these scriptures in relation to the task of
restoration and reappropriation pioneered by the efforts of Carl
Gustav Jung. It is no exaggeration to say that our culture cries
out today for wholeness, balance, and the consequent signs of
sanity. Understandably but regrettably, the need for wholeness
felt by so many is still understood predominantly in terms of
the entrenched extraversion that Jung deplored so much. Many
speak and write of world peace and the envisioned "one world"
without recognizing that such ideals can never be realized on
the external plane until enough individuals have come to
wholeness within themselves. The late J. Krishnamurti rightly
said: "The world problem is the individual problem." And we
might add that the individual problem must be faced within the
individual.
Now as before no deus ex machina, no externally precipitated
saving deity will extricate us from our predicament. Our
spiritual enfeeblement is not due to a fall from grace on the part
of Adam and Eve in paradise as some would have us believe,
and our regeneration will not come about by accepting a
personal savior in history. Nor has the fall of our culture come
about by the eclipse of a benign matriarchy and its replacement
by a malign patriarchy, which condition we are told might be
remedied by a restored matriarchy presided over by a
rehabilitated chthonic Goddess. We will not be saved by a risen
Redeemer any more than by a resurrected earth Mother, but
only by the reconciliation of the gods and goddesses within us.
The West was lost because of an unwarranted outward turn of
consciousness; it may be regained by a reestablish-ment of
balance attendant upon a reclaiming of inward realities.
It is the present writer's conviction that the Lost Gospels could
play a vital role in the reclaiming of the lost whole ness of the
West. When illumined by the insight of Jung, these documents
and the tradition they represent can

How the West Was Lost

25
serve to supply the missing element for the alchemical opus of
our personal and our collective individuation. In the following
pages, the writer has endeavored to put before his readers a
body of myth and symbol, augmented by historical fact and
psychological insight, in the hope that by these means some of
the Gnosis long lost to our culture might be found again. None
of us could help being deprived of this Gnosis, but we can only
blame ourselves if we fail to recover it now.
PARTI
The Other Tradition

Gnostic- CfchetniccA Serpent

I
A Tale of Two Heresies:
Nag Hammadi and Qumran
There is a belief almost universally held which declares that
when humanity is in its greatest hour of need spiritual help
comes forth from transcendental quarters. Well-known among
the testimonies given regarding this belief is the one attributed
to Sri Krishna in the portion of the great Hindu epic the

Mahabharata, which has become known and beloved as the

Bhagavad Gita:
When goodness grows weak.
When Evil waxes mighty.
I make for myself a vehicle.
In every age I return
To deliver the holy.
To destroy the fault of the evildoer.
To establish true goodness.'
Similarly, in the sacred lore of Tibet, as recounted by the late
Dr. W. Y. Evans-Wentz in his work. The Tibetan Book of the Great
Liberation, Padma-Sambhava. the mysterious magician-guru who
introduced Buddhism to Tibet, is reputed to have hidden
numerous documents of wisdom in various secret places in the
Himalayas, there to be discovered in subsequent historical
epochs when the need for them would be the greatest.
It has been rightly said that the night is always darkest before
the dawn. The macrocosm of human history and the microcosm
of the psychology of the individual both
15
26
The Other Tradition
testify to this truism. When the alienation of our mind from its
life-giving sources is the greatest, when the despair of the dark
night of the soul descends upon us with the full force of its
apalling weight, then the dawn of redeeming and healing
enlightenment breaks on the eastern horizon of the soul.
Depth-psychological insight declares that the greatest and most

enduring enlightenment of the soul comes only after the full

experience of darkness and despair. C. G. Jung was wont to
attribute this phenomenon to the principle enunciated by the
Pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus. known as enantiodromia,
where the deepest point of saturation with darkness gives birth
to a rapidly expanding point of light. History and
psycho-history both bring to our attention a principle of syn chronistic response whereby the forces of being that strive for
union, wholeness, and ultimate meaning spring into effective
manifestation at the time of the greatest need. The gr eat
German mystical poet Johann Ch. F. Holderlin gave proper
expression to this principle when he wrote: "Near is God, and
difficult is He to apprehend, but where the danger is great,
there the saving power ever draws near."
These considerations are eminently relevant to the strange tale
of the discoveries of two of the most outstanding finds within
the history of biblical and religious archaeology, namely, the
Nag Hammadi library of Gnostic scriptures and the Dead Sea
Scrolls of Qumran. In 1945, when the physical and
psychological ruins of World War II were still painfully evident
in Europe, Africa, and Asia; at the very time when the
hecatombs of Auschwitz. Dachau, and Bergen-Belsen were
about to be matched and superseded by the death camps of
Stalin's Gulag Archipelago; when it seemed to many that the
world would never recover from the greatest calamity of
human historyat this very moment of deepest darkness and
despair of the world soul, an Egyptian peasant, riding his camel
while searching for fertilizer, came upon a number of ancient
documents that possess the potential of aiding the West in the
recovery of a substantial portion
A Tale of Two Heresies
27
of its lost soul. At the very time when the sage C. G. Jung wrote
and spoke about modern man in search of a soul, a long
forgotten, or rather repressed, component of the soul of
Judeo-Christian religiosity and of Western culture in general

emerged from the soil at the base of the mountain range Jabal
al-Tarif near the river Nile in Upper Egypt. In a storage jar
made of claylike material the Egyptian peasant and his
companion found a collection of ancient manuscripts,
consisting of 1,153 pages bound into twelve leather -bound
primitive books (known as codices), containing fdty -two
separate writings (called tractates). The writings, as subsequent
investigation revealed, were copies by third and fourth century
Egyptian scribes from works that originated for the most part in
the Apostolic Age. when the memory of the enigmatic Rabbi
Jehoshva, known as Jesus, still lived powerfully in the minds of
numerous persons who were present during his brief but
portentous lifetime.
Only a little over two years later, in the summer of 1947 in
Palestine, an Arab goatherd was searching for one of the goats
of his flock. The goatherd was young and agile and with his
athletic prowess climbed about on the limestone cliffs
overlooking the Dead Sea. While engaged in these exercises he
espied a small hole leading into a cave in the mountain. Being
afraid of evil spirits, the young man first fled from the cave and
returned the next day with a companion. The two young men
descended into the cave where they found a number of clay jars
covered by bowl-like lids. Most of the jars were empty, but one
contained a large bundle composed of a piece of leather
wrapped in rags. They took the mysterious package home and
upon unwrapping it found that it contained a scroll, or roll of
parchment, which, when unrolled, stretched from one end of
their tent to the other. The same discovery was made
concerning two more bundles found in the same jar. The two
youths had in their possession three scrolls filled with writing
of a nature they did not comprehend. A few days later they sold
the three scrolls to a dealer who traded for the most part in
illegal
A Tale of Two Heresies
merchandise in the town of Bethlehem. The pilgrimage of what
became known as the Dead Sea Scrolls had begun.

The first three scrolls thus discovered on the shore of the Dead
Sea were soon deciphered and named the Isaiah Scroll, the
Habakukk Scroll, and the Manual of Discipline. They were
followed by a large number of additional scrolls found by
successive waves of expeditions sponsored by a number of
governments and academic institutions. The worldwide
publicity that followed revealed that the scrolls were the
writings of a heterodox community of Jews, called Essenes, who
resided at the site of the discovery from about 130 B.C. to A.D.
70 (with an intermission of about thirty years prior to the year 4
B.C.) and whose strange doctrines and practices as well as their
chronological proximity to the beginnings of the Christian
dispensation were bound to cause widespread interest.
At first the two finds impressed the observers with their
dissimilarity. The earlier discovery contained writings in the
Sahidic dialect of Coptic, a popular language of Hellenistic and
Roman Egypt; the latter find consisted of works written for the
most part in Hebrew and Aramaic, the Semitic tongues used in
contemporary Palestine. The authors and scribes of the Nag
Hammadi library were Christians of the Gnostic persuasion; the
persons involved in the authorship and copying of the Dead Sea
Scrolls were Jews of the Essene sect. Even the outer format of
the writings showed a radical divergence in appearance : The
Egyptian Coptic writings are the earliest example of the format
of bookbinding known as the codex, whereas the Palestinian
documents are in the form of long scrolls. To make the
divergence complete, the Jewish sectarian writers used
parchment, and the Christian Gnostic writers wrote on papyrus,
a derivative of the papyrus reed from whence the modern word
"paper" originates.
The differences dividing the two discoveries were dramatized
in the radically different turns that their respective fates took
subsequent to their initial reappearance.

Scroti jroro Qi/Wiran

30
The Other Tradition
The Coptic Gnostic library was not to see the light of
widespread public attention for many decades to come. The
first complete translation into the English language did not
appear for thirty-two years after the discovery. Wranglings
among scholars, politicians, and antiquities dealers, as well as
much obtuseness and indifference on the part of many of the
individuals involved, has made most persons awaiting the
publication of the Nag Ham-madi find well-nigh despair over
its prospects. The more imaginative of the would-be readers
might even have remembered that the ancient Gnostics, like
true magicians in the Egyptian mode, were given to the practice
of attaching awesome curses and binding guardian spirits to
their concealed holy books. In fact, one of the gospels of the
Nag Hammadi collection. The Gospel of the Egyptians. was found to
contain a magical admonition of just such an ominous nature:

Thou shalt write down what I tell thee, and of which I shall
remind thee for the sake of those who come after you and be
worthy (of such). And thou wilt make this book repose upon
the mountain, and thou wilt call up the guardian, (in this wise):
"O Come. Thou Dreadful One!"
To this statement might be added another, appearing in The
Apocryphon of John, near the text's end where Jesus addresses John
by pronouncing what has become known as the "Jesus curse":
"For truly I have given these things to thee to record them, and
they shall be deposited in a safe place." Then he spoke thus to
me (John). "Cursed is everyone who shall impart any of this in
return for a gift, or for food, or for drink, or for clothing, or for
anything of a like kind."
Whatever the effect of such curses, it appears that after the
passing of a quarter of a century, various individuals as well as
at least one international public agency (UNESCO) began to
overcome the forces opposing the publication of the Nag
Hammadi scriptures. It is to be noted also that the only portion
of the Gnostic find to
A Tale of Two Heresies
31
leave the turbulent and hostile climate of Nasser's Egypt of the
1950s and thus to become accessible to scholars without
restriction was purchased by the Jung Institute of Zurich and
presented as the "Jung Codex" to C. G. Jung on his eightieth
birthday. On November 15, 1953, at a convocation of leaders of
the Swiss government, as well as numerous academic and
professional authorities who had gathered to honor him, the
octogenarian Jung held in his hands this document that after
some 1,200 years heralded the possible rebirth of the Gnosis to
which the Swiss sage gave so much of his work and devotion. It
is most tempting indeed to imagine that now at last the Nag
Hammadi find made its connection with a truly worthy heir of
the tradition within which it had its origin. The principle that

Jung called synchronicity has once again worked its uncanny

magic: the barriers began to be lowered, the obstacles slowly
diminished, and the long-lost heritage of Jung's "old friends,"
the Gnostics, became accessible to all who would appreciate it.
The opportunities delayed had not passed; indeed, new
psychological and social developments arose in the 1960s and
1970s that created a climate of receptivity in regard to much
unconventional spirituality, including that of the Gnostics. The
message of Nag Hammadi was finally on the march.
The fate of the scrolls from the shore of the Dead Sea was of a
different nature. As in the instance of the Coptic Gnostic
papyrus books in Egypt, so here the discoverers knew nothing
of the real nature of their find. As the result of the intervention
of the Syrian Orthodox Metropolitan of Jerusalem, as well as
the mounting interest of a number of scholars, including the
redoubtable Professor E. L. Sukenik of Hebrew University,
some eighteen months after the initial discovery the news broke
upon the outside world. At first the news was greeted with
incredulity. Surely, so many thought, there must be some fraud
or mistake. The soil of Palestine, unlike that of Egypt, was
regarded as a most unlikely repository for parchment and
papyrus; the climate of the Judean mountains was
32
The Other Tradition
regarded as too humid for the preservation of such perishable
materials. The nineteenth century and early twentieth century
saw an appalling neglect of biblical archeological research in
this area, and there appears to exist evidence indicating that
some valuable finds were disregarded as fraudulent merely on
the basis of the dogma declaring that the caves in the region
were far too damp to permit the survival of delicate ancient
documents.
By 1949 the scholarly climate had changed, however, and many
authorities were prepared to admit that the three scrolls found
by the Arab goatherd were genuine. Nor were political

conditions identical with those prevailing prior to the two

world wars. In lieu of the torpid regime of the Ottomans and
the subsequent colonial administration, two "people of the
book," the Jews of the newly born republic of Israel and the
Arabs of the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan, were exercising
sovereignty over the lands of the Bible. Of these, the Jordanian
government was the more directly concerned, owing to the fact
that the Qumran region was located within its territ ory. Some
time after the initial dust from the discovery had settled, the
Jordanian government was instrumental in creating an
international team of scholars to edit the available scrolls, the
number of which was steadily increasing as the result of new
finds by various expeditions. Significantlyand perhaps
regrettablythe team, headed by Roland De Vaux, a Roman
Catholic priest, was composed almost exclusively of men of
religion. The lone individual who came to describe himself as
the "nonreligious person" on the team was the British scholar
John Marco Allegro, whose contribution must be regarded as
crucial to our considerations.
Not only were most of the scholars on the team clergy men, but
they were also all Christian clergymen. There was not a single
Jew among them (a condition that was more than compensated
for in later years when the Israeli government obtained a
monopoly on the scrolls). The notion that the researchers were
far from objective in
A Tale of Two Heresies
33
their attitude toward the contents of the find soon began to
receive some publicity. In 1955 the late and noted American
literary figure Edmund Wilson wrote a series of articles on the
scrolls for the New Yorker magazine. Wilson stated in these
articles that the materials contained in the scrolls frightened
church leaders who feared that the documents might reveal
information that would detract from the unique claims of
Christianity. The similarity of much of the Essene doctrine and
history to the later Christian New Testament could have justly

alarmed the guardians of church orthodoxy. In more than one

way, the Essenes of the Qumran community appeared as a
group of Proto-Christians. Did they not baptize like John and
later the apostles? Were they not opposed to the Temple
priesthood in Jerusalem, the legitimacy of which they viewed as
abrogated? And, most importantly, did they not speak of one of
their own leaders, a "teacher of righteousness," whose life and
death show supremely uncomfortable similarities to those of
Jesus of Nazareth?
The role that the apprehensiveness of orthodox Chris tian minds
may have played in obscuring the message of the scrolls will
remain a matter of conjecture. Still, there are at least some facts
to consider. The early Dead Sea Scrolls were divided fo r
purposes of research among eight members of the international
team. It is generally agreed that the theologically most sensitive
material, containing the history and practices of the Essene
community, was given to a Polish Roman Catholic priest from
France, Josef Milik. Today, thirty years later, the majority of
this material remains unpublished in the hands of Milik. It has
also become known that Father Milik has since quietly left the
priesthood. Could it be that the content of the documents
destroyed his faith, but that his commitment is still strong
enough not to wish to make public his conclusions? Looking at
the entire body of the Dead Sea Scrolls, only 20 percent of the
documents has been published, the remaining 80 percent being
still in the hands of scholars. One can certainly sympathize with
the lone maverick scholar.
24
The Other Tradition
John M. Allegro, who. in a lecture in 1985 in Ann Arbor.
Michigan, declared: "Why are my dear colleagues sitting on the
stuff.' It has driven me mad. . . . it's a scandal. The public has
got to be made aware, then maybe people will start asking (the
scholars) questions." 2

The caves of the Qumran mountain range continued to yield

additional materials. The Antiquities Department of the
Jordanian government (which came to appoint John M. Allegro
as its chief agent in this project) continued to sponsor and
support expeditions, one of which yielded the famous copper
scroll that was transported to England and. in 1955 and 1956
under Allegro's supervision, opened and deciphered. The
copper scroll and other more recently discovered documents
began to reveal a picture of the Essene community of Qumran
which indicated that the saintly Jewish heretics were involved
in much more than the hitherto known spiritual pursuits. The
copper scroll, for instance, seemed to indicate that they were
the custodians of the buried treasure of the Temple of
Jerusalem, destroyed and looted by the Roman legions in A.D.
70.
As the plot thickened in regard to the content of the scrolls, the
ever-turbulent developments of the politics of the Middle East
added a new keynote to the story of Qumran. After 1961 in the
wake of the so-called Three-Day War, the sites of the find were
annexed by the State of Israel. The British and American
influences in the project were now displaced by the
politico-religious zeal of the Israelis. The late
general-statesman-archeologist Yigael Yadin became the
leading explorer and guardian of the newly discovered
writings. Dozens of additional caves were explored, most of
which contained various materials hidden there by the Jewish
sectarians in the last two centuries B.C. and the first century
A.D. Not only the caves, but also the site of some ancient ruins
in the region yielded additional documents. The Israeli
influence did not prove a great improvement in regard to the
publication of the vast amount of available material. A division
arose between the Israeli custodians, on the
A Tale of Two Heresies
35
one hand, and the Jordanian Dead Sea Scrolls Fund (headed by
Allegro as trustee), on the other. The Essene library, which in

its original state is estimated to have consisted of more than 600

scrolls, slowly faded from public view. By the 1960s the
attention of the public and scholars alike had begun to move
away from the subject of the scrolls. The mist that for a large
part of every year broods over the briny waters of the Dead Sea
reenveloped the Essene treasure that it had concealed for two
millennia. Although removed from their place of concealment
in the bleak and parched wilderness, the Dead Sea Scrolls still
have not yielded the secrets they guarded for so long. The
mystery remains.*
The depth-psychologically oriented observer of these events
might perceive certain mythic patterns woven into the story
and fate of the two discoveries that may shed additional light
on their meaning. In a particularly dark period of the history of
the Western psyche two significant discoveries were made. Both
were the result of chance rather than a deliberate, purposeful
intent. The agonizing psychic need of the culture was thus met
by a synchronistic response from the innermost center of
reality. The hopelessness and spiritual bankruptcy of the West
in the wake of the Second World War and at the outset of the
atomic age brought forth two remarkable sources of a vital but
hitherto missing ingredient of its collective soul. Long ago the
guardians of Western spirituality unwisely banished an
important expression of their tradition from the daylight of
religious life. The Essene and Gnostic alternative tradition
became the equivalent of the psychological shadow to the
Judeo-Christian mainstream religiosity. Yet, the human psyche
cannot forgo the effective presence of its shadow for too long.
The time always comes when the hitherto rejected and
consequently missing portion of our selfhood mightily calls
attention
*Regarding the lack of the publication of certain materials
from the Qumran find, the author relied primarily on
published statements as well as information imparted verbally
by the late John M. Allegro.
36

The Other Tradition

to itself. The stone that the builders rejected surfaces once more
in order to be incorporated into the structure, indeed, more
often to become the cornerstone of the same.
According to Jungian and related depth-psychological thought,
spiritual and religious concerns are ultimately founded upon a
universal human drive toward wholeness. The disparate
components of our nature eventually undergo a process of
progressive unification (called by Jung "individuation"), which
has wholeness as its objective. It would appear that with the
coming of the post-World War II era the time for a certain
advanced phase of the individuation of Western culture had
come. Faced with the appalling evidence of human ev il
manifest in the war and in totalitarian tyrannies and shocked by
the prospect of global death and destruction resulting from
nuclear warfare. Western culture reached a psy chological
impasse wherein its repressed shadow could play a healing and
redeeming role. The time was finally ripe for the admission of
the rejected spirituality of the Gnostics and the Essenes.
The arising of such an opportunity for the healing of Western
spirituality (and with it of Western culture) should not be taken
to mean that difficulties and resistances to such a process of
healing would not be encountered. All persons familiar with
the practice of depth psychology know that the content of the
psyche will yield its true meaning only after prolonged
exposure to the light of consciousness, coupled with an
informed effort to illuminate this content with the amplifying
light of appropriate symbols. One can wrest a revelation from
the depth of the psychic mystery, but one can never be certain
that the revelation will not undergo a process of obscuration
and distortion. The religious content of the psyche is
particularly subject to such pitfalls. When writing about the
need to illuminate psychologically the symbolic statements of
religion, Jung gave expression to his concern regarding the
ever-present tendency toward unconsciousness and
obscurantism in this highly charged area of endeavor:

A Tale ofTyvoHeres .
es 27
I have to ask myself aiso. in all seriousness, whether it might not
be far mor e dangerous if Christian symbols were made
inaccessible to thoughtful understanding by being banished to a
sphere of sacrosanct unintelligibility. (Italics oursS.A.H.] They can
easily become so remote from us that their irrationality turns
into preposterous nonsense.
In the foregoing we have noted the existence of certain evidence
indicating that conscious as well as unconscious efforts have
been made to banish the heritage of Nag Hammadi and Qumran
to just such a "sphere of sacrosanct unintelligibility." Scholars
indoctrinated by the monolithic worldvi ew G f the Qt d and New
Testaments have encountered great psychological resistances in
their own minds when confronted with the challenge of dis coveries that, when brought into the light of thoughtful
understanding, may reveal themselves as an Other Testament
differing radically f rom an j 0 r ten con tradicting the two accepted
testaments.
The challenge of consciousness is always to let go of the lesser
in order t 0 he able to include the greater. Similarly, the
challenge G f the
Gnostic and Essene documents is to give up an incomplete and
one-sided religious consciousness in the interest of a greater,
more inclusive one. It would seem that this option is quite
forcefully demanded of us by the imperative of the growth and
healing of the human p syc he both at the individual and the
collective levels Q f its expression. The alternative would be a
repetition of the fatal mistakes made by religious authorities
and their followers in the pastthe very mistakes, in fact, that
have led to the lamentable lack of wholeness of t h e mainstream
spirituality of the West. In view of the evident need of the
culture in the midst of its present crisis, such an alternative
appears to be unacceptable.

Another testament has come to us in this latter portion of the

twentieth century. Like all testaments it is a witness (which is
the term from which testament is derived). The Other, or
Alternative, Testament bears witness to the
39
The Other Tradition
existence of a worldview that is at once different from and
complementary to the one adopted by the West in the form of
mainstream Judaism and Christianity. It is a heretical
testament, a heritage that deviates radically from much that
was accepted as normative and regular in religion and culture
for some 1,600 years. Although its full extent and content have
not yet emerged into plain view, its available documents suffice
to permit us an adequate perspective concerning its character
and potential impact. Such, in brief, are the recognitions that
ought to motivate us in our search for both the manifest content
and the implicit meaning of the Other Testament, beginning
with its expression that can chronologically lay claim first to
our attention, namely, the heritage of the Essenes.
2
Saintly Rebels:
The People of the Scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered at a place known today
as Qumran (pronounced koomrahn). an Arabic name without
any certain meaning. It is an ancient site, probably one of the
"cities of the wilderness" mentioned in the Book of Joshua.
Allegro believes that the mysterious people of the Scrolls
purposely came to locate their community upon an earlier
Israelite settlement of biblical prominence known once as the
city of Secacah. A few miles to the north of the present Qumran
is the ancient site of Jericho and of the fords where Joshua, son
of Nun, led the people of Israel across the river Jordan,
repeating after a fashion the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea

initiated by Moses. As the Red Sea had parted for Moses, so the
Jordan stopped in its flow for Joshua in order to permit the
crossing of the Jewsat least so all believers held. 1 The region
at and around Qumran was hallowed by a sacred past. It was a
place where miracles happened, where the God of Israel
intervened in the course of nature to show His favor to the
children of His covenant.
Curiously enough, beneficent divine miracles are not the only
events whereby this region is remembered. The plain clearly
visible from Qumran is the very one where, under a dreadful
hail of fire and brimstone, the unhappy populace of Sodom and
Gomorrah found their last, sad resting place. Even more
significantly, the Rift Valley in the immediate vicinity of
Qumran was traditionally
40
Saintly Rebels
31
believed to contain the Abyss of Judgement wherein the rebel
angels with their chief, Azazel, were cast by God in order to
languish until the day of the final judgment. Such apocryphal
books as those of Enoch and Jubilees (both of which were
favorite reading of the Essenes of Qumran) outline an entire
dark myth dealing with Azazel and his angelic host, who
intermarried with humans and became the forebears of a race
mighty in knowledge and magical skills. These beings, at times
called Watchers and Rephaim (related to the Hebrew verb rapha,
to heal), were regarded by at least some of the People of the
Scrolls as the spiritual ancestors of their own tradition, which
was popularly called Essene, related to healers and physicians. 2
Sometime after the Essenes, the Gnostics of Nag Hammadi also
viewed themselves as spiritual kin of both the rebellious
inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah and, at least by
implication, of the Rephaim as well. It may not be too audacious
to imply that the very locale of the discovery of the Dead Sea
Scrolls, and with it the headquarters of the most famous Essene

community known, gives clear indications of a rebellious

tradition opposed to orthodox establishments of doctrine and
devoted to secret knowledge and practices.
Turning from the place to the people themselves, we must note
that the Dead Sea Scrolls were by no means the first evidence of
the existence of the Essenes. The Roman writer Pliny the Elder,
the historian Josephus, as well as the Jewish philosopher Philo
of Alexandria have left us much testimony concerning those
whom they called Essenes. The Greek word Essenoi is of uncertain derivation, but it is related by scholars to the Hebrew
Asah (he acted), Hazah (he saw visions), as well as to the Aramaic
Hasaya (pious) and Asa (he healed). The modern Talmudic
Hebrew word Hasid (pious) may also be reckoned among the
cognate words. We may thus speculate that they were people of
action, visionaries, persons distinguished by extraordinary
piety, and above all, individuals preoccupied with healing, for
which reason (especially in Egypt) they were also fr equently

The, caves o j

Qumran

42
The Other Tradition
called Therapeutae, meaning physicians or healers. While the
early descriptions stressed asceticism and piety, the find of the

Scrolls brought into increasing view their rebelliousness and

heterodoxy.
For centuries the world of scholars viewed the Essenes as a
numerically small (Pliny gave their number as around 4.000),
quietist. and pacifist movement, desperately concerned with
purity in all formscelibate, ascetic, given to dietary
eccentricities, and utterly unworldly and otherworldly in
outlook and practice. Along with these notions went also the
acceptance of the hyperorthodoxy and strict legalism imputed
to the Essenes, who thus were made out to be merely an
extremely orthodox and ascetic group of Jews whose doctrines
and actions were in conformity with mainstream Judaism as
known throughout history. The picture emerging from the
Scrolls is, to say the least, very different from this earlier view
of the Essene character.
After the discovery of the Scrolls a good deal of learned
discussion was carried on in scholarly quarters about whether
the authors of the documents were Essenes or whether they
might have been what were called Zealots. As is known, in the
years A.D. 66-70 a great revolt took place in Israel that swept
through the country and that in A.D. 70 led to the final
destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem and the subsequent
abolishing of the Jewish homeland, which was not to be
reestablished until the middle of the twentieth century. The
instigators of this disastrous uprising were the Zealots, who
came to look upon the Roman occupying forces as the
embodiment of cosmic evil and upon themselves as the army of
light destined to rid Israel and the world of the demonic host
embodied in the power of imperial Rome. The Scrolls (at least
in part) propound a warlike mythos very similar to that
espoused by the Zealots. In one, the Sons of Light, led by a
princely Messiah and easily identifiable as the Essenes
themselves, would assume a leading role in the struggle against
the Children of Darkness, who in turn are led by the prince of
darkness, Belial, or the devil. This
Saintly Rebels

44
thoroughly dualistic document clearly established the People of
the Scrolls as being far removed from the pacifist image
attributed to them earlier. It also reminded many of the later
Gnostic and Manichaean myths of the struggle of the knowers
against the host of evil, led by the archon (ruler) of darkness. The
first indications of a Gnostic or at least Proto-Gnostic tradition
within Hellenistic Judaism thus made their appearance. No less
an authority than the universally respected scholar R. Bultmann
was prompted by the evidence of the Scrolls to write: "a
pre-Christian Judaism of Gnostic character which hitherto could only
be inferred from later sources is now attested to by the newly
discovered Dead Sea Scrolls* (Italics ours)
It has been said by one of the most insightful translators of the
Scrolls, Theodor H. Gaster (in his work The Dead Sea Scriptures in
English Translation), that the Scrolls are essentially mystical
documents and that the experiences spoken of in the document
called the Scroll of Hymns are genuine mystical experiences.
The "wondrous mysteries" of God revealed to the authors of the
Scrolls according to their testimony remind one of similar
mysteries and mystical experiences alluded to and docu mented
in various Gnostic scriptures, notably The Treatise of the Eighth and
the Ninth as well as others of the Nag Hammadi collection. It is
more than likely that the Essenic authors of the Scrolls, not
unlike the Gnostic authors of the Nag Hammadi codices, were
partakers of visions and revelations of an esoteric nature and
that the content of the Scrolls could be viewed as possessing an
inner, hidden meaning or code. (The Essenes were in fact in clined to employ codes, as the discovery of the so -called
Taxo-Asaph disguise by way of the use of the Atbash cipher
proves.)*
*For details regarding this code and cipher, see Chapter 3 of
the present work, as well as Hugh Schonfield. The Essene
Odyssey (Shaftsbury. England: Element Books. 1984).
44

The Other Tradition

As C. G. Jung repeatedly pointed out, the Gnostic docu ments,
including those of Nag Hammadi, were not based on dogmatic
or philosophical considerations but contained primary
revelations from the deepest strata of the human psyche.
Similarly, the latest research seems to reveal that at least a large
portion of the Dead Sea Scrolls also originates in such direct,
firsthand mystical experiences partaken of by the Essene
mystics of the Qumran community. The Gnostics of the later
period did not feel it necessary to disguise in code and cipher
the visionary nature of their inspiration. An excellent example
of such a Gnostic description of mystic vision is to be found in a
scripture referred to earlier. The Treatise of the Eight and the Ninth:
How shall I describe the All? I see another Nous [spiritual
soulS.A.H.) who moves the soul. I see one who speaks to me
through a holy sleep. Thou givest me strength. 1 see myself! I
am willing to discourse! I am overcome with a trembling! I
have found the origin of the Power above all powers, which
has no origin! I see a wellspring bubbling up with life! . . . I
have seen what discourse cannot reveal, for the entire Eighth,
O my son, with the souls therein and the angels are singing in
silence. But I. the Nous. understand. 4
While admitting that "wondrous mysteries" have been revealed
to them, the writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls utilize metaphors
and imagery from nature to indicate their own mystical and
secret experiences. Thus we read in the Thanksgiving Hymns of the
Scrolls:
But Thou, O my God. hast put into my mouth as showers of
early rain for all who thirst and a spring of living waters. . . .
Suddenly they shall gush forth from the secret hiding places. .
. .5
In the same collection of hymns (possibly written by the
mysterious Teacher of Righteousness himself), the image of a
variety of trees is used to denote the Essenes them selves. These

"trees" are nourished by the living waters that gush forth from
the secret places of God's secret
Saintly Rebels
46
wisdom, and among them prominently mentioned is the myrtle,
the name for which in Aramaic, assay a, is virtually identical
with the word for healing, from which one of the popular
names of the Essenes derives. Linguistic ciphers and other
metaphors are thus used by the People of the Scrolls to both
reveal and conceal their esoteric character.
Let us then address ourselves to the question: "Who and what
were in reality these Essenes, these People of the Scrolls?" Their
outer history is fairly quickly recounted. About a century and a
half prior to the birth of Jesus, a non-Jewish king named
Antiochus Epiphanes decided to impose a pagan form of
religion on the land of the Jews. Under the leadership of Judas
Maccabaeus a revolution broke out, which by the year 142 B.C.
came to establish the religious and political freedom of the
Jewish people. Among the followers of the revolutionary
leaders were many "pious ones," i.e., Hasidim or Essenes, who
adhered to an alternative form of mystical spirituality and
whose spiritual traditions went back a long time in Jewish
history. The aftermath of the revolution of the Maccabees,
however, created a permanent rift between these pious mystics
and the religious-political establishment in Jerusalem. The
Hasmonean royal family established by the revolution had
done a deed that the Essenes considered unforgivable: The
kings drove from their sacred seat of the high prie sthood of the
Temple the members of the tribe of Zadok, who had held this
office for some eight centuries, ever since the reign of King
Solomon. The new high priests became none other than the
kings of the new dynasty themselves. This was the state of
affairs that the Essenes could not accept. They packed up their
belongings and removed themselves from the jurisdiction of the
newly installed politician-high priests by moving into the
mysterious area of Qumran, there to practice their special form

of religious purity, conduct secret rites, converse with angels

and demons, and plot the overthrow of the establishment of
those whom they ever after called "the wicked priests."
47
The Other Tradition
From this time on the Essenes of Qumran became openly
declared heretics. Their teacher, a messianic figure whose
personal name they never mentioned and to whom their
literature always refers as the "Teacher of Righteous ness," was
slain by the royal and priestly tyranny around the year 100 B.C.
This cruel act, which, as we shall see. shows many startling
similarities with the execution of Jesus a century and some
years later, embittered the People of the Scrolls even further.
From then on they engaged in grand apocalyptic tasks of
mythmaking and prophesied the dawning of a new age wherein
the sons of light would fight a great war with the sons of
darkness, which would lead to the establishment of a new
kingdom of light and righteousness under the inspiration of the
pious Essenes themselves. For decade upon decade the holy
heretics brooded in their rock-hewn dwellings and labyrinthine
caverns and prepared for the coming of the new age of light. It
was within this period of sad and irate introspection that they
wrote and copied their numerous heterodox scriptures, ma ny of
which became known nearly two millennia later as the Dead
Sea Scrolls.
The Hasmonean kings were finally brought to their downfall by
the power of Rome in alliance with the non-Jewish dynasty of
Herod. The "evil priests" no longer ruled in Jerusalem, their
place having been taken by a foreign king supervised by a
Roman governor. While the chief antagonists of the Essenes
were eliminated, conditions in the lands of Judea were still not
to their liking. Many probably drifted back to the towns and
hamlets of their ancestral land, some even found refuge in
Jerusalem, the hated seat of the usurping establishments of
throne and altar. Yet others traveled to distant regions, notably
the land of mystery and magic called Egypt, where the equally

heretical Jew Philo of Alexandria was to call them Therapeutae,

or healers. But the majority in all likelihood continued to hold
out in the mountains and caves of Qumran, awaiting the new
age of a Messiah who would establish the long-awaited
kingdom of light that had eluded the expectations of the pious
ones. By the
Saintly Rebels
48
year A.D. 1 when an obscure infant was allegedly born in
Bethlehem, whose brief career seemed to be patterned so
closely on that of their Teacher of Righteousness, the People of
the Scrolls were inwardly ready for at least certain elements of
the new covenant which was proclaimed some years later by
the followers of the mysterious Rabbi Yehoshva. better known
by his Latin name, Jesus.
It is here that the content of the Scrolls sheds mu ch new and
valuable light on the Essene impact on the shaping of
Christianity, and beyond that, on the shaping of a certain
creative heterodox variety of Christianity, known as
Gnosticism. The Scrolls from Qumran confirmed most of the
already available information about the Essenes. but added
much invaluable material in the form of teachings concerning
the messianic warrior prince expected by the People of the
Scrolls. This is how John Allegro characterizes the expected
Essene Messiah of the Scrolls:
This charismatic leader of the future, born of the lineage of the
famous King David, would establish a new world order where
the will of God reigned supreme. Such a blessed state could
only come about after wars and bloody revolution in which the
"Anointed" . . . would personally lead the forces of Light in
their apocalyptic struggle against the powers of Darkness
under the arch-fiend Belial, the Devil. . . . All in all, the first
eager perusals of the new material supported the idea that in
Essenism we might expect to find clues to the conception of
Christian ideas. 6

The Dead Sea Scrolls revealed thus that the Messiah expected
by the Essenes conformed much more closely to the image of
Jesus than the vague intimations and prophetic expectations of
the orthodox Judaism of the first century. Not only is there a
great similarity between the Essene Messiah and the Christ
figure of the Jewish heresy called Christianity, but also there is
every reason to suspect that the Essene variety of Judaism
might have served as the matrix of an even more unorthodox
Christian heresy known as Gnosticism.
49
The Other Tradition
There is no other variety of Judaism besides that of the Essenes
that is so closely related to the entire body of New Testament
religiosity, including the Gnostic portions thereof. Essene and
Christian were both practicing if not a form of communism, at
least a communi-tarianism. Both were persecuted and therefore
resentful of the religious establishment at Jerusalem. Both
baptized their initiates; both practiced a sacramental ritual
meal. In addition to these important similarities, both were
greatly attached to the writings of the prophets and ex pected a
cataclysm and a glorious inception of a mes-sianically ruled
new age.
The relationship of the People of the Scrolls to the New
Testament, and beyond it to the Gnostic gospels, is undeniable.
In addition to this there are certain other questions nonetheless
portentous for being unanswered. If the traditional chronology
of the lifetime of Jesus and of the subsequent spread of the
Christian communities is accepted, then it appears almost
imperative that some sort of an already existing organizational
structure must have been utilized by the early Christians to
build their church. The time between the commonly supposed
date of the crucifixion of Jesus and the writing of the earliest of
the Pauline letters is much too short to allow for the
development of a highly complex network of organized
communities with well-developed methods of communication,
funding, and a structure of authority that presents itself to the

reader of the Epistles of Paul. There was only one organization

in existence that could have served as the foundation for this
rapidly developing structure, and it was the order of the
Essenes. Centered on its monastic headquarters by the Dead
Sea, but extending all over Judaea and in all likelihood into
Egypt, Rome, and Asia Minor, the Essene organization served
as a ready-made matrix upon which the new Christian
association of communities could be built. If, as we are
suggesting, the Essenes were the ones who swelled the number
of converts to the new Christian covenant in the first and
formative years of the Church, then the miraculous rapid
Saintly Rebels
50
growth and organization of the Christian network becomes
much more plausible. In this case we must also admit, as
Allegro has done, concerning the Essenes:
. . . their doctrines, and particularly their messianic expectations, were very much closer to those of their Christian
mentors than anything that appears on the surface in the
Scrolls. 7
A Messiah who failed to transform not only the world but even
the fate of his own countrymen in his igno-miniously
terminated three-year public ministry would not have inspired
spectacular mass conversions to his gospel. If the same Messiah
had been foretold by the prophetic traditions of the People of
the Scrolls, or if enough of these people believed that such was
the case, then the Essene-Christian connection received full
justification. As Hugh Schonfield pointed out:
We have to allow now what was previously so clearly evident
to no more than a relatively few scholars, that the Messianic
concepts to which Jesus and others of his time were responsive
were far from being confined to biblical sources. They were
being shaped by writings and teachings emanating largely
from the Essenes and widely regarded as inspired. Until it

became possible in recent times to be fully aware of this, and

to have access to much of their literature, the true story of
Christian beginnings could not be ascertained. 8
Let us then in conclusion summarize those features of the
People of the Scrolls that have a direct bearing on the
connections, not only historical but also what might be called
psychological, that join the Essene transmission with the new
covenant of Christianity, and more particularly within that
covenant with the early Gnostic variant of Christianity. It is to
be hoped that such a summary will present the reader with a
deeper understanding of the genius of the People of the Scrolls
and of the culmination of this genius in an approach to the
Christian message that found its most complete literary
expression in the
51
The Other Tradition
Nag Hammadi collection of Gnostic scriptures discovered but a
few short months before the Scrolls of Qumran.
1. The Qumran community was located on a site that eminently lends itself
as a backdrop to the growth and development of a heresy of a generally
Gnostic character. The choice of the location of the community
joined the Essenes of Qumran on the one hand with the
messianic figure of Joshua, son of Nun. and on the other, with
the demons and supernatural "watchers'" connected with the
Abyss of Judgement located in the Rift Valley. All of this could
be taken as a documentation of the Essene myths that is at once
messianic and angelic-demonic.
2. The influence of the Essene Teacher of Righteousness created a
predisposition among the Essenes toward dualism a rejection of the existing
world order and the identification of the world as evilall positions that
later became associated with the Gnostics. Admittedly this pre disposition originated in the political conditions of the Jewish
kingdom; however, in the minds of the Essenes of Qumran the
originally mundane issues soon became transformed into

cosmic and metaphysical calamities and predicaments. The rule

of the Hasmonean "evil" priest-kings became the forerunner of
the dominion of the archons and the Demiurge of the Gnostics.
The sons of light were the early embodiment of the
pneumatic-Gnostics, and the sons of darkness were similarly
the prototypes of the minions of the dark rulers of the lower
world recognized by the Gnostics.
3. The inspiration derived by the authors of the Scrolls did not originate
primarily in Jewish dogma and law but in vivid, emotionally charged
personal experiences of a mystical nature. Some of these experiences
are freely admitted in the Scrolls: others are disguised by way
of metaphors and codes based on such ever-popular ciphers as
the transposition of letters and the like. The latest scholarship
also agreeslargely as the result of the insights of Jung that
the origin of the writings of the Gnostics is to be sought in
direct, personal experience of the mysteries of being rather than
in pure syncretism, philosophic speculation, and the like.
Saintly Rebels
52
4. The specific variety of messianism developed by the Essenes in
conjunction with their attachment to the tragic figure of their mysterious
Teacher of Righteousness, prepared the way not only for the messianic career
of Jesus, but also for the mystical and cosmic messiahship embodied in the
figure of the Gnostic Christ who speaks to us and is extolled in the Nag
Hammadi Gnostic gospels. This circumstance may have been greatly
reinforced by the likely possibility that a large number of the
earliest converts to Christianity were Essenes.
This final point of our summary brings us quite directly and
logically to the consideration of the figure of Jesus and to the
ways in which this figure may be related to the most intriguing
though elusive character within the Essenic drama: the Teacher
of Righteousness. Assuredly it is in the relationship of these
two immensely important figures that we may find the most
important indications of how the "pre-Christian Judaism of
Gnostic character" (gnostisierendes Judentum) recognized by

Bultmann came to serve as the principal fountain and origin of

Gnosticism. 9 It is in the relationship of the Essene Messiah to
the Christian Jesus, and beyond him to the Gnostic Christ, that
the link may be discovered which joins the Dead Sea Scrolls of
Essene origin with the collection of Gnostic gospels found in
Nag Hammadi.
3
Essene Messiah and Gnostic Christ:
From Prototype to Archetype
In the Gospel of Matthew (16:13) we find a description of Jesus
questioning his disciples concerning their view of him. The
disciples reply first by describing the opinions expressed by
various people concerning the identity of Jesus: "Some say that
thou art John the Baptist, some Elias, and others, Jeremias, or
one of the prophets." According to this version of the story,
(there is a quite different one to be found in the Gospel of
Thomas from Nag Hammadi), the apostle Peter gives the
correct answer and is commended by Jesus by being told that
flesh and blood have not revealed this answer to him, but that it
came from the Father in heaven.
As in the days described by Matthew, the characteriza tions of
Jesus differ sharply one from the other throughout history. It is
very difficult to determine what the concept of the early
Christians was concerning their executed founder. It is virtually
certain that their concepts varied and that no uniform belief
about Jesus was present in the early Christian communities.
Turning to the Gnostic Christians we find that their Jesus was
an enigma, a well-nigh insoluble mystery. Sometimes they
represented him as a man, sometimes as the divine Anthropos,
the wisdom-man who had come to rescue the sparks of light
that had fallen into darkness. At times he had a body and a
human voice wherewith he uttered many wise sayings, at other
times he had a phantom-body that only seemed
53

Essene Messiah and Gnostic Christ

54
like any other. Like the trickster-god of the American Indians or
the Fool of the Tarot deck, he was everywhere and everything;
he was in a body and without it; he was in the world and
outside of it. In the Gnostic Odes of Solomon he is made to say the
words that still seem true today: "I seem to them like a stranger
because I am from another race." 1
Such was the image of Jesus for the first three centuries:
All-inclusive, mysterious, ubiquitouslike his emulator Paul,
he was all things to all men. In the catacombs we still find a
very universal, very Gnostic Jesus. He is depicted as a form of
Bacchus holding a staff with grapes and surrounded by vines.
He is a shepherd carrying a lamb on his shoulders. He is the
mysterious Ichtos, the fish, for which analogy no biblical
justification can be found, as one might conjecture in the case of
the Good Shepherd and the grape plant, both metaphors which
he is said to have applied to himself.
Beginning in the third, fourth, and fifth centuries, this mythos
of unceasing, overflowing creativity becomes confined to
dogmatic formulations. At the Council of Chalcedon, in A.D.
451 the church fathers declare it a dogma, or article of belief,
that Jesus was the union of the two substances of divinity and
humanity, that he was "perfect God of the substance of the
Father" and "perfect man of the substance of the Virgin Mary
his mother." The leaders of the Church here tried to rationally
define what previously was discerned as a nonrational realiza tion, and their attempt as a matter of inevitable necessity ended
in failure.
From this time on the figure of Jesus undergoes first a gradual
and then an ever more rapid devolution, or deterioration. In the
dazzling mosaics of the Byzantine empire, as presently visible
in Ravenna and Constantinople, Jesus is still present as a
superhuman being of cosmic dimensions; he is still the
all-ruling pantocrator with orb and scepter, the representative of

a transcendental dominion over earthly life. At the same time

one cannot escape
the
conclusion
when
contemplating
these
55
The Other Tradition
representations that somehow the creative unity has departed,
the chalice of the eucharist no longer can be said to overflow
with creative power as it did in the early centuries. Something
is still there, but something also has been lost. Then come the
long, dark Middle Ages with the still nonhuman figure of Jesus,
austere, regal, sometimes agonizing on the cross, but capable of
repeatingalthough with less convictionthe
Gnostic-statement: "I am from another race."
Next we arrive at the Renaissance, where in accordance with
the atmosphere of humanism Jesus becomes thoroughly human
in appearance. He becomes the perfect man, the model of
anatomical perfection of the human body: a classical hero -god
with vaguely messianic overtones. The perfect God has given
way to the perfect man: the divine king has now become the
perfectly proportioned human body. The dictate of the Council
of Chalcedon has been fulfilled: He who was declared both
perfect God and perfect man now has been experienced under
both aspects, but the unity between the two has been broken
irrevocably.
After the Renaissance there comes what might be justly called
the period of the Great Decline, at least as far as the image of
Jesus is concerned. This period begins with the Reformation
and ends in the soulless materialism of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. Luther detests the pagan beauty of the
Renaissance Christ. In his desperate attempt to oppose the
so-called paganism of Renaissance Rome he manages to
degrade and downgrade the Christ figure still further. He
boasts that Jesus dirtied his diapers like other human infants
(thereby giving Freudian psychologists of a later era a fine
excuse to invade the field of religion with one of their favorite

obsessions, i.e., the issue of toilet training). Luther wants to

make Jesus real and relevant, but instead of this he merely
initiates the great historical development that will make him
banal and irrelevant.
The other great reformers, particularly the stern and
guilt-ridden John Calvin and his fanatical disciple
Essene Messiah and Gnostic Christ

56

John Knox, leave Jesus more and more out of their calcu lations
and worship a Christianized form of the Old Testament
Godhead instead. It is this vengeful and cruel archetype that
becomes the God of the Puritans and eventually the Lord of the
industrial revolution, of the wool merchants of Manchester and
the Yankee traders of New England. Under the influence of the
industrialized Jehovah image, the concept of the Old Testament
Israel is replaced by the chosen people of the successful, the
industrious, the rich. Calvinist predestination comes to declare
that the Puritan God loves the rich more than the poor and that
wealth and success are signs of divine favor.
And where in all this is Jesus? He is still present, but he has
been dethroned. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries use
him as a sentimental object of maudlin devotion and little more.
He becomes a sentimental comforter, a friend on whose
shoulder the bereaved may cry and the downtrodden hope but
never quite find complete consolation. What a far cry is this
pale, sentimentalized image from the fierce defender of the
outcasts of society who appears in the New Testament! And
also, how far removed from the majestic, transcendental
universal king of the Byzantine mosaics, not to mention the
mysterious, ubiquitous well of the living waters that once
flowed from the Gnostic figure of Christ in the first few
centuries A.D.
The bottom of the abyss, the nethermost circle of the inferno of
history, follows. Rationalism becomes the deity of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The cult of reason begun
by Voltaire and the encyclopedists makes heads roll under the

guillotine in a less than reasonable manner, while revolutionary

rationalists enthrone a Parisian prostitute on the altar of the
republic, proclaiming her the Goddess of Reason. God is dead,
long live reason! Reason triumphant thus rides her chariot into
the nineteenth century, but her apostles are no longer the
genteel, aristocratic philosophes of the eighteenth century.
Darwin, Haeckel, and their fellows thrust the
57
The Other Tradition
sword of reason into the process of life and discover no God
and no savior there, only blind force and the survival of the
fittest. Rationalism also looks at Jesus and uses its wiles to
assert that as a figure of historical fact he can hardly be said to
exist. Renan, Legge. and countless others, including Albert
Schweitzer, declare that the quest for the historical Jesus leads
nowhere. "Jesus is a myth," so cry the positivists, implying
thereby that lacking in clearly recognizable historicity he is a
mere unreality, an invention without either substance or merit.
The chorus of materialists, from science, philosophy, and art to
Marxist politics, joins in with fierce glee.
God is dead, religion is the opiate of the people, and Jesus does
not exist. Or does he? Comparative mythologists appear on the
scene who are not so sure. Behind the vague and uncertain
historical data surrounding the figure of the founder of
Christianity they begin to discover a powerful mythic reality no
less impressive for being at least in part remote from physical
history. The historical Jesus gives way to the Jesus of myth.
Scholarship discovers that the image of the crucified Nazarene
is intimately connected with a large number of savior gods of
antiquity: Osiris, Horus, Tammuz, Mithra, Orpheus, and many
others. Upon the heels of the mythologists appear the
representatives of modern depth psychology, among them C. G.
Jung.
Unlike the rationalists, positivists, and the followers of Freud,
Jung comes to hold the symbolic and mythic content of religion

in great reverence. Not for him the sneering and debunking of

Jesus, nor of any great figure of the spirit. In his teachings
concerning the collective unconscious, or objective psyche, he
brings forward the notion that religious symbols arise from a
common human source in the depth of the mind. The physical
reality of a historical Jesus is far less important to Jung than the
psychic reality of the Christ figure as discernible within the
functioning of the human soul. The symbols and myths on
which various religious faiths are based reveal the powers of
interior transformation and redemption
Essene Messian and Gnostic Christ
58
that heal and unify the fragmented and tormented minds and
hearts of people. Working from such premises. Jung views the
Christian myth with its central redemptive figure of Christ as a
great and well-nigh unique gift to humanity. The psychological
and spiritual value of the Christ symbol as a unifying and
healing expression of that intrapsychic principle, which he calls
the Self, appears as a never-varying recognition in Jung's
utterances and writings. He admits that Osiris, the Son of Man
in the Book of Enoch, the Buddha, Confucius, Lao-Tse, and
Pythagoras all played a psychological role similar to the one of
Jesus, but he holds that Jesus mobilized more powerful
transformative projections than these other figures. 2
By recognizing Jesus as the greatest and latest symbolic
representative of the archetype of the Self, Jung has given us an
invaluable tool to be utilized in the study of Christian origins
and indeed within all concerns and disciplines that address
themselves to the religious problems of Western culture. Jung's
recognitions may also be taken as signs of hope indicating that
the era of negative and confused attitudes regarding this most
significant archetype of our culture may be coming to an end.
Of course, confusing voices and opinions are still plentiful. The
world of entertainment presented us in the 1970s with such
products as Godspell, wherein Jesus appeared as an unreal and

whimsical clown, and Jesus Christ Superstar, where he was seen

as an abrasively unpleasant social critic. In the world of
popular scholarship we have a few new Jesuses as well. One is
the psychedelic-phallic symbolic figure emerging from the
controversial work of John M. Allegro, of the Dead Sea Scrolls
fame, entitled The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross*; another is the
erotic magician conjured up by the noted scholar Morton Smith
in his book Jesus the Magician* The German author Johannes
Lehmann, in his book Jesus-Report: Protokoll einer Verfdlschung
(which created a great sensation in Europe in the 1970s),
represents Jesus as a somewhat
59
The Other Tradition
confused Essenian Rabbi unjustly killed and buried in a
cabbage patch. 5
Perhaps the most influential of all the popular books on the
story of Jesus was certainly Hugh J. Schonfield's The Passover
Plot, in which Jesus engages in a plot to establish his
messiahship by deliberately fulfilling the prophecies made
concerning the Messiah in Jewish holy writ. The plot or coup
misfires in the end and Jesus perishes, to the sad astonishment
of his followers. 6 Merely as a matter of amusement we may give
mention to a curious book by the Australian journalist Donovan
Joyce entitled The Jesus Scroll. Here Jesus becomes a Zealot
warrior, who survives to extreme old age and finally dies a
hero's death at the last stand of the Jewish patriots in Masad a.
(Incidentally, the document written by Jesus himself just before
his death, allegedly viewed by the author for a brief time, is
purloined by the KGB and reposes in the vaults of the Kremlin
where it serves as an instrument of blackmail against the
Vatican.) All of this merely proves that the public in this
post-Christian (or semi-Christian) era is quite hungry for
alternative versions of the story of the founder of the Christian
faith, irrespective of the credentials of authors and the kind of
sensationalism manifest in their books.*

The confusion and ambivalence surrounding the figure of Jesus

stand a good chance of being substantially reduced as the result
of some developments of an entirely different nature; namely,
the increasing awareness of scholars and laypersons alike
concerning the content
*The above list of unconventional theories and books about
Jesus is by no means complete. Speculation continues about
the tomb of a personage by the name of Jo-asaph at Shrinagar
in the Kashmir, identified by some as the tomb of Jesus. The
turgid sensationalism of Holy Blood. Holy Grail by Michael
Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, fantasizing about
a surviving Jesus married to Mary Magdalene and procreating
numerous offspring scattered over France, may serve to
convince us further of the hunger for information about Jesus.
Essene Messiah and Gnostic Christ
of the Dead Sea Scrolls. As noted earlier, the Essenes of Qumran
were the chief carriers of the messianic impulse in Hellenistic
Judaism. Their own Teacher of Righteousness described in the
Scrolls shows so many similarities with the Christian Messiah
that the suggestion has been repeatedly put forward that the
two might, in fact, be one and the same. While such statements
are little more than exaggerations, the similarities joining the
two figures are nevertheless impressive. In addition to the
Teacher of Righteousness, the People of the Scrolls also awaited
a coming princely and priestly duo of messiahs, who together
would reestablish the new dispensation of true godliness and
righteousness. Indeed it may be said that when it came to
messianic expectations and speculations the Essenes were by no
means lacking in prodigious talent and accomplishment.
The connections linking Essene messianism with the C hristian
phase of messianic archetypal developments are manifold. The
first of these links concerns the Jewish hero whose name the
Christian savior bore. Joshua or Yehoshva, son of Nun, the
successor of Moses as leader of the Jewish people, was a
remarkable man. Josephus, calling him by the Greco-Latin name
Jesus, son of Naue, describes him in terms of highest esteem. 7

Joshua, appointed to leadership and successorship by Moses, is

indeed confirmed in his position by the God of Israel. "This day
will I begin to exalt thee in the sight of all Israel, so that they
may know that I was with Moses, so will 1 be with thee."* Later,
after the numerous miracles attending his campaigns, which
included the drying up of the waters of the river Jordan, the
collapse of the walls of Jericho, and the arrest of the sun and the
moon in their courses, his victory is described as the greatest
event in the history of the covenant: "There has been no day like
it. before or since, when God hearkened to the voice of man.'"'
The most significant function of Joshua, particularly in the eyes
of the Essenes. was not so much his miraculous generalship, but
his role as the new giver and concealer of the Law. The Essenes
held that Joshua sealed
61
The Other Tradition
the Torah inside the Ark of the Covenant, there to repose for a
very long time, until the pious King Josiah (pre sumably in the
seventh century B.C.) 10 in the course of certain reconstructions
of the Holy of Holies accidentally discovered it, the discovery
being recounted graphically in the second book of Kings. The
Essene work known as the Damascus Document states that King
David had no knowledge of the "sealed book of the Law" for the
very reason that it had not been opened since the death of
Joshua."
Joshua, thus, is the one who has concealed the sacred books of
the Torah, so that only those worthy should find them at the
appropriate time. The aforementioned synchronistic principle
evident in the discovery of important sacred literature is quite
clearly expressed in the traditions concerning Joshua. All of this
is of great import for our considerations in view of the fact that
the Dead Sea Scrolls clearly show that the Essenes came to
regard their Teacher of Righteousness as the new Joshua and
his teachings as the "second Torah." 12 Amazingly, even the very
mode of the concealment and preservation of the Scrolls
effected by the Teacher of Righteousness seems to have

followed the example traditionally set by Joshua, son of Nun. In

an apocryphal book, dating back to the first century A D ., called
the Assumption of Moses, Moses instructs Joshua to anoint the
five books of the Law with cedar oil and put them in earthen
vessels, a procedure virtually identical with the one adopted for
the preservation of the Scrolls of Qumran. 13 Also, on a
parchment sheet found in the so-called Partridge Cave and
published by Allegro in 1956. a series of prophetic blessings
and curses are to be found. These utterances, all attributed to
Joshua, relate to the coming of the Messiah, who is ritually
blessed here by his predecessor, while a wicked builder of the
city is at the same time ritually cursed. It takes but little
imagination to divine that the Essenes collected these mainly
biblical formulae in order to apply the blessings to the Teacher
of Righteousness, whom they regarded as the prefiguration of
the
Essene Messiah and Gnostic Christ
62
Messiah, whereas the curses were to apply to the "wicked
priest," the precursor of the diabolical opposition to the
messianic age of the last days.
What might thus be called the "Joshua connection" is clearly
present. Joshua, son of Nun, is the first archetypal prefiguration
of the messianic principle: a conqueror, a lawgiver, a concealer,
and a preserver of the true Gnosis. or secret doctrine. He is
followed by the Essene Teacher of Righteousness, the new
Joshua, author of the New Torah, who is murdered by the
"wicked priest" and hung or crucified on a tree in the vicinity of
Qumran, known on the basis of biblical reference as the
"Diviner's Oak" and to the Essenes as the "Teacher's Oak." The
Teacher of Righteousness leaves behind various prophecies con cerning the true and final Messiah (sometimes divided into two
figures of the princely and the priestly messiahs). The time is
now ripe for the arrival of the third Joshua, namely, Jesus of
Nazareth, who is slain in a manner similar to that of the murder
of the Teacher of Righteousness. Again. Jesus brings a new

Law, or Covenant, and foretells his own second coming for a

future period when the final battle between good and evil shall
take place. As the first two Joshuas hid their secret doctrines
and sealed them hermetically, so that only the right people
might discover them at the right time, so the Jesus of the
Gnostics subsequent to his Resurrection reveals his own secret
teachings, which then are hidden by his followers (albeit
perhaps two or three centuries later), not to be discovered until
the twentieth century in the form of the Nag Hammadi gospels.
Truly, this is a mythic pattern of impressive proportions,
showing the unfoldment and repeated reembodiment of an
archetype: The three Joshuas have an organic connection with
each otherthey are conquering, revealing, sacrificing, dying,
and reappearing images of a Gnosis that ever seeks its expres sion, irrespective of the adversities and vicissitudes of human
history.
Before leaving the Joshua connection it may be useful to
contemplate a passage from the Gnostic Gospel
63
The Other Tradition
of Philip discovered in the Nag Hammadi find:
Jesus is a concealed name, Christ a revealed name. Therefore
(this name of) Jesus really does not exist in any other
language, but his name is (nevertheless) Jesus, as they might
call him thus. But Christ is called the messiah in Syria, but in
Greek his name is the Christ. . . .' 4
The author of this gospel identifies the name "Jesus" as the most
limited name applied to the Savior, limited because it makes
sense only in the Hebrew language. The conjectural secret
meaning of the name "Yehoshva" (Joshua, Jesus) may be as
follows: The Hebrew letters Yod. Heh, Vav, Heh compose the
Tetragrammaton, or four-lettered name of God. With the
insertion of the so-called "holy letter" Shin in the center of the
divine name, we get the name of Joshua: Yod, Heh, Shin, Vav,

Heh. Gnostic thinking may view this operation as a comple tion,

or rectification, of the name of the Jewish God, because this
deity generally appears as an imperfect demiurgic entity in
Gnostic scriptures. Joshua may thus appear as a perfected or
more highly evolved manifestation of the Old Testament God,
capable of bringing the divine Law unto greater heights of
perfection and usefulness. Sanctified by the power of the holy
letter Shin, the original divine tetramorph now receives a
differentiation that it previously did not possess. In
psychological terms one might say that Yahveh becomes
conscious in Jesus and that this process of the creator's growth
toward consciousness proceeded from Joshua, son of Nun, to
the Essene Teacher, and finally culminated in Jesus as understood by the Gnostics. The Gospel of Philip clearly states that the
name "Jesus" holds a certain secret, but that this secret does not
exist in any language other than Hebrew. Thus, the above
theory regarding the secret of this name is by no means l acking
in some measure of probability.*
The author of the present work claims no authority other than
his own for this explanation of the meaning of the name of
Jesus.
Essene Messiah and Gnostic Christ

64

The Essenes themselves were ever conscious of the archetypal

connections of their own teacher with earlier spiritual figures
renowned in sacred lore. Two of these (in addition to Joshua)
were the patriarch Joseph and the Levite Asaph of the time of
King Solomon. Joseph appears to embody the archetypal
qualities appearing as the suffering holy one, while Asaph stands
for the inspired seer and miracle worker. The Essenes looked upon
Joseph as a prefiguration of their Teacher of Righteousness.
Significant references to this circumstance can be foun d in
several Essene scriptures, notably in the Book of Jubilees and in
the Habakkuk Scroll, the commentary on the Prophet Habakkuk,
which was one of the first three scrolls discovered in 1947. In a
scripture not directly related to the Essenes, the Testaments of
the XII Patriarchs, in a portion called the Testament of Benjamin,

we find a prophecy that various scholars, including Hugh J.

Schonfield, related to the Teacher of Righteousness, even
though they ostensibly refer to Joseph. Here are some of the
conclusions offered by Schonfield in regard to the latter
document:
Under the figure of Joseph we are surely meant to discern
someone else, conceivably the True Teacher, who suffered at
the hands of lawless and godless men, and whose be lieved
death was supposed to bring atonement. That the prediction
relates to a Joseph-type was discerned by a Christian
interpolator of the Testaments: for after the words "prophecy of
Heaven" he inserted the words, "concerning the Lamb of God
and Savior of the world." so relating the prediction to Jesus. 15
The Christian interpolator, in spite of his possible sec tarian
intentions, may have discerned the archetypal connection
between Joseph, and the Teacher of Righteousness, and Jesus,
with a clarity that we ourselves might be well advised to
emulate.
The connection with Asaph is even more intriguing. In the
Essene work the Assumption of Moses referred to earlier, there
appears a meaningless name, Taxo, applied
65
The Other Tradition
to a saintly Levite who, with his seven sons, retires from the
corrupt city of Jerusalem and sets up residence in a cave. Credit
is due to Schonfield for having applied an old cipher of Hebrew
scripture and thus discovering that Taxo is a coded disguise for
Asaph. (The cipher is one in which the first eleven of the
twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet are exchanged for
the last eleven letters in reverse order. The key to the cipher is
Aleph equals Tav and Beth equals Shin, which is pronounced
Atbash.) The question now arises: Who is Asaph?

Asaph ben Berechiah is described in several books of the Bible

as a Levite at the time of King Solomon. 16 In both Jewish and
Islamic lore he is regarded as a master of occult and miraculous
arts, a wizardly figure who advises King Solomon in the
theurgic practices, a man possessing knowledge of the true and
ineffable Name of God. These qualities combined with the
notion that, according to a later version, he is said to flee to live
in a cave were sufficient to establish him in the eyes of the
Essenes as a forerunner of their Teacher.
Joshua is the heroic hierophant of the concealed Law; Joseph,
the gentle patriarch, betrayed and tormented by his brothers;
Asaph, the priestly thaumaturge who works miracles and
knows the secrets of the Divine Name. All three lead us to the
True Teacher or Teacher of Righteousness. Perhaps it is well
that he has no name, for in a mystical sense he is Joshua, as well
as Joseph and Asaph, a bringer of the new Torah, a suffering
and murdered image of meekness, and a magical healer and
worker of mighty deeds of the spirit. And further down the
road of history there is Jesus, embodying all of these archetypal
qualities, and synchronistically related to the names of all three
of his spiritual forerunners. His name is that of Joshua, his
father is Joseph, andincredibly enough one of his latest
legendary manifestations as told by Islamic and Asian sources
is none other than a mystery figure called Jo-Asaph. The latter
point needs to be explained briefly.
Ancient Islamic records tell of a saintly religious
Essene Messiah and Gnostic Christ
66
teacher named Jo-Asaph or Yaz-Asaf. An influential Moslem
sect known as the Ahmadiyya movement flatly states that this
Jo-Asaph is identical with Jesus, who survived his crucifixion
and ended his days in India.* Related to this mythical
development may be the once very popular medieval work
Barlaam and Josaphat (known in its variant form as Barlaam and

Jo-Asaph). which has been alternatively suspected to be a

disguised story of Jesus and of Buddha.
All of the above considerations make it fairly clear that the
figure of the Christian Savior is the last and greatest of a series
of archetypal images manifesting in Jewish tradition, which
finally converged in the universal messiahship of the new
dispensation. Joshua the conquering lawgiver, embodied in his
namesake, became both the suffering Joseph and the miracle
working Asaph, even as he came to be regarded in emulation of
the priestly and royal messiahs of the Essenes as the sacrificed
priest and the Davidic World Ruler.
It is but one step from these convergences to the un disguised
intrapsychic mysticism expressed in the cosmic messiahship of
the Gnostics. The sequence from Joshua to Joseph to Asaph to
Jesus logically leads to the Gnostic Christ, the celestial
anthropos or heavenly man. Schonfield makes this quite plain
when speaking of the connection of Jesus with the messianic
prefiguration in the patriarch Joseph:
Using the account in the Bible of the favorite son of Jacob
whose death had been sought by his brothers and who had
been exiled from his land as a Messianic antetype, the Essenes
saw in him the anticipation of their True Teacher. From this
equation, and the doctrine of the two Messiahs, there emerged
the figure of a "Son of Joseph" Messiah.... He would be the
Man performing the perfect will of God and suffering
accordingly.
Higher flights of esotericism then linked the Man human
*See the footnote on p. 33. Chapter Two.
67
The Other Tradition
with the Man celestial, the primeval Son of Man, in whose
universe-filling likeness the first man on earth, Adam, was
created. 17

Following upon the earlier prototypes (early images) or

"antetypes," as Schonfield calls them, came the epiphany of the
archetype (primeval image) as perceived and proclaimed by the
Gnostics. The Essenes had envisioned it with remarkable
insight, but due to their secretive eso-tericism they could or
would not proclaim their vision openly. Veiled in allegory and
concealed by code and cipher, they guarded the Messiah
archetype in their secret Torah. In his highly authoritative early
work. The Dead Sea Scrolls, Allegro went on record stating:
An intriguing problem which has presented itself during the
work has been the deciphering of a number of different secret
codes in which several of the works were written . . . to keep
certain works especially secret. 18
By contrast, the Gnostic Christ and other mythic and
semimythic savior figures were no longer concealed. The
religious pluralism of the great metropolitan centers of the
Roman Empire, where the Gnostics flourished, did away with
the anxious secretiveness practiced by the People of the Scrolls.
Only centuries later when pluralism ceased and the repression
of a newly emerged orthodoxy struck did the Gnostics resor t to
secrecy again. Until then the Gnostic Messianic image was open
to the gaze of all. The Semitic obsession with concealment
vanished along with the preoccupation with purity, diet, and
other remnants of the old law. A new era, a new law, a new
dispensation of Gnosis had come. Still, the new was no more
than a more highly differentiated offspring of the old. and an
explicit as well as implicit continuity existed between them.
Allegro justly stated this:
The gnostic ('knowing') Essenes reappear on the literary scene
as 'gnostic Christians." but . . . there is really no justification
for the heavy black dividing line that is customarily drawn
across the page of history between
Essene Messiah and Gnostic Christ
68

them. There is a continuous development of religious thought,

influenced by the turn of political events, which is perfectly
comprehensible chronologically and doc-trinally without the
artificial separation of 'Christian' from 'pre-Christian.' 19
When contemplating the movement of the esoteric Jewish
prototypes and their culmination in the new messianic
archetype of the Gnostic Christ, it is necessary to remember that
this development was greatly facilitated by a powerful
intellectual-spiritual development that did not have its seat in
Palestine but in Alexandria. The great city of Alexander, located
at the crossroads of many cultures and traditions, harbored a
distinguished movement directed toward the synthesis of the
deepest and most enlightened elements of the religious
traditions of the Jews and the so-called Pagan peoples of
antiquity. As early as 250 years before the birth of Jesus, the
wise men of Alexandria were busily at work in their attempt to
discern the underlying unity within the structures of Semitic
and Greco-Egyptian spirituality. Ever since the learned ruler
Ptolemy Philadelphus (325-246 B.C.) commissioned a team of
scholars to translate the Hebrew Bible into Greek, this
Helleno-Jewish spiritual conjunction may be said to have
gathered momentum in its development. It was the gr eatest
representative of this movement, Philo of Alexandria (who, as
stated, was well acquainted with the Essenes), who became the
first thinker to employ the term "archetype" in a sense closely
resembling its usage in modern depth psychology. Philo clearl y
recognizedas did subsequently the Gnostics that the gulf
separating the monotheistic God from the human soul may be
bridged by intermediate spiritual beings as well as by exalted
and indeed divinized personages such as some of the greatest
figures of the Bible. Intimately connected with Philo's teachings
regarding such beings was his concept of archetypes, which
was manifest among others in his teaching regarding the Logos
of God. This principle, said Philo. was in effect the archetypal
manifestation of God in relation to
69

The Other Tradition

humanity. The Logos was the interpreting, prophetic, priestly
effulgence of God uniquely capable of bringing humans to the
knowledge of God. Not only was this concept obviously
utilized by Christian theology subsequently, but it also reminds
us powerfully of the principle underlying the thinking of the
Essenes, particularly concerning their archetypal spiritual
figures such as Joshua, Joseph, Asaph, and the Teacher of
Righteousness. By his own admission, C. G. Jung felt inspired
by the teachings of Philo when giving the name "archetype" to a
certain phenomenon of the psyche. 20
Jung defined an archetype (Urbild. primordial image) as "a
figurebe it a daemon, a human being, or a process that
constantly recurs in the course of history and appears wherever
creative fantasy is freely expressed." 21 When the human being
encounters one of these images, the impact felt is one of
intensity and novelty. As Jung expresses it, "It is as though
chords in us were struck that had never resounded before, or as
though forces whose existence we never suspected were
unloosed." 22 Human beings inherently know that the archetypes
are autonomous, that they obey their own sovereign laws, and
that while they are in the nature of internal experiences they
reflect themselves onto the screen of external human
experience. Archetypes are thus present simultaneously in the
internal structures of the human psyche and also in the arena of
history. In the course of his life, Jung came to differentiate
between the archetype as such and the archetypal image. The
archetype as such, he said, does not reach consciousness, for it
is lodged in an inaccessible region of psychic reality, "the
invisible, ultraviolet end of the psychic spectrum." 25 Archetypal
images, on the other hand, regularly manifest to the conscious
mind in dreams, visions, imaginative experiences, and altered
states of consciousness. Archetypes as such, said Jung, are
psychoid, i.e., they transcend the human psyche, while
archetypal images are psychic, namely, they belong to the
knowable realm of consciousness. In all of these recognitions
Jung was inspired by the modifications

Essene Messiah and Gnostic Christ

71
introduced into the Platonic concept of primordial ideas by
Philo. From Philo this realization proceeded to the Christian
Gnostics, who gave expression to their understanding of
archetypes and archetypal images in statements such as the
following passage in The Gospel of Philip:
Truth did not come into the world naked, but it came in the
types and images. It (the world) will not receive it in any other
fashion. 24
(In another line of the same saying in this gospel, the writer
uses the phrase "the image through the image." indicating what
might be his way of distinguishing between archetype and
archetypal image.)
It is somewhat difficult for us today to appreciate the import of
the archetypal element in connection with such figures of
religious lore as Joshua. Joseph. Asaph, the Teacher of
Righteousness, and Jesus. An insightful Jungian writer. Lucindi
F. Mooney, wrote concerning this:
Archetypal symbols, primordial images, actually do have the
same meanings as always. What has changed in the Christian
world is the Westerner's religious attitude toward them. For
example, the form or physical representation of the symbol,
created by our earlier fathers in an effort to express externally
an internal drama, is almost universally rejected as a mere
piece of carving or plaster. Nothing else. Once such symbols
are seriously questioned as being indicators for something
beyond rationality, they die. Thus, our culture is one
commonly referred to as stripped of its symbols, as
floundering between two myths, as rejecting its own
hereditary home. 25
As in the Gospel of Matthew quoted at the outset of the present
chapter, so today we may be justly reminded that flesh and
blood cannot reveal the true nature of the archetype to us.

"Flesh and blood" are represented in our contemporary world

by our alienated egos enmeshed in an alienated culture. Still,
there is hope. Much of this hope seems to be embodied in the
documents of the
72
The Other Tradition
Essenes and of the Gnostics, restored to us after a period of
many centuries. When conjoined with an insightful
psychological understanding of their meaning, these scriptures
may yet reverse the sad trend of spiritual impoverishment
alluded to by the quotation above. The messianic archetype
declares to us, as it did of old, that it seems to us like a
stranger, for it is of another race, but twentieth-century depth
psychology fortified by the authentic heritage of the long -lost
Essene and Gnostic core of Western spirituality increases our
familiarity with the shining and mysterious stranger. The old
religious keywords salvation, sin, fear of God, blind obedience
to dogma, and commandment are losing their influence upon
the growing edge of the culture. New hallmarks of spirituality
have arisen, mostly deriving from psychological theory:
self-knowledge, integration, authenticity, spiritual growth,
wholeness. In spite of confusion, reaction, and an often childish
naivete, a certain Gnosis has appeared in our midst. An image,
a persona that characterizes the people who are responsive to
this Gnosis has begun to constellate itself. It is an i mage that is
in itself archetypal in nature and thus may be said to resonate
with all that possesses the radiance of that other, archetypal
reality. This new image may indeed be the harbinger of a newly
dawning and more adequate myth for the West, a myth t hat
would supply the missing compensatory elements Jung felt our
culture desperately cried out for under the fateful, overriding
imperative for its wholeness.
The search for the archetypes and prototypes of Essene and
Gnostic lore is not without a vital contemporary meaning. The
ancients wisely held that the gods are immortal, referring thus
to their polytheistic vision of the archetypal powers of the soul.

Beginning in the dim mists of ancient Semitic lore, the

transformative and redemptive image of messiahship moves on
the pathways of history. From Joshua and Joseph to Jesus and
beyond him to the mystical and cosmic hero-God of the
Gnostics, we see the unfolding of a mighty principle of
redemption
Essene Messiah and Gnostic Christ

73

and wholeness, which has not lost its urgency for us even
today. The diminished recognition given to this messianic
image in recent times is not a circumstance to be accepted or
condoned. Referring to this very condition, Jung warned us:
"For it seems to me that the world, if it should lose sight of
these archetypal statements, would be threatened with
unspeakable impoverishment of mind and soul." 26
Happily we now possess means for the prevention of such an
impoverishment in the form of the evidence in behalf of the
spiritual importance and distinguished archetypal history of
the Messiah-Christ image. The nearness of the redemptive
power of the Living God as evidenced by the prototypes of the
Christ image among the Essenes is but one important
component within this evidence. The inescapable nearness of
Divinity reaches new and even greater heights of recognition in
the flowering of the Gnostic tradition proper, to the
investigation of which we shall devote ourselves.
4
The Feminine Wisdom
and the Coming of the Knowin g Ones
J. Krishnamurti, an Indian-born teacher of contemporary
alternative spirituality, wrote in his early, small book At the Feet
of the Master. "In all the world there are only two kinds of
peoplethose who know, and those who do not know; and this
knowledge is the thing which matters." 1 This aphorism could
very well have been written some 1,700 or 1,800 years ago by

the curious and much-maligned people called Gnostics, or

Knowers.
What kind of knowledge did Krishnamurti and his early
predecessors refer to? The English language is relatively poor in
expressions denoting subtle differences of philosophical or
psychological meaning. This is not true of the Greek language,
which distinguishes the kind of knowledge that is reflective
and scientific from another kind of knowledge that is based on
experience and observation. This latter kind of knowledge is
called Gnosis. In a deeper and more detailed sense this term
could be more accurately rendered as "insight"; or in a
depth-psychological sense it might be defined as "consciousness." In any case, it does not describe a static quality or
condition, but rather a process of an intuitive, contemplative
nature, and it is closely related to self-knowledge. The term is
of Indo-European origin, closely related to the Sanskrit word
jnana.
Although Gnosis is now primarily associated with the Christian
Gnostics of the first few centuries A.D.. it was a
74
The Feminine Wisdom
74
sort of spiritual prize valued and sought by many persons in
the time just preceding and following the Christian era. The
Poimandres and the Asklepius, both writings of the Hermetic
school of mystical thought, frequently employ the term Gnosis
to describe interior, illuminative insight. In another untitled
Armenian collection of Hermetic sayings we find a sentence
that is strongly reminiscent of several Christian Gnostic
scriptural passages: "He who knows himself, knows the All." 2
In the first century there appeared in Judea and in Egypt, and
subsequently in most parts of the Roman Empire, a strange,
new kind of people. Those who made their acquaintance called

them gnostikoi, those who know. It was generally believed that

they possessed what many were seeking: an inner knowledge of
a reality and a familiarity with a field of experience greater
than the life lived by most.
The earliest of the wandering Gnostic sages and prophets was
Simon, nicknamed the Magician, or Simon Magus. He was a Jew
from Samaria, a "Samaritan," as his compatriots were called.
Samaritans were people residing in the North of Judea. who
like the Essenes were regarded as heterodox by their more
conventional-minded compatriots. Also like the Essenes, they
shunned the Temple in Jerusalem and worshipped on their own
holy mountain. Of the Hebrew Bible they accepted only the
Books of Moses. From these rebellious and shunned people
came Simon Magus.
There can be little doubt that Simon was a historical personage.
References to his career abound in early Christian writings. The
Book of Acts (8:10) represents him as a reprobate member of the
Christian community, rebuked by the apostle Peter and then
presumably reconciled with the apostolic church. Other
Christian writers, such as Justin Martyr and the anti-Gnostic
polemicists Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and Tertullian, make him out
to be a troublesome rival of the apostles. In other early writings
known as the pseudo-Clementine works, some highly
suggestive points of Simon's career are recounted.
The Feminine Wisdom
65
It would appear that Simon, along with an Arab com panion
named Doshtai, was a disciple of John the Baptist. After their
apprenticeship to John, both Simon and Doshtai declared
themselves messianic savior figures and traveled the roads of
the Roman world, preaching and conferring mysteries. It is by
no means unlikely that these two men, who like Jesus were
initiated by John the Baptist, were infused with the power of
the messianic archetype and acted as alternative savior figures
side-by-side with Jesus. Certainly, the Romans regarded Simon

as an embodied deity and conferred on him the title of "the

great power."
Not only were Jesus, Simon, and Doshtai all initiates of the
mysteries conferred by John the Baptist, but each appears to
have had a mysterious and controversial connection with the
hitherto repressed and secret feminine side of Hebrew
spirituality. This connection manifested openly in the fact that
Simon and Doshtai each had at their side a female disciple by
the name of Helen, even as Jesus was intimately associated with
his own female disciple Mary Magdalene. As we shall see, these
women were much more than disciples and came to represent
the divine feminine in association with the masculine Messiah.
It is often assumed that the Hebrews were fiercely opposed to
goddess worship in all its forms. This may be true as far as the
utterances of many of the prophets are concerned, but it is to be
doubted that Hebrew popular religiosity shared in the
misogyny of these "mouthpieces of the Lord." Both the Egyptian
and the Babylonian matrix of spirituality, which were so closely
associated with early Jewish history, were greatly attached to
feminine deities, and the common Jewish people felt frequently
deprived because their leaders gave them a lonely male god
without a consort. It is quite likely that throughout the
centuries the ordinary people who were without theological
prejudice tended to worship a Lady along with their Lord God.
It has been reported that in comparatively recent times in the
vicinity of Hebron and in

NAG HAMMADI VALLEY

77
The Other Tradition
the area of the Negeb inscriptions were found dating back to
the eighth century B.C.. in which references were made not only
to "the Lord who protecteth us" but also the Lord God's wife,
here called by the name Ashera. a feminine form of one of the
names of the Hebrew God. Similarly in the fifth century B.C..
the Jewish soldiers stationed in Egypt at Elephantine (near the
present Assuan) were wont to worship Anal Jahu. a goddess

whom they regarded as the wife of their Lord, the God of

Israel.' Thus, evidence continues to manifest indicating that the
feminine was not totally absent from the pre-Christian Jewish
archetypal structure.
By the first century B.C.. the feminine divine archetype began
to manifest at the level of sacred literature. This new
manifestation was of a sophistication and subtlety that
distinguished it sharply from the popular expressions alluded
to above. The early Jewish goddess figure appears to have been,
like her Babylonian counterpart, of a relatively primitive,
primarily sexually toned, and at times androgynous character.
The new divine feminine principle that emerged and took shape
largely in the literary efforts of Alexandrian Jewish authors was
not merely a primitive great mother, but a spiritual out flowing
of the highest godhead described by the Hebrew name
Chokmah, Wisdom. Since the Greek language was the normative
tongue of the educated at that time, Chokmah soon came to be
known by her Greek analogue, Sophia. The principal literary
work through which Chokmah-Sophia made her grand entry
onto the stage of Alexandrian and Judean spirituality was the
Book of the Wisdom of Solomon, which in reality represented the
first century B.C. recension of certain elements of a hitherto
secret Jewish tradition regarding the divine feminine.
It is thus that Sophia, the feminine wisdom of God.
subsequently so closely associated with the Gnostics, appeared
in plain sight for the first time. She is represented from the
beginning as a divine spirit pervading all being. In the Book of
the Wisdom of Solomon, she is in fact identified as partaking of
the power of the creator
The Feminine Wisdom
78
("the worker of all things"), as omnipotent (capable of "doing all
things"), and as the mother of the gifts of wisdom and prophecy
("entering into holy souls in every generation producing
prophets and friends of God"). There are certainly echoes

present in this work of the ancient idea that Chokmah -Sophia

may indeed be the consort of the Lord God: "She glorifieth her
nobility by being conversant with God; yea, and the Lord of all
things hath loved her." 4 Perhaps even more importantly, this
feminine wisdom also becomes the lover and inspira-trix of the
righteous and the wise. It is thus that Solomon, the archetypal
wise man. declares his love for her: "Her have I loved, and have
sought her out from my youth, and have desired to take her for
my spouse: and I became a lover of her beauty." 5 Furthermore
her guidance and her Gnosis are considered essential by the
author of the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon for the proper
conduct of a wise and holy life:
Send her out of thy holy heaven, and from the throne of thy
majesty, that she may be with me, and may labour with me,
that I may know what is acceptable with thee. For she knoweth
and understandeth all things, and shall lead me soberly in my
works, and shall preserve me by her power. 6
While the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon may be said to
represent the feminine wisdom by way of the most exalted
imagery, this Wisdom is already represented in a very similar
manner in the older biblical Book of Proverbs. Wisdom is
represented here as crying aloud in the land and in the streets,
exhorting people to abandon their childish ways and to cast
away their hatred for Gnosis. 7 In the same book. Wisdom is
accorded primacy in all creation and is called the firstborn of
God, companion in God's work, and one who delights with Him
in his creation and in humanity. 8
Thus we find that roughly since the postexilic period Wisdom is
represented as a person, and beginning with the Book of the
Wisdom of Solomon this person takes on
79
The Other Tradition
distinctly feminine characteristics. The archetype of the
feminine Wisdom has come to constellate itself as a glorious

woman, as a goddess slightly disguised, who stands in a

specially intimate relationship to all seekers after wisdom.
Whereas to the pious readers of Proverbs and the Book of the
Wisdom of Solomon the Wisdom-Woman appeared as an ethereal
spirit of the higher worlds, to later individuals she appeared as
a physical woman. The first one to devise a mythological
framework for the manifestation of Wisdom in incarnate
woman-form was the aforementioned Simon Magus. It is
reported that Simon encountered a woman named Helen and
recognized in her the First Thought (a synonym for wisdom),
who long ago had descended into the created world and
underwent a process of deterioration and degradation. Simon
himself is said to have expressed this process in the following
poetic account:
In the beginning the Father intended to bring forth
the angels and the archangels. His thought leaped forth from
him. this thought. Who knew Her Father's intention. Thus she
descended to the lower realms. She bore angels and powers,
who then created
the world.
But after she thus bore them, she was held captive by them.
She suffered every indignity from them. And she could not
return to the Father, In a human body she came to be confined.
And thus from age to age she passed from body to body.
Into one female body after the other . . . Thus she became the
lost sheep. 9
One of the female bodies occupied by the First Thought, said
Simon, was that of Helen of Troy, the most beautiful and fateful
woman known to the ancient Greeks.
In Simon's system, the Father as well as the First
The Feminine Wisdom

81
Thought have their origin in Silence, an ever-existing, limitless
power. Thus the primordial unity eventually brings forth a
primal duality, consisting of a masculine principle (Father, also
Nous, i.e., mind) and a feminine principle (Epinoia, first
thought). The feminine wisdom having become entrapped in
the cosmos, the masculine principle is moved to descend into
the lower world in order to rescue the maiden in distress.
Simon, it would seem, saw himself as the incarnation of the
redemptive masculine, while he regarded Helen as the last
embodiment of the fallen thought of God. (The early Christian
writers have alleged that Helen was in fact a prostitute, but
these statements have been revealed as possible mis understandings by G. Quispel.) 10
In less technical terms we might summarize the Simonian story
as follows: There was a man sent from the most high God
whose name was Simon. He was the light sent from on high,
and he was bright like unto the sun. (Kabbalistically, the name
Shimon is chiefly composed of the Hebrew letters Shin and
Mem, which with the repetition of the letter Shin becomes
Shemesh, the sun, the symbol for light and mind, the nous, or
redeeming understanding, the principle responsible for Gnosis.)
There also was a woman named Helen, who was the
embodiment of the World Soul, even as Simon was that of the
World Mind. She was a light also, but it was that of the soft,
night-shining moon, whence her name is derived from Selene,
the moon. After many lives in earthly bodies, Helen at last felt
that her liberation was drawing near and she knew that her
celestial twin aeon would come to earth and find her. The twin
would come in the body of a man. just as she was born in the
body of a woman. Thus she betook herself to the coastal city of
Tyre, where many travelers were wont to tarry and she hoped
that one of them might be her celestial companion and
liberator. As so often before, she was obliged to sell herself into
bondage in her new domicile in order to provide for her
necessities.

One day, a middle-aged man of majestic countenance

82
The Other Tradition
entered the place where Helen lived as a chattel and he
instantly recognized her as the Soul of the World. He paid off
her debts and set out with her on a great journey. Together they
walked the dusty roads of Syria and Palestine, the paved
highways of Imperial Rome, and they called out to the
lightsparks, the souls of potential knowers, so that they might
gather around them and join the company of the liberated. As
the years passed, Simon grew old and his eyesight failed, so
that Helen led him by the hand from city to city in pursuit of
the liberation of souls. Peopleso late Gnostic tales told in the
underground traditions declarecan still see a young woman
walking on the pathways of the world, leading an old. majestic,
and magical man, and those who have eyes to see can perceive
that the old man has about him a radiance like unto the sun,
while the young woman is accompanied by a luminosity like
that of the moon. Many legends and tales throughout the ages
express their eternal story: Faust and Helen of Troy, Sleeping
Beauty and the Prince, Kundry and Parsifal, Dulcinea and Don
Quixote de la Mancha. The names and times change, but the
actors are the same. Helen and Simon, the World Soul and the
World Mind, are still among mortals and are still about the
business of their Universal Parent, the great brooding Silence
that dwells in the Fullness.
The liberation of Helen by way of the influence of Simon set an
example for the redemption of all other human beings from the
bonds of the false cosmos wherein they find themselves. The
conjunction of World Soul and World Mind, of heart and head,
of the relatedness of Eros with the intelligence of Logos, set the
pattern that ever after was so crucial to every form of the
Gnosis: the pattern of the creative conjunction of the opposites
that results in freedom from limitation and the beatitude of a
new and higher consciousness. The teaching of Simon is
embodied not in a solitary messiahship, such as was found

among the Essenes, but in the creative and redemptive power of

the divine-human couple. The Essene redemptive figures were
solitary sages, with an implied
The Feminine Wisdom
83
spiritual androgyny of the kind only known to monkish
chastity. The Teacher of Righteousness speaks thus in one of the
Hymns of Thanksgiving found in the Qumran caves: "Thou hast
made me a father to the sons of grace, and as a foster -father to
men of portent; they have opened their mouths to me like
sucklings."" And in the same collection, the Teacher attributes
similarly ascetic-androgynous characteristics to God: "For Thou
art a Father to all (the sons) of Thy Truth, and as a woman who
tenderly loves her babe, so dost Thou rejoice in them; and as a
foster-father supporting a child in his lap, so carest Thou for all
Thy creatures." 12 The contemplative and ascetic Essene still was
obliged to envision both himself and his God as fulfilling a dual
role as male and female, while Simon's liberated Gnosis was no
longer in need of such psychic strategems.
In the Gnostic system of Simonthe first such system as far as
history knowsthe desperate, compulsive emphasis on purity
as found among the People of the Scrolls gives way to a liberty
and libertarianism of impressive proportions. As a surviving
contemporary of Jesus, Simon was of course familiar with the
abrogation of the law of Moses as enunciated by the Nazarene
rabbi. As Jesus called for the establishment of a new law charac terized by love in lieu of harsh justice, so Simon preached
freedom from the restraints of both Jewish orthodoxy and
Essene heterodoxy. Restriction is the order imposed on the
world by the tyrannical creator angels, said Simon; whereas
freedom from restriction is the natural consequence of Gnosis.
The few fragments of Simon's writings available to us indicate
that he was not concerned with the freeing of the Jews from
political oppression, but with the freeing of the souls of men
and women from what today we would call psychological
restrictions, such as the one-sidedness and narrowness of

consciousness. In the so-called Great Announcement he brought

forth his majestic Gnostic myth involving the First Thought (or
World Soul) and the World Mind, while in the Four Quarters of the
World he probably propounded
84
The Other Tradition
a magical image of the universe. And in The Sermons of the
Refuter he appears to have criticized the God of the Hebrew
Bible and engaged in a reinterpretation of the Book of Genesis
in light of the foolishness of the creator who jails his human
children in a fool's paradise, so that the wise serpent needs to
assist their liberation.
It is apparent from these fragmentary reports con cerning the
teachings of Simon that almost all of the major features of the
later Gnostic systems are already present in his legacy. These
may be summarized as follows: (1) the Sophianic myth of the
feminine world soul captured in the lower world and liberated
by her supernal twin, who then becomes her companion; (2) the
magical view of the cosmos and the consequent need for
ceremonial sacramental aids to liberation and wholeness; and
(3) the imperfect character of the Old Testament revelations and
of their god. with the consequent need for a new dispensa tion
or "covenant" in which the old law would be declared defunct
and a new law of freedom and love proclaimed.
It is interesting to note regarding the third feature above that
Simon, both as a Samaritan and as a Gnostic, stood in
opposition to the Jewish faction ofearly Christians who were
represented by Peter, sometimes known as "the apostle of the
circumcision" in recognition of his attachment to Jewish
customs. The legendry evolved by the Christian detractors of
Simon has him engaged in a prolonged rivalry and contest of
will with Peter, replete with duels involving miraculous powers
and contests of what one today might call spiritual
one-upmanship. Interestingly, both men are called Simon, and
so Simon Peter the Judaizing Christian apostle and Simon the

Magician appear as two sides of the same or at least similar

archetypal image. It has even been suggested (by the early
scholar of Gnosticism W. Baur and his Tubingen school) that
Simon Magus is but a disguise for the apostle Paul. Petrine,
restrictive Christianity is thus contrasted with Pauline universal
Christianity. This suggestion cannot be considered as literally
true, but may contain a certain amount of symbolic truth
nevertheless. Could
The Feminine Wisdom
85
it be said that in the juxtaposition of Peter and Simon we find a
symbolic confrontation of the sort of Christianity that
subsequently became normative and orthodox, with the
liberating and Gnostic Christianity that Jesus himself taught
and that the Petrine church, under the influence of the Old
Testament archetypal structure, came to deny? And it is
certainly true that Pauline Christianity with its openness to the
non-Jewish populace and its pluralistic view of the composition
of the church was certainly nearer in spirit to the Simonian
Gnosis than its more rigid counterpart.
It must be remembered also that Simon was indeed rightly
called Magus or Magician. As such he was the inheritor of the
messianic archetype encountered earlier in the Levite Asaph,
author of many Psalms, greatly revered by the Essenes.
Whereas Jesus primarily appeared to embody the archetypes of
the Suffering Holy One and the Conquering Hero (and only to a
minor extent those of the Priest and the Magician), Simon
appeared clearly as the miracle working sage, commanding the
elements, extolling the virtue of the alchemical firewhich in
his Great Announcement he represents as the symbol of the
Universal Root of beingand performing as well as preaching
many astonishing wonders. Not the least of his wondrous deeds
is the reputed feat of Simon's ability to fly. In a third-century
Syriac work called Didascalia, Simon is reported to rise up into
the air. and Peter then miraculously causes him to fall and
break his ankle. Eusebius in his work on Church history (c. AD.

324) writes that Simon, when confronted with Peter's opposition in Judea, simply rose into the air and flew away in a
westwardly direction. In the Acts of Peter and Paul, Simon
receives a supernal summons to speed to Rome and he flies
through the air from Aricia to Rome, arriving at the city gates
in a cloud of smoke. Perhaps more significantly, in a
fourth-century source we find an account of Simon riding in a
chariot drawn by four flaming horses.
What are we to think of the tales concerning this Gnostic
Icarus? The flying motif is not unknown in either t he
86
The Other Tradition
Old or the New Testaments. Ezekiel the prophet is in a sense
regarded as the patron of all mystic flights, inasmuch as in his
famous vision he beheld a divine chariot conjoined with a
throne upon which God was seated and surrounded by four
winged creatures called the Cherubim. 13 This throne-chariot,
called in Hebrew Merkabah. became the mystical archetype of a
certain form of Jewish mysticism, consisting in spiritual flights
wherein the soul of the devotee was said to leave his body and
rise through various intermediary regions to the throne of God.
It is held by some scholars (notably Gershom G. Scholem in his
noted work Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism) that this practice
of mystical flying gave rise to the later system of the Kabbalah,
the received tradition of secret Jewish Gnosis. What is
particularly significant for our purposes is that the Dead Sea
Scrolls contain fragments that speak of the glories of the chariot
of God and the vision of the "Glorious Face" among the "Angels
of Knowledge." 14 Merkabah mysticism and with it early
Kabbalism thus may indeed be rooted in Essene mystical
practices of "dying on the Chariot."
Simon, it would seem, inherited from the Essenes a mystical
proclivity for flying, and he perfected this art both magically
and by way of constituting it as a spiritual metaphor. Ever since
Simon the Gnostics always knew that in order to achieve

liberation the initiate had to find a way of releasing his

imprisoned spirit from the limitations of the gross material
body, allowing it to fly to its own true home in the fullness, like
a bird freed from its cage. Once again, the Essene tradition
appears to have acted as the forebear of the Gnostic. Thus we
find in the account of Josephus describing the Essenes of an
earlier time:
For it is a fixed belief of theirs that the body is corruptible and
its constituent matter impermanent, but that the soul is
immortal and imperishable. Emanating from the finest ether,
these souls become entangled, as it were, in the prison-house
of the body, to which they were dragged down by a sort of
natural spell; but when once they are
The Feminine Wisdom
87
released from the bonds of the flesh, then, as though liberated
from long servitude, they rejoice and are borne aloft. 15
Not only are we assured here once again of the direct continuity
linking Essene and Gnostic practice, but also we may find a
relationship between the Hebrew alternative tradition and the
timeless practice of shamanistic and related transmissions. A
common experience of archaic technicians of ecstasy is the
exiting from the body and the flight of the soul over long
distances. Mystical flights are a prominent feature of the stories
of prophets such as Elijah. Ezekiel. and Muhammad, as well as
of witches and magicians persecuted by the inquisitors. Simon
the flying Gnostic finds himself thus in abundant company
indeed.
Simon discovered the World Soul in Helen, as did his fellow
initiate Doshtai in another Helen. For many centuries it was
believed that these two men differed radically from Jesus, who
merely redeemed the fallen woman Mary Magdalene. It took
the recent discovery of the Nag Hammadi gospels to bring to
the attention of Christendom the routinely held belief by at

least some Christians of the early centuries that Jesus had found
in Mary Magdalene the same kind of Sophianic consort as
Simon found in Helen. Not only was Mary Magdalene the
favorite and most Gnostic disciple of Jesus, but as indicated by
The Gospel of Philip she was the magical consort of Jesus as well:
There were three who walked with the Lord at all times; Mary
his mother and her sister and Magdalene whom they called his
consort. For Mary was (the name of) his sister and of his
mother and of his consort. 16 The consort of the Savior is Mary
Magdalene. The Lord loved her more than all the disciples and
used to kiss her often on her (mouth). 17
Yet it would be erroneous to assume that the association of such
messianic figures as Simon, Doshtai, and Jesus with a particular
woman denoted primarily a human and
88
The Other Tradition
personal relationship. The dyad of Messiah and Messianic
Consort bears all the hallmarks of a myth in the truest sense of
the word. The two protagonists appeared in many different
forms and were called by a variety of names. This is
particularly manifest in Simon's mystical consort Helen, whose
name (while related to the Goddess Selene) means torch and
who was regarded by Simon and his followers as the
reembodiment of Helen of Troy. This woman, whose beauty
brought about the Trojan War. was associated with a
supernatural radiance, so that while she was asleep in Troy, her
Greek countrymen were able to locate her residence by
perceiving the light that blazed above her chamber. Quoting
Simon, the church father Epiphanius recalls this episode as a
metaphor for Helen's Gnostic role in the enlightenment of
humankind:
Through its shining, as I said, he signified the display of light
from above. . . . As the Phrygians, by dragging in the wooden
horse, ignorantly brought on their own destruction, so the

gentiles, that is. men apart from the gnosis, produce perdition
for themselves. . .
Helen thus symbolized the light of supernal knowledge, and
her role on earth was to lead human beings through the
darkness of matter back to God. The World Soul herself,
redeemed from exile, brings about the victory of the forces of
light by showing forth her own radiance. Sophia. Wisdom, has
become manifest under the guise of a woman and has become a
partner, even an equal partner, in the task of redemption. The
notion of a solitary male savior, as taught in later mainstream
Christendom, is contrary to the vision of such knowing ones as
Simon and his successors. The Gnostics made their appearance
as the apostles not merely of the man of light ( S i m o n . Jesus) but
also of the woman of light (Sophia, Helen, Mary Magdalene) as
co-redemptrix. or partner in the work of salvation. The
knowing ones had come and with them Wisdom, the feminine
Word, had begun her march in history. Resented and
persecuted, combated and repressed from age to age, she came
to enjoy a period of manifestation
The Feminine Wisdom
89
through the agency of her Gnostic devotees that was to leave its
mark on the turbulent tale which constitutes the history of
Christendom and of Western culture. Again and again the voice
of the eternal feminine was to go unheard and crying in the
wilderness, but she was assuredly wooed, prayed to. and
revered by her friends the Gnostics. With Simon the Magician,
the tradition of the knowers emerged from the shadows of
Hebrew patriarchy and declared its uniqueness, its power to
enchant and transform the hearts and souls of those who long
desired to know the face of Lady Wisdom. Jacques Lacarriere,
the French poet and admirer of the Gnostics, summed up their
intentions well when he wrote:
The essential point about everything concerning Simon Magus
(and Gnosticism) is the image of the primordial Couple, the

image of Desire . . . exalted as the primary fire of the world

and the source of liberation, which is the image of Wisdom,
incarnate in the body of Helen, who has fallen from the
heights of heaven into the depths of history to teach men that
the way to salvation is through union with that reflection of
the divine splendour that is the form of woman. 19
The Odyssey of the Gnosis
The journey of Gnosticism began on the high roads of Samaria,
but it did not end there. Two disciples of Simon carried his
message to Antioch and Syria. Their names were Saturninus and
Menander. Both taught the existence of an Unknown God and
the great intermediate hierarchies composed of angelic beings,
not all of whom stand in a benevolent relation to humanity. The
rigid monotheism of Judaism, which was inherited by the
orthodox party in Christianity, was revealed by these te achers
as a gross oversimplification. The personal God, envisioned as
the creator, lawgiver, tyrannical king, and judge of his universe
so said Saturninus and Menanderis not the only and true
God. The authentic Godhead is an impersonal fullness, utterly
transcendent and beyond the reach of the human mind in its
present condition. This Godhead, referred to at times as the
Unknown Father, emanated a portion of its own sublime
essence, which became the created cosmos. It also emanated a
number of angels and creative spirits, some of whom became
estranged from their ultimate source and came to look upon
themselves as autonomous rulers. The traditional cosmology of
the ancient Hebrews already recognized that the planets were
not inert luminaries, but rather that they were ensouled by
angelic powers whose inevitable order served to cele brate the
power of Jehovah. The star-angels and other ruling spirits
appear as tyrannical, limiting agencies
90
The Odyssey of the Gnosis
90

in this Gnostic view. They are usurpers who lord it over

humanity and creation in order to enhance their own
self-importance and glory. It is incumbent upon the knower to
realize this and to extricate himself from the grasp of these
powers whenever possible. The existential predicament of
human life lies in the uncomfortable dominance to which these
lesser godlings subject the spirits of human beings, and from
which only the experiential realization of Gnosis can extricate
them. 1
Such myths are clearly not "scripture" as exoterically
understood by Jew or Christian, nor are they a work of
philosophy in the sense of discursive reasoning in the
knowledge of the origins and nature of the human being.
Rather, they appear to be based on what might be called
experiential psychospiritual knowledge. They are what Gilles
Quispel insightfully called "the mythologization of
Self-experience."
Significantly, it is in Egypt and not in Palestine. Antioch. or
Syria that Gnosticism came to reach its greatest and fullest
flowering. This circumstance is in fact more understandable
than it might seem at first hearing. Hellenistic Egypt was not
only a gathering point of religious and transformative
traditions and disciplines of great diversity, but also it was the
locale where colonies of Essenes existed. The People of the
Scrolls were as numerous, perhaps even more numerous, in
Egypt than they were in Palestine. It was here that Ptolemy
Philadelphus (309-246 B.C.), the learned Greco-Egyptian ruler,
commissioned the noted translation of the Hebrew Bible into
Greek, in the version known as the Septuagint. Here Judaism
met Platonism as well as the mystery systems of Serapis, Isis.
and others, and here Essene piety was subjected to the refining
and widening influences of the wisdom-heritage of the known
world. No wonder that the Gnostic teachers found a welcome in
Alexandria and other Egyptian settlements and that they found
followers in profusion.

Simon and to a lesser extent Saturninus and Menander were

itinerant prophets. The later generation of teachers
92
The Other Tradition
of the Gnosis came to be established in cities, or more
frequently in the city, Alexandria, the spiritual capital of the
Roman Empire and, indeed, of most of the world beyond it.
Whereas Gnosticism proper differs from most Western religions
in having no personal founder, it soon becomes intimately
associated with the still youthful movement of Christianity and
its founder, Jesus. Thus, it is without doubt that one of the
earliest popularizers of the Christian message, Lucius Charinus. a
disciple of John the Evangelist, was a thoroughgoing Gnostic.
His Acts of the various apostlesnamely, Peter, Andrew, John,
Thomas, and Philipenjoyed wide popularity and represented
a major factor in the spread of Christianity. This literature was
not considered heretical by anyone for some time, and its
author was revered as a close associate of the author of the
Fourth Gospel. Another great teacher of the Gnosis, Basilides,
was regarded as having been a disciple of Glaucias, who as a
very young man sat at the feet of Peter, chief of the apostles.
Basilides taught in Alexandria from about A D . 117 to 138, and
his school was even extended to Spain by one of his successors.
Marcus of Memphis. Such teachings of Basilides as are available
to us indicate that he emphasized the importance of the concept
of the Unknown God. totally transcendental, incomprehensible,
and beyond all categories of existence. Here are some of his
statements in this regard as recorded by the church father
Hippolytus:
There was when naught was; nay even that 'naught' was not
aught of things that are. But nakedly, conjecture and mental
quibbling apart, there was absolutely not even the one. And
when I use the term 'was,' I do not mean to say that it was; but
merely to give some suggestion of what I wish to indicate, I
use the expression 'there was absolutely naught."

Naught was, neither matter, nor substance, nor voidness of

substance, nor simplicity, nor impossibility of composition,
nor inconceptibility. imperceptibility, neither man. nor angel,
nor God; in fine, neither anything at all for which man has
ever found a name, nor any operation
The Odyssey of the Gnosis
93
which falls within the range either of his perception or
conception. 2
Basilides was clearly in touch with numerous teachings of the
East, both in the form of the writings of Zarathustra and of
transmissions received from India. It is in part due to these
sources of insight that we may attribute the remarkable fact that
his vision soars beyond even the archetypal world of Plato and
rises to contemplate the Absolute, the unnameable One, which
can be adored in silence alone.
Bardesanes, or Bardesan, born in A.D. 155 on the banks of the
river Daisan in Syria, was of distinguished birth and was a
close advisor of the local ruler whom he converted to a Gnostic
form of Christianity. Thus, between A D . 202 and 217, there
actually existed a Gnostic Christian state in Syria, which was
subsequently destroyed by the Roman emperor Caracalla.
Bardesanes, however, continued to teach in Armenia.
Mesopotamia, and Syria and died in A.D. 233. He was a writer of
odes and hymns of great beauty, and it is generally held that
the lovely mythic poem known as Song of the Pearl was written
by him.* His book of 150 hymns was used by the Christian
church of Edessa in Syria until it was replaced some 170 years
later with the more orthodox hymns composed by St. Ephrem.
After Bardesanes' death, he was succeeded by his son
Harmonius, who also was known as a poet and musician.
Whereas it is often held that Bardesanes' approach to the
Christian Gnosis was characterized by somewhat atypical
ascetic tendencies, it is certain that his teachings also contained
a considerable emphasis on the divine feminine as exemplified

by the following triple fragment of his hymns preserved by St.

Ephrem:
Thou fountain of joy Whose gate by commandment Opens wide
to the Mother; Which Beings divine
*See Chapter Nine of the present work.
94
The Other Tradition
Have measured and founded.
Which Father and Mother
In their union have sown.
With their steps have made fruitful.
Let her who comes after thee To me be a daughter A sister to
thee.
When at length shall it be ours To look on thy banquet. To see
the young maiden. The daughter thou sett'st On thy knee and
caressest? 3
Sacred scriptures have played a great role in the teaching and
practice of many religions. Among such religions the
Judeo-Christian-Islamic family of faiths appears to possess a
particularly fervent attachment to its scriptures, amounting at
times to a veritable worship of the written word. Early
Christianity was faced with a considerable dilemma regarding
scripture, inasmuch as its founder had repeatedly shown a lack
of reverence for the letter of the Jewish scriptures and in
addition declared that he had brought a new law, apparently
superseding the old. The man who addressed himself with
great acumen and success to this dilemma was a Christian cleric
and shipowner born on the southern shore of the Black Sea by
the name of Marcion. who though widely traveled and well
acquainted with the Alexandrian Gnostic teachers, carried on

considerable activity in Rome between the years 150 and 160.

He was a bishop and also the son of a bishop and a man of
great influence in the various Christian communities.
Marcion pointed out that the God referred to by Jesus and the
God spoken of and speaking in the Old Testament are not one
and the same Being. The God of Jesus is a Good God said
Marcion. whereas the God of the Hebrew Bible is merely a Just
God. Many centuries later, the modern school of higher biblical
criticism adopted views
The Odyssey of the Gnosis
extremely similar to those espoused by Marcion. G. R. S. Mead,
commenting on the position of Marcion, writes truthfully:
The Christ had preached a universal doctrine, a new revelation
of the Good God. the Father over all. They who tried to graft
this to Judaism, the . . . creed of a small nation, were in
grievous error, and had totally misunderstood the teaching of
the Christ. The Christ was not the Messiah [expected by the
mainstream of JudaismS.A.H.]. The Messiah was to be an
earthly king, was intended for the Jews alone, and had not yet
come. Therefore the pseudo-historical "in order that it might be
fulfilled" school had adulterated and garbled the original
Sayings of the Lord, the universal glad tidings, by the
unintelligent and erroneous glosses they had woven into their
collections of the teachings. 4
Something needed to be done. Marcion thus decided to remedy
the existing conditions. With great skill he organized the
material relating to Jehovah in the Old Testament and
juxtaposed it in topically related parallel columns to the sayings
and deeds of Christ. The result was devastating. The
contradictions and inconsistencies shocked and distressed all
who were confronted with them. The best of Jehovah merely
showed him as a stern God of Justice, whereas at his worst he
was revealed as a capricious, cruel, and willful Being. In both
aspects he seemed greatly removed from the ideal of the Good
God preached by Jesus. Marcion was particularly attached to

the figure and tradition of the apostle Paul, who he said was the
first to really understand the mission of Christ, and who had
rescued Christianity from the provincialism and petty
sectarianism of those who attempted to follow Jesus without
understanding him. (This reasoning was by no means
uncommon among Gnostic teachers and is based on the fact
that Paul communed with Christ spiritually in his experience
on the road to Damascus and, thus, had an experience of Gnosis
that was superior to the experience of those who had merely
seen Jesus in
96
The Other Tradition
the flesh.) The gospel espoused as authentic by Marcion was a
version he possessed of the Gospel of Luke and which he said
was in the main the work of the apostle Paul himself.
One of the most controversial and also most engaging Gnostic
teachers was Carpocrates, who with his wife Alexandra and his
son Epiphanes (the historical existence of whom is doubted by
some) presided over an influential school of Gnostics. Irenaeus.
who wrote about Carpocrates and his school in malicious and
scandalous detail, as well as the somewhat more trustworthy
Clement of Alexandria (AD. 150-205) inform us that
Carpocrates was a Greek born on the island of Cephalonia, b ut
who settled in Alexandria and taught there during the reign of
the emperor Hadrian (AD. 117-138). While the church fathers
accused Carpocrates and his school of all manner of unsavory
practicesprimarily of a sexual nature there is no true
evidence indicating that this particular group of Gnostics was
much more than a cultured, educated, and prosperous
Alexandrian circle composed of urban intellectuals of liberated
views and habits. Some of the ideas of this circle were set forth
in a treatise concerning justice, which may have been written by
Carpocrates' son Epiphanes. This scripture puts forth certain
ideas that were not uncommon in contemporary Christian
communities, or rather communes, where the sharp
divisiveness and selfishness of personal property and the

exclusiveness of familial connections were abrogated. It is also

unfortunate that Clement, who seems to have stood in a
position of some sort of rivalry with Carpocrates, represents
one of our principal sources of information on this topic. All
one can say with certainty is that Carpocrates, along with the
majority of Gnostics, taught the need to be emancipated from
the obsessive rules and repressions of the Mosaic structure of
law, and that he did not view the tendencies of some Christian
leaders (possibly including Clement) to compromise Christian
existential freedom with the old law with any degree of favor.
The Odyssey of the Gnosis
97
Of greater interest is the teaching of this school regarding what
has been called the Monadic Gnosis and its implications in
terms of the reembodiment or reincarnation of souls. The
Monad, or primeval Unitary Being, is the fount and ultimate
destiny of all existence. But the manifest plane of existence
contains numerous finite spiritual entities, who in the interest
of maintaining their own separate spheres of influence are ever
bent on counteracting the universal striving after unity, which
pervades all creation. Such mundane spirits impose various
restrictions on the portions of the universe they do minate. It is
necessary for the spirits of human beings to awaken first of all
to the memory of their former condition and their origin, so that
fortified by these reminiscences, they may soar above the
limitations of diversity and return to the unity of t he Monad.
The mystery of remembering (anamnesis) thus makes its first
powerful appearance in the available Gnostic literature. The
existential and psychological predicament of the human soul
according to these views is that it fails to remember what it is
and where its true home is located. One is reminded of the
thoroughly Gnostic statement of the modern British writer
Colin Wilson that a human is really a god suffering from
amnesia, laziness, and nightmares. But how, one might ask, can
this amnesia be removed? The answer given by Carpocrates and
his school is that by purposeful or. as we might call it today,

conscious experience of the world and of the flesh one may

recover one's true memory. In its cycle of existence the soul has
to pass through a great diversity of experiences, all of which if
carefully observed and assimilated may be conducive to the
overcoming of self-forgetfulness. By way of careful
self-observation in the midst of experience, human souls are
able to shake off the shackles of limitation imposed on them by
the mundane spirits. They are freed from the cycle of repeated
lives and experiences and are able to obtain a state of perfection
and sovereign repose. It would appear that this school
definitely accepted a version of the doctrine of reincarnation,
while
98
The Other Tradition
asserting that only the individual who chooses to lead a
self-observing life of alert consciousness can overcome the
ceaseless round of cyclic return to which the agents of
limitation have condemned the human race.
This brings us to the most outstanding of all the Gnostic
teachers, in whom the Gnostic tradition receives its greatest and
most appealing expansion and amplification: the poet, prophet,
visionary, and lover of the Divine whose name was Valentinus.
Mead called Valentinus "the great unknown of Gnosticism," and
indeed it is true that we possess far less information regarding
his life and person than we might wish for. Valentinus was
born in Africa on the coast of the ancient state of Carthage
around or before the year 120. He was educated in Alexandria
and spent a considerable portion of his life there, although an
important segment of his life must be allocated to his residence
in Rome. He was personally acquainted with numerous leaders
of the Christian churches in Alexandria and Rome. The famous
church father, Origen, born A.D. 185. was one of his early
associates, and it is not unlikely that some of Origen's teachings
as well as general "Gnosticizing" attitude may have been
influenced by Valentinus. Between A.D. 135 and 160 Valentinus
lived in Rome, and according to Tertullian he was a candidate

for the office of Bishop of Rome. It is also stated by Tertullian (a

subsequent candidate for heresy himself) that Valentinus was
excluded from the "great church" around A.D. 175. There is
evidence indicating, however, that he was never universally
condemned as a heretic in his lifetime, and that he was
respected in most Christian communities until his death. He
was almost certainly a priest in the mainstream church and may
even have been a bishop. Like other prominent Gnostic
teachers, Valentinus also received a transmission of teaching
and of sacramental power from an "apostolic man." in his case
from one Theudas, a friend and disciple of the apostle Paul .
It is certainly a question of more than minor interest what the
course of Christian doctrine and practice might have been had
Valentinus been elected to the office of
The Odyssey of the Gnosis
99
Bishop of Rome. His clear, hermeneutic vision, combined with
his sense of the mythical, would have probably re sulted in a
general flowering of the Gnosis within the very fabric of the
church of Rome and might have created an authoritative
Gnostic paradigm of Christianity that could not easily have
been driven out for many centuries, if at all. The fact that
circumstances and the increasing floodtide of
pseudo-orthodoxy caused his efforts to fail must be reckoned
among the great tragedies of the history of Christianity. Still,
many important features of his unique contribution survived
and more have recently surfaced from the sands of the deserts
of Egypt. Some of these may be in need of enumeration here.
Valentinus and many other Gnostic teachers have presented
their students and readers with intricate cosmologies:
systemizations of psychospiritual reality of impressive
proportions and rich content. It was alleged by the antagonistic
church fathers and long held by those who followed their lead
that these cosmological constructs were little more than
artificially compacted images calculated to bewilder and

impress the minds of devotees. It was largely the result of the

highest and most unbiased insight of modern depth psychology
that many contemporary scholars began to recognize that these
cosmic images, which reappear in kindred form in neo-Gnostic
systems such as Theosophy and Anthroposophy. might in fact
be primal patterns perceived as the result of direct visionary
and intuitive experience. C. G. Jung, who found remarkable
similarities between Gnostic archetypal imagery and his own,
stated repeatedly that he was convinced that the Gnostic
systemizations of reality were the result of direct and highly
instructive spiritual experience on the part of the Gnostic
visionaries, among whom a place of signal distinction belongs
to Valentinus. Jungian psychologist and mythologist Ean Begg
comments on the depth-psychological character and importance
of Gnostic archetypes in the following manner:
To Gnostics the archetypes were not just concepts or abstract
ideas, nor were they quite the same as the gods
100
The Other Tradition
of old. personifications of human instincts and receptacles for
human projections, who were already entering into their
twilight by the time Gnosticism appeared on the scene. It
seems as though some Gnostics, at least, came very near to
understanding the archetypes as psychoid, that is, subliminal,
collective, autonomous energy quanta, manifesting typically
in synchronistic or transcendental experiences, possessing
individuals and operating through them. The closeness of
their views to his own impressed Jung greatly, though, when
he died, only a fraction of the Nag Hammadi library, the Jung
Codex, had been translated. 5
The cosmogonies and theogonies, gospels and myths that are
often gathered under the heading of "Valentinian" might all be
most profitably understood as being based on a single
existential recognition, which might be summarized as follows:
Something is wrong. Somewhere, somehow, the fabric of being at

the existential level of human functioning has lost its integrity.

We live in a system that is lacking in essential integrity and
thus is defective. Humans live in an absurd world that can be
rendered meaningful only by Gnosis, or self-knowledge. This
absurdity is the property of the kind of reality we live in. It
does not follow that the physical or superphysical constituents
of this reality are in and of themselves absurd, but our
systematic way of perceiving them is. The word "cosmos" as
used by Gnostics does not mean world (as it is frequently, but
inaccurately translated) but rather system, and can thus be
perfectly well applied to the system created by the human mind
concerning reality. Basilides called this cosmos one of illusion,
thus replicating the views of Hindus and Buddhists. Valentinus,
in the Gospel of Truth, of which he is the likely author, introduced a name, "plane," meaning error to denote the same
concept. We all can agree that reality to us is what appears to
be real, and so our minds though lacking in Gnosis present us
with a flawed reality replete with absurdity.
Similarly, it is necessary to consider that Valentinus' effort to
shift the blame for the cosmic defect from
The Odyssey of the Gnosis 101
The ignorance of the agencies that create the false system
humanity to Divinity is by no means the sort of blasphemy that
Judeo-Christian-Islamic believers would perceive it to be. Rigid
monotheism is lacking in the kind of psychological and
metaphysical subtlety that may be found in Gnostic thinking.
The lesser God. or creator, as envisioned by the Gnostics is
somewhat akin to an imperfect mythologem created by the
mind. The Gospel of Philip, a scripture bearing the imprint of the
influence of Valentinus. tells us: "God created man and man
created God. So it is in the world. Men make gods and they
worship their creations. It would be suitable for the gods to
worship men." 6 The proposition that the human mind lives in a
largely self-created world of illusion and error from whence
only the enlightenment of a certain kind of Gnosis can rescue it.
finds well-nigh exact analogues in Hinduism and Buddhism.

The Upanishads state that this world is the maya of deity,

through which man deceives himself. Buddha stated that the
world consists of ignorance, im-permanence. and the lack of
authentic selfhood. Valentinus is in very good company indeed
when he establishes the proposition that we live in a defective
system of false reality that can be set aright by the insight of the
human spirit.
How does Valentinus propose that humans bring about the
repair of the flaw of the cosmos? Irenaeus quotes Valentinus
concerning this:
Perfect redemption is the cognition itself of the ineffable
greatness: for since through ignorance came about the defect
. . . the whole system springing from ignorance is dissolved in
Gnosis. Therefore Gnosis is the redemption of the inner man;
and it is not of the body, for the body is corruptible: nor is it
psychical, for even the soul is a product of the defect and is a
lodging to the spirit: redemption therefore must be itself of
^pneumatic (spiritual) nature. Through Gnosis, then, is
redeemed the inner, spiritual man: so that to us suffices the
Gnosis of universal being: and this is the true redemption. 7
102
The Other Tradition
is thus undone by the spiritual Gnosis of the human being. The
defect can be removed by Gnosis. Spiritual self-knowledge thus
becomes the inverse equivalent of the ignorance of the
unredeemed human ego. The proposition thus outlined, which
some have called "the pneumatic equation." represents the
central core-reality of the elaborate mythic structures of
cosmogonic and redemptive content that are associated with
the teachings of Valentinus.
The methods advocated by Valentinus for the facili tating of a
true, spiritual Gnosis are not confined to philosophical
doctrines and poetic mythologems. The Valentinian system was
above all a system of sacrament. In addition to the seven

Christian sacraments still preserved in certain branches of

Christendom, the Valentinian Gnosis practiced two greater
mystery rites, called "redemption" and "the bridal chamber,"
respectively.*
Valentinus had numerous disciples, among whom a particular
distinction belongs to Marcus, an early disciple, and two learned
commentators who tended to modify the teachings of
Valentinus, Ptolemaeus and Heracleon. The latter two have
further modified the teachings to accommodate mainstream
Christian views. Thus, while Valentinus emphasized that Jesus
occupied a vehicle that was pure spirit, Ptolemaeus admitt ed
that he also had a psychic nature and body.
The names here mentioned by no means exhaust the number of
the Gnostic teachers of the classical period of the second and
third centuries. Such names as those of Cerinthus, Monoimus,
Cerdo. and Apelles appear in the polemical writings of the
church fathers, all describing teachers and practitioners of the
same Gnosis of which Valentinus and the other prominent
Gnostic leaders may be considered the greatest representatives.
What came of Gnosticism? Beginning with the fourth century,
all of Alexandrian spirituality began a rapidly accelerating
decline. In the wake of the fateful Council
*For an exposition of the Valentinian supreme mystery rites,
see Chapter Twelve of the present work.
The Odyssey of the Gnosis
103
of Nicea (A.D. 325), convoked by the pagan emperor
Constantine who nevertheless established Christianity as the
official religion of the Roman state, the mainstream party
attached to literalist orthodoxy became the ruling element not
only in the Church but also in society in general. Elaine Pagels,
in her influential work. The Gnostic Gospels, tells us:

By the time of the emperor Constantine . . . . when Christianity

became an officially approved religion in the fourth century.
Christian bishops, previously victimized by the police, now
commanded them. Possession of books denounced as heretical
was made a criminal offense. Copies of such books were
burned and destroyed. 8
It became a matter of expediency that the form of Chris tianity
now propagated for the masses should be as simple and
unsubtle as possible. These criteria were not met by Gnosticism.
The teaching and practice of the Christian Church henceforth
became reduced to the lowest common denominator. General
culture suffered also: the great Alexandrian library was burned,
the School of Philosophy was closed for want alike of students
and qualified teachers. Gnostic devotees either learned to adapt
their minds, at least ostensibly, to the narrow orthodoxies of the
Church and passed their lives in the early monasteries of Egypt
and Europe, or they hid their Gnostic theory and practice
behind the mysterious phrases and symbols of alchemy. Except
in some outlying provinces, the Gnostic transmission ceased to
function in the outer world and its mysteries were withdrawn
behind the veil.
To the east of the Roman Empire in the ancient land of Persia a
special branch of the Gnostic movement was founded by the
poet, painter, and prophet Mani. Born in Mesopotamia of
Persian parents in A.D. 215 and executed cruelly in 277, this
gentle and refined lover of the Gnosis was indoctrinated in
some variety of probably Syrian Gnosticism in his early youth,
which he adapted to the Persian spiritual milieu in the course
of his ministry. Mani and his associates were not only
visionaries and
104
The Other Tradition
writers but efficient organizers. In spite of the relative brevity
of Mani's life, the Manichaean movement grew and spread not
only in the Mediterranean region but also in India and China,

as well as in the Balkans and in Europe. Put to the sword and

burned at the stake over and over again in many lands, the
followers of the Manichaean Gnosis heroically and stubbornly
survived. In the Balkans, a saintly teacher named Bogo -mil
(friend of God) in about 960 established a form of the faith of
Mani that enjoyed widespread popularity for several centuries
and is still said to possess secret devotees in Bulgaria. By far the
largest and most influential late Manichaean movement was
that of the Cathars (pure ones) in the Languedoc, whose
learning, moral purity, and kindliness earned them the love and
respect of the local populace, but also aroused the anxiety and
ire of the papacy and the kings of France, whose joint efforts
led to the frightful extermination of the Cathar devotees and
the devastation of the lovely provinces where they resided.
On March 16, 1344, the last stronghold of the Cathar faith, the
mountain fortress of Montsegur, fell to the ravaging Northern
French armies, and the remaining leadership of the faith
perished in an inquisitorially ordered holocaust, described by
novelist Lawrence Durell as the Thermopylae of the Gnostic
soul. As in the Balkans, the sparks of the Gnosis were never
totally smothered, and the secret fire continued to smolder
beneath the ground trodden by inquisitors and enemy troops.
To this very day one may encounter in the Languedoc
unassuming country folk who will confide to a discreet visitor
the fact that they never ceased to be Cathars and that they shall
continue in their ancient pure faith until the end of their race.
The outer world has also increasingly become aware of the
mystery and romance of the martyred pure ones, and the ruined
castle of Montsegur serves today as a site of frequent
pilgrimages of reverent visitors from many parts of the world.
Pioneered by historian and novelist Zoe Oldenbourg, a
mounting body of contemporary
The Odyssey of the Gnosis
105
literature in several languages continues to explore the ways
and byways of the story and teachings of the Cathar Gnosis.*

Are there any Gnostics today? The answer is. Yes. The
contemporary representatives of the Gnostic tradition may be
divided into two groups: the undeniably direct and unbroken
descendents of ancient Gnostic schools, on the one hand, and
revival movements and partial revival movements, on the
other. A direct heir of ancient Gnosticism is the faith of the
Mandaeans, who in remote backwashes of the Middle East have
maintained their distinctive traditions since the very first
centuries of the Christian era. Virtually nothing was known of
these reclusive Gnostics until an enterprising British woman.
Lady E. S. Drower, in the early decades of the twentieth century
discovered their existence and translated many of their holy
books into English. 9 Manda means Gnosis in the ancient tongue
of this people, and the Gnosticism of their faith appears to be of
a very early variety, since it does not accept Jesus and
concentrates its attention on the figure of John the Baptist
instead. Mandaeans today constitute a respected religious
minority in Iraq, residing primarily in cities such as Baghdad
and Basra, and are increasingly the subject of interest on the
part of visiting scholars. It is by no means unlikely that the
thoroughly Gnostic, but non-Christian Mandaeans constitute a
vital, previously missing link connecting the gnosticizing late
flowering of the Essenes with the classical Gnosis.
With the gradual coming to light in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries of such original Gnostic documents as the
Akhmin, Askew, Berlin, and Bruce Codices, the sympathetic
interest of the creative edge of the culture in
*One of the more unusual contributions to this literature
comes from the British psychiatrist Arthur Guirdham, who in
his practice encountered numerous persons who seem to
possess startlingly accurate memories of previous lives as
Cathars. (See particularly his book. The Cathars and
Reincarnation (Wheaton, 111.: Quest Books. 1978).
106
The Other Tradition

Gnosticism increased. William Blake was called a Gnostic by his

friend Crabb Robinson, while a century later Madame H. P.
Blavatsky undertook a full-scale rehabilitation and rekindling
of Gnosticism. Religious scholar Robert S. Ellwood, Jr.,
commented: "Blavatsky took up again the cause of the Gnosis .
Scattered through [her work] Isis Unveiled are affirmations of
most of its principles, though their existential pessimism is
much mitigated by her making them equivalents of more
sanguinely expressed Eastern, Hermetic and Cabalistic
doctrines."" 1 The opinion of scholars regarding the character of
this, the most influential pioneering movement of the occult
revival of the nineteenth and the twentieth century, is by now
almost unanimous in its assertion to the effect that Theosophy
is indeed a new Gnostic movement. In his work on the
Theosophical movement. Prof. Bruce Campbell states that
Theosophy is "an ancient Western tradition, the Gnostic
tradition, which went underground when Christianity
triumphed.""
As might be expected, the discovery and subsequent translation
of the Nag Hammadi collection of Gnostic texts, even more than
the few original Gnostic codices discovered in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, have led to a Gnostic revival. Already
early in the twentieth century there was a known Gnostic
church in France that functioned in public. This body, the
"Eglise Gnostique Universelle," had attracted such noted French
esotericists as Papus (Dr. Gerard Encausse), Sedir (Yvon Le
Loup), as well as artists, writers (such as Fabre des Essarts, the
symbolist poet), and generally the creative edge of the
mainstream culture. Rising from mysterious but dis tinguished
sources of transmission such as the Cathars, Knights Templar,
and even older secret Gnostic bodies, the French Gnostic church
has experienced a revival and has initiated extensions in other
parts of the world. While still far from numerous. Gnostics are
present and accounted for in today's world.
The heart and soul of the Gnostic tradition is myth ological.
Beginning with its hoary origins in the deserts

The Odyssey of the Gnosis

108
of Judea and Egypt among the pious Jewish heretics called
Essenes, and continuing with the great luminaries of the Gnosis
such as Valentinus, Basilides, and Mani, the other tradition
winds its way not unlike a great underground river right into
the landscape of the contemporary world with its jet planes,
computers, and increasing spiritual rootlessness owing to the
loss of its once nourishing myths. It is time now that we
examine the principal myths of this other tradition, so that
peradventure we may find there what our official myths were
lacking. Tennyson wrote: "God fulfills himself in many ways,
lest one good custom should corrupt the world." Assuredly, the
alternative myth carried by the other tradition represents one of
the ways in which such divine fulfillment may save us from the
depredations brought upon us by the one-sidedness of the
traditions and myths of the mainstream. It is with such
expectations that we may address ourselves to the mythic
images that together present us with the consciousness of the
other reality.
PART II
e Other Reality

QmosKXo GlcfiemUal Serpent

Errant Wisdom:
The Myth of Sophia
Introduction: Gnosis, Metaphor, and Myth
Tradition is always rooted in experience. Behind ev ery
structure woven of theology, philosophy, and revealed ethics
there lies a fundamental bedrock of transcendental experience.
Moses climbs Mt. Sinai and by experiencing the reality of
Jehovah receives the tablets of the Law. The Buddha achieves
enlightenment under the sacred Bodhi tree and then goes forth
to proclaim the Dharma. Muhammad discourses with the angel
Gabriel in a cave before beginning his prophetic mission. Yet it
is undeniable that the mainstream religious traditions differ
substantially from the alternative tradition, inasmuch as the
former tend to enshrine the results of revelatory experience in
belief and commandment, and the latter strenuously resists the
metamorphosis of experience into theology and moral
preachment. The Gnostic tradition descended from the Essene
and continuing within the Christian dispensation has always
thus resisted the turning of experience into a theological -ethical
construct and opted for a different course instead.
As noted earlier (Chapter Five), the Gnostics e ngaged regularly
in what G. Quispel called "the mythologiza-tion of
Self-experience." The same author explained this procedure in
greater detail in the following manner:
In my Gnosis als Weltreligion (1951), I suggested that
Gnosticism expressed a specific religious experience which
99

109
The Other Reality

was frequently turned into myth. An example is the story

when Mani. the founder of the Manichaean religion was
twelve years old God sent an angel to him to inspire him.
When he was twenty-four the angel came to him again and
said. "The time has now come to make your public appearance
and to proclaim your own doctrine." The name of the angel
means "twin" and he is the twin-brother or "divine self of
Mani.
This Manichaean myth expresses the encounter between the 1.
the ego. and the divine self. In the system of Valentinus we
find the similar concept of the guardian angel who
accompanies a man throughout his life, who reveals the gnosis
to him and is not allowed to enter eternal bliss without him.'
At the heart of the alternative tradition of Gnosticism lies the
experience of the inward self, which, being of the same
substance as God. naturally joins human conscious ness with
divinity. The personal experience of the Gnostic-was alluded to
by Prof. Elaine Pagels in the title of the sixth chapter of her
book The Gnostic Gospels, which reads: "Gnosis: Self-Knowledge
as Knowledge of God." This experience of self-knowledge,
which simultaneously is knowledge of God. is then turned by
the Gnostics into that most creative of all symbolic expressions
of reality known as myth.
One of the greatest modern mythologists. the Hungarian
scholar C. Kerenyi. likened mythology to music. Music and
mythology have this in common: in both we find art and
material fused in the same phenomenon. The art of the
composer and his material, which is the world of sound, are
one. The making of the myth and the material of the myth, in
this case the world of images, are also most intimately related.
Myth is in fact not as much made as it is experienced, and the
experience then gives rise to a torrent of mythological images
expressing aspects of the meaning of the experience. Moreover,
a true mythic expression or mythologem is not something that
could be expressed just as well and just as authentically in a
non-mythological way. One cannot substitute for mythology a

Errant Wisdom
111
mode of expression of a different nature. Certain ex periences
can be adequately expressed only in the form of myth and in no
other way.
Seen in this way, myth acquires a new significance. It becomes
the expression in the world of relativity of spiritual principles
that are of crucial importance to all human beings, inasmuch as
they express within this same world the experience of the
Absolute. The experience of the Absolute, as found in the
knowing of the inward self by the Gnostic, is then expressed in
the realm of mind by the myth that acts at once as the veil over
Truth, and as the way whereby Truth may be unveiled. "The
apparent leads to the Real" is a Sufi saying indicating that
behind symbolism there is a reality linked with the symbol
itself, and that behind mythology also there is an experiential
essence that possesses a direct connection with the original
experience (called by Jung Urerfahrungarchaic experience) that
gave rise to the myth in the first instance.
It is more than likely that the Gnostics were the first conscious
mythologists who used myth both to express their primal
mystical experiences and to subtly lead others to similar
experiences. Already in classical times the Greek word mythos
had come to denote a legend from the time before history, a tale
involving the denizens of the ahistorical dimension, namely the
gods, goddesses, and heroes. In comparatively modern times, in
the romantic era, the same term was reintroduced as describing
a story in which supernatural persons or events of an
unspecified earlier period appear. Many contemporary
dictionaries define myth as something "entirely fictitious." But
one needs to remember that the word "fictitious" comes from
the Latin fingere, to form or to shape, thus suggesting that a
myth is an account that is not historically true, yet represents a
shaping of truths of a timeless character. Mythic events occur,
as the Latin Mass expressed it when announcing the Gospel, in
illo tempore, in an unspecified time similar perhaps to what

Australian aboriginals are wont to call "dreamtime." The

Gnostic myths must be understood as existing in such
timeless categories.
112
The Other Reality
occurring as what in Latin has been called sub specie eternitatis.
under the aspect of eternity. It is from such deep and
mysterious sources that the Gnostic mythmakers drew their
sustenance and inspiration.
That the Gnostics were indeed such psychologically informed
expert mythmakers was long suspected by those on the creative
edge of modern scholarship. Long before Jung, Quispel, and
Joseph Campbell, as long ago as in 1932. F. C. Burkitt wrote: "It
is quite evident all the time that he [Valentinus] is descr ibing
the first origin of things under the figure of myth . . . and
further, that his idea of the origin of things was psychological, akin
to the mental processes of our own mind, which indeed are the
only mental processes we know of." 2 (Italics oursS.A.H.)
What Burkitt, Jung, and others have called psychologically
informed mythmaking was recognized by Hans Jonas and
Rudolf Bultmann as "existential objectification." which simply
means that the Gnostic myths represent the objectifica tion of
the human being's understanding of its existence. 1 Whether
originating in the psyche's striving for individua tion or brought
to the fore by the need of humans to understand the fateful
alienation and portentous choices of their existence, the
immense value of the Gnostic myths is attested to by both
parties.
Experience turned into myth and myth turned inward as
psychological self-knowledge: such is the grand movement of
Gnosis on the plane of psychic reality. Yet, there is still a third
component, which allows the myth to descend from the purely
psychological to the material level of manifestation where it
may impress not only the intuitive, thinking, and feeling
functions but also the function of sensation. This third element

is valid ritual, possessing true meaning, which becomes the

dramatization or "playing out" of the myth in plain view of the
senses. The considerable concern of the Gnostics with
sacramental ritual attests to the important role played by the
ritualization of myth in the above-noted movement of Gnosis. It
is also here in the nature of this movement of Gnosis that we
may graphically apprehend the great
Errant Wisdom
113
difference separating such mainstream traditions as Judaism,
non-Gnostic Christianity, and Islam, on the one hand, from the
alternative tradition of Gnosticism, on the other.
The tendency of the mainstream traditions is to turn the initial
experience into dogma and commandment through the
intermediary agency of historically interpreted holy scriptures,
which usually appear as stories with a moral. The tendency of
the alternative tradition is to move from initial experience to an
expression of the experience in myth, and from there to the
ritual playing out of the myth into fully perceptible physical
manifestation, from whence proceeds the withdrawal of the
images into the Self, thus opening the way to original and
primal experience once more.
An interesting validation of the transcendental rooted-ness of
Gnostic myths comes to us from the aforementioned noted
mythologist C. Kerenyi. In his work Essays on a Science of
Mythology (written in collaboration with C. G. Jung), he
indicates that the Gnostics were mystics who specialized in the
mythologization of mystical experience. Following the lead of
the late scholar Leo Frobenius (1873-1938), Kerenyi assumes the
existence of certain major mythic structural coordinates, which
he calls "monads." These mythic monads are the principal
EXPERIENCE
EXPERIENCE

114
The Other Reality
differentiated forms into which the primal experience of mythic
reality divides itself. The noted German philosopher Oswald
Spengler recognized eight such cultural monads, with another
in formation (some of these being the Egyptian, the
Greco-Roman, the Vedic-Aryan, and the Maya-Aztec-Incan). All
of these mythic monads are based on primary mythologems
that are premonadic, which category includes the mythologems
of the Gnostics, says Kerenyi:
The mythologems that come closest to these naked encounters
with the Godhead we regard as the primary mythologems. . . .
These in their pure state, e.g. the pure idea of the mandala, its
"archetype," so to speak, are premonadic. What exists
historically has the character not only of a monad, i.e.
belonging locally and temporarily to a definite culture, but
also of a work. i.e. speaking in the manner typical of a certain
people. On the other hand, every people displays its true form
most purely when it stands face to face with the Absolute. . . .
That is why Plotinus can tell us about pure mystical
experience, and why his contemporaries, the Gnostics, can tell us

about what comes closest to mythology in mysticism4 (Emphasis

oursS.A.H.)
This mystical mythology found among the Gnostics is thus a
rather unique phenomenon. Rooted as it is in highly charged
personal experience of deeper states of consciousness, it
possesses qualities seldom found in traditional folklore and
culturally conditioned mythologems. Unlike the latter, it is
capable of conveying a considerable measure of its original
quality, to which Jung and others have applied the term
"numinous," carrying the power of a numen. or deity. Gnostic
myths belong in a special category, and as such they possess a
force capable of making an impact of unusual quality on the
psyches of individuals. That most efficient popu-larizer of
mythology, Joseph Campbell, has pointed out (largely by way
of utilizing a preexisting analysis by Immanuel Kant) that the a
priori realm of transcendence
Errant Wisdom
115
can relate itself to the temporal field of phenomenal
appearances only by analogy, and that the instrument whereby
this kind of analogy is expressed is the metaphor.1' This agency,
which Campbell defined as "a psychologically affective image
transparent to transcendence," must also be regarded as the
true cornerstone of Gnostic myth. Gnosis, myth, and metaphor
thus constitute the trinity of conscious instrumentalities
whereby the realities glimpsed by the Gnostic seers were made
available to mortals still aspiring to such seership. Let us now
allow some of the myths and metaphors of the Gnostics to
speak to us in their own fashion, albeit modified and amplified
by our contemporary perception and language. We shall thus
address ourselves to the first of these important mythologems
in the form of the story of the divine wisdom-woman Sophia.
The Myth of Sophia

High in the ineffable and transcendental world of light there

existed a primal pair named Depth and Silence. Together they
brought forth a perfect realm of balance and creative power,
consisting of thirty archetypal forms of consciousness called
Aeons. The youngest and most adventurous of these, called
Sophia (Wisdom), fell in love with her own royal progenitor,
the great invisible king of the all, called Depth, and wished to
fathom his perennially inscrutable nature. Confused by her
love, she cast her glance in various directions from her aeonial
seat in the fullness until in the distance she espied a
magnificent light, shimmering with sublime grace. In her
bewilderment brought about by love, she could no longer
distinguish between the above and below and thus came to
assume that the seductive light, which was in reality below her,
was none other than the royal effulgence of the great king, her
father, who resided at the highest point of the heavens. Thus
she descended into the abysmal void, where in a boundless and
fathomless sea of glass the reflection of the heavenly light
beckoned to her. Her celestial consort, Christ, was unable to
restrain her. and
116
The Other Reality
thus after a final, painful embrace she plunged into the murky
deep, only to discover how the reflected light had deceived her.
Saddened and frightened, she found herself enclosed by
emptiness, devoid of the quality and power of Gnosis to which
she was accustomed in the fullness. Desirous of hav ing a
kindred figure next to her, she brought forth in a virginal
fashion a being whose name was Jesus. Although conceived
mysteriously by her desire for her original Gnosis, Jesus was
nevertheless joined to a shadow of darkness, which attached
itself to him because of the malefic influences of the dark void
wherein he was born. Jesus soon freed himself from his trouble some, shadowy attachment and ascended into the fullness,
leaving Sophia in a state of despondency.

Left outside the supernal spiritual universe, alone and

comfortless, Sophia experienced every sort of psychic storm
imaginable. Passion, sorrow, fear, despair, and ignorance
exuded from her being like mighty clouds and condensed into
the four elements of earth, water, fire, and air. as well as i nto a
number of beings, which later were to be known under such
names as the Demiurge and the rulers (archontes)fierce and
troublesome spirits, one and all. The mightiest of these, a
lion-faced being filled with pride and the will for power,
marshaled his host of world-fashioning spirits, and out of the
raw material of earth, water, fire, and air they built a world of
impressive external appearance, yet replete with great flaws,
having been created in the image of its creators. Sorrow, fear,
ignorance, and other painful and destructive passions were
built into the fabric of this imperfect world, inasmuch as the
raw material used by the fashioners originated in feelings like
those experienced by Sophia. Looking down at the flawed and
troubled world pride-fully fashioned by her own ignorant
offspring. Sophia was filled with pity for creation and resolved
to assist in such ways as would be available to her. She thus
became the spirit of the world, anxiously observing it like a
mother is wont to do when watching over a feeble and misshapen child.
Errant Wisdom
117
Meanwhile in the lofty height, Jesus was anxiously observing
the sorrowful fate of his mother, Sophia. He joined himself to
Sophia's twin aeon, Christ, and thus became Jesus-Christ, the
Messiah and messenger of God. Around him rallied all the
sublime and compassionate powers of the fullness, each
contributing to him gifts and glories of their respective
treasures. Thus in Jesus-Christ the fullness and its powers came
to be gathered together, readying him for the great act of
redemption, the liberation of Sophia from her lamentable
condition in the void. Ceaselessly, Sophia's supplications
ascended like clouds of bittersweet incense, penetrating the

recesses of the fullness, arousing the compassion of all the

splendid aeonial beings who perpetually contemplate their
glory in their kingdom of perfection. Through the centuries and
millennia of earthly history, Sophia prayed and sorrowed over
her fate and the fate of the flawed world and the sparks of light
enmeshed in the nets of the rulers, who like monstrous spiders
continued to manifest webs of matter, emotion, and thought for
the entrapment of humansin essence not their creation but
rather the sparks of Sophia's own higher nature infused into
bodies of clay.
Finally, the powers of the fullness were assembled and, having
entered Jesus-Christ, descended to earth to free Sophia and
thereby also to bring redemption to her spiritual children, the
members of the human race. After undergoing vicissitudes
visited upon him by the rulers and their deceived human
minions, Jesus-Christ rose triumphantly from earth, holding
Sophia by the hand. Joyously they ascended to the various
heavenly mansions, knocking at the portals of the spiritual
guardians and gaining passage to ever-higher and subtler
regions of existence. At each of the gates Sophia uttered great
songs of praise and gratitude to the light that had saved her
from the chaos of the nether regions.
When the World-Spirit Sophia came to the borders that
separated the nether worlds from the fullness, she looked down
once again unto the flawed and troubled world.
118
The Other Reality
suspended in the void and chaos, and compassion filled her
broken but now mended heart. No. she could not leave utterly
behind this strange creation, to its less than adequate resources.
Neither could she abandon her true children, the women and
men who were more intimately related to her than any other
beings outside of the fullness. Thus, she worked her magic and
divided her nature in half: one to ascend into the aeons of
fullness, there to dwell with Christ and Jesus, the other to

remain in proximity to creation and continue to assist it with

compassionate wisdom. Her second self, created by compassion, thus became known as Achamoth, the errant or lower
one who is still in contact with humanity and the regions of this
world.
It was thus that it came to pass that the universe con stellated
itself in three regions. The first of these is the sublunar or
material world, ruled by a prince whom the ancients called Pan
and whom others inaccurately call the devil. This prince rules
over the earth, the plants, and

Sophia actingutsfurig ike dcCtauf

Errant Wisdom
119
living creatures and like a patient shepherd sees to it t hat all of
these manifestations of Sophia's life may one day reach the
higher worlds, no matter how far they stray. Not privy to the
realities and designs of the mighty aeons of light, the prince of
this world merely turns the great wheel of birth, death, and
rebirth, hoping that if he and his flock are but able to remain
within the motions of biological life, their hour of liberation
will not find them past redemption.

Higher in immaterial space is the world of soul or mind, which

is ruled by the chief archon, also called the Demiurge and
having numerous names, including Yaldabaoth (childish God)
and Saclas (blind one). It is from the realm of this arrogant and
power-hungry godling that many of the concepts and precepts
originate that enthrall the minds and wills of humans. The
blind god has a great liking for what he is pleased to call law.
Rules, commandments, and regulations of all sorts are
fashioned by him in order to diminish freedom, which is the
birthright of the spirit. Philosophies and ideologies of diverse
sorts are also placed into human minds by the Demiurge, along
with greed, power, and other obsessions that becloud and
vitiate the spiritual purity of men and women.
Thirdly, in the world above planets, immediately below the
portals of the mighty fullness itself, is a region where
Sophia-Achamoth. the celestial mother and wise helper of
humankind, is enthroned. With her live countless hosts of
angels of light and holy and righteous souls that once occupied
human bodies. This is the world of spirit, where the twin angels
of human personalities also reside and the celestial bride
chamber is erected wherein the lesser selves of humans may
meet and be wedded to their spiritual counterparts, the twin
angels. When humans commune with whom they envision as
the Goddess in her manifold aspects, it is none other than
Sophia-Achamoth. their wise guardian, whom they envision.
Unaware of these subtle mysteries, many well-intentioned
followers of the Christian revelation have come to see this form
of Sophia as Mary, Queen of Heaven. It is in this
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The Other Reality
manner then that our Lady Wisdom, though redeemed and
having assisted Jesus-Christ in the work of redemption, is not
far from her children even to this day.
The three cosmic regions just spoken of have their
corresponding portions within the nature of the children of

men. Within every human there is the material part (hyle).

derived from the kingdom of Pan and carrying the instincts and
urges of material life with its inten-tionality of survival and
physical continuity by way of offspring. There is also a portion
embodying mind and emotion, referred to often as soul (psyche).
This portion is derived from the realm of the Demiurge, and
thus it contains more than one dangerous feature. While it is
the seat of ethical awareness and calculating reason, it is also
susceptible to the influences and blandishments of the rulers
with their obsessive commandments, fanatical ideologies, pride,
and arrogance of soul. Third is the human spirit (pneuma).
which belongs to the fullness, although it is the gift of Sophia.
In most humans this spiritual spark smolders and dreams,
unconsciously awaiting the breath of the emissaries of the
fullness to be fanned into effective action. This spirit is of
Sophia, and through and beyond her, it is of the identical
essence as the supreme King and Queen, Depth and Silence
themselves.
In this embodied existence we find some humans who may be
called hyletics, who are ruled by instinct, urges, and sensations
and live largely in the realm of Pan. Others have been named
psychics, and they usually worship the Demiurge as God,
having no awareness of the spiritual world above. Their pride
and joy are law and doctrine, and they imagine themselves as
superior to other humans by virtue of their laws. So the
spiritual history of humanity is largely a progression from
primitive instinctuality and nature-worshipping pantheism
(where Pan is theos. i.e., God) to dogmatic religion and ethics,
and from these to the true spiritual freedom of Gnosis. In order
to reach the kingdom of light and become a pneumatic, the
human being must have first renounced his servitude to
physicality.
Errant Wisdom
121
and then, often with great difficulty, also renounce the
thralldom of the Demiurge and his minions in the form of

ideological servitude. Ideas enslave just as much as passions,

and both are obstacles to the rule of the spirit. Thus comes
about the great renunciation (apolytrosis) wherein humans
break the shackles affixed to their bodies and minds by the
rulers. Following this there is but one great step to be taken: the
bride chamber, or the transformative union of the lesser human
with the overshadowing presence of the twin angel.
From the heights of the material world and the peak
experiences of the mind, men and women lift up their eyes and
behold the everlasting hills of Sophia-Achamoth's kingdom of
spiritual light. The twin angel reaches down his shining arm to
earth and bears the human soul aloft into the bride chamber
where the spiritual union is sealed in a heavenly marriage. One
by one, Sophia draws her spiritual children unto herself,
bidding them to join the army of the elect. Such is the gift of
Sophia, drawn from the endless treasury of the light and made
available to humans by way of her compassion and wisdom.
She who remained faithful to the true light entreats her children
to do likewise. Faithfulness to the spirit dwelling in the deepest
and highest recesses of their nature will thus lead them to the
renunciation of illusion and the embracing of the real.
Interpretation of the Myth
The above recension of the myth of Sophia is based primarily
on the version of Valentinus, as embodied in Pistis Sophia, the
principal scripture referring to Sophia, but it has also been
streamlined and amplified to serve the needs of contemporary
persons. As such, it might be called the product of a
"latitudinarian" approach to Gnosticism by some who fancy
themselves purists, but it must be kept in mind that it is
precisely such an approach that is intended here. Descriptive
and exegetical scholarship may profit from a purist approach,
but such a mode would by no means be appropriate to the
purposes
122
The Other Reality

the present writer intends to realize.

Let us then, in outline form, address ourselves to some
indicative interpretation of the myth of Sophia. Sophia is the
World Spirit, or the collective archetype of the entirety of
cosmic and individual life, growth, and development. As such,
she is most closely associated with the nature and fate of
humanity: the initial differentiation and subsequent
individuation of the soul and its union with spirit. At first she
dwells in a plenum of undifferentiated psychic energy, a
heaven world where all things exist in full potentiality. The
fullness (Pleroma) is like the uncarved block of Taoist Chinese
metaphorical thought: a fullness of being from whence
individuality and manifest existence emerge by way of
subtraction and not by way of a creatio ex nihilo (creation out of
nothing). Emanation rather than creation is the law of
manifestation, certainly in the realm of the psyche and in all
likelihood in the sphere of cosmic manifestation also.* The
unitary primal nature of the psyche differentiates and descends
into ever-deeper conditions of alienation from its original
source of light and power. At the psychological level, this
alienating differentiation is at the heart of the dark mystery of
the fall of Sophia.
Sophia's love for her father, the king of the heavenly fullness,
and her effort to get close to his light have been frequently
interpreted as a metaphor for the hubris, whereby the human
mind, or any kind of limited embodiment of consciousness,
presumes to want to comprehend the ever-incomprehensible
and ineffable transcendence of being. In our desire for
comprehension, we no longer know whether we are looking
upward toward transcendence or downward into lesser realms
of mind where transcendence is reflected. Again and again in
our lives we mistake the reflected light for the true light.
Especially
*For an authoritative neo-Gnostic creation myth, embodying the
methodology of emanation and closely affinitized to Hindu and

Mahayana Buddhist metaphysical theory, see the noted magnum

opus of H. P. Blavatsky. The Secret Doctrine.
Errant Wisdom
124
true is this, perhaps, of the essentially arrogant efforts of many
growth psychologies and so-called New Age movements, which
in an overly glib and facile manner treat the greater mysteries
of being as if they were readily susceptible to the manip ulations
of personal consciousness. A good, though relatively mundane
example is to be found in the field of the use of dreams. On the
one hand. Jung and other responsible depth psychologists
regard the dream as a primarily revelatory expression of the
unconscious to be treated with great care and reverence. On the
other hand, we find efforts of less reverent persons to exploit
and manipulate the dreams of people for the accomplishment of
strictly personalistic aims. Whenever a psychospiritual
phenomenon of a potentially transcendental value is
subordinated to personal goals, one may say that, like Sophia,
we mistake the reflected light for the supernal radiance and
thus put ourselves in jeopardy.
In the course of the differentiation of the psyche, all of us find
ourselves eventually in an empty space without Gnosis. Here,
our terror, anguish, and other feelings create unsavory
emanations, which proceed from our own psyche and in turn
evolve into tyrants and tormenting demiurges of our authentic
being. Once the human ego falls into a space greatly removed
from psychic wholeness, aspects of the ego (or in the view of
some, the ego itself) become demiurges. Ean Begg, in his
meditation on Gnostic myths, writes:
The rulers, the planetary gods . . . who assist the demiurge in the
creation of horizontal man keep him unaware of his true origin.
They are the archetypal core of the complexes or subpersonalities
that live our lives for us while we remain unconscious of them....
The ego-consciousness which emerges is that of the demiurge, and
his limited perceptions are accounted the sole reality. Man is a

prisoner of space and time. His rulers are real, not only as the
divisions of the week but as the complexes. The sun, the
ego-complex, the chief ruler, rules the day and. with its light and
heat blots out the hidden influence of the other
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The Other Reality
archons. The moon is the great pendulum which keeps everything
as it is, ticking over regularly, inexorably fixated within its own
cycle.6
Not only the sun and the moon, but also the other planets were
regarded by the Gnostics as symbols for the manifold
limitations imposed on the freedom of the human spirit by the
rulers. The often shallow, although clever intellectualism of
Mercury, the gripping and imaginative desire of Venus, the
fierce combativeness of Mars, the lordly heedlessness of Jupiter,
and certainly the restrictiveness and pusillanimity of Saturn
(often equated with the Demiurge) are all superbly suited to
symbolize the tendencies and proclivities of the personal self of
the human being, ever interposing itself between earthly life
and the true light of meaning. Living on the earth below the
moon, we appear to be subject to the archonic limitations of the
planets, even as Sophia was thus entrapped and limited by the
rulers.
The mystery of salvation, meaning liberation from the
existential condition of unconsciousness and limitation, is
intimately connected with our heavenly origins. On the one
hand, our redeemer is Christ, a heavenly archetype, h aving its
true home in the fullness. On the other hand. Jesus, the more
human component of the salvific principle, is made by
ourselves in the vale of tears, which was also called by the poet
John Donne "a vale of soul making." We cannot depend entirely
on an external and transcendental Savior, as Christendom has
been wont to do for all too long, for by so doing our own
inherent powers of spiritual freedom atrophy. Still, the
self-created salvation ensuing from our own travails avails us

heartily little also, unless transcendentally archetypal assistance

is adduced to it. So Sophia brings forth Jesus in her exile but is
redeemed by Jesus conjoined with the heavenly aeon Christ.
Gloriously ascending from her limited state, Sophia yet
remembers humanity, her younger and less capable relations,
and decides to remain in a position to be of assistance to them.
(An eminently valid analogy may
Errant Wisdom
126
be found in the Bodhisattva ideal of Mahayana Bud dhism,
where the redeemed becomes a redeemer. In fact, the celestial
Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, whose name literally means "one
who looks down from on high," whose most popular form is the
feminine Bodhisattva Kwan Yin and who is accessible to all
earthlings in need of compassionate redemption, bears such a
resemblance to Sophia that one readily suspects a more than
casual connection. It may also be recalled that Gautama the
Buddha, according to Mahayana teaching, has also left behind
an aspect of himself to continue to assist living beings toward
liberation. It is this aspect that, according to certain legends,
manifests once a year on the Buddhist holiday of Wesak (to
those capable of observing it).
Thus Sophia, the redeemed redeemer, continues as a guarding
and enlightening entity in association with earth. In a personal
psychological sense, it may be said that a major step taken in
individuation always necessitates an effort at liberating the still
unintegrated part selves as well as a compassionate and
charitable course of living in relationship to our fellow humans.
The Sophia myth also has human implications of a more direct
and intimate character. Even as Simon is said to have regarded
his consort Helen as the manifestation of the World Soul, so
there is some evidence indicating that Mary Magdalene, whom
the Gnostic scriptures identify as the true "beloved disciple,"
may have been regarded as an earthly manifestation of Sophia,
and that her relationship with Jesus may indeed have been the

ritual acting out on earth of the liberating union between the

celestial Messiah and Sophia.
Thus, we come to the end of our considerations re garding the
myth of Sophia. It goes almost without saying that the minimal
exegesis here offered can in no way do justice to this complex
and inspiring myth. The psychological emphases in these
commentaries, inadequate in themselves, touch but upon one
facet of the magnificent cut gem that is the story and the
mystery of Sophia. (Similar statements may be made with much
justification
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The Other Reality
regarding the other Gnostic myths to be recounted in the
chapters following the present one.) Still, one more thought
intrudes in conclusion: Why. one might ask, is it at all useful or
even necessary for Sophia, the World Soul, the psyche, and the
ego to leap out after the deceptive light and undergo such trials
and sorrows as well as joys and triumphs? It is once again none
other than C. G. Jung who offered us one of the best replies
when he wrote: "Were it not for the leaping and twinkling of the
soul, man would rot away in his greatest passion, idleness."1 (Italics
oursS.A.H.) Action and risk are essential to the Gnostic
enterprise. Those who must know run great risks, including the
one of plunging into the abyss of loneliness and alienation. The
Gnostic risk opens up the individual psyche to many
adventures and may lead to opportunities for the exercise of the
kind of compassion that only wisdom is capable of manifesting.
Despite the ever-recurring naive notions of many to right all the
wrongs of existence by way of extraverted collective solutions
alone (an effort worthy of demiurgic arrogance!), the crucible
wherein compassion weds wisdom is erected in individuals one
by one. Collective solutions are in reality no solutions at all. for
the true vehicle of life, the offspring of Our Lady Wisdom, is
the individual. Those favored by the grace of Sophia may
devote their lives to offering active service in the public arena,
or, again, they may simply bring the compassionate light of

Sophia to bear upon the private human tasks of their daily

lives. In all instances, however, they might consider the
concluding words written by Miguel de Unamuno in his Tragic
Sense of Life: "And may God deny you peace but give you glory."
7
The Dancing Savior:
The Myth of the Gnostic Christ
Introduction: The Alternative Image of the Savior
The sparks of light that are the spirits of men and women
entrapped by the ruling powers of this lower world (so said the
Gnostics) are nevertheless not abandoned by the divine Source
from whence they originate. The supreme Light never lost
interest in the scattered fragments of its own essence. It sent a
redeemer or intermediary to assist in their liberation. The large
majority of Gnostics were associated with the then brand -new
Christian movement and looked upon Jesus as the carrier of
this redeeming light. The secret tradition of Israel, manifest in
the Essene movement, was well on its way toward transforming
the political Messiah of official Judaism into a cosmic and
personal savior who would redeem the spirits of the sons of
light from the oppression of the world of darkness and its dark
rulers. This development culminated in the image of Jesus. As
we noted earlier (Chapter Three), there are an almost
bewildering number of characterizations of Jesus today, most of
which contradict each other radically. These are but the most
recent portrayals; the much earlier ones, especially those that
appear to us in sacred art, are also more than a little confusing
and contradictory.
All of the Jesuses demanding our attention are based on what
until recently constituted the only evidence concerning this
mysterious figure, namely, the New
128

129
The Other Reality
Testament. And the New Testament evidence itself is confusing
and contradictory. Some of the canonical Gospels portray Jesus
as quite human, even sensuous: "the son of man came eating
and drinking, and they say, 'behold a glutton and a drunkard, a
friend of tax collectors and sinners' " (Matt. 11:19). His
association with women is represented as causing a scandal:
"And they marveled that he was talking with a woman" (John
4:27); "There were also women looking on from afar . . . and
also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem"
(Mark 15:40). At the same time, Paul describes him more a s a
transcendental, even Gnostic spiritual being when he states that
Jesus is "far above all rule and authority and power of
dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this
aeon but in that which is to come" (Eph. 1:21). If one prefers to
envision Jesus as a gentle and peaceful individual, one may
refer to the way he describes himself in Matthew 11:29: "for I
am meek and humble at heart, and you will find rest for your
soul." If, on the contrary, one wishes to conjure up a picture of
him that shows anger and rough manners, one can point to his
treatment of the merchants in the temple and his un qualified
condemnation of the Pharisees as hypocrites, whited
sepulchers, and blind guides, misleading people. Needless to
say, these diverse images of Jesus make the often extolled
"imitation of Christ" more than a little difficult. For instance,
are we to imitate him when he advises us to "turn the other
cheek" when struck; or are we to emulate him when he says, "I
came not to bring peace but a sword"?
In addition to the Jesuses based on the evidence of the New
Testament, there has always been another Jesus, although much
of the evidence concerning him has emerged into full view only
recently. In order to present and understand this Jesus, we have
to reconstruct the myth that is told by the scriptures of the
Gnostics, many of which are contemporaneous or very nearly

contemporaneous with the New Testament. What did the

Gnostics say about Jesus? They disagreed with the exoteric
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130
Christians about the precise nature of his physical embodiment
as well as about his death and resurrection. They did not accept
the simplistic notion that the redemption of humanity was
accomplished by the physical death of Jesus on the cross, and
that a good Christian merely has to believe in this event in
order to be redeemed. The reason for most of these
disagreements was that Gnostics never held that humans were
primarily in need of redemption from sin. The task of the
messianic messenger was to help human beings discover who
they truly are, and to assist them in overcoming the inimical
cosmic powers and rejoin the fullness of the true light.
"Salvation" thus became synonymous with "liberation," and the
way to this state was envisioned not as consisting of faith but of
interior liberating experience facilitated by the teachings of the
Liberator and by the sacramental mysteries he entrusted to his
followers.
The Jesus of the Gnostics is a person substantially, and not only
superficially, different from the Jesus of most of the canonical
Gospels. His humanity is far less significant than his
transcendental or archetypal nature. Thus, it might appear fair
to say that the Gnostics were less interested in what Jesus did
and were more concerned with who or what he was. Most of
their scriptures, such as The Gospel of Thomas, contain sayings of
Jesus without any connective narrative. We do not have a
Gnostic gospel that reads like the four canonical ones, where
we may gather details of the events in the life o f Jesus in
connected, narrative form. Still, it is quite certain that the
Gnostics had their own version of what did take place in
connection with Jesus. Indications of this version can be found
in many sources: The Acts of John, a scripture that has been
available and was widely read for centuries, written in all
likelihood by Lucius Charinus from whom some Gnostics

derived their esoteric transmission. Portions of The Gospel of the

Egyptians, one of the scriptures in the Nag Hammadi collection,
are also most useful in this respect. Another work of
distinguished history is the collection called The Odes of
Solomon.
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The Other Reality
portions of which appear in the early discovery Pistis Sophia, a
complete collection of which was published in the nineteenth
century and dates back probably to the end of the first century
or the beginning of the second century. In addition to these,
several of the scriptures from Nag Hammadi contain valuable
material that allows us to reconstruct a mythic narrative o f
some consistency.
One element of crucial importance to the myth of Christ is of
course the issue of why humans need a savior in the first place.
Can't Gnosis come to individuals without the intermediary
agency of a messenger, a redeemer from the greater world of
fullness and light? Aren't good works, sincere desires for
greater consciousness, and meditative practices sufficient for
liberation, salvation, enlightenment, or whatever names may be
devised for the needed salvific event? Historically, no doub t the
concept of a soter (healer, maker of wholeness, freely translated
as "savior") developed from the time-honored Jewish idea of the
Messiah. Spiritually, it developed from universal, archetypal
roots of a much wider scope and greater depth. One set of
important questions answered by Gnosticism (and raised
explicitly in these words by Valentinus) is the following: "What
we were and what we became; where we were and whither we
have been cast; whither we hasten, whence we are delivered;
what is birth and what rebirth?" The answers may be
summarized as follows: Humans are originally pure spirits, but
they have become shackled in a cosmic system; once they dwelt
in the regions of the fullness with the Divine, but they were
made to descend into a realm of imperfection. The spiritual
nature within humans desires to hasten back to its unity with

Divinity, thus to be delivered from the existential limitations of

life within the cosmic system. Birth means to be born here to
this cosmos, which is at least in part in the grip of unfriendly
forces. Rebirth is to be born anew as a free being into a divine
world of consciousness and light. This rebirth does not come
about unaided. Divinity is actively engaged in facilitating
humanity's rebirth into its own and true
The Dancing Savior
132
estate. Salvation requires a savior, not only in Judaism and
Christianity, but in most of the great spiritual traditions.
Already in the Upanishads we find the statement that salvation
is effected by "the Lord" (Isvara).' An elaboration of this
concept is the teaching regarding the avataras, or descents of
God, particularly of the second person of the Hindu trinity,
Vishnu. Vishnu is known to have at least ten such descents,
among whom the most important are Rama and Krishna. In
both Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism, a plurality of
Buddhas is envisioned (usually seven for the entire
evolutionary history of the earth), all of whom are descents of
transcendental spiritual beings (Dhyani Buddhas and Dhyani
Bodhisattvas) in addition to their earthly personalities. All of
these Buddhas, however, are also recognized as aspects of the
One Buddha Light in its redemptive aspect. Even the gods who
administer existence in the manifest realm are in need of and
rejoice over the descent of a Buddha. In one of the sutras it is
just one such god who addresses Buddha in this manner:
"Marvelous it is, O Lord, how after such a long time you have
today manifested yourself in the world. During fully eight
thousand ages had this world of the living been without a
Buddha. ,:i The attitude of the Gnostic tradition is clearly stated
by the Persian prophet Mani, as quoted by the Arab scholar
Al-Biruni:
Wisdom and good deeds have always from time to time been
brought to mankind by the messengers of God. So in one age they
have been brought by the messenger called Buddha to India, in

another by Zarathustra to Iran, yet in another by Jesus to the West.

Thereupon this revelation has come down, this prophecy in this
latter age through me. Mani, the apostle of God of truth in
Babylonia.
The foregoing should suffice to convince us that in the idea of
salvation and of the Savior we are faced with a truly archetypal
idea, universal and not conditioned by time or culture. We may
thus safely address ourselves now to the retelling of the myth
of the Savior, in our case
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The Other Reality
Jesus, of whom Mani said in the above passage that he "brought
wisdom and good deeds as a messenger of God to the West."
The Myth of the Savior
When the time for the earthly descent of the one who was to
heal the broken heart of the lower world was come, all the great
Powers of the kingdom of the fullness gathered together. The
Father of all and the Holy Spirit mingled their spiritual
substance and brought forth a fiery seed of life. The Powers
arranged themselves in a vast circle and imposing their hands,
infused the seed of the Father and of the Holy Spirit with their
strength. Then the fiery seed descended through the circle of
the stars and the region of the planets into the wo mb of a
chosen human virgin whose name was Mary and who was
destined to become the mother of the Savior after the flesh.
Although a virgin, she became a mother without any pain, for
the helpers of the fullness stood by and gave her assistance.
The boy grew up in a household where simplicity and purity
reigned; he was guarded by his mother Mary and taught skills
by her husband Joseph. Yet many were the times when it
became apparent that he was a person of unusual powers and
character, and his mother and earthly father regarded him with
awe. Thus, one day Jesus was working in the vineyard with

Joseph; at the same time a person demanded entrance to the

house who looked like Jesus in appearance and asked: "Where
is Jesus, my brother?" Mary, recognizing that she had met a
spirit rather than a human being, constrained the spirit in the
house while she summoned Joseph and Jesus. When Jesus
entered the house he loosed the spirit from confinement and
they embraced and became one. It became known that this
spirit was the twin angel of Jesus who descended from the
heaven world and joined his earthly counterpart in an act of
abiding union. This union came to be called later the mystery of
the bride chamber and was experienced only by the wisest and
greatest of humans who had become perfect in the skills of their
spirits. But
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134
Jesus was a united and whole being already as a young boy,
thus being prepared to bring wholeness to all children of men.
When reaching young adulthood, his mother and brothers
brought news of a man named John who was baptizing people
in the wilderness for the remission of sins. Although Jesus
stated that he had no sin from which he should be freed, he
went to be baptized by John, and while he was immersed in the
waters a light shone brilliantly on the waters, so that all were
afraid. A dove fluttered above the head of Jesus and sang, and
it became plain to many that a power had descended on him
that was not of this world. The power was the Christ, a high
presence from the fullness, destined to guide him to the
fulfillment of his earthly mission. When the people gathered to
look at him they could but barely recognize him as the man
they knew, and he said to them: "I seem to you like a stranger
because I am from another race."
He became a guide to those who would follow him; he was
tranquil and unhurried. He put to shame those who were filled
with the importance of their own learning and the Law; he
called them empty people and they hated him. And he said to

his disciples words like these: "I came into the midst of the
world and in the flesh I appeared to them but I found them all
drunk, and I found none of them thirsty for my living waters.
And I sorrow for the children of men because they are blind
and are not able to see with their hearts." And he also told them
that he came to make the things below like the things above, the
external as the internal, and the male and the female he came to
make into a single one. All these things they heard him say, but
they understood little. Many of his disciples were called by him
in an unusual way. Thus when he was at the Sea of Galilee, he
chose first Peter and Andrew and then motioned to John and
James, who were fishing in a boat offshore, by calling out to
them: "I have need of you, come follow me." James, however,
saw a child on the seashore and inquired from his brother what
the child could possibly want with him. John, on
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The Other Reality
the other hand, saw a grown man on the shore, while others
saw a light only and yet others saw nothing. They went to the
shore in great perplexity, wondering who or what it was that
they had seen so differently.
Jesus also exhibited little respect for the priesthood of the
Temple and for the Law. Once he took his disciples to the
innermost part of the Temple where they were accosted by a
prominent priest named Levi, who arrogantly declared that
Jesus and his disciples were unclean and unworthy to observe
the sacred vessels and places. Jesus called him a blind man who
mistakes the external symbols of cleanliness for true purity and
wisdom. He also exhorted his disciples not to follow blind men,
such as Levi and the other members of the establishment. And
when his disciples asked him if circumcision was necessary or
not. he answered: "If it were necessary then every father would
beget an already circumcised boy from his mother." When
asked about the need to observe a special diet, he merely
answered that it was more important not to lie and not to do
what one hated, for those things that remained hidden in one's

soul would become apparent eventually. It became increasingly

clear to everyone that Jesus had come to declare the old Law
abrogated and to proclaim a new Law, the core of which was
love. And he said: "Love your brother as your soul and keep
him ever as the apple of your eye." When explaining the
relationship of the spirit to the body he said: "I marvel at how
such a treasure came to find its habitation in such poverty."
In Bethany, Jesus was brought by a woman to a tomb where her
brother was buried. The brother then called to Jesus out of the
tomb, and Jesus raised him up, taking him by the hand. Jesus
then arranged to meet with the youth in the dead of night and
taught him great truths and conferred mysteries on him. And
he became known as a miracle worker and initiator who could
lead humans from death in this world into the life of the spirit.
All this while the priests and Pharisees were inspired by the
rulers of this world to arrest and murder Jesus, because if they
left him to his own devices, the people would follow him and
the darkness of this aeon would
The Dancing Savior
136
be defeated. Jesus knew that if they were to proceed with their
plan to kill him, the leaders of the establishment would so
discredit themselves that their rule over the people would be
greatly shortened. And thus, Jesus met with his disciple Judas
Iscariot, who said to him secretly: "Is it not true. Lord, that this
world is dominated by the Evil One and that you must dissolve
the things below and the things above?" And Jesus answered
him: "So it is, Judas. But how can one enter a strong man's
house and deprive him of his treasures unless one can bind the
strong man first? Only then can one enter and take his treasure.
Remember, that when I am lifted up from this world, the Prince
of this World will be cast in chains in that very hour." And it
was thus that Judas came to understand that it was necessary
that Jesus be handed over to his enemies and he proceeded to
act as the instrumentality of Jesus' betrayal, while he had a

secret understanding concerning the need for this course of

action. And the leaders of the people, whose law was false and
inspired by lawless spirits, believed Judas and made
preparations for the arrest of the Savior, thereby sealing th eir
own doom and the doom of their Temple and their Law.
Before he was to be arrested by his enemies, Jesus gathered all
his disciples together and bid them to partake of a sacred meal,
at which he blessed the bread and the cup of wine and
reminded them that they ought to do this in remembrance of
him and in order to invoke his presence when he would no
longer be with them in the flesh. Then he said to the disciples:
"Before I am delivered up let us sing a hymn to the Father and
then we shall go forth to whatever awaits us." Then he stood in
the middle of the room, asked the disciples to form a circle
around him, holding each other's hands, and after the recitation
of each verse to answer with the word "Amen." And so he
began to sing a song, while the disciples danced around him in
a circle, responding repeatedly by saying "Amen."
And this was the hymn Jesus sang: Glory to Thee, Father!
(And they moving around in a circle answered him)
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The Other Reality
Amen! Glory to Thee.
Charts (Grace)! Glory to Thee, Spirit!
Glory to Thee, Holy One!
Glory to Thy Glory! Amen!
We praise Thee, O Father;
We give thanks to Thee, O Light:
In Whom Darkness dwells not! Amen!

For what we would give thanks, I say:

I would be saved; and I would save. Amen!
I would be loosed; and I would loose. Amen!
I would be broken; and I would break. Amen!
I would be born; and I wish to give birth. Amen!
I would eat; and I would be eaten. Amen!
I would hear; and I would be heard. Amen!
I would understand; and I would be understood. Amen!
I would be washed: and I would wash. Amen!
Now Charts is dancing.
I would play on the pipes; dance all of you. Amen!
I would play a song of mourning; lament all of you. Amen!
The eight sing praises with us. Amen!
Those who dance not, know not what cometh to pass. Amen!
I would flee; and I would stay. Amen!
I would be adorned; and I would adorn. Amen!
I would be at-oned; and I would at-one. Amen!
I have no house; and I would have houses. Amen!
I have no place; and I have places. Amen!
I have no temple; and I have temples. Amen!
I am a lamp to thee who seest me. Amen!
I am a mirror to thee who understandest me. Amen!

I am a door to thee who knockest at me. Amen!

I am a way to thee a wayfarer. Amen!
Now answer to my dancing!
See thyself in me who speak;
And seeing what I do, keep silence on my mysteries.
Understand by dancing, what I do;
For thine is the passion of man
That I am to suffer.
Thou couldst not at all be aware
Of what thou dost suffer.
If I were not sent as the Logos by the Father.
Seeing what I suffer, thou sawest me suffering;
And seeing, thou didst not stand still.
But wast moved greatly, thou wast moved to be wise.
Thou hast me for a couch; rest thou upon me.
The Dancing Savior
139
What I am thou shalt know when I depart. What now I am seen to
be, that I am not.
But what I am thou shalt see when thou comest. If thou hadst
known how to suffer, Thou wouldst have power not to suffer.
Know then how to suffer, then thou wilt have power not to suffer.
That which thou knowest not, I myself will instruct thee.

I am thy God, not the betrayers'.

I would be kept in time with holy souls.
In me know thou the Logos of Sophia.
Say thou to me again:
Glory to Thee, Father! Glory to Thee, Logos!
Glory to Thee, Holy Spirit!
But as for me, if thou wouldst know who I was:
In a word I am the Logos who did dance all things, and
who was not ashamed at all. It was I who danced.
But do thou understand all. and, understanding, say: Glory to Thee,
Father! Amen!4
Having said these things, Jesus departed and the disciples fled
in all directions, like people who had awakened from a trance,
for their consciousness was so changed by the hymn and dance
of Jesus. Not even John, his beloved disciple, was able to stay
by his side but fled in haste to a cave on the Mount of Olives
and there wept and grieved. And when Jesus was crucified,
darkness covered the earth, but the figure of the Savior
appeared to John in the cave in a burst of great light and
addressed him saying: "John, in the eyes of those below here in
the city of Jerusalem I am crucified and pierced by lances, and I
am tormented, and given gall and vinegar to drink, but you
should know that nothing of these things which they will say of
me have I truly suffered; for the true mystery was not this, but
rather the suffering that I have revealed to you and the others
in the dance; that was the true mystery that came to pass. I
show you what you are, but what I truly am I alone know and
no other man."
While John was thus favored with a visit from the Savior, Peter,
leader of the apostles, had a visitation also.

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The Other Reality
In a vision that occurred prior to the trial and Crucifixion. Peter
saw a crowd approaching and seizing Jesus. "What is this that I
see. O Lord?" asked Peter. "Who is this whom I see above t he
cross, one who is happy and laughs? Is it he or another, whose
feet and hands are being pierced?" The Savior replied to Peter:
"The one whom you see above the cross, glad and laughing, is
the living Jesus. The one whose hands and feet are pierced by
nails is merely his corporeal part, which is but a substitute,
made in his likeness." It was thus that unbeknown to the
persecutors Jesus stood by while the Crucifixion was in
progress, laughing at the blindness of his enemies.
From this time on Jesus was known as the Living One, for he
had obtained mastery over the deadly powers of this world.
Though his fleshly body was tormented and slain by the
servants of the Demiurge, yet he lived. Many were the
mysteries he came to reveal to his disciples after he had
returned from death. He taught them much wisdom and led
them on mystical journeys into the secret worlds of the aeons,
where they became acquainted with the treasuries and wonders
of the light. When the time had come for him to depart from
this earthly kingdom, he admonished his disciples to go forth
and impart Gnosis to all people. And he also made it plain to
them that he came to bring them freedom, for the Law of Moses
was ended: "I have left no commandment but what I have
commanded you (namely, that you should love one another),
and I have given you no law as did the lawgiver, for I would
not have you bound by any law." When he said this he went
away and ascended to his own place in the high aeons.
After Jesus' departure the disciples were bewildered and
fearful, for they had an inadequate understanding of the
mysteries he communicated to them. They approached Mary
Magdalene, whom he loved more than any of the other
disciples and who was regarded as his companion, and they
sought her counsel. Mary said to them: "What is hidden from

you I will disclose." And Mary Magdalene taught them the

secret teachings that
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142
Jesus had imparted to her and that concerned the ultimate
liberation of all things, both earthly and heavenly, and the
manner in which the soul shall ascend through the regions of
the seven planets, who shall ask the soul: "Whence do you
come, you fierce hero, and where are you going, you conqueror
of space?" And the victorious soul liberated by Gnosis will
answer: "Whatever seizes me is killed and what turns me about
is overthrown, for my desire has reached an end and now
ignorance is dead. I am a whole world, and I was saved from a
cosmos, and from the chains of the helpless knowledge, from
the existence which is bound to time. From this time on I shall
rest in the time of the moment of eternity in silence."
And it was in this way that Mary revealed to the other disciples
the true secret of salvation, and. although several among them
resented her on account of her sex, they were obliged to accept
her Gnosis and went forth into the world fully informed
regarding the purpose of the coming of the Savior and the
accomplishment of his labor of freedom. 5
Interpretation of the Myth
The myth of the Savior declares that the decisive revelation of
the Gnosis was brought by Christ, the heavenly Power, who
had descended upon and fused his nature with that of Jesus at
the time of the baptism in the river Jordan. This is the same
Christ who, according to the Valentinian myth, waits for th e
spiritualized souls at the entrance of the Pleroma in the
company of Sophia and who with her is the guardian of the
bride chamber where the pneumatic union accomplishes the
ultimate spiritualization of human souls. Christ is thus both the
messenger who initiates the process of redemption on earth and

the transcendental hierophant who places the ultimate seal of

redemption on the liberated soul.
As in the case of the myth of Sophia, so here also our
understanding may be greatly aided by enlisting the
illuminative amplification afforded by archetypal motifs
recognized by C. G. Jung: "The drama of the archetypal
143
The Other Reality
life of Christ describes in symbolic images the events in the
conscious life as well as in the life that transcends
consciousnessof a man who has been transformed by his
higher destiny." 6
This means that the life of Christ viewed psychologically
represents the process of individuation. Jung had repeatedly
alluded to the fact that persons who are contained in a
collective myth are carried along unconsciously, or
semiconsciously. by this process, whereas those who for
various reasons have left this containment become candidates
for a personal experience of Gnosis, which ultimately makes
them into indivisible psychic beings. (The word "individual" is
derived from the Latin in-dividuum, signifying an indivisible
unity.) Thus the story of Christ, when accepted as a matter of
faith, often acts as a substitute or vicarious symbol for
individuation. When the myth, on the other hand, is recognized
as a metaphor open to transcendence, it becomes both a
symbolic description of and a guide to the personal experience
of individuation. This may be best apprehended when the
various portions of the above-recounted myth are individually
explained in terms of their significance as stages of this process.
The prehistory of consciousness is symbolized by the
transcendental seed of light being prepared for its
in-carnational journey. The process of psychospiritual
development begins and ends in the fullness, the plenum of
being. The full potency of psychic life is gathered together for

the purposes of rendering the future journey of the soul as

effective as possible. Every authentic movement of
psychological growth and transformation is initiated by a state
of empowerment, which must of necessity originate in a state of
wholeness. In a prayer of the Greek Orthodox church, this
transcendental background of the nativity is expressed in terms
that appear Gnostic:
The Virgin today brings forth the Superessential. and the earth
offers a cave to the Unapproachable. I behold a Mystery strange
and wondrous: The cave is Heaven, and the Virgin is the throne of
the Cherubim: In the confines of the manger is laid the Infinite.7
Th
In the nativity of i energy descends intc^ 8118
transpersonal

83Cred

the instrumentality man i>estation. It does this by way of stands

as the symbni the Virgi " Wh Se virginity
or ego that is capabu f ^ kind f hUm3n P ersonality energy without
been ex P ressing transpersonal psychic
only the mother of j^'"8 inflated thereby' Yet' Mary 1S that each individual
j US " aftef the '" Which mC3nS realm of spiritual tp d SOul is " twice born ' once
in the manifestation. The . anscendence and once in external of the
earthly pare ntual pUrity f the household and permeability of the K t S f
JesUS si8nif,es the necessary individuation is i^ Uman ego " wlthout whlch
successful facilitate early enco, P SSible - Th ' S P ermeability may
symbolized in G n o s ^ 3 " d eVe " U " ion WIth the Self ' visits and
unites JJ? scriptures by the twin angel, who boyhood tbe y un g
Jesus already in his
In the mystery of tk his authentic vocati ba P tlsm - the future Savior
receives descent of a supern-,?" by Way f a " over shadowing or the
deepest essence Principle. The autonomous psyche, makes itself
known f the collect,ve unconscious, thus to his or her true v ^ Calls
thC individuatin8 P erson forming person em^ 31 ' 0 "' Int the Hfe f CVery
tr3nS " in which one's trans! 1 " 8 the drama f death a " d reb ' rth This destiny

is neve^ 80 " 3 ' de8ti " y ' 8 mCt 3 " d acce P ted personalistic considl f Und at the
level f mundane and showing forth ( E p i p h U o n * ' but i s a l w a y s the result f
3

commemorating th,? Q " y < the ancient name f

ba Ptism of Jesus) of a power greater
regarding baptism , e,fn od -

the feaSt

Writin g of Gnostic v,ews

than our human

' r enaeus writes:

For the baptism ins.

remission of sins k,tUted by the vis,ble JeSUS WaS for the Christ who
descend,^ 'he redernPtion brouSht ln bv that former is animal h, Up0" Him"was
Perfection; and. . . the of John was procla the ,aUer sPmtual- And the baPtlsm
the redemption by ',med with 3 view t0 repentance, but perfection. And
W3S brou8ht in for the sake of
to th
another baptism to i!" "e feferS Whe" H S3yS' "A"d ' haVC towards it" (Luke
baPtized with- and 1 hasten eagerly
i->
^:30).'
e

Dancing Savior 145

145
The Other Reality
The first baptism, connected with John and his Essene
purificatory background, is connected with preparation and
cleansing, the second with being redeemed from the constraints
and terrors imposed upon humans by the rulers of the cosmos.
The individuated ego finds itself at odds with the cir cumstances
of this life and particularly with the rules and regulations
imposed on the soul by those who are concerned with the
mundane order of things. Thus. Jesus complains of the
blindness of his fellow men and exhorts them not to follow
leaders and laws that exhibit spiritual blindness. The law of
individuation is quite different from the procedures the psyche
may follow prior to the discovery of its true higher destiny.

Thus, the old law must be abrogated and the new, spiritually
informed order must be made to prevail.
The Last Supper celebrated by Jesus and his disciples assumes a
double aspect in the Gnostic account. The first is the mystery of
the Eucharist, still widely practiced in Christendom. The word
"Eucharist" means thanksgiving, and the act of consecrating the
partaking of the sanctified elements of bread and wine was
considered by the early Christians the proper way of thanking
God for having sent the Savior to them and for making such
means of grace available to them. The second portion of the
story of the Last Supper, as present in the Gnostic myth, is of a
different order. After one communes with the higher life, one
must experience the transport of ecstasy, and this element is
embodied in the dance that Jesus bids his disciples to execute
after they partake of the sacramental meal. Moreover, it is
significant that he states that the true character of his suffering
is manifest in the dance, rather than in the dark tragedy of the
Crucifixion. Here is an important event in the drama of the
Savior that has been suppressed and ignored in the official
accounts endorsed as canonical by the Church. Why? The chorea
mystica (ecstatic cult dance) was not unknown in antiquity. In
one Greek magical papyrus we read: "Come to me. Thou who
art greatest in heaven.
The Dancing Savior
146
to whom heaven was given as a dancing ground." 9 Thus, the
high divinities are often envisioned as dancers who dance the
world into existence. Similarly, the religious dance has the
capacity to so enrapture the devotees that they joyously dance
through the gates of initiation into the supernal aeons. The
dance as an instrumentality of establishing contact with
Divinity was still known in the Middle Ages, where the German
mystic Mechtild of Magdeburg (1212-1277) in her poem Der
Minne Wag ("The Way of Love") tells us of a dialogue between
the divine Lord and a maiden. The Lord commands: "Maiden,

dance as deftly as my elect have danced before" and the maiden

replies:
I would not dance. Lord, unless thou leadest me.
Wouldst thou that I leap mightily.
Then must thou sing for me.
Thus will I leap into love.
From love into knowledge.
From knowledge into joy.
From joy beyond all human senses.10
Thus, we are faced with the second portion of the myth of the
Last Supper; the ecstatic dance is revealed as the other or
second Eucharist in which the emphasis is not on the shed
blood and the broken body of the crucified one, but rather on
the event of the dance, which is not confined to the earthly
dancers but is joined in by Charts (Grace), one of the high
feminine aeons of the fullness, as well as by the eight (the seven
planets along with their sphere of transcendence) and the
zodiacal twelve powers. The dance is thus revealed as a cosmic
and transcosmic movement in which all of creation participates
and which is also blessed with the presence of the
representatives of the supernal fullness. And, as Jesus revea ls to
John, the true secret of his suffering is not to be found in the
Crucifixion but in the dance. It may be useful to remember at
this point that "to suffer" comes from the Latin sub-ferre, to
undergo. What has the Savior thus truly undergone? The
Crucifixion of his corporeal selfhood? No, for unlike
147
The Other Reality
the hyletic portion of humanity, he possessed the capacity to
detach himself from the body of flesh. He underwent, however,

the limitation in order to enter the region where the lost sparks
of light dwell and from whence they must be liberated.
The psychological significance of the Crucifixion and even
more of the cosmic one described here than of the physical one
on the wooden crossis well stated by C. G. Jung:
The reality of evil and its incompatibility with good, cleave the
opposites asunder and lead inexorably to the crucifixion and
suspension of everything that lives. Since "the soul is by nature
Christian" this result is bound to come as infallibly as it did in the
life of Christ, i.e.. suspended in a moral suffering equivalent to
veritable crucifixion."
The cross and the dance are two interrelated and inter changeable symbols. The dance reveals the true cross, which is
not the mere cross of wood but the cross of light upon which
the true life and salvation of the cosmos are suspended. It is in
the ecstatic dance that this secret is revealed: The Logos
declares that he is indeed the one who has danced all things
and who teaches us what is the nature of suffering and of
redemption. Jung has stated that, from a psychological point of
view, the drama of Christ represents the vicissitudes of the Self
as it undergoes embodiment in an individual ego and of the
human ego as it participates in the salvific drama of
individuation. The myth of the Gnostic Christ is eminently
compatible with this understanding, although it must be
recognized that the interpretation of the myth tran scends
psychological categories and possesses numerous aspects that
we could not elucidate here. The Dancing Savior is nevertheless
a unique Gnostic image in which ecstasy and suffering, the
cosmic process and its transcendence, embodiment and
liberation are united in a peculiarly Gnostic conjunction of the
opposites. In it we may also find indications of an o ften
overlooked phenomenon: The role of ecstatic, altered states of
conThe Dancing Savior
148

sciousness in the process of Gnosis. The intensity of the

transport of mind and emotions is aptly portrayed in the image
here observed and the Dancing Savior declares to us his
amazing etiquette of ecstasy when he admonishes us:
All whose nature is to dance; dance. Amen!
Those who dance not. know not what cometh to pass. Amen!
8
Princes of the World:
The Myth of the Tyrant Angels
Introduction: Creator Gods or Divine Rebels?
Who created and who rules this world? The answers to these
questions vary. The mainstream tradition of
Jewish-Christian-Islamic orthodoxy holds that the creation and
subsequent management of the cosmos are to be attributed to
the One God, the ultimate source and destiny of all. The
alternative tradition apparently always had its doubts
concerning this proposition, which it considered an
oversimplification at best and a deceptive falsehood at worst.
Ancient peoples were far more sophisticated in their thinking
about ultimate metaphysical issues than we generally recognize
today, and thus they often brought forward ideas that cast
doubt on the simplistic view of the monotheistic religions. One
of these concerns the nature of deity itself. If the ultimate
source of all being is absolute, as most religions claim, how
could this utterly transcendental, absolute existence be directly
responsible for the minutiae of the fashioning and development
of the innumerable details of the created world-system?
Echoing the sentiments reflected in many ancient sources, the
neo-Gnostic writer H. P. Blavatsky writes:
The One is infinite and unconditioned. It cannot create, for It can
have no relation to the finite and conditioned. If everything we see.
from the glorious suns and planets

1
Princes of the World
150
down to the blades of grass and specks of dust had been created
by the Absolute perfection and were the direct work of even the
First Energy that proceeds from It, then every such thing would
have been perfect, unconditioned, like its author. . . .'
As the above quotation indicates, the other issue raised by the
critics of the monotheistic religions concerns the existence of
imperfection and evil in the world. How can an omnipotent,
good deity create and/or countenance the existence of so much
grotesque, injurious, and senseless evil? (The well -nigh
frivolous answer advanced frequently that evil is somehow due
to human sin would not even have been seriously considered
by most skilled thinkers in the ancient world.) If, on the other
hand, evil and imperfection exist in the world, they must be
due at least in part to the activity of agencies who interpose
themselves between manifest existence and the Absolute and
who do not partake of the perfection and goodness of the
former. "By their works shall ye know them." An imperfect
world replete with very real evil must be the work of gods or a
God partaking of the qualities of imperfection. Such was the
judgment rendered by the Gnostics and before them o f other
sophisticated thinkers of the ancient world.
Semitic religiosity was filled with curious contradictory images
and notions when it came to a concept of the deity and to the
nature and origin of evil. The Sumero-Babylonian religious
matrix that exercised a large influence on ancient Judaism
squarely admitted that the gods were responsible for evil as
well as for good. Enki and other Babylonian gods freely amused
themselves by creating monsters and freaks and visiting
humanity with evil conditions purely for their own divinely
perverse amusement. The Lord God of Israel was in many ways
similar to his Babylonian counterparts: he had both a good and
an evil side and freely exercised both of these proclivities

depending on his whim. The people who served the Hebrew

God simply had to bow their heads to his will, whether it bode
good or ill to them. During
151
The Other Reality
the last few centuries prior to the Christian era. an in creasing
number of Jews were no longer willing to endure the tension of
the opposites that they perceived in their God. Thus, the
Essenes came to avail themselves more and more of a mythos of
dualism, which served as a rationale for the existence of radical
evil in the cosmos. The People of the Scrolls diligently searched
the more obscure works of Jewish literature and mythology,
such as the legendry associated with the prophet Enoch, and
discovered ideas there that shed light on their concern with evil
and the battle of the sons of light with the children of darkness.
Some of these scriptures spoke of imperfect beings bridging the
gap between God and the created cosmos.
The notion of the existence and activities of angelic beings,
"sons of God." who were nevertheless imperfect, lustful, and
rebellious, has ample warrant in the Hebrew Bible. The first
four verses of the sixth chapter of Genesis tell of the curious
episode of the so-called sons of God, who as soon as daughters
were born to humans took them as their wives ("any of them
they liked") and thus became the progenitors of an equally
strange race of beings, whose name is sometimes translated as
heroes and at other times as giants. Later Jewish apocryphal
literature, such as the Book of Noah, and the renowned Books
of Enoch present lengthy elaborations on this theme. The
actions, all too briefly alluded to in Genesis, now take on a
distinct tone of rebellion brought on by concupiscence and
greed. The chief of the sons of heaven, who is called Semihazah,
leads his terrible host of two hundred rebellious angels down
from the summit of Mount Hermon, pronouncing terrible
magical oaths and curses and filled with fierce lust for human
women. The angels in question are called by the ominous name
of "watchers." and the offspring resulting from their rape of

human women are angry and cruel giants who kill men and
beasts and despoil the earth. The Lord then explains to Enoch
that the giants will be called demons or evil spirits and the
earth shall be their dwelling place. These giant
Princes of the World
152
spirits are destined to continue to oppress humankind and to
do all sorts of damage to the earth, and all of this is justified by
the fact that they have the "holy watchers" as their ancestors
and progenitors. One of the ten leaders of the rebel angels in
the literature of Enoch is named Asael, who a s Azazel appears in
the writings of the Qumran community (see Chapter Two of the
present work). One passage in the Enochian literature is
particularly instructive. Here Enoch travels around in cosmic
realms seeing all the workings of the universe, and he is shown
seven stars of the heavens who are bound together like
prisoners. The explanation given to Enoch is that these are
some of the stars that transgressed the command of the Lord
and have been bound for ten thousand years for their sins. The
linking of the rebellious angels with the seven planets thus
leads us to the Gnostic idea that the planets are ruled by
sinister lords of limitation who are intent upon keeping the
spirits of humanity captive in their earthly confinement . 2
From the Books of Enoch, the Book of Jubilees (both of which
were very popular with the Essenes), and the fascination of the
People of the Scrolls with the subject of the rebel angels, there
naturally developed the Gnostic conclusion that split the
biblical monotheistic God into a transcendent Being, on the one
hand, and a lower creator being or Demiurge, on the other. The
transcendence and unknowability of God were stressed for
some time by Jewish theology, when the increasing gnosticizing
tendencies of the Essene groups finally erupted as an open
rebellion against the image of Jehovah as it appeared in the
official teachings of the Jewish priesthood.' Parallel with this
development there evolved a recognition, which may be called
the doctrine of the Son of Man. The expression "Son of Man" is a

Hebraism denoting simply a member of the human race, but the

teachings that grew up around this concept have implications
that reach beyond humanity as ordinarily understood. The Son
of Man, known in Greek as anthropos, of whom the Teacher of
Righteousness was regarded as a manifestation.
153
The Other Reality
came to be understood as the reflection of God in creation, a
miniature manifestation of the transcendent Godhead, who is
destined to develop into the fullness of his potential on our
planet. This archetype of true humanity is described by Hugh
Schonfield in the following manner in his late work The Essene
Odyssey:
He is the ideal of our species incognito. He may be encountered in
East and West, in the past, in the present, and in the future by any
of us of any faith and clime. He is the immortal traveller who has
endured all the adversities our planet can inflict. Wherever he is
found he calls us back to our better selves, to the path of concern
for others, to love and goodness of heart. He restores our courage
and our hope. He is eternally adaptable, so that in all our diversities
we are at home with him. and he is our home. He is also the goal
towards which we strive, the World Man of a wiser, nobler world
we visualize in our finer imagination. Through him, in spirit, we
reach out to wonders infinite and glories incomparable.4
The earliest embodiment of this archetype of humanity, so the
developing alternative tradition believed, was the first human
pair, Adam and Eve. A set of treatises collectively called the
"Adam books," comprising such works as the Life of Adam and
Eve (Vita Adae et Evae), The Apocalypse of Moses, and the Nag
Hammadi text the Apocalypse of Adam (all composed probably
in the first century B.C.), present us with an image of the first
parents of humanity that is substantially different from the
current representation. Adam and Eve appear here as majestic,
quasi-divine beings filled with glory and power, whose status is
envied by the adversary angels. In the overtly Gnostic

Apocalypse of Adam, Adam speaking to his son Seth about his

and Eve's original estate says: "And we resembled the great
eternal angels, for we were higher than the God who created us
and the powers with him whom we did not know."
Rebellious angels interposing themselves between the
transcendent God and creation; glorious humans, created in the
image of a supernal archetype and infused
Princes of the World
154
with a spirit superior to this world; the envy and hostility of the
rebel angels against humanity: Such are the dramatic elements
that make up the great tragedy of human life on earth as
understood mythically by the alternative tradition. We may
now perhaps be ready to appreciate the myth of the Princes of
this World and their aeonial contest with the children of men.
The Myth of the Tyrant Angels
From Sophia, the celestial mother of all living things, was born
the one who became the fashioner and ruler of the system of
creation. His mother was in great sorrow and anguish when she
brought him forth, for she was alone in an abyss of darkness
and her light was diminished. Her offspring appeared before
her and she saw that he was a shape changer: he appeared in
the shape of a serpent with the face of a lion, and out of his eyes
there came forth lightning flashes. And Sophia repented of her
desire to bring forth a being in her loneliness, and she wept and
lamented over her offspring whom she named Yaldabaoth,
which means the Child-Lord.
Yaldabaoth then went forth into the chaos and fashioned a
system of creation that was to his own liking, and into it he
placed twelve authorities, seven kings of the firmament and
five kings of the abyss. All of these, with their children, were
called rulers, for their desire for power and authority was great.
The fashioner and his host then mingled light with darkness, so

that the darkness would appear radiant and thus could deceive
the eye. This mixture of light and darkness resulted in a world
that was imperfect and weak, for the darkness prevented it
from developing an armor of light that might protect it. And
great indeed became the weakness of this world, for the
darkness that was everywhere mixed with the light invited
terrible, evil powers and beings from beyond the sy stem of the
world.
Thus. Yaldabaoth stood in the midst of the world system he
fashioned and grew arrogant in his pride as he exclaimed: "I am
God and there is no other God beside
155
The Other Reality
me!" Thus, he demonstrated his ignorance of the true character
of being and his pride, whereby he denied even his own
mother. Sophia, however, looked down on him from on high
and exclaimed with a loud voice: "Thou hast uttered a
falsehood. O Samael!" It was thus that he received the name
that makes him the blind lord of death, and then Sophia also
called him by the name of Saclas, whereby she affirmed his
foolishness.
Sophia, however, knowing that her offspring had fashioned a
creation in his own flawed image, decided to secretly come to
the aid of the light that was present in the world. She
descended from her habitation and came close to the earth,
moving to and fro over it, and thereby conferred her wisdom
and love upon the system that the foolish fashioner created. It
was her mighty spirit that moved upon the face of the waters,
as was stated in the account of creation rendered by Moses. The
rulers thought that they alone created and ordered the world,
but the spirit of Sophia secretly contrived to place splendid
archetypal patterns into the fabric of their work.
Then a great wonder appeared in the heavens: the form of a
man, majestic and glorious to behold. And the image was

accompanied by a voice that exclaimed: "The Man exists and the

Son of Man." The creator and his host trembled and the
foundations of the abyss shook and the waters churned in terror
upon the earth. So great was the radiance of the celestial human
archetype that appeared in the heavens that the rulers were
blinded by it and they could not bear its power. They averted
their eyes and beheld the reflection of the form of the man as it
appeared in the waters below.
All the rulers and their servants rushed hither and gathering
their powers made a replica of the image of the heavenly man.
But their work was faulty and feeble, because the fo rce of
Sophia was not in their creation. The counterfeit man was dull
and insensate and crawled on the earth like a worm. Sophia
then sent down several of her messengers of light and they
secretly entered the mind of Yaldabaoth, causing him to breathe
into the
Princes of the World
156
pitiful creature, thus bestowing life upon him. The fashioner
thought that it was he who endowed man with life, but in
reality it was his mother, Sophia, who gave humanity true life.
And the man stood up, walked, and was surrounded by an
unearthly light.
Yaldabaoth and his host now came to recognize that the man
was in fact a being whose spiritual power and intelligence
exceeded their own. Filled with envy and rage they attacked the
man whose name was Adam and cast him into the darkest
region of matter, there to languish in sorrow and deprivation.
But Sophia, in cooperation with the highest powers of the
fullness, sent a helper to Adam to instruct and assist him with
wisdom and spiritual strength. The helper was a woman who
came to be known as Eve, but whose true name is Zoe, meaning
life. The wise feminine spirit entered Adam and was concealed
in him. so that the rulers could not recognize her presence.

The rulers now conspired and devised a plan whereby they

hoped that the man could be deceived and remain a captive to
their designs. They made a garden filled with the beauties and
delights of the earth and placed Adam in the midst of it,
providing him with every kind of pleasant object he could
desire. But the beauty and the pleasures they offered him were
deceptive and corrupt and designed to keep him a captive of
the rulers, without a will and a life of his own. A tree was also
placed by them in the garden that contained their life and that
they forbade Adam to touch or eat the fruit of.
Once again Sophia and the other heavenly powers came to the
aid of Adam and instructed him to eat of the fruit of the tree
and defy the ruler and his tyrant angels. At the same time, the
woman came forth from Adam, but the chief of the rulers
recognized her as having the light of Sophia in her and he was
enraged. He pursued her all over the garden and, having
subdued her, raped her, and she conceived two sons by him
whose true names were Eloim and Yave, although they became
known as Cain and Abel. But the shining spirit of wisdom that
inhabited Eve fled while this ravishment took place, so
157
The Other Reality
that only the human Eve was thus shamed but not Zoe, the
living spirit. Eloim-Cain became master over earth and water
and from him descended men and women whose inclination is
toward matter, whereas Yave-Abel commanded fire and air and
became the father of humans who value the soul and mind.
Adam, however, recognized what the tyrant ruler had done and
subsequently fathered a son by the name of Seth. whose
inclination was toward spirit and who became the father of
those who desire Gnosis and who strive for union with spirit.
The tyrant angels then watched in rage as humankind went its
way and would no longer linger in the fool's paradise where the
fashioner wished to keep them captive. The chief ruler
particularly cursed the woman who became the mother of

humankind, and her lot and the lot of her daughters has been a
difficult one ever since. Nevertheless, Eve gave birth to a
daughter named Norea who was filled with true Gnosis and
who remained on earth for a long time as a helper of humanity,
because she was wise and knew of the schemes and the evil
works of the tyrant angels.
Meanwhile, humans multiplied and. instructed by Seth and
Norea, many turned to Gnosis, so that the rulers had few men
and women who would accept them as divine and follow their
laws. The tyrants gathered and declared that they wished to
destroy all humans who were not subservient to them. They
caused a deluge from which they intended to save only those
who were still beholden to them, among whom was a man
named Noah. The chief ruler approached Noah and told him to
build an ark whereby to save himself and his companions from
the deluge. Norea, however, learned of this and in order to
frustrate their designs she first attempted to dissuade Noah
from constructing the ark, but when she did not succeed in her
attempt she blew fire upon the ark he had built so that it
burned. Noah, however, being stubborn, built a se cond ark.
The evil angels then assaulted Norea, wishing to ravish her as
they did her mother Eve, but a great angel of light
Princes of the World
158
named Eleleth rescued her and gave her strength to continue
with her mission. The knowers of the truth hid themselves in a
luminous cloud high above the mountains and were saved from
the flood. So, with the help of Norea the scheme of the tyrant
angels was frustrated.
Ever since those days, humankind lived in conflict and division,
for the chief ruler had divided it in wrath. True Gnosis became
rare and the children of men learned about useless and dead
things and their knowledge became worldly and corrupt. Still,
the human race was never left alone, for it had helpers in the

high aeons. Not only Sophia and her angels, but some tyrant
angels also turned from the evil of their chief and returned to
the service of the light. The greatest of these was the brother
ofYaldabaoth, and he is named Sabaoth and also Abraxas. This
spirit renounced the works of his blind and evil brother and
submitted to his mother Sophia, who appointed him the ruler of
the seventh heaven, from whence he ever calls after the fashion
of a celestial chanticleer

dhraxas
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The Other Reality
to all beings, so that they might awaken and renounce the
works of darkness.
At a later time, conflict arose between the children of men who
still served the tyrant angels and those who had been liberated
by Gnosis. The servants of Yaldabaoth betrayed the knowers,
and the rulers rained fire and brimstone on them, hoping to
destroy them. Abraxas-Sabaoth, assisted by other mighty angels
of light, rescued them, so that the plan of the rulers once again

came to naught. (This became known as the destruction of

Sodom and Gomorrah.)
Time and again the rulers rallied and schemed to destroy those
humans who would not serve them. They wished to corrupt the
whole human race by mingling their essence with humanity,
and they abducted many human women and procreated giants
who were filled with malice. These giants became the ancestors
of those men who selfishly despoil the earth and deprive good
men and women of their possessions and sustenance. Owing to
the manifold evil schemes and depredations of the rulers, a
certain portion of the human race is contaminated by their seed,
although all men and women possess in addition the spark of
Sophia.
The rulers, however, are truly tyrants. Their deepest desire is to
subjugate and rule the children of men whom they mistrust and
despise, for they are superior in essence to the rulers
themselves. Thus the rulers are ever at work devising laws and
commandments whereby they might constrain the children of
men. They masquerade as messengers of light, or even as the
true God himself, and demand obedience and worship. They
thus deceived many well-intentioned prophets and seers and
came to dominate large numbers of humans. The Law of Moses
was, at least in part, similarly inspired by the rulers, for Moses
could not make a distinction between the true, transcendental
God and the chief of the tyrant angels.
Jesus, who descended from the high aeons, came to advance the
defeat of the tyrant angels by teaching humans how they might
become free and by bringing
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them mysteries that would act as weapons against the wiles of
such adversaries. The chief ruler in his blindness did not
discern that Jesus was of such high and divine origin; he
assumed him to be merely a troublesome human who could be

murdered. He thus incited the priests and Pharisees to

condemn Jesus to death. Jesus, being other than human, did not
die. although he permitted the illusion of his physical death. He
returned in glory and completed his work of redemption in
spite of the plans of his enemies. The assault on his person had
brought such consequences upon his persecutors, however, that
soon the Temple at Jerusalem was destroyed and the
circumstances changed in such a way that many could renounce
the old law that was influenced by the rulers. The spiritual
freedom brought by Jesus only prevailed for a brief period of
history, and the tyrant angels began to corrupt the message of
the Good News once more. The battle of the forces of light
against the tyrant angels continues, but the outcome is not in
question. The forces of redemption are destined to prevail,
bringing Gnosis and liberation to the sparks of light hidden in
humanity. Defeat will come to the blind and foolish tyrant
angels who have for so long ruled in the kingdom where, like
usurpers, they established their illegitimate dominion.
Interpretation of the Myth
The origins of the chief tyrant angel lead us back to Sophia. The
feminine soul, having descended into the abyss of darkness,
brings forth an offspring in an irregular manner. The
Apocryphon of John tells us that this offspring was brought forth
without the consent of the spirit and "though the personage of
her maleness" did not approve. The mother of the Demiurge
thus acted in an unbalanced manner. In contemporary terms,
we might say that she brought forth without the cooperation of
her animus or masculine psychic selfhood. When we act out of
only one side of our contrasexual polarities, we go wrong. In
order to bring forth a psychologically healthy and
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The Other Reality
productive creative act we must solicit the approval of the
opposites. The head needs the consent of the heart, the ego of

the Self, the spiritual of the physical, the anima of the animus
(and vice versa). Unbalanced acts bring disaster in their wake.
Sophia's misbegotten son has the shape of a lion-faced serpent.
He also has the capacity to assume other forms. Lion and
serpent are creatures associated with the primary polarities of
fire and water, respectively. In the same vein, the Demiurge is
also described as androgynous by many Gnostic scriptures.
These features would lead one to believe that he stands for a
certain preconscious, undifferentiated force that stands in an
adversarial relation to differentiated consciousness. In the Seven
Sermons to the Dead, Jung refers to a similar symbolic figure as
"the hermaphrodite of the lowest beginnings." We may thus
initially define this being as a symbol for primitive,
undifferentiated psychic energy that constellates itself in a
human ego. As soon as this energy has assumed an ego
identity, it begins to create its own world. The ego comes forth
from its larger psychic background, but soon turns its back
upon its mother and arrogantly declares its independence from
the unconscious mystery from whence it arose. The name
Yaldabaoth, although having several meanings, is derived from
YHVH (Yahweh, Jehovah), the meaning of which is "I am that I
am." Do not the words "I am" also characterize the very nature
of the psychological ego? The imperfect creator serves thus as a
suitable metaphor for what depth psychologists call "the
alienated ego." Defined by its own sense of selfhood, this
psychic entity draws away from the wisdom (Sophia) contained
in the unconscious and declares itself as a creator and ruler in
its own right. He who could have become an angel of light
becomes a dark tyrant.
The ultimate proof of the tyrant ego's arrogance is implicit in
the statement of the Demiurge: "I am God and there is no other
God beside me!" Jungian psychologist Edward Edinger writes
of this phenomenon as follows:
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162

Power motivation of all kinds is symptomatic of inflation.

Whenever one operates out of power motive omnipotence is
implied. But omnipotence is an attribute only of God. Intellectual
rigidity which attempts to equate its own private truth or opinion
with universal truth is also inflation. It is the assumption of
omniscience. . . . Any desire that considers its own fulfillment, the
central value transcends the reality limits of the ego and hence is
assuming attributes of the transpersonal powers.5
Sophia thus stands for the transpersonal, supernal matrix (from
mater, mother), whereas Yaldabaoth represents the tyrannical
ego, which is unwilling to acknowledge the existence of
transcendence and thus of any limits that may be set to its
power. It may also be noted that the Demiurge frequently
exhibits fits of anger, which is a hallmark of an inflated state.
The inflated ego ever attempts to coerce and dominate its
environment, and when attempts in this direction are not
successful, fierce anger is the result. It is for such reasons that
the Creator curses Eve at the time of the fall, and it is also such
anger that motivates him and his minions to rape her and to
attempt the same kind of outrage against Norea. (In a rather
Gnostic way. various Jungian psychologists have identified this
kind of arrogant anger as a "Yahweh complex.") Alienation
leads to inflation; Sophia's child becomes alienated from its
mother and then arrogantly repudiates her and all other powers
outside of itself.
The ego creates its own world, but of necessity it is a flawed
world. The wisdom of the transpersonal, archetypal psyche,
however, is never totally absent. That is why Sophia's spirit
moved over creation and entered it secretly. The alchemists
were responsible for coining the term Lumen Naturae, the light
of nature, whereby they implied that in addition to the higher
light of divinity in the realm of transcendence, there also exists
another light, inferior in character but still potent. This light is
present in nature and in the body of the human being. Its
ultimate origins, of course, are divine. The presence of this light
is
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The Other Reality

indicated by several mythologems in the story of the Demiurge
and his tyrant angels. First. Sophia enters into an intimate
connection with creation. Then she exhibits to the terrified gaze
of the rulers the image of the perfect or heavenly human form.
On the basis of this celestial archetype the rulers fashion the
first man, but he is lacking in one very vital ingredient:
consciousness or self-awareness. This power only comes to him
at the behest of Sophia. We are made in the image of great
archetypal patterns, but we become truly human only when the
gift of consciousness comes to us.
With the first stirrings of conscious selfhood begins the process
of psychospiritual growth. The first steps along the path of
individuation evoke strong resistances from the tyrant ego.
Spiritual development never occurs without a struggle brought
about by the arrogance and the will to power of the ego. The
lengthy story of the difficult relationship of the human race
with the Demiurge and the rulers is a tale that tells of this
struggle.
A particularly fine mythologem expressing this struggle is the
story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden as understood by
the Gnostics. The ego world is so constituted that it may
efficiently distract the soul from the tasks of individuation. In
many ways this is a paradisiacal world: It is filled with objects
and experiences that promise pleasure, riches, and power. Still,
when viewed from the vantage point of transformative growth
it is a fool's paradise. The serpent, not mentioned by name in
our account, is in reality the principle of Gnosis, the emerging
consciousness and urge to individuation. Also, it is worthy of
note that it is Eve rather than Adam who responds to the
inspiration of wisdom and brings about the happy catastrophe
of the expulsion from paradise. Gnostic interpreters of Genesis
generally felt that Eve represented the human spirit wit h its
supernal intuition, whereas Adam signified the soul with its
somewhat earthbound emotions and thoughts.

This mythologem is repeated in connection with the story of

Noah, where Norea acts in accordance with the
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165
designs of the spirit and Noah remains subservient to the
rulers. There is little doubt that the entire Gnostic approach is
greatly affinitized to the feminine with its nonrational intuitive
emphasis. One person who recognized this fact and put it to
good use was C. G. Jung. As early as August 1912, Jung
intimated in a letter to Freud that he had an intuition that the
essentially feminine-toned wisdom of the Gnostics, which he
symbolically called Sophia, was destined to reenter modern
Western culture by way of depth psychology. By unlocking the
deep recesses of the human soul through intuition and insight,
by rehabilitating the dignity of human feelings, Jung's
psychology has in large measure justified this early prediction.
The Gnostic myths suggest that it was the wisdom of the
feminine as embodied in such Figures as Sophia. Eve, Norea,
Mary Magdalene, and other women that acted as the champion
of Gnosis throughout human history, whereas the masculine
psyche with its more prosaic, earthbound orientation was more
often than not in league with the forces of ego-consciousness
and worldly mindedness. One may also note that though the
relationship between Adam and Eve is envisioned by Gnostic
interpreters as a metaphor for the intrapsychic relationship of
soul and spirit, the enlightening importance of the feminine as
embodied in living woman is not ignored. Thus, when the wise
spirit sent by Sophia, after first being concealed in Adam,
finally separates from him and becomes external to her mate,
she remains his instructor and inspiration and continues as his
spiritual superior. A psychological analogue appears in the
importance of the value of the anima. not only when recognized
within the masculine psyche, but also when projected from it
and appearing superimposed upon a flesh-and-blood woman.
Another instructive and significant motif of the myth is one that
recurs within many other myths of the Gnosis. This concerns

the issue of law versus freedom. Whenever humans become

free, the tyrant angels try to destroy them. The "sins" for which
humanity is visited with the
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The Other Reality
deluge and with fire and brimstone are disobedience to the
laws of the tyrant angels. Depth psychology recognizes that
individuation implies going contrary to the established
shiboleths of society. As long as the human psyche is content to
be contained within the system of family, state, and society, the
kind of inner growth brought about by individuation does not
occur. This does not mean that the individuated person remains
forever in a mind-set characterized by rebellion and anarchy;
rather, we must realize that once the psyche has ceased to
identify with and blindly accept rules and laws external to itself
it becomes capable of living as a free individual within a social
setting. Individuated (or successfully individuating) persons
seldom flaunt their nonconformism; nor are they unconscious
slaves and victims of collective rules and conventions. In order
to make choices, it is necessary to become emancipated from the
choiceless adhering to established rules. And it is choice that
characterizes the process and the results of individuation at
their best. It is obvious then why the Gnostic myths describe
the battles of the choice-makers against the slaves of the law.
The pneumatic Gnostic is ever a person willing to bear the
burden and enjoy the glories of existential choice and
responsibility, whereas the psychic non-Gnostic values
externally imposed law over the internally held values of his
own soul.
Gnostic mythologems tend to contrast the old dispensation of
Moses with its rigid concern with the law with the new law
proclaimed by Jesus. The former decrees obedience and,
flowing from such obedience, a collective redemptive victory of
the people of Israel. The latter implies an existential dignity
brought about by conscious choice and personal responsibility.
(That many subsequent developments led to the neglect of this

existential element in the Christian ethic does not mitigate

against its historic existence and cannot diminish its usefulness
when recognized and implemented.) The old law is the law of
collective psychology influenced by the dark unconscious
tyranny of humanity's guilt-ridden unconscious. The new law
recognized by the Gnostic, but often obscured
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167
by later so-called orthodoxy, is the law of individuation with its
attendant freedoms and responsibilities, its existential terrors
and transcendental joys. Well did the great American
mythologist Joseph Campbell state it in his work The Hero With
a Thousand Faces:
It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but
precisely the reverse. And so every one of us shares the supreme
ordealcarries the cross of the redeemer not in the bright
moments of his tribe's great victories, but in the silences of his
personal despair.6
Sooner or later we all must come to the kind of Gnosis that
inspires us to turn from the blandishments and threats, the
carrot and the stick of the tyrant angels. Masquerading as
religious law, customs of society, political and economic
ideology, and many other manifestations, the designs of the
tyrant angels keep us enmeshed in a condition of collective
thralldom, lacking choice and individuation. The tyrant ego
acts in many ways and at many levels. Some of his cunning
deeds are collective, whereas others are intensely personal.
Externally imposed dogma thus meets and conspires with guilt,
anger, and greed rising from the shadow side of the
personality. Like Seth and Norea in the Gnostic myth, we must
avert our gaze from the intimidating spectacle presented to us
by tyranny and wickedness residing in high places. In The
Gospel of Thomas, Jesus employs the word monachoi, usually
translated as "solitary ones" but also meaning "those who have
become unified." This is the name whereby one might describe

the individuated psyche, the soul of the knower, who having

become a unity now can stand alone without the burdensome
collectivity of society, as well as without the tyranny of the
alienated ego. These are the men and women who have
succeeded in freeing themselves of the dominion of the tyrant
angels, and of them the Gnostic Christ says: "Blessed are the
solitary and the elect, for they will discover the king dom! . . .
Many stand outside the door, but it is only the solitary ones
who will enter into the bridal chamber." 7
9
Traveler from Heaven:
The Myth of "Song of the Pearl"
Introduction: A Song of the Soul's Journey
Among the numerous documents that serve as vehicles of the
enshrinement of Gnostic experience in mythic form, none
equals the charming and meaningful story of "Song of the
Pearl." Contained within Acts of Thomas, an apocryphal
scripture long known in Christendom, this poem is poetically
attributed to Thomas, the apostle of Jesus, most highly
regarded by the Gnostics. The Nag Hammadi collection alone
contains two major scriptures attributed to this apostle (The
Gospel According to Thomas and The Book of Thomas the
Contender), and numerous other books and traditional sayings
are said to originate with him.
In the Ninth Act of Acts of Thomas is an account of the apostle
traveling to India, where he ran afoul of an important official
named Charisius, whose wife Mygdonia became his follower
against her husband's wishes. The enraged husband proceeded
to denounce Thomas before the local ruler, and the apostle was
thrown into prison. While in prison, Thomas was approached
by his fellow prisoners to give them spiritual consolation, and
responding to this request he sang a poem or song to them that
represents a thinly veiled version of the Gnostic myth of the
liberation of the soul from confinement in the darkness of

materiality and unconsciousness and its entry into the kingdom

of light and fullness. The story is
169
Traveler from Heaven
169
thus at once a parable and a symbolic monomyth, the message
of which may be discovered in virtually all other Gnostic
myths.
As in most such instances, the poetic account of the origins of
the poem is probably not an accurate one. It is frequently
assumed that the true author of the song was Bardaisan
(Bardesanes), the great light of Syrian Gnosticism.*
Acts of Thomas has been described as a Gnostic composition
preserved with orthodox reworkings; however, such
reworkings appear to be totally absent from "Song of the Pearl"
itself. In addition, one may note also the absence of any
explicitly Christian references, all of which makes this poetic
tale the most universal and also the most readily
comprehensible of all Gnostic mythic statements. The total lack
of any technical terminology whatsoever, in combination with
the impressive simplicity of the story, place this scripture into a
category all by itself. (The present writer, having told this tale
to general audiences as well as observed it being performed in
dramatic form, can attest to the fact that its message is very
readily apprehended by persons with little or no background in
Gnosticism or in mythology of any kind.)
The text of our poem is available both in the Syriac language
and in a Greek version. The former is to be preferred, since it
appears to be closer to the original, whereas the latter
represents a revision. The story is written in the first person,
thus reinforcing the impression that it is based on personal
experience. In the following account I shall retell it as a prose

narrative, disregarding the original metric divisions and

maintaining the first-person form.
The Myth of "Song of the Pearl"
When I was but a little child and lived in the kingdom of my
parents and enjoyed the wealth and splendor of
*For an account of the life and teachings of Bardaisan, see Chapter
Five.
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The Other Reality
those who raised me. my parents decided to send me on a
journey away from our homeland in the East. They did not,
however, send me forth without provisions, for from the
abundance of our treasury they gathered a bundle for me: It
contained gold, silver, chalcedony, and opal. In addition, they
girded me with adamant, a metal so strong that it crushes iron.
Great was the burden of these provisions, yet light they were
also, so that I could bear them alone.
My splendid robe of glory, which in their love they had made
for me, they now removed from my shoulders, and also the
purple mantle that was made to fit me perfectly. And they
made an agreement with me, which they wrote on my heart, so
that I might never forget it. It read as follows: "If thou shouldst
go down into Egypt, and bring the One Pearl to us, which
reposes in the middle of the sea, guarded by a roaring serpent,
then, upon thy return thou shalt resume thy robe of glory and
thy royal mantle, and together with thy brother, our viceroy,
thou shalt be the heir of our kingdom."
I left the East and accompanied by two royal envoys, who were
ordered to assist me since I was young and needed help on such
a dangerous journey, I passed over several lands that lay
between the East and the land of Egypt. As I arrived at the
border of Egypt, my guardians took their leave from me.

Having arrived in Egypt. I traveled to a place that was near to

the sea where I knew that the serpent lived. I established myself
in an inn, there to await the time when the serpent should
sleep, so that I might take the pearl from him. I was a stranger
to the others who dwelt in the inn. Still, I met a person there
who was of my own kind, fair and familiar and a descendant of
royalty. I received a warning from him to guard myself against
the Egyptians, for they were unclean. I thus disguised myself,
wearing the garb of the Egyptians, so that they might not
discover that I was an outsider intent upon taking the pearl,
and that they might not therefore arouse the serpent against
me. Nevertheless, they soon recognized
Traveler from Heaven
171
that I was not their compatriot. They feigned friendship for me
and persuaded me to drink of the drink they mixed for me and
of the food they prepared for me.
To have thus yielded to the blandishments of the Egyptians
became a great calamity for me. I fell into a swoon of
forgetfulness, and I no longer knew that I was the child of a
king and I served their king instead. I forgot all about the pearl
for which my parents had sent me.
My parents in their kingdom were aware of what had befallen
me and they grieved for me. They issued a proclamation and
summoned all the great ones of their kingdom for a meeti ng, at
which a plan was devised not to allow me to languish in Egypt.
They wrote a letter to me, and each of the great ones signed it:
From thy father the King of Kings, and from thy mother, the ruler
of the East, and from thy brother, our viceroy, to thee, our child in
Egypt, greeting. Awake and arise out of thy deep sleep, and be alert
to the message of our letter. Remember who thou art: The offspring
of a king. And see whom thou hast served in dark bondage.
Remember also the pearl, for whose sake thou hast journeyed into
Egypt. Remember thy robe of glory and thy splendid mantle, so

that the time may come when these may rest again upon thy
shoulders, and. arrayed in them, thy name may be read in the book
of the heroes, and thou shalt become, with thy brother, our viceroy,
heir in our realm.
This letter was a magic messenger unto me. My father had so
sealed it that it would be protected against the dreadful
denizens of the regions that it would have to traverse before
arriving at my habitation. The letter rose up in the shape of an
eagle, the king of all birds, and it flew until it arrived beside
me, where I heard its speech. Upon hearing the message I
awoke from my sleep and arose, took the letter, kissed it, broke
its seal, and read its contents. The letter read like the words
inscribed once upon my heart. I remembered everything: I
knew that I was the offspring of kings and that my soul, born to
freedom, was desirous of being with its own kind.
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The Other Reality
I also remembered the pearl, which I had come to Egypt to
fetch. Thus I proceeded to enchant the roaring serpent by
singing over it the name of my father, my brother, and my
mother, the ruler of the East. I then seized the pearl and turned
about to go to my parents. I cast off the impure garment of the
dwellers in this land, and I directed my way so as to go toward
the light of our homeland, the East.
As I proceeded on my way, I was guided by the letter that had
awakened me. and as it once aroused me with its voice, so it
now guided me with its light, which shone before me. Its voice
encouraged me against my fear, while its love drew me on. So I
went forth and passed through the regions and the cities that lie
between the land of Egypt and my homeland, the kingdom of
the East.
Then the treasurers sent by my parents, who for their
faithfulness were entrusted with it, brought to me my splendid
robe that I had taken off and also my royal mantle. Indeed, I no

longer remembered its magnificence, for it was long ago that I

had relinquished it in my father's house. But all of a sudden,
when I saw it over against me, the splendid robe of glory
looked more and more like my own reflection; I saw it as if it
were my own self, and the distinction between it and myself
melted away, so that we were two in differentiation but one in
single union. Even the two treasurers who brought my robe to
me appeared as a single person, impressed with the one seal of
my father's majesty.
I thus came to observe further the robe in its splendor. It was
adorned in glorious colors; upon it were gold and many diverse
jewels, and its seams were fastened with adamant. The image of
the King of Kings was depicted all over the robe, and I saw
move over it the rippling movements of the holy Gnosis. I also
perceived that the robe was about to speak to me, and the
sound of great hymns resounded in my ears as it fell down on
me: "I am the one that acted in the actions of the one for whom I
was brought up in my Father's house, and I perceived in myself
how my stature grew in accordance with his
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173
works." And the robe poured itself entirely down upon me with
regal movements, and it leaped out of the hands of those who
held it, so that it might come to rest upon me. And I loved it so
greatly that I ran towards it to receive it. I reached up towards
it and enveloped myself in its glorious colors, having clad
myself entirely in this royal robe of glory.
Clothed in my robe, I now ascended to the gate of salutation
and adoration. I bowed my head and adored the splendor of my
father who had sent the robe to me, whose commands I had
fulfilled, and who had done with me as he promised. And at the
gates of his nobles I met the great ones of the kingdom. And my
parents were jubilant as they received me. for now at last I was
with them in their kingdom. And with a mighty voice of music
did all their servants praise them, and they exclaimed that they

had promised that I should journey to the court of the King of

Kings so that, having brought the pearl, I might appear togethe r
with him.
Interpretation of the Myth
Hans Jonas, in his well-known work The Gnostic Religion, writes
concerning "Song of the Pearl":
The immediate charm of this tale is such that it affects the reader
prior to all analysis of meaning. The mystery of its message speaks
with its own force which almost seems to dispense with the need
for detailed interpretation. Perhaps nowhere else is the basic
Gnostic experience expressed in terms more moving and more
simple. Yet the tale is a symbolic one as a whole and employs
symbols as its parts, and both the total symbolism and its
component elements have to be explained.'
We shall thus comply with Jonas' suggestion and add our
interpretation to the story.
The Father's house in the East is the Pleroma, or full ness of
spiritual power, from whence the soul originates and to which
it desires to return. The existence and the memory of this
transcendental homeland are central
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The Other Reality
features of all Gnostic myths dealing with human existence. The
celestial king and queen represent the supreme dyad that is
envisioned as the true and ultimate Godhead. The viceroy and
the great ones of the kingdom are the aeonic powers, which
together with the king and queen represent the totality of the
fullness.
Contrasted with this plenum of heavenly beatitude, we find the
land of Egypt with the pearl guarded by a serpent in the sea.
The ancient name for Egypt is Khem. meaning "dark earth."

Egypt thus stands as the symbol for earthly life with its
attendant darkness of unconsciousness and alienation.
The roaring serpent in the sea is a symbol very different from
the wise serpent of Genesis. Rather, it is a serpentine dragon
envisioned as encircling the earth, the beast of the original
chaos, enemy of the light and Gnosis. In the book Pistis Sophia we
read: "The outer darkness is a huge dragon whose tail is in his
mouth." The sea within which the serpent-dragon dwells is the
watery body of corruption and forgetfulness into which the
divine has sunk. Yet in the midst of this sea guarded by the
terrifying monster lies the pearl so greatly desired by the rulers
of the heavenly kingdom.
Many of these elements of the myth bear a relationship to
Jung's theories concerning the beginnings and journey of the
human ego. The ego has its beginning as a child of the celestial
royal family, living in a state of identity with the archetypal
psyche and its royal Self. In order to gain personal
consciousness, the ego must of necessity leave this powerful
matrix of psychic primordiality. Thus, it is sent away from its
supernal home on a mission. Although we leave the
heaven-world of the archetypal Self, we are "provisioned" by
carrying with us a measure of its power and the distant
memory of its sublime character. The poet Wordsworth in his
ode "Intimations of Immortality" speaks of these psychological
implications of the earthward journey of the child of heaven:
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises
with us, our life's Star,
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175
Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar.
Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we

come From God, who is our home: . . .
And in reference to the "descent into Egypt" with its attendant
vicissitudes, the poet continues:
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy But he beholds the light, and whence it
flows,
He sees it in his joy; The youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel is still Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended; At length the Man perceives it die
away. And fade into the light of common day.
It is this "fading of the vision splendid into the light of common
day" that is poignantly stated in "Song of the Pearl" by way of
the metaphor of the partaking of the drink and food of the alien
land by the traveler from heaven. The soul is a stranger to its
fellow dwellers in the inn of this world. The acceptance of the
condition of existential alienation brings with it a useful conse quence, however. This is the appearance of a helpful
companion, whose presence and advice assist the pro tagonist in
pursuing his goal. The Gnostic is thus ever aided in his
predicament by the company of those "of his own kind,"
namely, of persons who share the quest for consciousness and
are aware of their spiritual mission. Yet the world of the
commonplace, "the triviality of everydayness" (as Heidegger
named it), eventually overpowers the individual. The
suffocating world of personal preoccupations makes us forget
the world of broader meaning and significance that resides in
the inner recesses of our psyche. The ego becomes estranged
from the Self and from the entire archetypal psyche, and its
The Other Reality

estrangement pushes it into subservience to the consensus

reality of the external world and in due course into de pression,
the well-nigh universal affliction of contemporary humanity.
Humans possess two ways in which they can expand the magic
circle of their selfhood: one outward, the other inward.
Extraversion of psychic energy propels the attention of the
personality into the outer world of sensation with its attendant
reactive feelings and thoughts. But in states of deep inward
attentiveness and psychic permeability, another kind of
expansion takes place. Suddenly, we are no longer puny
humans trapped in the gray fog of personalistic concepts and
images; rather, we are at the center of a web of consciousness,
we become aware of many kinds of meaning vibrating along the
web, and we develop the capacity, not unlike a spider in a
similar situation, to catch hold of the causes of these vibrations.
To use another image, we become like a tree that suddenly
becomes aware that its roots reach down deep into an
underground world of power, meaning, and blissful
excitement, and we also come to acknowledge that it is this
underground realm that confers life on our branches, which
stretch above it into the daylight world of ego-consciousness.
Such is the phenomenon of seeing the connecting link between
ones ego and one's supra-personal, original selfhood
reestablished.
In "Song of the Pearl," this reconnecting of ego and Self, of the
personal and the transpersonal, is brought about through the
instrumentality of a letter. The letter is of a highly magical
character; it speaks words, flies on the wings of an eagle, and is
"like a messenger." It is without doubt that this portion of the
poem possesses soteriological overtones: the messenger, who is
also the message, is a primeval symbol of the agent of
salvation Jesus, Buddha, or any other salvific messenger of
light. Upon the individual's ability to open the seal of such a
letter, which means to receive the redeeming call in full
consciousness, depends the redemption of the soul.
In the Odes of Solomon, a scripture of powerful Gnostic

Traveler from Heaven

178
overtones, we read an account of the theme of the letter where
the recipient is unable to take advantage of the message of
salvation:
And his thought was like a letter.
And His will descended from on high.
And it was sent from a bow like an arrow
That has been forcibly shot.
And many hands rushed to the letter.
In order to catch it, then take and read it.
But it escaped from their fingers;
And they were afraid of it and of the seal which was upon it.
Because they were not allowed to loosen its seal; Because the power
which was over the seal was greater than they.2
Where, as in "Song of the Pearl," the soul is ready to receive the
full significance of the symbolic communication, a great
awakening and transformation of the personality takes place.
Psychologically, the letter symbolizes, in its various aspects, the
axis that connects the ego and the Self. Without this axis, life is
lacking in the psychic energy that is required to fulfill the tasks,
to live out successfully the personal myth of the psyche. It is
not possible to capture the "pearl of great price" in the turbulent
sea of this world without being awakened by the power of
psychospiritual redemption.
But who or what is the pearl in search of which the soul, even
the ego, descends into the arena of conflict and travail? And
how are we to regard the serpent when applying its symbolic

image to the inner life of the individual? The answer to these

questions in a sense determines the meaning of the entire story.
As Hans Jonas pointed out, in Gnostic symbolism "pearl" is one
of the principal metaphors for the concept of soul in a
transcendental sense. 3 In this case the meaning of the
mythologem is defined by the existential fate that has befallen
the pearl. The pearl of our story is not any pearl: It is the lost
pearl that needs to be found and retrieved. Throughout this
manifest creation the seeds of the Divine, the sparks of the
eternally brilliant flame,
179
The Other Reality
are scattered and concealed. The great sea of material and
psychic forgetfulness has covered the precious pearls of heaven.
Frightful and fierce guardians watch over them and hold them
captive. The pearl is hidden in the shell of an animal; thus are
the scattered sparks of light hidden in nature and in the
material universe. The dragon-serpent, as noted earlier, is a
form of the ouroboros, the tail-swallowing monster whose
circular shape represents (among others) the cyclicity of
self-perpetuating natural life within time. The symbol of the
serpent serves the same purpose as the Wheel of Life in
Buddhism; it stands for the fiercely revolving patterns of
embodied existence that hold the units of transcendental life
and light captive.
The heavenly traveler is thus the human soul descendi ng to
earth in order to rescue the divine spirit enmeshed in the
structures and workings of nature. The human spirit acts as a
savior to the spirit lost in the cosmic sea. At the same time, the
forces of the manifest cosmos are not without their effect on the
heavenly traveler; they overpower him and impose the sleep of
unconsciousness on him. The rescuer now needs to be rescued
himself; the savior is in dire need of salvation, which boon is
bestowed on him by the letter from on high. (In many ways,
this is the Gnostic version also of the myth of the wounded

healer, the maimed fisher king, and similar figures.) Humans

act as redeeming helpers toward the spirit in matter and nature,
whereas the divine messengers of light in turn come to the aid
of the human soul in the calamities into which it fell in the
course of its own redemptive mission.
These motifs of Gnostic metaphysics are amplified by the
psychological relevance of the mythologems and symbols
employed. It is a time-honored recognition of Gnostic and
related thinking that the greater world (macrocosm) of
transcendence is duplicated within the smaller world
(microcosm) of immanence, and the latter may justly be
envisioned as the human psyche itself. Thus the ego stands as
the intrapsychic representative
Traveler from Heaven
180
of the human soul, whereas the Self is the symbolic paradigm of
the redemptive agencies of transcendence.
As Jung never ceased to affirm, Christ is the supreme symbol in
our culture of the Self, and redemption is the relig ious
formulation of individuation. The robe of glory of individuated
selfhood is intimately related to the aspect of that robe in its
ultimate metaphysical meaning. As always, the spiritual and
the psychological are not mutually exclusive. Far from it, the y
are but two sides of the same great coin of wholeness.
One more important keynote needs to be reiterated in
conclusion of this interpretation. It is evident to anyone who
reads the "Song of the Pearl" in its unabridged form that the
writer was not so much motivated by didactic intentions, such
as one may find among writers of allegories, as he was inspired
by vivid personal feelings rooted in experience. Particularly,
the description of the robe when it is restored to its original
owner bears all the hallmarks of an altered and/or mystical
state of consciousness with its accompanying visionary
transports. The symbolic meaning radiating from this splendid

poem is perhaps the greatest proof of the efficacy of the Gnostic

function of myth. It is almost impossible not to experience a
measure of the original insight, and even rapture, experienced
by the writer once one has read and assimilated this wondrous
mythic poem. Today, as long ago, we may still perceive in this
work, as on the robe of glory depicted in it. "the rippling
movements of the holy Gnosis." 4
10
And the Myth Goes On:
Some Modern Gnostic Myths
Jung's Gnostic Myth: Answer to Job
In 1952, Jung's controversial book Answer to Job' was published
and caused much upset among clergymen and laymen of
various Christian denominations who were associated with his
psychological school. Most felt that this book represented a
startling and drastic kind of criticism of Christianity, whereas
few if any recognized that it was a modern Gnostic myth. While
Jung's Gnostic interests were known to many and his early
poetic Gnostic treatise Seven Sermons to the Dead bore testimony
to his close identification with Gnosticism, few of Jung's
students were prepared for the contents of his reworking of the
biblical myth of Job.
The Book of Job, a work dating vaguely between the years 600
and 300 B.C.. deals ostensibly with the theme of the righteous
man who is unjustly afflicted by God. In Jung's Gnostic view,
this venerable story concerns not the theme of a suffering
human who arrogantly questions God's inscrutable designs, but
rather that of a God who is unwise, uncharitable, and unjust
because he is imperfect. Here, then, in brief outline form is
Jung's myth of Job and his afflictor.
Driven to extremity by the sufferings unjustly visited upon him.
Job demands a confrontation with God, who with great bluster

replies to him out of a whirlwind. But the answer given so

dramatically by God is in reality no
And the Myth Goes On 182
answer at all. What sense is there, asks Jung, to God's
thundering about morning stars, flowing seas, crocodiles, and
so on, and what is the point to his asking Job where he was
when he created the world? After all, poor Job was only too
conscious of the bewildering mystery of things, for he had
experienced it quite painfully. God, however, evades the issue
by telling Job something he knew quite well, namely, that God
is the Almighty, and then goes on boasting about what his great
might can do. For all the impressive noise, the inflated majesty,
and the parading of the panorama of nature, God was just
blustering. Job had asked him a perfectly legitimate question,
one of most agonizing urgency to the questioner, and yet he did
not offer a real explanation; nor did God apologize for his
conduct, which any sensible mind would regard not only as
unseemly but also as immoral. Were a human being to destroy
another's family by fire and practice bacteriological warfare on
him, such a person would assuredly be called to account; but
God just replies that he is almighty and that is the end of the
argument. Moreover, God seems angry at Job for having put the
question, and he reproaches the poor man with thunderous
divine eloquence.
In Jung's view. Job is not truly the inferior of God, and he is
aware of this fact. Job is not in the wrong, but rather it is God
who is in the wrong. God is a great, powerful, but quite
unconscious bully who has been coasting along on his own
omnipotence until he found himself in a position in which one
of his creatures could stand up to him and utter a legitimate
criticism of him. He is a jealous God who demands of Job and
of all humans complete obedience to his will and law. Jung
points out that God is also a cheat, for in contravention of his
promise to abide by the covenant, he cheats David, who in the
Eighty-ninth Psalm complains bitterly of this fact.

The moral superiority of Job, the created man, over God the
Creator introduces a truly Gnostic paradox into the myth.
Obviously, there is something radically wrong with God.
whereas there is much that is right with
183
The Other Reality
Job. It is Job who is the real hero of the story, and as a
representative of humanity, as against so-called divinity, he
represents the small but potentially vital element of
consciousness of the human spirit confronted with the huge,
materially powerful, but spiritually unaware almightiness of
the Creator. Jung here restates the ancient Gnostic proposition
that we find in our foregoing chapters, namely, that the God of
this world is a Demiurge, and that the materially feeble human
being possesses a moral superiority over the Creator by virtue
of the presence of the supernal spark deposited into his nature
by Sophia. The words uttered by Job, "I know that my
Redeemer liveth," show that Job is aware of beings and forces
that are superior to the God of this world who are capable of
bringing about the redemption of the captive light-sparks from
this lower region of existence.
More importantlyand it is here that Jung's myth adds a new
keynote to the Gnostic themeGod is still in the process of
growing, of developing consciousness. Jung's God is an
undifferentiated being, possessing a double nature. The
sufferings of Job, as well as his questionings, have led to a
significant achievement. The double nature of God, his light
and dark aspect, was now revealed, and with the assistance of
the human spirit God would have to renew himself. Jung states
bluntly that when God discovered that his creature caught up
with him. he then decided that it was time for him to become
different. The growth and development of God could occur by
God coming to consciousness in humanityin other words,
using Christian terminology, by incarnating. God must become
man in order to discover what human consciousness is like and
to enlighten his own darkness by the light he might discover in

the human spirit. The incarnation of God is a step taken by God

because of his recognition that it might benefit him to
assimilate the superior qualities present in the human soul and
spirit.
Like the ancient Gnostics, so Jung the modern Gnostic turns the
traditional reasoning of the Judeo-Christian system of thought
upside down. Not only does the almighty
And the Myth Goes On 184
but unconscious God desire human consciousness, but also
Christ did not become man because humans sinned, but
because God needed redemption from sin. Jung states
unequivocally that God had to become man because he had
done man an injustice.
Jung now traces the stirrings of psychological growth in God,
since these occur subsequent to his confrontation with Job. God
begins to remember. His vivified memory reveals to him the
existence and the role of someone he once knew but forgot:
Sophia, Lady Wisdom. The relationship of Sophia to the God of
this world is not clarified by Jung in any detail; she appears as
a combination of mother, sister, and spouse of God, who in the
course of his own career had lost her and forgotten her. Now he
begins to desire her and wishes to move closer to her.
Along with Sophia, God also begins to remember another
figure: the Son of Man, the mysterious celestial archetype of
humanity, mentioned by Enoch and Ezekiel, and repeatedly
emphasized by the Gnostics. Jung states that the preparation for
the coming of the Son of Man in the form of an inc arnation was
lengthy and extensive. The numerous prophecies of Enoch and
other seers and prophets created a psychological readiness for
the coming of the messianic dispensation. He remarks in this
connection that if any event was ever prepared for by a
historical development in the thinking of the human environment into which it came, it was the emergence of
Christianity. (We find here Jung's recognition of the
psychological element that is so amply represented by the

Essene tradition and its emphasis on the Son of Man archetype.

It is necessary to remember that at the time Jung wrote Answer
to Job, the Dead Sea Scrolls were not available for his
investigation.) The archetype of the Son of Man, as extolled by
the books of Enoch (a literature most dear to the People of the
Scrolls), represents thus the first answer of God to the question
of Job, namely, the promise that the incarnation of certain
divine forces will take place and justice will be done for
humanity.
When the time is ripe the promise is fulfilled, and the
185
The Other Reality
Son of Man appears on earth as the messianic figure of
Jesus-Christ. Jung points out that great precautions were taken
by divine providence to make the venture of the incarnation a
success. The circumstances of Christ's birth, occurring by way
of a virgin, the paternity not being assigned to any man but to
the Holy Spirit, and many more elements indicate that he
conforms to the Hero archetype, thus being sharply
distinguished from other men. In typical Gnostic manner , Jung
states that Jesus was more god than man, that in him, human
and divine nature were not evenly matched. Being free from sin
particularly, says Jung, distinguishes Jesus from the rest of
humanity, since all human beings sin. Only at one point in his
career did Jesus fully experience the lot of humanity, and that
was when he was moved to exclaim on the cross: "My God, my
God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Here Christ, according to
Jung, manifested the real answer to Job. not merely in prophetic
vision or promise but in actual fact. This was the point in time
when God found himself in the position of a human being and
thus experienced the forlornness and agony of the human
condition. In all other ways, the incarnation is an incarnation of
the light side of the Divine only.
A fascinating aspect of Jung's myth is the assertion that Jesus
seems to have been aware of several Gods, according to his

recorded statements. On the one hand, he speaks of his

heavenly Father as a God of kindness and love, and he insists
that humans could count on his being such. On the other hand,
he addresses the petition "lead us not into temptation" to
someone in the Lord's Prayer. How can a God of love lead
human beings into temptation? Obviously, in addition to the
loving Father we are dealing here also with a darker, more
tricksterlike and therefore perilous aspect of divine nature.
Clearly, Jesus was aware that, although he as an embodiment of
divine light was in touch with the God of light, the dark god, or
the dark aspect of God, was also in evidence and was in need of
being addressed. This recognition is the point of departure for
the further development of Jung's myth.
And the Myth Goes On 186
The incarnation of Christ increased the light, but the darkness
did not go out of existence; it continued at certain levels of
being and was bound to reemerge eventually. Christianity was
designed to be a faith of light, ushering in an age of light,
inasmuch as the light aspect of God was thus placed in the
forefront of human consciousness. Thus, soon after the
departure of Jesus for higher realms, the dark side of reality
begins to emerge from hiding. This becomes particularly clear
in the Book of Revelation, where the dark side of God
reemerges and with it the dark side of life and of Christianity.
Jung implies that in numerous ways this book indicates that the
dark God has broken into the universe and conse quently into
Christian thought once more; the author of Revelation is no
longer dealing with the workings of the messianic light, but
rather with the fury and cruelty of the evil side of God so often
encountered in the Old Testament.
With all of its dark and terrifying imagery. Revelation brings
forth an image that Jung considers fascinating and hopeful.
This vision may be found at the beginning of the twelfth
chapter. A woman appears, arrayed with the sun, with the
moon under her feet, and bearing a crown of twelve stars. She
is about to give birth, and a terrifying red dragon is waiting to

devour her child when it is born. Further strange events take

place: the child is born and is taken up to God's throne, and its
destiny is to rule the nations. The woman flees into the
wilderness, where a place has been prepared for her by God.
Jung notes a great similarity between this image and the one
usually appearing in connection with the emergence of the Self,
the paradigm of the individuated ego. The woman is clearly no
longer the Virgin Mary, but rather the universal, cosmic
woman, the counterpart of the Son of Man. Thus in Jung's
mythic vision, the incarnation is now brought forward into a
new and universal phase. Jung also indicates that the
incarnation did not cease with the ascension as sometimes
assumed, but that it is continued in another fashion by way of
the work of
187
The Other Reality
the Holy Spirit. This means that, in the continuing progress of
the incarnation, the Divine can be born in every human being;
in some sense all humans can become an incarnation of the
Divine.
Although Christ represents the all-important pattern of this, in
some sense it can be repeated by all. Thus, Jung finds the third
answer to Job. The first was the promise of the incarnation as
revealed in the visions of Enoch; the second, the human
experience of Jesus in his abandonment on the cross; and the
third lies in the fact that deity is today striving to come to
consciousness in every human soul. God no longer incarnates in
the pure virgin, but in the archetype of earthly womanhood;
God is incarnating in the existential state of humanity and no
longer waits for conditions of exceptional purity and holiness
as the prerequisites for his descent into human flesh. (A parallel
concept may be found in our investigations indicating the
change of emphasis from Essene purity to Gnostic existential
living in the earliest times of the Christian era, as described in
Chapters Three and Four.)

Jung indicates that this third answer to Job, the new possibility
of incarnation, is hardly conscious at this time. The child is
caught up to God, and the woman goes into the wilderness for a
long period. Still, the indications are clearly present that the
divine and earthly principles can once again come together in a
new synthesis of consciousness, and that God can thus be incarnated in an ordinary human being who is not purified and
prepared in the manner of an earlier age.
The incarnation of God in humanity at large, said Jung,
involves the elevation of the feminine principle and its return to
divine or semidivine status. As the Creator had become
forgetful of the divine woman Sophia and thus became a
one-sided and largely unconscious being, so it is by the
restoration of the exalted feminine to consciousness that this
demiurgic forgetfulness can be finally undone. It is with such
thoughts in mind that Jung approached in Answer to Job the then
recent Papal
And the Myth Goes On 188
pronouncement on the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. 2
which he regarded as the most outstanding theological and
religious event since the Reformation, since it implies that the
earthly principle of the feminine (the physical body of the
Virgin) is given association and therefore, by implication, equal
status with the Godhead.
As Jung welcomed the declaration of the Assumption of the
Virgin as a spontaneous revelation of the unconscious, so he
recognized that with the coming of the Aion of Aquarius,
humanity is about to face a new task. At the beginning of the
Christian era, what humanity needed most were the values
embodied in the Christian revelation. These values concerned
to a large extent the concept of the light side of God and of
human nature itself. Only when this was done could other,
equally important, but more ambiguous recognitions be
allowed to surface into consciousness. The writer of Revelation
became aware of the still-present dark side of God and of life,
but Jung regarded him as somewhat naive, especially when

compared with contemporary humanity. Today's individual has

the ability to be more aware of the danger of what knowledge
has been put into his hands and also of the impulses within his
psyche. We do not possess any longer the purity of the ancient
saints; we are, as it were, much closer to the darkness. This may
enable us to withstand the onslaught of the dark powers of the
soul and to become conscious of what they really are.
Purity may keep the darkness at bay and removed from the ego.
but the existential life seemingly advocated by Jesus and
endorsed here by Jung leads in due course to the encounter
with darkness. This is not to say that we ought to renounce our
Christian tradition; the kindness, goodness, and light present
there may act as highly useful agents balancing the modern
psyche in its attempts to deal with the dark possibilities of this
age. Answer to Job was written in the aftermath of World War II,
wherein Jung saw the eruption of the greatest mass of evil that
ever appeared in human history. While observing the
189
The Other Reality
frightful carnage of the war and the possibly even more
frightful horrors of the Nazi death camps and of the Gulag.
Jung was convinced that moral power was not sufficient to keep
evil at bay. Moral humanity has failed; what is needed now is
wisdom, the wisdom Job sought in his own predicament.
The new savior is different from the virtuous male Messiah of
old. The new redeemer is female and is called Sophia, or
Wisdom. By becoming the children of Lady Wisdom, we reenter
a condition where the opposites are close together. We must
become aware of what is within us in its light and dark aspects.
We must develop conscious resources whereby we might deal
with evil possibilities. To act consciously is our greatest saving
necessity. Jung reminds us of the Gnostic saying of Jesus: "If
you know what you are doing, you are blessed; but if you do
not know what you are doing, then you are accursed and a
breaker of the Law." 3

In Jung's day as in ours, many bewail the moral decline of the

culture and the absence of values in human conduct. It is
almost universally stated that humanity must attain to a higher
moral level. To Jung this means that we must attain a higher
level of consciousness, for morality without consciousness will
inevitably go astray. Jung has given numerous indications
through his teachings regarding the individuation process that
contemporary humanity, rather than its happy predecessors, is
chosen as the birthplace of the progressive incarnation of the
Divine. We have lost our innocence, and by this very fact we
have merited the descent of the Holy Spirit into our guilty,
heartbroken selfhood. In the present era of history, he who
regards himself as innocent has in reality not paid his debt to
existence and has sheltered himself from the alchemical fire of
transformation.
Jung's Gnostic myth reminds us of the imperative tasks of our
lives as contemporary persons: to strive with all our might for
more consciousness while not abandoning our roots in the
spiritual traditions of Western culture and. most significantly,
without succumbing to the perils
And the Myth Goes On 190
attendant upon transformation, among which may be found the
demonic pride of the inflated ego. Jung's individuated person
does not "create his own reality," does not take credit for the
operations of transcendence within this realm of immanence.
As he states in his conclusion to Answer to Job: ". . . the
enlightened person remains what he is, and is never more than
his own limited ego before the One who dwells within him,
whose form has no knowable boundaries, who encompasses
him on all sides, fathomless as the abysms of the earth and v ast
as the sky." 4 Jung's myth with its iconoclasm, insight, and
ever-fearless Gnosis must thus be reckoned as a vital
contribution to insightful living in our troubled times and
world.
A Personal Myth: The Tale of the Brat Prince

All human beings are creatures of myth. Joseph Campbell, who

taught the value of myth to many in our culture, expressed this
convincingly when he wrote: "The latest incarnation of
Oedipus, the continual romance of Beauty and the Beast, stands
this afternoon on the corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue,
waiting for the traffic light to change." 5 The outward-oriented
consciousness of human beings frequently and indeed regularly
loses touch with the inner realities of the mind, and myths in
their own picture language tell the human ego how these
realities may be recognized and integrated into its life. The
dialogue with these inner realities is a function of what in olden
days was called Gnosis, and it is understandable that this
dialogue should take place today even as it did long ag o and far
away.
As noted before. Gnostic myths are a particular modality of
self-understanding, not confined to any one historical period.
Neither are they the sole province of prophetic figures of Jung's
stature and training. It has been observed by insig htful
psychologists that the dreams and imaginative experiences of
persons in our modern world frequently bring forth personal
myths that possess distinctly Gnostic motifs. The following
myth, while not the product of
191
The Other Reality
psychological analysis, possesses such impressive and
instructive features that it appears worthy of inclusion here,
particularly as an example of Gnostic mythmaking in our time.
L. V., a man between thirty and forty years of age ac quainted
with Gnostic myths and teachings, has developed the following
personal myth as the result of repeated experiences of active
imagination extending over a one-and-a-half-year period.
At first, L. V. became aware of what appeared to be him self in
an earlier period and in a world very different from this one.
He was a young boy living in a heavenly city of great beauty

and glory, a child of divine and royal parents, whom he

identified with Christ and Sophia. Although living in a beatific
state of wholeness and peace, he was filled with a certain
restlessness and an adventurous spirit. On the occasion of a
feast in honor of his birthday or coming of a certain age he was
called into the presence of his grandfather, the high God, who
presented him with a magic key that would unlock any door in
the city. It would appear that his elders expected him to use the
key to explore various secret portions of his home city, but such
was not the case.
The boy now betook himself to a portal within the wall that
separated the city from the outside. Frequently, in the past, he
had directed his gaze to the region outside the wall, perceiving
shadowy forms there. Now he wished to find out what existed
beyond the wall. He opened the door with his key, and heard a
rending shriek of disturbing proportions. Through the open
door there poured a veritable cloud of unsavory creatures,
among them a great dark lord, whom he recognized as his own
evil uncle (presumably a satanic brother of Christ) who lived in
exile, having been expelled long ago from the heavenly city.
The evil uncle cast a contemptuous look upon him and swiftly
passed inside the city.
A gorgonlike being with huge hands and claws now seized him
and, nearly piercing his chest with one great claw, hurled him
into a region of black darkness. Gradually
And the Myth Goes On 192
the darkness gave way to a panorama that was fdled with
millions of stars, some at great distance, others closer by; he
was floating in starry space. After some time a light came
toward him and propelled him downward until he found
himself on solid ground. Primeval jungle sur rounded him and
before him stood a strange saurian creature gazing down at the
new arrival with benevolent bemusement. It was quite apparent
that the creature had come to watch over him. The frightene d,
lonely boy held onto the creature and cried uncontrollably.
Separated from his almighty parents and torn from his home in

the splendid city in the heavens, he found himself in a strange

world with an alien creature as his only friend and company.
A long period ensued wherein the boy and the lizard remained
in close association. After some time a symbiotic embodiment
took place wherein they both inhabited a dragonlike body and
roamed the earth, successfully mastering the territory and
fending off potential enemies. After the passage of much time,
amounting to centuries and millennia, conditions changed, and
the form within which they dwelt became human. Nevertheless,
the lizard remained in union with the boy, becoming a kind of
guardian spirit attached to him and cohabiting his body. Many
embodiments took place, but the lizard guardian was always
present, supplying much needed cunning and worldly
intelligence lacking in his companion.
Meanwhile, in several visions, the exile learned what drama
took place in the heavenly city after his own forced departure.
He saw a scene wherein his evil uncle triumphantly burst into
the chamber of Sophia, intending to ravish her, thereby
mingling his dark seed with the luminous substance of heaven.
At first it appeared as if the terrible and sacrilegious deed
would be accomplished, but soon it was evident that Sophia
had freed herself from her assailant by magical means and
stood laughing in a distant portion of the room. The cause of
her merriment was not merely her escape. With satisfaction she
pointed to the dark lord's chest where she had made
193
The Other Reality
appear a fiery, indelible mark: It was the encircled cross, her
own symbol and emblem, which her attacker was now obliged
to bear forever. With a dreadful howl of pain and humiliation,
the dark one fled from the chamber and from the city.
The intrusion of the dark lord into the city and into Sophia's
chamber was not without its consequences. In some mysterious
fashion, and at least in part as the result of the branding of the

evil one with Sophia's cross, a measure of the celestial light

entered the darkness. A race of beings came into existence that
bears the imprint of Sophia and yet is related to the dark lord.
These beings, of somewhat vulpine appearance, are
nevertheless of a rather benign dispostion and respect Sophia
rather than any other divinity.
A few subsequent experiences served to elucidate the further
career of the exile on earth. In one vision he saw himself in the
company of an old wise man, who pointed to a particular
luminary in the heavens and explained to him that he had come
from beyond the stars to this world. The wise man was
apparently a messenger who at long last had come to remind
him of his own origins and instructed him in the w isdom that
appertained to his station. The contact between himself and the
homeland was thus established and strengthened.
Another development concerns the ancient saurian being
incorporated into the organism of the exiled child of heaven.
With the coming of greater self-knowledge on the part of its
host, the lizard had grown and was able to cooperate more
knowledgeably with the process of wholeness in which both
were engaged. At one point the lizard said to the exiled prince:
"I am your body." The gulf separating L. V.'s spirituality from
his physicality had increasingly diminished, and the two sides
coexisted in mutual trust.
The bringing to consciousness of this myth was accompanied by
much emotion. L. V. found himself literally reeling under the
impact of the story and, particularly in the earlier stages of the
unfoldment of the myth, often
And the Myth Goes On 194
felt despondent and weighed down by guilt and remorse over
having admitted the enemy into the heavenly king dom and
having caused his own exile. As the story unfolded these
feelings gradually abated, and it became clear that even the
seemingly ill-advised deeds of the adventurous young prince
operated within a meaningful order of supernal intent. At the

same time, L. V.'s personality successfully fought off

temptations of both positive and negative inflation, although
not without difficulty. The realization came to him that the
personal can neither take credit nor assume responsibility for
the transpersonal. The issue of the exalted origins and
parentage did not lead to phenomena of ego-indation; nor did
the story of the association with the lizard-being take on
features of a multiple personality. After a year and a half of the
unfoldment of the myth, L. V. is much more self-possessed,
balanced, and functions with greater ease in life than before.
The integrative effect of the myth is thus clear and evident.
We are confronted here with a personal myth that has definite
Gnostic overtones and at the same time serves definite purposes
of an integrative, individuational character. The story begins in
a childlike condition of primitive wholeness where ego and
archetypal psyche are identified. Inner and outer, above and
below possess no differentiation. With his adventurousness, the
"brat prince" becomes a mercurial facilitator of differentiation.
His proclivity for pranks and jokes, which culminate in his
opening of the gate, brings about the catastrophe of the
violation of the integrity of heaven. Yet, this catas trophe does
not have totally dire consequences, for the maternal wisdom
(Sophia) in the fullness is not victimized. Rather, the dark
intruder, though unwillingly, becomes the carrier of light into
the realm of his own darkness. Satan is changed into Lucifer;
the adversary becomes now a reluctant bearer of the light of
wisdom.
When one contemplates one's psychic origins, one finds a
double condition. On the one hand there is perceived a
condition of paradisiacal wholeness, a state
195
The Other Reality
where one's nature is united to the essence of Divinity (being a
child of Christ and Sophia); on the other hand, it is a state
where creativity and growth are excluded. Children, in growing

to adulthood, eventually face the problem of how to achieve

union with the fullness and with the gods without succumbing
to inflation attendant upon identification. In order to achieve
this end. the integrity of heaven must be broken, a sin against
wholeness must be committed. Without the loss of psychic
innocence there can be no individuality, and without
individuality, individuation in the depth-psychological sense is
impossible. The brat prince must fall from heaven, so that in
due time, richer in wisdom and experience, he may once more
regain the glories of the celestial city.
Space does not allow us to explore the full scope of the Gnostic
and psychological wealth of this myth. It is easy to discern that
the ultimate reconciliation of light and dark is one of the
important motifs present. It is interesting to note, for instance,
that the deed that may lead to such an eventuality is brought
about by Sophia. Even as in Roman Catholic lore Mary is the
ultimate conqueror of the demonic serpent, so here also the
final redemption is foreshadowed by Sophia's imprinting of her
seal of light on the chest of Satan. The redeeming function of
the divine feminine thus reveals itself clearly in this myth, even
as it is present in much ancient Gnostic lore.
The issue of the body, the physical "guardian spirit" of the
psyche, is another fascinating feature of this tale. The saurian
creature that declares in the end "I am your body" can teach us
much concerning the proper understanding of the mind-body
dichotomy. Psyche (the prince) and soma (the lizard) are not
one but two. yet their interaction produces an ever more
harmonious relationship wherein both parties benefit and
undergo a creative transformation. The cunning and
resourcefulness of the lizard (and aren't humans still bearers of
a "lizard brain"?) afford the psyche protection and opportunity
for experience. The conjunction of the soul of the prince with
the nature of the lizard ensures many useful developments
And the Myth Goes On
196

on the part of both beings. One may also note that much of the
neo-Gnostic lore to be found in such sources as H. P.
Blavatsky's works contains references to spiritual monads from
far-off realms of light who take up residence in crude animal
bodies of earth and thus begin their long evolutionary journey.
As always, the question arises: What is the most profitable wa y
to treat myths of this nature? Most frequently in the past,
visionary persons were wont to present their own inner
experiences by attaching to them metaphysical claims of
representing revealed truth. Today's world also is filled with
prophets, mediums, and "channels" who claim absolute validity
for their mythic insights. It is well to take to heart Jung's wise
words. "In view of this extremely uncertain situation," he wrote,
"it seems to me very much more cautious and reasonable to take
cognizance of the fact that there is not only a psychic but a
psychoid unconscious, before presuming to pronounce
metaphysical judgments. . . . There is no need to fear that the
inner experience will thereby be deprived of its reality and
vitality." 6
Unknowable, transpsychic factors are ever at work behind the
unconscious psyche and its mythic images. We may call them
aeonic beings after the fashion of the Gnostics, or psychoid
archetypes, following Jung's intimations. The basis and
substance of the myths that rise to the surface of the
consciousness of men and women cannot be explained by the
use of concepts and words belonging to any discipline. The
myth, and with it the growth and transformation of the human
soul, goes on, and in it may be discovered the treasures of a
Gnosis that continues to assist the illumination of the dark
recesses of our lives and discloses the treasures of meaning and
redemptive insight.
PAR T III
The O t h e r G o s p e l s

Gnostic OtlcrvemUol Serpent

11
The Secret Sayings of Jesus:
The Gospel of Thomas
The Gnostic scriptures discovered at Nag Hammadi make up a
library of diverse religious material. When one attempts to
classify them according to subject matter, one finds six separate
categories. Some works deal primarily with creative and
redemptive mythology, giving various accounts of the creation
of the world, of the pre-fall existence of Adam and Eve. of the
descent of the Saving Power as Jesus and at times under other
names. The emphasis in these scriptures is strongly focused on
the differences that separate these accounts from the book of
Genesis. (Thus in The Apocryphon of John the phrase "not as
Moses said" occurs several times.' Other books consist of
observations and commentaries concerning various spiritual
themes, such as the nature of reality, the nature of the soul,
spiritual salvation, and the relationship of the soul to the
world. 2 The third category of writings contains liturgical and
initiatory texts. 3 The fourth category is primarily concerned
with the feminine principle, particularly Sophia. 4 The fifth
group includes writings that relate to the lives and experiences
of some of the apostles. 5 Finally, the sixth category of scriptures

contains sayings of Jesus as well as some incidents in his life. 6

In addition, there are a certain number of scriptures that may
be regarded as unclassifiable and include writings from other
traditions, such as the writings of Zarathustra, a portion of
Plato's Republic, and others.
IRS

199
The Other Gospels
Only four of the Nag Hammadi scriptures bear the title
"Gospel." In this connection, it is necessary to recall that this
term possessed a different meaning in the early centuries A.D.
from the one that is common today. The Greek term Evangelion
(gospel) was originally accorded to pronouncements sent out by
exalted personages, such as rulers and high officials,
announcing important events of a happy nature. After the first
century, the Church came to employ this term to characterize
documents written by Christian writers, which in some manner
embodied the message of the new dispensation inaugurated by
Jesus. The early Christian period abounded with gospels, and
apparently it was not unusual for the same author to write
several alternative gospels, as the comparatively recent
discovery of the secret Gospel of Mark indicates. 7
The early Church nourished a tradition that held that there
were three lost gospels, namely, that of Philip, Matthias, and
Thomas. When we look to Gnostic authors, we find that they
held views that sustain this tradition, for they affirmed that
there were four recipients of the secrets of Jesus after the
resurrection, namely, Mary Magdalene, Thomas, Philip, and
Matthias. It is certainly worthy of note that the Nag Hammadi
collection contains gospels named after two of these, namely.
The Gospel of Thomas and The Gospel of Philip. In the present chapter,
we shall concern ourselves with the first of these two gospels.

The Gospel of Thomas is not a story, but a collection of sayings.

Save for an introductory sentence at the beginning and for the
title of the treatise appended at the end, it contains one solid
body of sayings, each of which is introduced by the words
"Jesus said." Many of the sayings are identical with or bear a
close resemblance to sayings of Jesus contained in the canonical
scriptures. This has caused some scholars to surmise that The
Gospel of Thomas might be in fact the fabled Q Document (named
after the German word Quelle, meaning source, since it is said to
be the source from whence the three so-called synoptic
The Secret Sayings of Jesus
200
gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke were written).
The reader familiar with the format of the canonical gospels
may wonder why Thomas or the other Gnostic gospel-writers
concentrated on the sayings of Jesus in preference to the story
of his life. The reason for this may be found in the Gnostic
conception of Jesus. As indicated earlier (Chapters Three and
Seven), the Gnostics felt that Jesus and the nature of his earthly
career were a mystery that is not subject to rational analysis.
They also held that whatever the meaning of this mystery may
be, its focus cannot be found in the physical life of Jesus,
namely, his birth, travels, healings, or even his death and
resurrection.
Jesus, according to the Gnostic scriptures, practiced his
ministry in two ways: First, he was a teacher who offered verbal
instruction of a particular kind. When he taught he imparted
more than concepts and precepts. Rather, it appears that his
teaching was in the nature of stimulating the operation of a
creative and transformative process in his disciples. Second, he
was a hierophant who instituted mysteries into which he
initiated those who were ready to receive them. The Gospel of
Thomas represents a partial record of his activities as teacher,
although indications of his hierophantic mysteries are present
also. By contemplating a selection of the sayings contained in

The Gospel of Thomas, the reader may gain an impression of the

tone of these secret sayings, and may come to discern the
difference between the Gnostic Jesus and the Jesus of
conventional Christianity.
Sayings Concerning the Human Condition
If the flesh has come to be because of the spirit, it is a wonder,
but if the spirit has come to be because of the body, that is a
wonder of wonders. But I wonder how such a great wealth has
come to dwell in this poverty. (29)*
*The number in parentheses indicates the number of the
saying in the Gospel. The numbering of the sayings used here
agrees with the system of numbering used in the majority of
the published translations.
201
The Other Gospels
The spirit-body duality is regarded here in the light of Gnostic
objective idealism, with some existential overtones. Spirit and
body are both real in their own right, and together they
constitute the process of incarnate existence. Pure materialism
and pure idealism are both rejected. The existential task of
legitimate inquiry is not to argue whether spirit is a function of
body or whether the body is a product of spirit, but rather to
recognize how limited the scope of consciousness has become in
our present condition. The implications of the saying are that it
is surely incumbent on us to undergo a transformational
process of Gnosis, whereby the original wealth of pure
consciousness may be recovered.
His disciples said: When wilt thou appear to us and when will
we behold thee? Jesus said: When you divest yourselves of
your clothing without being ashamed, and take your clothes
and trample them under your feet as the small children do, and
step on them, then shall you behold the son of life and you
shall not be frightened. (37)

The theme of spiritual nakedness, which occurs more than once

in this gospel, may be interpreted in a narrower sense as the
discarding of our persona, and in a wider sense a s the need to
shed the many illusory concepts and beliefs that make up the
false cosmos of our personality. Gnosis does not consist so
much in adding some miraculous external element to our
consciousness; rather, it requires a subtracting from our minds
and lives of much material that serves to obstruct insight. To
confront the ineffable greatness, we must first shed our false
selfhood without fear of consequences.
Jesus said: Become passers by. (42)
The shortest saying in this gospel is truly eloquent in its
simplicity and brevity. An Islamic adage states: "The world is a
bridge; pass over it, don't build on it." The Gnostic does not
regard this cosmos as the home of the human spirit. We are
travelers in this world and should not regard ourselves as
permanent residents.
The Secret Sayings of Jesus
202
If they say to you: "From where are your origins?" say to them.
"We have come from the Light, where the Light has begun
through itself." . . . If they say to you: "Who are you?" say: "We
are his children and we are the chosen of the Living Father." If
they ask you: "What is the sign of your Father in you?" say to
them: "It is a movement and a quiet." (50)
This is a most important saying inasmuch as it deals with the
definition of the identity of the Gnostic disciple. The Gnostic
knows that he originates in the fullness, where the supreme
light of primordial divinity dwells. The elect are those who
know themselves as emanations of the supreme light.
"Movement" stands for the principle of dynamic change as
evidenced in becoming, realization, living; whereas "quiet" may
be taken to signify the pleromic state of equipoise. Becoming
and being, out-breathing and inbreathing when balanced and

consciously realized constitute the hallmark of true Gnosis

within the individual.
There was a rich man who had much wealth. He said: I will use
my goods so that I may sow and reap and plant and Till my
granaries with fruit so that I will not be deprived. This was
what he thought in his heart. And that same night he died.
Whoever has ears let him hear. (63)
The fruits of earthly labors and cares are precarious and
evanescent. The Gnostic ought not to waste an over -amount of
his psychic force on the personalistic pursuits of life, for his
efforts ought to be employed elsewhere.
A woman from the assembly said to him: Blessed is the womb
which bore thee and the breasts which fed thee. He said to her:
Blessed are those who have heard the word of the Father and
have kept it in truth. For there will be days when all of you
will say: Blessed is the womb which has not conceived and the
breasts which have not fed any child. (79)
The mere physical role of giving birth and nourishing has
limited value. The biological cycles of nature are one
203
The Other Gospels
of the great traps wherein consciousness is caught. To be
human means more than to be a parent; it is more im portant to
be a woman than to be a mother.
The Kingdom of the Father is similar to a woman who was
carrying a jar filled with meal. While she was walking on a
long road, the handle of the jar broke off. The meal poured out
behind her on the road.... After she came back into her
dwelling, she put the jar downshe found it empty. (97)
This parable, which is not found in any other source, brings to
our attention an important principle. When starting on our
earthly journey we have a measure of the fullness present in

our souls, but in the course of our lives we are in grave danger
of losing this plenum of glory and creativity. Life in the world
can imperceptibly rob us of our innate spiritual treasure. Only
self-observation and conscious vigilance can prevent this
unhappy state from obtaining.
Simon Peter said to them: Let Mary depart from among us,
because women cannot be worthy of the Life. Jesus said: I
shall direct her. so that I will make her male, that she may be a
living spirit, just like you men; for every woman that becomes
male will enter the kingdom of heaven. (114)
It is easy to misunderstand the significant meaning contained in
this saying. In several Gnostic scriptures the apostle Peter is
represented as a male chauvinist, resentful of the high regard in
which Jesus holds women. Jesus here tries to convince Peter,
using a language Peter understands, that women may overcome
the socially imposed handicap of their gender by undergoing a
spiritual androgynation. It is interesting to note that in the
writings of Clement of Alexandria we find Gnostic statements
indicating that this same process may be applied also to men,
who will enter the kingdom when having become fe male. In
Jung's psychology, women need to integrate their animus, and
men must do the same with their anima; the bringing to
consciousness of the
The Secret Sayings of Jesus 204
contrasexual image of each person permits entry into the
kingdom of individuation and consequent wholeness.
Sayings Concerning Conduct
The disciples asked him, they said to him: Desirest thou that
we fast, and in what manner should we pray. . . . and what diet
must we observe? Jesus said: Do not lie; and do not do what
you dislike, for all things are open before Heaven. For there is
nothing hidden that shall not be revealed and there is nothing
that is covered up that shall remain without being disclosed.
(6)

An honest relationship with one's inner being is more

important than the following of outer rules. As in many other
sayings, so here we find the emphasis the Gnostic Jesus places
on the existential attitude toward life, in contrast to the
anxious, compulsive concern about the Law we find among his
opponents, the Pharisees. Unconscious resentment, engendered
by rigid rules of behavior, brings psychological disaster, for
repressed feelings and desires will not stay in the psychic
underworld to which they have been banished, but will return
to haunt the individual. This is even more evident in the
following saying:
If you fast, you will start a sin for yourselves and if you pray,
you will be condemned and if you give alms you will do injury
to your spirits. And if you go away into any country and travel
in the regions if they welcome you. eat what they place before
you, and heal the sick among them. For what goes into your
mouth will not pollute you, but what comes out of your mouth,
that is what will pollute you. (14)
The new dispensation proclaimed by Jesus abrogates the
observances of the old Law. Aside from this important Gnostic
teaching, one may also consider the emphasis in Jung's
psychology on the need for the individual to discover his or her
own internally authenticated moral code. Individuation is not
possible until the assumptions and shibboleths of the collective
are consciously scrutinized and replaced by informed choice.
205
The Other Gospels
Love thy brother as thy own soul, protect him as thou would
the apple of thine own eye. (25)
Gnosis and Gnosticism are not based on cold, impersonal
principles of what ordinarily is understood as "knowledge." The
orthodox Christian has no monopoly on lovefar from it.

Why do you clean the outside of the chalice? Do you not

comprehend that the one who made the inside also made the
outside? (89)
This saying is addressed to the emphasis on purifica tion, which
was regarded as abrogated by the new existential emphasis
brought by Jesus. The inner and the outer. Self and Ego, form
an organic unity, albeit a unity existing initially at the
unconscious level. The ultimate objective envisioned by the
Gnostic is not the mere purification of the personality, but the
integration of the dichotomy of personal versus transpersonal
into an abiding condition of wholeness.*
Whoever has discovered the world and has become wealthy,
let him abjure the world. (110)
Before we can deny anything we must have acquired it. Those
who do not own the world (in a psychological sense) cannot
renounce it. To find the world means to come to terms with it,
and to become wealthy means that we must accumulate a
wealth of experience. The Gnostic teacher Carpocrates pointed
out that without extensive experience of the world, the world
cannot be overcome (see our Chapter Five).
Woe be to the flesh which is dependent upon the soul; woe be
to the soul which is dependent upon the flesh. (112)
The Gnostic worldview is not characterized by one -sidedness. It
is neither an extreme idealism that regards the flesh as an
illusion nor materialism that views the soul
as an
epiphenomenon
resulting from bodily
*See also Saying 22 of this gospel later in this chapter.
The Secret Sayings of Jesus 206
functions. Earlier we characterized Gnosticism as a form of
objective idealism inasmuch as it recognizes the reality of
material objectivity as well as the reality of ideation.
Concerning the Redeemer

Jesus said to his disciples: Speak of comparisons to me and tell

me whom I am like. Simon Peter said to him: Thou art like a
righteous messenger. Matthew said to him: Thou art like a
sage with wisdom. Thomas said to him: Master, my mouth
cannot express whom thou art like. Jesus said: I am not thy
master, because thou hast drunk, thou hast become inebriated
by the bubbling spring which I have measured out. And he
took him, and he withdrew and uttered three words. When
Thomas came back to his companions, they asked him: What
did Jesus say to thee? Thomas said to them: If I tell you one
thing which he said to me, you will raise up stones and throw
them at me; and fire will issue from these stones and burn you
up. (13)
All definitions of the mystery of the Self, even when embodied
in Jesus, the paradigm of the individuated selfhood, are
inadequate. Peter tries to define Jesus in purely spiritual terms,
while Matthew sees him in merely human terms. Thomas, the
Gnostic apostle, knows that he is faced with an inscrutable
mystery. Jesus is no longer master over Thomas, for Thomas
has availed himself of the direct experience of Gnosis, which
Jesus made accessible to him. The three words signify initiation
into the hierophantic secrets of Jesus. Divulging them would
naturally excite the antagonism of those who had not received
the initiation. Even one's companions in the search for Gnosis
will turn against one, when a special grace that one received is
denied them.
I will give you what no one's eye has seen and what no one's
ear has heard and what no hand has touched and what has not
arisen in the heart of human beings. (17)
The Gnosis brought about by the Redeemer is truly the
knowledge of the wholly other. It is not the product of nature
or of evolution or of the effort of the lesser man.
207
The Other Gospels

who is of the earth, earthy. The difference between Gnosis and

worldly knowledge is not quantitative but qualitative; the
cleverness of the ego is a quality of a different order from the
wisdom of the Self.
People probably think that I have come to cast peace upon the
cosmos and they do not know that I have come to bring strife
upon the earth; fire, sword, war. . . . (16)
I have cast fire upon the cosmos, and behold. I guard it until
the cosmos is ablaze. (10)
The way of Gnosis is the way of creative conflict. Many seek
peace and peace of mind, and what they find is merely the
bovine tranquility of unconsciousness. The fire ment ioned is the
same fire that the alchemists employed as the agency of
transformation through the conflictual interaction of the
opposites. One is reminded here of Prof. Gilles Quispel's sage
statement: "Alchemy was the Yoga of the Gnostics."
His disciples said: Point out the place where thou art, because
it is necessary for us to seek it. He said to them: Whoever can
hear let him hear. Within a man of light there is light and he
illuminates the whole world. When he does not shine, there is
only darkness. (24)
The place of Christ is in every person who has attained Gnosis.
Thus, the place where he is, is in reality in us. Consciousness,
which is Gnosis, illumines the world. Thus, we need to cultivate
the light within us and thereby contribute to the enlighten ment
of all the world.
I took my position in the midst of the cosmos and in the flesh I
did appear to them; I found them all drunk, I found none
among them thirsty. And my soul was afflicted for the
children of men. because they are blind in their hearts and do
not perceive that empty they have come into the world and that
empty they seek to exit from the world again. But now they are
all drunk. When they have shaken off their wine, then will
they turn around. (28)

The Redeemer finds those whom he desires to redeem

The Secret Sayings of Jesus
209
intoxicated with the influences of the external world. Jesus
seems to be saying: "Although I have become like them, I can't
communicate with them because they are still looking outside
of themselves for the values of life. The metanoia (turning
around, often called 'repentance') will come when they empty
themselves of the extraverted involvements and fascinations
which are like a drunkenness."
Whosoever drinks from my mouth shall come to resemble me
and I myself will become he, and the hidden things shall be
revealed to such a one. (108)
The mouth is the gateway of the soul; consequently, the
soul-kiss is the sign of Gnostic initiation. The initiate becomes
inwardly united with the initiator and becomes the par taker of
those truths that have hitherto remained concealed.
I am the light that is above them all, I am the all, the all came
forth from me, and the all became me. Cleave the wood, I am
there; raise up the stone and you will find me. (77)
The Greek word for "all" is pan, which is also the name of the
goat-footed god of nature. Jesus here states that though by
virtue of his supernal consciousness he is above the cosmos and
above nature, he is also one with nature. When perfected,
nature and the totality of creation will attain the greatness of
the celestial man (anthropos), of whom Jesus as the Son of Man
is the manifestation. As the paradigm of the ineffable greatness,
Jesus is also present in nature, and his light may be discovered
in the stone and in the wood. At the same time, it is necessary
to recognize that only one who is above the all can have a
proper relationship with the all. Those who are merely
contained within nature, without having emancipated
themselves from nature's thralldom. are unconscious and need

to differentiate themselves from nature so that they, too, might

be above it. As usual, Gnosticism defies all categories: It is
neither theism nor pantheism but a mystic vision that
transcends and unites both.
210
The Secret Sayings of Jesus
Concerning Self-Know ledge
He who knows the all but fails to have self-knowledge lacks
everything. (67)
If you bring forth what you have within you, that which you
have will redeem you. If you do not have it within yourselves,
that which you do not have will kill you. (70)
. . . Whoever discovers his own self, of him the world is not
worthy. (Ill)
These are some of the sayings most closely and directly related
to modern psychological insight. The psyche con tains within
itself the potential for redemption or destruction.
Self-knowledge is the one and only solution to the innumerable
afflictions of life; no commodity of life of any kind can make up
for its lack. Unconscious content of a destructive potential must
be brought to consciousness, lest it turn ever more malign and
destroy the individual's sanity, if not his very life. In order to
overcome the world, it is necessary that one find and know
oneself first. Few persons versed in psychology would disagree
with these recognitions.
Let him who searches not cease searching until he finds, and
when he finds, he will be disturbed, and when he has been
disturbed, he will be amazed and he will have dominion over
the all. (2)
Here we have a concise description of the stages of Gnosis, or
Self-knowledge. By "searching" is meant the awakening to the
need for inner meaning; by persistence the success of the search

is assured; and "finding" signifies the awareness of the growth

of consciousness. To the surprise of many, however,
psychological development does not bring about serenity and
what is called peace of mind. Far from it, the discovery of
individuation brings transformative conflict and much psychic
turmoil. As one approaches the archetypal psyche with all its
numinous denizens, the only appropriate reaction is a reverent
amazement; whereas the final outcome is dominion over
The Secret Sayings of Jesus 211
the natural world of the psyche, which is an accompanying sign
of wholeness.
If those who lead you say to you: "Behold the kingdom is in
heaven." the birds of heaven will enter therein before you. If
they tell you: "It is in the sea," then the fish will enter before
you. However, the kingdom is within you and it is also outside
of you. If you know yourselves, then you will be known and
you will know that you are the children of the living father.
But if you have no knowledge of yourselves, then you are in
poverty and you are poverty. (3)
The heavenly kingdom of meaning and individuation is not
attained by extraverted means. The bird and fish are able to
enter the realm of greater being by virtue of their natural
authenticity and thus may prove superior to humans, who
know not their true nature. The unconsciousness of the human
mind is the most terrifying form of poverty, for to lack meaning
is to lack the central core of the process of living.
Self-knowledge establishes the axis that connects ego and self
and leads to authentic living.
The disciples said to Jesus: Tell us how our end will be? Jesus
said: Have you found the beginning so that you ask about the
end? For where the beginning is, there will be the end also.
Blessed is he who shall stand at the beginning and he shall
comprehend the end and he shall not undergo death. (18)

The meaning of death presents one of the great haunting

questions of human life. Jesus tells us here that death, the end,
ought to be viewed not as an isolated phenomenon but as part
of a process. The same might be said about all end-events, such
as the end of civilization or the end of the cosmos. Gnostic
eschatology could be called a process eschatology, for it refuses
to separate the end of things from their beginnings and thereby
reveals the meaning concealed not in individual events but in
their connections within a process. History is conditioned by
the non-historic; meaningless chronological time is awash
212
The Other Gospels
in a timeless time of transcendental significance. At the
beginning we find the fullness from whence we came, and the
process of meaningful living offers us the promise that it is to
this same fullness that we shall return.
If two are reconciled with each other in this one dwelling, they
then shall say to the mountain: "Move!" and it shall be moved.
(48)
The reconciliation of the opposites is the key that unlocks the
storehouse of limitless psychic energy. Miracles are performed
by those in whom "the two have become one" (as in saying 22).
It is interesting to note how the above saying, with its
intrapsychic emphasis, in the canonical Gospel of Matthew is
turned into one possessing an extraverted emphasis: "Blessed
are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God."
(18:19)
The true peacemaker, according to Thomas, is the one who has
made peace within himself. A cognate theme is expressed in the
following saying:
Blessed are you who have become unified and have become
the elect, for you shall find the kingdom; because you come
from it. and you shall return to it again. (49)

Our present rendition of this saying is far from literal, but

reflects the obvious intention of the saying. The standard
translation of the key word as "solitary" is grossly misleading.
The person in whom the dualities have become united is not a
monk but rather virunus, the human having become one whose
consciousness has comprehended the soul's true origins and
who is thus enabled to return to the point of origination once
more. References to the unified person in this gospel are
numerous; thus, in Saying 75 it is stated that the unified person
will enter the bride chamber in preference to others.
Every student of Jung would agree with the following
characterization of what in depth psychology are known as the
archetypal images:
When you see your image, you are glad. But when you see your
images which came into being before you.
The Secret Sayings of Jesus
213
which neither die nor are made, how much will you then
endure! (84)
The state of transformed, unitive consciousness wherein all
opposites are reconciled and transcended is repre sented by the
Gnostic Jesus as the true objective of the life of the spirit, which
to advance he came into this world:
Jesus saw children who were being nursed. He said to his
disciples: These children who are being nursed are like those
who enter the kingdom. They said to him: Should we then
become children in order to enter the kingdom? Jesus said to
them: When you make the two one, and when you make the
inmost as the outermost and the outer as the inner and the
above as the below, and when you make the male and female
into a single unity, so that the male will not be only male and
the female will not be only female, when you create eyes in the
place of an eye, and create a hand in the place of a hand, and a

foot in the place of a foot, and also an image in the place of an

image, then surely will you enter the kingdom. (22)
Once again we find the image of small children, this time
nursing at their mothers' breasts. The nursing babe may be
taken as a metaphor for the human, who having been born from
the matrix of the unmanifest is still close to the nourishing
power of the archetypal psyche. Individuation (entering the
kingdom) brings the human ego into a state wherein this
intimate closeness with the deeper sources of spiritual
nourishment is reestablished. The disciples misunderstand
Jesus, interpreting his statement literally, so that a more explicit
statement on his part is indicated.
The next portion of the saying demonstrates the intent of the
metaphor most impressively. The union of the opposites within
the psyche brings complete renewal, so that no portion of the
human being remains unchanged. Introversion and
extraversion, matter and spirit, good and evil, animus and
anima having become welded into a new. indivisible unity -, the
person has become a totally new being and as such has entry
into a kingdom of ultimate, numinous meaning.
214
The Other Gospels
It may be useful at this point to summarize the principal
recognitions that are indicated by the sayings we have quoted
and that, significantly, organize themselves according to a
quaternary pattern in the following fashion:
The proper understanding of the human condition leads to the
kind of conduct that is conducive to Gnosis, whereas Jesus as
the image of the individuated Selfhood of the human being
shows the way to the unitive knowledge of the Self.
The premise of Gnosticism regarding the human condition is
that the human soul and spirit do not require an external
institution for their redemption, but rather they contain within

themselves the capacity for spiritual direction. The Redeemer is

a helper and a shower of the way, but the way must be trod by
the individual himself. (Vicarious salvation and a need for a
church as an "ark of salvation" consequently are negated.)
Safe rules and commandments become hindrances to those
who. having spiritually outgrown them, are ready for Gnosis.
Transformation within the Gnostic model brings about a
creative disruption of psychological defenses and thereby
facilitates the "solitary" (unitary) condition, which is the state of
being of the autonomous individual. Society, fam ily, laws,
commandments, and beliefs are relativized as the individual
comes to sacrifice any form of unconscious identification with
them. (In the canonical scriptures, Jesus admonishes people not
to call any man on earth father [Matt. 23:9] and states that those
who love father and mother more than him are not worthy of
him |Matt. 10:37-38]).
Ignorance, not sin. is the cause of the suffering attendant upon
the human condition. Knowledge of the self, which is
essentially identical with the supreme Self or transcendental
being, is the goal of the Gnostic life. This
SELF-KNOWLEDGE
HUMAN CONDITION
+
JESUS
CONDUCT
The Secret Sayings of Jesus 215
goal brings with it the unification of all opposites and thus
union with all life.
In the New Testament Gospel of Matthew (16:24-25) there is a
sentence that has given translators frequent anguish: "Whoever
cares for his own safety is lost; but if a man let his self [original:

psyche] be lost for my sake, he will find his true self [psyche]." To
attempt to convey more meaning, the translators have thus
sometimes translated the same word, psyche, by two different
terms. It is more than likely that if one should evaluate this
statement in the light of the sayings of Jesus in The Gospel of
Thomas, and add some modern psychological terms to boot, one
could make the phrase read: "... if a man will lose his ego, for
my sake, he will find the Self." Such is the insight that might be
brought to us by the lost gospel, attributed to Thomas, found by
a wandering peasant in an old jar beneath the sands of Nag
Hammadi!
12
Means of Transformation:
The Gospel of Philip
Secret rites of power administered in order to facilitate the
transformation of the human soul have been present in the
religions of all times and cultures. Christianity was no
exception. The Secret Gospel of Mark, quoted by the church father
Clement of Alexandria, and its accompanying letter were
discovered in 1958 by Prof. Morton Smith. They have brought
to the attention of contemporary students the idea that Jesu s
himself functioned as a hierophant, conferring secret initiations,
and that at least certain communities within the Christian
church maintained an initiatory order of strictly graded practice
and instruction. Clement thus informs his correspondent in th e
letter just noted that one set of public gospels was made
available to lower-ranking Christians, while a second set of
secret gospels was made available to more advanced members
of the community, and that the "hierophantic secrets of Jesus"
were imparted only verbally in a secret manner. 1
Gnostic Christians appear to have cultivated initiatory
mysteries in addition to those known to more conventional
communities. None other than Plotinus remonstrated with the
Gnostics, who had attracted some of his students, by saying:
"They say only, 'Look to God,' but they do not tell anyone

where or how to look." 2 There can be little doubt that the

Gnostics employed effective methods for the cultivation of
transcendental states of consciousness.
217
Means of Transformation
217
Several sources in the Nag Hammadi collection describe
techniques of spiritual discipline. Such books in this collection
as Zostrianos, The Treatise of the Eighth and the Ninth, and
Allogenes are replete with descriptions of spiritual practices and
the ecstatic conditions of mind induced by such practices. None
can equal, however, in this respect, The Gospel of Philip, which
like The Gospel of Thomas contains a large number of sayings
attributed to Jesus, interspersed with explanatory
commentaries. Philip's gospel has not attained the relative
popularity enjoyed by that of Thomas, and the reason for this
circumstance is to be sought in the emphasis that the former
attaches to the Christian mysteries, or sacraments, as Gnostic
means of transformation.
Since the Protestant Reformation, Christianity has been
increasingly moving away from the mystique of the sacraments.
Today, even the former bastion of sacramental faith, the Roman
Catholic Church, seems to be undergoing its own belated
neo-Protestant reformation, wherein the archetypal power of
the seven historic sacraments is progressively waning. One may
doubt whether C. G. Jung could write today as he did in 1939
when commenting on the fact that he encountered fewer
neurotic Catholics than Protestants or atheists.
There must be something in the cult, in the actual religious
practice, which explains the peculiar fact that there are fewer
complexes, or that these complexes manifest much less in
Catholics than in other people. That something besides
confession is really the cult itself. It is the Mass, for instance.
The heart of the Mass contains a living mystery, and that is the

thing that works.... And the Mass is by no means the only

mystery in the Catholic Church. There are other mysteries as
well. . . . Now these mysteries have always been the expression
of a fundamental psychological condition. Man expresses his
most fundamental and most important psychological
conditions in this ritual, this magic, or whatever you call it.
And the ritual is the cultic performance of these basic
psychological facts. 1
218
The Other Gospels
With the diminishing of the mystery in our day, the hitherto
valuable element of sacramental worship and its psychological
effects are bound to lessen. As Jung warned us, continuing his
above statement: "That explains why we should not change
anything in a ritual. A ritual must be done according to
tradition, and if you change one little point in it, you make a
mistake. You must not allow your reason to play with it." 4 It is
precisely this rational "playing with" the ancient sacramental
rituals in past and present that is responsible for the lesser
attention received thus far by The Gospel of Philip.
It is perhaps no exaggeration to say The Gospel of Philip is
primarily a manual of Gnostic sacramental theology, in other
words, an account of the Gnostic mysteries. The fountain of
these mysteries, according to this gospel, is Jesus himself:
The Lord worked all things as a mystery; a baptism and
an anointing and a eucharist and a redeeming, and a
bride-chamber. (68)*
Here we find a listing in Gnostic terminology of five of the
seven traditional Christian sacraments. (According to the first
translator of Philip, Dr. H. M. Schenke, a restored passage in
Saying 60 reads: "For the mysteries are seven.") It is very likely
that the two final mystery-sacraments, the redemption and the
bride chamber mentioned above, have been subsequently

changed by the mainstream Church into the much more

mundane sacraments of penance and matrimony. In order to
place these matters in perspective it may be useful to look at the
Gnostic sacraments in their proper order.
Baptism was practiced by the authors of this gospel in two
forms. Ordinary baptism as administered by the orthodox was
known to the Gnostics as "psychic baptism." because it was
designed for people whose consciousness
*The system of numbering the sayings here employed is the
one used in the normative work. The Gospel of Philip, trans. R.
McL. Wilson (New York: Harper Row, 1962).
Means of Transformation 219
was lodged in the mind-emotion complex and who were not
ready to enter the realm of spirit. A higher form of baptism was
known as "pneumatic baptism," indicating that when
administered in this fashion, the baptismal rite no longer
merely served the purpose of purifying the soul, but rather put
the personality in touch with the higher, or spiritual Self.
Baptism as well as all the other mysteries possessed an
indelible character; their effect could never be wiped out:
God is a dyer. As the good dyes, which are called "true,"
dissolve with the things dyed within them, so it is with those
whom God has dyed. Inasmuch as his dyes are immortal, they
are immortal by means of his colors. But God immerses what
he immerses in water. (43)
Anointing (in modern times called confirmation) is the second
initiatory sacrament. Water is used to wash, oil is employed to
seal. Oil. when ignited, burns and is thus associated with the
element of fire, whereas baptism is associated with water. These
two elements have traditionally been regarded by the ancients
as the primary polarity, which when conjoined produce
wholeness. Thus the following saying becomes meaningful:

The soul and the spirit entered existence from water and fire.
The child of the bride-chamber came into being by these and
by Light. The fire is the chrism, the light is fire, the light also
is formless, we speak not of it, but of the other whose form is
white, which is of the light and beautiful and bestows beauty.
(66)
Having entered the stream of the living waters by way of
baptism and having been tempered in the fire of the anointing,
the Gnostic Christian is ready to partake of the eucharist:
The eucharist is Jesus. For he is called in the Syrian language
Pharisatha, which means "the one who is stretched out." for
Jesus came in order to crucify the world. (53)
220 The Other Gospels
The cup of prayer contains wine and also water, and it is
ordered as the kind of blood over which one gives thanks. And
it is filled with the Holy Spirit, and it belongs to the wholly
completed human. When we drink of this, we shall receive for
ourselves the (condition) of the completed human. (100)
The mystery of the bread and wine is thus unmistakably the
one whereby the living presence of the Redeemer has been
made available to his followers. By way of partaking of this
mystery, the Gnostic is prepared to accept the two supreme
mysteries, namely, the redemption and the bride chamber. In a
heroic act of renunciation and commitment called "redemptio n,"
the Gnostic initiate becomes free of the compelling attachments
to this world and its rulers. The Gospel of Philip gives us only
minor details concerning this mystery, but the anti -Gnostic
church father Irenaeus repeats certain statements that were
ritually uttered by those who have received this sacrament: "I
am established, I am redeemed, and I redeem my soul from this
aeon, and from all that comes from it, in the name of IAO, who
redeemed his soul unto the redemption of Christ, the living
one." And the people present respond: "Peace be with all on
whom this name reposes." 5 The author then states that the
initiate is subsequently anointed with the oil of the balsam tree,

which is the symbol of the sweet savor that transcends all ter restrial things. Such are some of the faint echoes left behind of
the mystery of the redemption, known in Greek as apolytrosis.
The supreme mystery of the bride chamber (sometimes called
the spiritual marriage or the mystery of the syzygies) is the
decisive event in the reunion of the divisions of the human
being. As noted in various ways in our recounting of the
Gnostic myths, one of the fundamental mythologems of the
Gnostics concerns the division separating the human
personality and the higher self or "twin angel." While on earth,
the human being is said to possess a body, a soul, and a spirit.
These three are coexisting in a state of imperfect association,
which is
1653
Means of Transformation
221
rendered perfect by the experience of the bride chamber.
Irenaeus, interpreting the teachings of the followers of
Valentinus, describes this mystery as the marriage of the human
spirit to an angel of the Redeemer who resides in the heaven
world above this earth. In modern terms one might define this
mystery as a sacred rite of individuation wherein the person
becomes a true individuum, or indivisible unity.
No less than thirteen different sayings in The Gospel of Philip
refer directly to the bride chamber. Here are some of the most
important:
Everyone who becomes an offspring of the bride-chamber will
receive the light. . . . If anyone does not partake of it while he
is in this world, he will not partake of it in the other place.
One who has partaken of that light will not be seen, nor can
such a one be detained; and none shall be able to afflict such a
one even if he should abide in the world. And again when he
departs from the world he has already received the truth in the

aspect of the images. The world has become the aeon already.
For the aeon is for such a one a Pleroma, and it is in this
manner: it is disclosed to such a one alone, not hidden in the
darkness and the night, but hidden in a perfected day and a
sacred light. (127)
The marvelous effects of the mystery are further described:
But the bride-chamber is concealed. It is the holy of
holies____There is a glory that is superior to glory, there is a
power which is above power. Thus the perfect things are
revealed to us, and so are the hidden things of the truth; and
the holy things of the holy are disclosed, the bride-chamber
calls unto us to enter. (125)
It is evident then, that the mystery of the bride chamber,
though obtained by the individual while still in embodied
existence, joins him or her with a realm of supernal bliss and
transcendence. Whether still living on earth or in an after-death
state, the person who has undergone the experience of the bride
chamber is utterly free from the danger of being captured and
afflicted by the powers of
222
The Other Gospels
this world. The fullness of the Pleroma is no longer a longed for
condition pertaining to a world beyond this one. for earth and
heaven, the below and the above are now one. "Those who put
on the perfect light, the powers do not see them," declares
Saying 77.
Several sayings state that the bride chamber exists in order to
reestablish the primordial unity that existed in the human being
before the separation of the sexes, as symbolized by the
dividing of Adam and Eve in the story of Genesis:

At the time when Eve was in Adam, then there was no death;
but when she was separated from him death came to exist. If
completion shall occur again, and the earlier identity is
attained, then death will be no more. (71)
If the feminine had not separated from the masculine, she
would not die with the masculine. This separation became the
origin of death. It was because of this that Christ came, so that
he might take away the separation which was there from the
beginning and thus again reunite the two; and so that he might
give life to those who died while separated and make them
one. (78)
Also the feminine is united to her consort in the
bride-chamber. And those who have united in the
bride-chamber will never be divided again. (79)
The psychologically informed reader cannot help but be
reminded by these sayings of the contrasexual images of the
anima and animus spoken of by Jung. The psychic
androgynation envisioned by psychology as the result of the
process of individuation has apparently been antici pated (and
sometimes achieved) by the protopsychologists called Gnostics.
The death from which this union redeems humans may be
envisioned as the death of consciousness induced by the lack of
integration of the psyche. (Students of both Western and
Chinese alchemy have similarly interpreted the issue of
immortality versus mortality in alchemical symbolism.)
Although the mystery of the bride chamber is represented as
having been made available to humankind by Jesus,
Means of Transformation
223
it appears that the mystery itself has a high divine origin,
having been enacted in the supernal regions by the high
divinities themselves:

Is it permitted to even speak of this mystery? The all-Father

joined with the virgin who came down, and a fire enlightened
him that day. He appeared in the great bride-chamber as one
who came into being from the bridegroom and the bride. So
Jesus established everything in it through these mysteries.
And it is right for each one of his disciples to thus enter into
his rest. (82)
The transcendental bride chamber thus is said to have united
God the Father with God the Mother (the Holy Spirit), and
Jesus has replicated this divine example for the benefit of
divided humanity. Nor is the bride chamber absent from the
early history of the human race. In Saying 102, we are told that
just as true humanity is remade today in the bride chamber, so
the same has occurred long ago, producing a race whose
members were called by such names as "the true man," the "Son
of Man." and similar names. The mystery is thus clearly not a
novel phenomenon, but one that was available to the spiritual
flowering of the human race in every age.
While a large number of the sayings in this gospel concerns the
Christian Gnostic sacraments, particularly the supreme mystery
of the bride chamber, a number of others concern other themes
of the spiritual life, although most of these may be related in
some manner to the subject of the sacraments. Since the bride
chamber is vitally concerned with the union of the masculine
and the feminine, it is understandable that prominent sayings
should be devoted to the feminine principle. In addition to
Sayings 32 and 55 (quoted in Chapter Four), we may list one
other here:
Some said: "Mary conceived of the Holy Spirit." They do not
know what they are saying. When did it ever happen that a
woman conceived of a woman? Mary is the virgin whom the
powers never defiled. She is a mighty anathema to the
Hebrews, which denotes apostles and apostolic men.
224
The Other Gospels

This virgin whom no power defiled [revealed herself so that)

the powers might defile themselves. And the Lord would
never have said "My Father which is in heaven," unless he had
another father, but he would have just said, ["My father."] (17)
Although Mary, the mother of Jesus, is mentioned less
frequently by the Gnostics than Sophia or even Mary
Magdalene, her importance is still considered by them as very
great. The Holy Spirit in their view is none other than God the
Mother and thus cannot be the paternal agency of Jesus'
conception. Mary is a being untouched by the dark po wers who
rule this world and a manifestation of the unsullied (ever
virgin) feminine power of the Divine. Many of the followers of
Jesus, such as Peter, were still deeply mired in Hebrew
patriarchy and thus were put off by the complex mystery of the
divine feminine that made its appearance in connection with
Jesus. The true father of Jesus is the highest masculine power of
the fullness and not any of the intermediate rulers, whose force
is mingled with all other beings to some extent.
As becomes clear upon contemplating the various scriptures of
the Gnosis, human nature is never regarded as corrupt or the
body as incapable of experiencing sanctification (contrary to the
teachings of St. Augustine and other church fathers):
When the pearl is thrown into the mud. it does not become
therefore devalued, nor does it become more valuable if it is
anointed with oil of balsam. Rather, it possesses the same
worth in the esteem of its owner. It is the same with the
children of God, wherever they may find themselves, for their
value is known by their Father. (48)
The holy person is holy completely, right down to his very
body. For he makes the bread holy when it is offered, and also
the cup, and any other thing he receives, for he sanctifies
these. Then how could he not consecrate the body also? (108)
The essential dignity of the human spirit and soul are
Means of Transformation

226
cardinal tenets of the Gnostic worldview. The essence of the
human being is not merely created by God but is God, not in
the exclusive but in the inclusive sense inasmuch as it is part
and parcel of Divinity. Psychologically, this might be seen to
mean that the psyche may be subject to unconsciousness (the
mud into which the pearl falls) but its very nature entitles it to
the highest respect. Similarly, temporary unconsciousness and
ill-advised behavior (sin) do not indicate that with the
necessary growth and development of consciousness true
spiritual greatness is precluded. Critics of the Gnostics often
accused them of deprecating the human body. The above saying
puts such accusations to shame. The body can be sanctified by
the indwelling consciousness, as can matter and nature and all
creation. To the holy all things are holy, while to the
unconscious all of life is but darkness of darkness.
Another criticism leveled against the Gnostics (notably by some
neo-Platonists) was that they had no regard for virtue. The
following saying, however, extolls the three chief virtues of
Christianity and adds to them a fourth, Gnosis:
The workings of this world are made possible through four
forms. [The goods of the world] are gathered into the
storehouse by way of water, earth, air and light. And the
workings of God are likewise through four; faith and hope and
love and Gnosis. The earth is faith, in which we take root. The
water is hope, by which we are nourished. The air is love, by
which we grow. And the light is Gnosis by which we ripen.
(115)
Were the Gnostics radical dualists as some have in ferred? Is it
true that they divided all being into two categories, beneficent
light and evil darkness, and envisioned the purpose of the true
life to be simply the liberation of the light from the darkness?
No, says The Gospel of Philip:
The light and the darkness, life and death, the right and the
left, are twin siblings of each other. It is impossible

227
The Other Gospels
to separate them from each other. Thus the good are not truly
good, nor the evil evil, nor is life life, nor is death death. Thus
each one of these will be resolved into its origin as it was in
the beginning. But those who have risen above the world,
these are the ones who are indissoluble and eternal. (10)
The untransformed human exists in a world where the
opposites are fiercely and hopelessly entangled in each others
conflictual embrace. To attempt to disengage them from each
other by intellectual analysis or absolute moral judgment is an
exercise in futility. It is only by rising above the opposites that
the spiritual perspective of true Gnosis arises. The intrapsychic
implementation of these insights is further elucidated in Saying
40, where the author uses the metaphor of domesticated and
wild animals living on the same earth. Similarly, says the
gospel, one having Gnosis uses the powers that are subject to
conscious control but does not cast out the dark side of the
mind any more than the light side. Rather, such a person
recognizes that both are necessary for the achievement of
wholeness. The saying ends with the statement that this indeed
represents the design of Divinity: "The Holy Spirit shepherds
everyone and rules all these powers, the 'tame' ones as well as
the 'wild' ones, and also those which are united. For indeed she
keeps them shut up together in order not to let any of them
escape, even if they wished."
Philip also reveals that, contrary to the popular view of
Gnosticism, the Gnostic view of the cosmos does not imply the
absence of a supernal divine design in creation. According to
the following saying the creating rulers in their ignorance are
not aware of the hidden design operating within the creation
they wrongfully assume to be their exclusive domain:
The rulers held that it was by their unique force and will that
they were performing their works, but the Holy Spirit, in

secret, had organized everything through them as it intended.

Truth is sown in all places, that truth which
Means of Transformation
228
existed from the beginning. And many perceive it when it is
sown. But only a few see it being harvested. (16)
The liberating mysteries of the Gnosis are designed to bring
about a deification (apotheosis) of the human being. By
inducing an experiential knowledge of things transcendental
the knower becomes increasingly affini-tized to transcendence
and comes to realize the hitherto hidden divinity within
himself:
It is not possible for anyone to see anything of the things that
are truly real unless he becomes like them. Such is not the way
with those in the world: they see the sun without being the
sun; and they see heaven and earth and all other things, but
they are not these things. This is the truth of the matter. Thou,
however, didst see the Spirit, and thou didst become spirit.
Thou didst behold Christ, and then thou didst become Christ.
Thou didst behold the Father, thou shalt become the Father.
Therefore in this world thou dost see everything but dost not
see thyself. But in that other place thou seest thyself.
Therefore what thou seest, that thou shalt assuredly become.
(44)
The experience of Gnosis, facilitated by the sacramental
mysteries, transports the knower into a realm of exalted
consciousness where unitive knowledge is possible. Faith, in
the Gnostic sense, consists mainly in being faithful to this kind
of experience. By being faithful to one's experience of
transcendence one also develops the capacity of loving action,
which is connected with the sharing of Gnosis with others:
Faith receives, love gives. No one will be able to receive
without faith. No one will be able to give without love.
Therefore, in order to truly receive, we have faith, but this is

so that we may love and give, since if one does not give in
love, he has no profit from what he has given. (45)
Love is indeed far from absent in the teachings given in The
Gospel of Philip. The great division of the psycho-spiritual
organism of humanity into the dualities of above
229
The Other Gospels
and below, inner and outer, male and female, and so forth is
healed by love alone. The mystery of the bride chamber bears
the very name of a chamber of love. Thus, the sacramental
mysteries of the Gnostics appear as directed both by and
towards love. The longing desire of humanity for completion by
way of wholeness meets the unconditional affection of Divinity
proceeding from the fullness. Yet, this divine affection needs
vehicles wherein to manifest and become effective. It is here
that the doctrine of the images as taught in this scripture
becomes understandable. The naive notion, often culti vated by
mainstream Christians, that declares the sanctifying grace of
Divinity can reach the soul without a special vehicle is not
shared by the Gnostics. A number of sayings in Philip expound
a teaching concerning the images in which the supernal
principles proceeding from the fullness are manifest on earth:
Truth did not enter this world unclad, but it came in types and
images. This aeon will not receive truth in any other manner.
There is rebirth, and there is an image of rebirth. It is truly
necessary that (human beings| should be born again through
the image. What image is the resurrection? The image must
rise again through the image. . . . If one does not acquire [the
images] for oneself, the name also will be taken away from
one. But if one receives them in the anointing of the Pleroma,
of the might of the cross, which the apostles called "the right
and the left." then such a person is no longer a Christian but a
Christ. (67)

Those conversant with modern psychology will neces sarily be

reminded here of Jung's teaching regarding the archetypes and
archetypal images. Such images may indeed be envisio ned as
conveyors or receptacles of such psychic energies as are
manifest as meaning, consciousness, and transformation. Jung's
statement quoted early in this chapter, that humanity's "most
fundamental and most important psychological conditions" are
contained in such archetypal rituals as the sacraments receives
Means of Transformation
230
validation here from Gnostic sources. The "Christing" of the
human person occurs not in a purely personal and internal
fashion, but it can (perhaps even must) be facilitated by the
initiatory mysteries to which this gospel is dedicated.
We are thus presented with a seeming paradox. On the one
hand, it might appear that the Gnostic attitude, since it is
oriented toward personal spiritual experience, would be
incompatible with formal practices of mysteries and
sacraments. On the other hand, we have incontrovertible
evidence before us that declares the existence of a formal,
graduated initiatory sacramental practice explicitly Gnostic in
character and associated with the highest flowering of the
Gnosis in the school of Valentinus. Whatever Gnostics might
have been, they were not proto-Protestant antiritualists, for
their adherence not only to sacraments but also to a doctrine of
apostolic succession is attested to. Thus, Saying 95 states that
"the Father anointed the Son and the Son anointed the
apostlesthe apostles anointed us. He who is anointed
possesses the all. He possesses the resurrection, the light, the
cross, the Holy Spirit. As the Father gave him this in t he bride
chamber, such a one received it."
According to The Gospel of Philip (as well as other Gnostic
documents), the availability of spiritual power is supplemented
by the ability of the duly initiated to pass on such spiritual
power. Personal charisma is undoubtedly present, but so is the

charisma that is initiatory and thus institutional, that is, passed

on in an orderly, definite tradition and succession. Gnostic
individualism does not imply a renunciation of sacramental
grace and of the apostolic authority to administer such grace.
Like C. G. Jung many centuries later, Valentinus, Marcus, and
other Gnostic hierophants administered rites that acted as
means of grace, means of transformation. The non-Gnostic
church after Constantine continued with this practice, but it
lacked the original emphasis. The greater mysteries of the
redemption and of the bride chamber were lost, although they
surfaced centuries later in the
231
The Other Gospels
Cathar rite of the consolamentum. Baptism was reduced to
psychic baptism, and the anointing became a folk rite of
passage for adolescent fledgling Christians. Still, as Jung so
correctly pointed out more than fifty years ago. the sacraments
of Christendom retained a certain measure of their original
power and remained able to convey a certain, though subdued.
Gnosis. It is to be hoped that the discovery of such lost gospels
as that of Philip may stimulate informed interest in the subject
of the initiatory means of transformation. Should this indeed
occur, the efforts of the knowers of old may bear fruit in an age
in dire need of the grace of Gnosis.
13
Redemption and Ecstasy:
The Gospel of Truth and The Gospel of the Egyptians
Two more scriptures from the Nag Hammadi find bear the title
"gospel." One of these. The Gospel of Truth, is contained in the
well-known Jung Codex, the first of the collection to be taken
out of the troubled Egypt of the 1950s and made available to
scholars (see Chapter One). The other is The Gospel of the
Egyptians, also called "The Holy Book of the Great Invisible

Spirit." Both of these books appear to have attracted attention in

ancient times. Writing around A.D. 180. Irenaeus mentioned a
scripture authored by Valentinus called the Gospel of Truth.
After the Jung Codex became available to scholars, many felt
confident that the new find was indeed none other than the
fabled gospel written by the greatest of the Gnostics,
Valentinus. The scholar chiefly responsible for the purchase of
the codex, Gilles Quispel, wrote:
It appeared that the Gospel of Truth beyond doubt came from
the school of Valentinus and was identical with the writing
which was referred to by Irenaeus. A new heretical gospel, the
only one of its kind which is as yet available to students, had
been discovered. Our surmise has proven to have been correct.'
Similarly, information concerning a "Gospel According to the
Egyptians" has existed for a long time. Such an apocryphal
scripture was mentioned occasionally by the fathers of the
Church, and though it is impossible to
232
232
The Other Gospels
determine whether the two fragments bearing this name found
in the Nag Hammadi collection are identical with the gospel
alluded to in the early literature, it is possible that we are
indeed in possession of this long-lost gospel.
The Gospel of Truth is a poetic work of Christian mysticism with
powerful Gnostic overtones. Should it occur to anyone to
question the compatibility of mystical Christianity with
Gnosticism, this scripture might convince him or her otherwise.
Not even the most carefully written, Christ-centered tract of
Evangelical derivation could demonstrate greater devotion to
the figure of Jesus Christ than is found in this scripture
attributed to the "arch-heretic" Valentinus or one of his closest
disciples. The sublime beauty of its meditative thought and the

poetic flight of its language qualify it as one of the great

treatises of early Christian mysticism, to be placed along side
such classics as The Cloud of Unknowing and the writings of
Dionysius the Areopagite. The tone is evident in the opening
passage:
The Gospel of Truth is a joy for those who have received the
gift of knowing the Father of truth by way of knowing him
through the power of the Logos, who came forth from the
fullness, the Logos who is ever present in the thought and
insight of the Father, he who is addressed as the savior, such
being the name he receives because of the work he is to
perform for the redemption of those who do not know the
Father. The name "gospel" is the proclamation of hope, and the
discovery for those who search for him.
In effect, the author of this gospel says to us that though the
non-Gnostic Christian believes Jesus is the Son of God who
came to redeem humankind from sin, this story is still very
incomplete. A much more complete tale is told here and may be
summarized thus: There is a Source of all called the Father
(called Depth by Ptolemy or Space by H. P. Blavatsky in our
time). From this ultimate progenitor emerges Truth, the
quintessential wisdom of the Father, whereby the Father can be
known. To know the truth is the ultimate objective of human
life; upon it
Redemption and Ecstasy 233
depend such issues as love, authenticity, and above all,
freedom. "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth will make you
free," says the New Testament Gospel of John.
Although she is the first emanation of the Father, Truth
(Aletheia) may also be envisioned as God the Mother, the
supernal and transcendental aspect of Wisdom (Sophia). From
the Father of all and Truth the Mother proceed the Word
(Logos), who is the revelation of consciousness and the agency
that leads the human mind to truth, awareness, and wholeness.
Using terms familiar to depth psychology, we might say that

the Word is the archetypal image, the Truth the archetype , and
the Father the psychoid archetype-as-such, and that all three
are expressions of the same principle of ultimate redemp tive
wholeness.
In the first few passages of the gospel we literally see the plot
thickening. The all, or creation, searched for its own source, and
in its anguish it emanated a thick substance like fog, which
prevented it from perceiving clearly. Within this fog of
unconsciousness another personified principle, named Error
(Plane), arises and waxes powerful. Not knowing the truth, t his
being of error now fashions its own cosmos, but it is an
inauthentic world, a substitute reality, from which truth is
missing. Thus, we are presented early in the text of this gospel
with a psychologically meaningful description of our existential
condition. Unconsciousness causes a meaningless existence
within which the human psyche roams about without the
authenticity it needs.
In his essay "Analytical Psychology and Weltanschauung" Jung
describes this condition: "Human beings have the feeling that
they are haphazard creatures without meaning, and it is this
feeling that prevents them from living their lives with the
intensity it demands if it is to be enjoyed to the full. Life
becomes stale and is no longer the exponent of the complete
human being." The gospel tells us that the nature of this
existential condition is error, lack of truth; the cognate term in
Indian philosophy might be maya, usually translated as illusion.
234 The Other Gospels
How is this error, this illusion, to be dispelled and authenticity
regained? Through the saving agency of the Word, manifesting
in the Christian mythos as Jesus:
This is the happy news of the one who is sought, the gospel
that is manifest to those who are perfect through the mercy of
the Father; it is the hidden mystery, called Jesus the Christ.
Through this gospel he enlightened the ones who were in
darkness. He rescued them by enlightenment out of oblivion,

he showed them the way. This way is the truth which he taught
them. . . . For this reason Error (Plane) grew wrathful at him,
tormented him, was distressed at him. and then Error was
brought to naught. He was nailed
to a tree; he became the fruit of the Gnosis of the Father____
And he discovered them in himself, and, moreover, they
discovered him in themselves; they discovered the incomprehensible, inconceivable one. They discovered the Father,
the perfect one, the one who created the all. while the all
remained contained within him. and the all was in need of
him.
The gospel goes on extolling the virtues of the Savior, in an
earlier passage described as a guide, peaceful and unhurried,
whom the false wise men of this world hated, but who was
beloved by those called "children" because of their
guilelessness. His gospel may be likened to a book that is at
once a living reality, embodying his redemptive mission:
For this reason Jesus came forth; he assumed identity with that
book. He was nailed to a tree; he made public the message of
the Father on the cross. O such great teaching! He descends
down to death, even though life eternal encompasses him.
Having divested himself of the perishable rags, he assumes
imperishability, which no one can ever take away from him.
He entered the empty spaces filled with terrors, he passed
those by who were stripped naked by oblivion. He was
knowledge and perfection, and he proclaimed the things that
are in the heart of the Father, and thus he taught those who
were willing to receive.
As indicated in the above passage, not everyone
Redemption and Ecstasy 235
responded to the message of the Redeemer in equal measure.
Those who "were stripped naked by oblivion" he was obliged to
pass by, but he found response from those who were chosen by
their own Gnosis. These are described as follows:

The one who has Gnosis is a being from the height. If such a
one is called, he hears and he answers, and he returns to the
one who calls him, and he ascends to him. And such a one
knows in what manner the call comes. Having Gnosis, such a
one obeys the will of the one who called him, he wishes to
please his caller, and thus he receives the repose. . . . The one
who thus has Gnosis knows from where he comes and whither
he goes. He understands as someone who frees himself and
awakes from the stupor wherein he lived and thus returns to
himself.
The changes brought about in life and in the world by the
redemptive action of the Logos are indicated by a parable in
which some people move into a house and find a number of
useless, damaged jars that the new owner of the house decides
to remove from the rooms. At the same time there are other jars
that, having retained their usefulness, are rehabilitated and
filled by the owner. The meaning of the metaphor is revealed in
the following passage:
When the Logos came into the midst. . . a great disturbance
took place among the jars because some of them had been
emptied out. others were filled . . . others broken up. All the
places were shaken and disturbed inasmuch as they were
without true order and stability. Error (Plane) was perturbed,
and it did not know what to do. Error was grieved, it was in
mourning, it was afflicted because it knew nothing at all.
When Gnosis drew near to itfor such is the downfall of Error
and of all its emanationsit proved itself empty, having
nothing inside of itself.
The image of jars, and even more of broken shards, is not
unknown in esoteric lore. The Kabbalah speaks of shards
(Klipoth) when describing the counterproductive.
236
The Other Gospels
discontinuous elements of evil that afflict the sparks of light in
this manifest world. Similarly, the autonomous complexes of

the unconscious might be likened to broken shards that the

archetype of wholeness must discard from the newly
constellated internal household which comes about in the
course of individuation. Yet, such psychic forces cannot be
expected to yield to the new Self without opposition. The false
self. Error, also arises in agitation, for its long, dark reign is at
an end and its hollow, unproductive character revealed at last.
We may see here the difference between the Christianity
embodied in The Gospel of Truth, on the one hand, and the
non-Gnostic Christianity of the self-styled orthodox, on the
other. It is not from sin, personal and original, that the
redeeming Logos frees humankind, but rather from the
confusion and illusion brought about by unconsciousness. This
condition is graphically described by the gospel:
One flees to one knows not where or one remains fixed at the
same spot when one desires to move forward, while pursuing
one knows not whom. One feels that one is in a battle, one
dispenses and receives blows. Or one feels as if one is falling
from a great height, or one seems to be flying through the air
without the benefit of wings. At times it appears as if one were
killed by an unseen murderer, without having noticed any
pursuer before.... These things happen until the moment when
those who have experienced all this wake up. Then they see
nothing . . . for all those dreams were . . . naught. It is thus that
they rid themselves of their ignorance, even as it were a dream
which they esteem as naught.
The redeemed elect, i.e., "the living who stand written in the
Book of Life," receive through The Gospel of Truth. which Christ
brings them, the awakening that frees them from illusion and
restores them to their true Self. The revelation of God comes
about through the knowledge of Christ, who is not merely an
agency external to the soul but is found to be present within the
spirit of the
Redemption and Ecstasy 237

human being ("'they discovered him in themselves, they

discovered the incomprehensible, inconceivable one").
It may be appropriate to conclude this summary of The Gospel of
Truth with the beautiful injunction addressed to the redeemed:
The day from on high has no night, and its light never wanes,
for it is perfect. Proclaim, then, that you are this perfect day
and that it is in you that the unfailing light dwells, you who
possess the Gnosis of the heart. Utter the truth to those who
seek it, and speak Gnosis to those who in their error have
made mistakes. Make firm the foot of those who have
stumbled and stretch out your hands to those who suffer from
sickness. Feed those who are hungering and afford repose to
those who are weary, and raise up those who wish to rise, and
awaken those who sleep. For you are the "Gnosis of the heart"
that is manifest.
The knower becomes the power of knowing, the Gnostic is the
embodiment of Gnosis, and redemption changes the redeemed
into a redeemer. It has been observed by some that distinctly
heretical traits of other Gnostic scriptures such as the
distinction between the Unknown God and the Demiurge find
no place in The Gospel of Truth.2 Yet. what is the role of Error
(Plane) if not that of the Demiurge? Whether it is called Error,
Yaldabaoth, or by any other name, the creator of falsehood, of
illusion, is always recognized in the Gnostic gospels. The
names, the personifications matter little; what remain are the
existential realities of imperfection and unconsciousness to
which all humans are subject and which are set off against the
liberating knowledge of the heart, facilitated by the great
messenger and incarnation of Gnosis, Jesus the Christ. The
mysterious transgressivity joining Christ with the
transcendental potential in each and every human spirit, the
mystery of the "Christ in us, the hope of Glory" of whom Paul
speaks, becomes also the point wherein Christian mysticism of
the more orthodox variety joins hands with the presumably
heretical Gnostics. This
238

The Other Gospels

relativizing of heresy and orthodoxy by way of the revelation of
the secret unity within the knowledge of the heart is perhaps
one of the greatest virtues of this sensitively articulated and
deeply felt message that justly deserves to be called The Gospel
of Truth.
Of a different character, and yet of comparable worth, is the last
one of our lost Gnostic gospels to which we are about to turn
our attention: namely, the "Book of the Great Invisible Spirit,"
or The Gospel of the Egyptians. This scripture distinguishes itself
from many other treatises of its kind by the fact that it is not
only a mythological or cosmological narrative but also a
liturgical text or initiatory liturgy, which undoubtedly was
intended to serve as part of a ritual of admission into some
profound mystery of the Gnosis. It is divided into three parts:
(1) a description of the incorruptible realm of the high Full ness;
(2) an account of the mythic history of Gnostic humanity, as
personified by Seth and his descendants; and (3) an initiation
text, which may merit being called a document of ecstasy
because it appears to be based on the experience of ecstatic
initiation undergone by a Gnostic visionary.
The threefold structure of this scripture raises certain issues. If
the ecstatic text constituting part three of the gospel is indeed
an attempt of a Gnostic initiate to document his own ecstatic
experience, then we may inquire whether there is any reason
why the author leads the reader toward his utterance of ecstasy
by way of the lengthy descriptions of the realm of the fullness
and of the story of the wise race of Seth. Would it not be more
appropriate to treat the ecstatic initiation experience merely
"ex-perientially," as might be done today when experience and
technique are so often considered sufficient unto themselves?
The answer may be that to the Gnostic the context of
transcendence is of equal importance with the experience of
transcendence. It is certainly true that the Gnostics of the early
centuries cultivated vivid, impressive ecstatic experiences. (One

other outstanding document of such an experience is the Eight

Reveals the Ninth,
Redemption and Ecstasy 240
a treatise from Nag Hammadi mentioned in ChapterTwo.) Yet,
such experiences were always undergone within a specific
mythology where cosmology, theogony, and spiritual history
were allowed to play a vital part. The Gnostics were aware that
extraordinary experiences in themselves are incomplete and are
always in need of amplification, leading to assimilation. In
psychological terms, only the assimilated experience of the
archetypal psyche is transformative, and such assimilation is in evitably enhanced by a helpful mythological context within
which the experience finds its appropriate place.
The first part of this gospel presents us with the ultimate or
highest context in the image of the Incorruptible Realm. To the
practicing mystic and Gnostic, questions regarding the supreme
field of being are of great importance. Is there something
beyond who we are, what we are, and where we are? Is there
something beyond our petty lives and, moreover, even beyond
the cosmos, that is, transcending the system of sun, moon,
planets, and stars? The Gnostic answers that there is a beyond.
(This Gnostic insight finds its analogues in other esoterical ly
toned approaches to spirituality. In Hinduism we en counter the
concept of Parabrahman. that which is beyond the knowable
deity. Some schools of Buddhism call the same reality by the
name of Adi Buddha, the ultimate Buddha essence, and the
Kabbalah calls it Ain Soph Aur, limitless light.) This is the
ultimate context of transcendence, that which was and is and
always shall be: timeless, limitless, yet filled with the potential
of all time, all space, all life, and all consciousness. The Gospel of
the Egyptians gives a graphic description of this incorruptible
realm and in typical Gnostic fashion enumerates a grouping of
eternal beings who populate this supreme field of fullness.
Presiding over the Pleromic region is the brooding presence of
the Great Invisible Spirit, also referred to as the Parent. This
ultimate Being is manifest in a trinity: the Father, the Mother,

and the Son. From these transcendental centers of creativity

emanate a large number of Aeons, Glories, Thrones, and
241
The Other Gospels
other beings. Of particular importance are four pairs of powers
called the Luminaries, one of whom is Abrasax (Abraxas), the
Gnostic mythic figure that appears so prominently in Seven
Sermons to the Dead by C. G. Jung.
The matter of a context of transcendence leads us directly to
considerations of a context of transmission. The need for this
context may be envisioned in the following manner: There is an
imperishable realm that gave us life and light, but we find
ourselves in a perishable realm where life is mingled with
death, and light is combined with darkness. How are we to
attain to our original estate? By way of the transmission of
assistance from above, which means by way of the seeds of
light proceeding from the fullness and planted in our midst. As
we have noted in other myths and scriptures of the Gnosis, the
supreme light has repeatedly sent its emissaries into the lower
worlds of manifestation for the purpose of facilitating the en lightenment and liberation of the creatures present there. T he
prototype of all Gnostic messengers of light according to this
gospel is Seth, third son of Adam and Eve, who unlike the
imperfect, contending brothers Cain and Abel had a clear
knowledge of his own nature and of his connection with the
imperishable realm and its celestial denizens.
Seth is represented as the father of a race of enlightened,
knowing humans who uphold the principles of Gnosis in every
generation. The gospel describes them as follows: "This is the
vast, imperishable race that came forth from three (earlier)
worlds." (One is reminded here of the teachings of Theosophy
that indicate that certain human monads/spiritual essences
have come to earth after having existed in other cosmic
systems.) The race of Seth may also be understood as a body of
enlightened Gnostic-adepts present in the world in every

generation who possess a distinguished, luminous prehistory in

their own right.
The illustrious company of these spiritual descendants of Seth
is subject to the relentless enmity of the Demiurge a nd his
troublesome servants:
Redemption and Ecstasy 242
And the flood shall come as a prefiguration for the end of the
age against the world. On account of this race the
conflagrations also will come upon the earth.... And grace
cometh through the agency of the prophets and the watchmen
who come from the living race. Plagues and famines also are
visited upon all because [of the enmity of the demiurge]. All
these things will come to pass on account of this great,
imperishable race.
Next we are told by the gospel that because of the persecutions
visited upon the illustrious company of the children of Seth a
host of guardian spirits and powerful helpers was dispatched
from the great aeons. Led by the spirit of great Seth himself,
these beings are ready to extend their grace and assistance to
the embattled members of the illustrious race. Great sacraments
have been prepared "to make the holy people be born again by
the Holy Spirit, and invisible, holy mystic symbols." The second
part of the gospel thus ends with an invitation extended to the
elect to partake of the initiation prepared for them by their
father Seth and the guardian spirits who have come to their
rescue.
The next and final portion of The Gospel of the Egyptians must be
understood as an ecstatic account rendered by an initiate of the
mystery experienced within the context of the sacrament of
Seth. Significantly, although the sacrament is traced to the work
of Seth, the invocations and prayers of thanksgiving that form
part of this section of the gospel are addressed to Jesus by his
particular mystic name, Iesseus-Mazareus-Iessedekeus. There
can be little doubt that these prayers are indeed the result of
vivid ecstatic experience and that the strings of mystic letters

reproduced in the text are in the nature of glos-solaliathat is.

of ecstatic utterances expressed in sounds that do not reflect
any earthly language. (Such combinations of letters, known
technically as "barbarous words," are frequently present in
Gnostic texts where direct accounts of transcendental
experiences are presented.) A short example of such utterances
will have to suffice for our considerations here:
243
The Other Gospels
O Iesseus! Ieoeuooa!
In very truth! . . .
O living water!
O child of the child!
O name of all glories!
O eternal being! . . .
O being, which beholds the aeons
In very truth!
AEEEEEIIIIYYYYYYOOOOOOOO,
O existent for ever and ever! . . .
0 existent forever unto eternity!
You are what you are! You are what you are! . . . Having myself
become acquainted with your being
1 have now mingled myself with your unchanging being;
I have surrounded myself and come to be armored in loveliness
and light, and I have become a shining one.

After these ecstatic utterances are concluded, a descrip tive

postscript declares that this book was composed by the great
Seth, and that he had placed it in high mountains so concealed
that the sun never rises upon them. At the proper time, when
the ages are complete, Seth will come forth and according to the
promise of this book to the illustrious race, and accompanied by
the eternal light and the divine feminine beings Sophia and
Barbelo he will travel with his children into the incorruptible
worlds. The association of this text with the Christian mythos is
finally affirmed by the personal note of the scribe, whose
spiritual name is given as Eugnostos and who concludes with
the words:
O Jesus Christ, O son of God, O Saviour! O fish! Holy indeed
are the origins of this holy book of the Great Invisible Spirit!
Amen.
Different though they might appear in outward appearance,
these two gospels, the Valentinian Gospel
Redemption and Ecstasy 244
of Truth and the "Sethian" Gospel of the Egyptians, tell a common
story. Whether meditating on the Gnostic saving mission of
Jesus as assisting humanity to discover the divine self within 1
or presenting a context of transcendence and transmission for
an initiatory experience of ecstasy, the intent is the same: to
remind humankind of its high and holy origins, as well as its
present predicament of incomprehension, and to assure men
and women of the availability of redemption and a return to
consciousness, glory, and bliss.
It is also to be remembered that informative though such
gospels are, they constitute but a minuscule portion of the vast
body of Gnostic teaching and initiatory experience. Much of
such wisdom and spiritual discipline remained unwritten,
which was due to Gnostic principle rather than to any other
cause. Transcendental experience is by definition
incommunicable, and the instructions of Gnostic adepts
contained in sayings, myths, parables, and exhortations could

not communicate Gnosis (at best, they were merely similar to

the proverbial Zen Buddhist finger pointing to the moon). "The
knowledge of the things that are" (as G. R. S. Mead called it)
must be arrived at by the individual, although select
individualized teaching and practices may assist one to
approach such knowledge within a meaningful and helpful
context of psychological receptivity. Such a knowledge always
would appeal to relatively few. Those who would be satisfied
with faith in the statements received from others, those who did
not balk at having faith in the faith of someone else, would
always disqualify themselves when it came to Gnosis. Many
centuries after the time of the Gnostics, C. G. Jung expressed
their attitude poignantly when describing his own position
regarding the spiritual needs of the modern world:
I am not . . . addressing myself to the happy possessors of faith,
but to those many people for whom the light has gone out, the
mystery faded, and God is dead. For most of them there is no
going back, and one does not know either whether going back
is the better way. To gain an

Cross of

the conjunction of Light and Life

Mandala figures from the Books of Jeu

230
The Other Gospels
understanding of religious matters, probably all that is left us
today is the psychological approach. That is why I take these
thought-forms that have become historically fixed, and try to
melt them down again and pour them into moulds of
immediate experience. 4
The "other gospels," long lost and now rediscovered, appear to
hold the potential of being of great assistance to those engaged
in the task of melting down the rigid theologies and arid
philosophies of this age and of pouring their essence into molds
of the immediate and yet timeless Gnostic experience.
Epilogue
From Hiroshima to the Secret Gospels:
The Alternative Future of Human History

Not long before his death in 1961, C. G. Jung had a series of

visions of a future great catastrophe. According to Marie-Louise
von Franz, who remained the custodian of the notes and charts
concerning these utterances, Jung saw a worldwide catastrophe,
possibly in the nature of a fiery holocaust, occurring in about
fifty years (i.e., about 2010), which according to some students
coincides with the controversial date the Mayan calendar is said
to come to an end.' Fully ten years earlier in his book^4/o,
Jung predicted the coming of the age of the Antichrist, placing
its culmination within or possibly soon after the termination of
the twentieth century. The cosmic synchronicities outlined by
Jung in Aion concern the progression of the so-called Platonic
months, also known as zodiacal ages. Thus, it may be regarded
as a meaningful coincidence that the age of Pisces, which
started roughly at the time of the birth of Christ, occurred at the
same time the religion of Christianity developed and became
the normative spiritual influence for much of the world. The
fish also is the old, well-known symbol for Christ. After the
passing of the first millennium of the Piscean age. the shadow
side of Christianity could no longer be contained and repressed
alternative movements (many of them of Gnostic origin) such as
the Cathars, Waldensians, the Holy Spirit movement, and the
followers of Joachim of Fiore arose with great might, to the
discomfort of the
247
From Hiroshima to the Secret Gospels

247

Roman church. Thus, the "kingdom of the second or dark fish"

was initiated and rises toward its culmination as the end of the
second millennium approaches. (The astrological sign of Pisces
is often represented as two fishone light, the other dark in
colorswimming in opposite directions.) It was Jung's view
that if the dark or enshadowed side of the Christian archetype does
not manage to enter and become integrated into consciousness, a
most powerful and malefic manifestation of this shadow might
attain ascendancy, and that this baneful event would in all

likelihood occur at a date not far removed from the year 2000.
This would be the advent of the Antichrist of whom Jung wrote:
If we see the traditional figure of Christ as parallel to the
psychic manifestation of the self, then the Antichrist would
correspond to the shadow of the self, namely the dark half of
the human totality, which ought not to be judged too
optimistically. So far as we can judge from experience, light
and shadow are so evenly distributed in man's nature that his
psychic totality appears, to say the least of it. in a somewhat
murky light. The psychological concept of the self, in part
derived from our knowledge of the whole man, but for the rest
depicting itself spontaneously in the products of the
unconscious as an archetypal quaternity bound together by
inner antinomies, cannot omit the shadow that belongs to the
light figure, for without it this figure lacks body and
humanity. In the empirical self, light and shadow form a
paradoxical unity. In the Christian concept, on the other hand,
the archetype is hopelessly split into two halves, leading
ultimately to a metaphysical dualismthe final separation of
the kingdom of heaven from the fiery world of the damned. 2
In short, the spiritual imbalances within the psy chological
framework of non-Gnostic Christianity are so great that if they
fail to be reconciled in an abiding union of psychic fullness, the
inner tension brought about by the unreconciled opposites is
bound to bring the uneasy coexistence of these constituent
portions to a disastrous end. The likelihood is great tha t Jung's
vision
248
Epilogue
of the fiery catastrophe concerned the breaking asunder of the
psychic structure of Western culture with an accompanying
physical holocaust of a natural or a thermonuclear origin.
Jung, and with him other persons of a generally Gnostic
orientation, was also aware of another set of ideas that bear a

relationship to the age of the Antichrist and the vision of the

catastrophe communicated by Jung to Marie-Louise von Franz.
These ideas were popularized by the church father Origen in
the second century A.D. and are subsumed under the Greek
apeWation Apokatastasis Panton (the return of the All). At the
end of time all things must return to God, the source of all, said
Origen, who employed several quotations from the New
Testament to authenticate his theory (Matt. 10:26; I Cor. 4:5;
Luke 12:2; Matt. 17:11; Acts 3:20-21). It must also be
remembered that this same Origen was once associated with the
greatest Gnostic teacher, Valentinus, and thus may have
absorbed some of the Gnostic teachings in this regard.
Valentinus, and with him many Gnostic and neo-Gnostic
writers, held that creation is composed of several (usually
three) portions or waves. The first of these is gross matter,
which serves as the staging ground for the drama of cosmic life;
the second is life, or the scattered sparks of divine light that fall
into the relative darkness of preexisting materiality; and the
third is the revelatory descent of guiding and salvific figures,
Dhyani Buddhas, Avatars, Sons of the Firemist, as they are
called in various traditions. The gathering back of the all to its
source thus may come about in one of two ways: First, the
tension of the opposites having been reduced by developing
consciousness, the antagonism of the dualities disappear s and,
rather like envisioned in alchemy, the coniunctio brings into
existence a wonder and mystery that is capable of freely and
consciously uniting itself with its source in the divine fullness.
As noted in The Gospel of Thomas, the facilitation of this union
was in fact the supreme objective of Jesus, who as true soter
(healer) came to "make the
From Hiroshima to the Secret Gospels

249

two into the one."* The second possibility is rather more

dramatic. Here the opposites do not find a way to reconcile and
consequently the cosmos remains in a permanent state of
alchemical nigredo, manifest in unrelieved suffering, conflict,

and chaos. The broken heart of the universe is not healed and
the efforts of the saviors do not produce their intended resul t.
Thus, there is only one option open: Like Shiva in his
destructive aspect, the Antichrist, the "dark fish," obtains
ascendancy and breaks asunder the material framework, so that
the light and life captured within it may be freed from its
shackles and ascend unhampered into the fullness. Neo-Gnostic
myths and pronouncements declare that minor manifestations
of this apokatastatic process have occurred repeatedly in the
distant history of our world, bringing about the destruction of
vast continents inhabited by high cultures. Some of the
legendary names associated with such events are Atlantis and
Lemuria.
According to Jung, we live now in an "End Time" period: This is
not only a fin desi'ecle, but it is a fin de I'age. As such, it is
pregnant with great possibilities, both destructive and
constructive. The critical and in a sense final character of our
times is intuited by man, and the reactions brought forth in
response to it are varied. Millenarians and Harmonic
Convergers, UFO devotees and the advocates of the return of
Quetzalcoatl vie for attention with Bible Fundamentalists
desirous of Armageddon. End Time scenarios range from the
ludicrous to the terrifying, while the essentially unspiritual and
prosaic majority culture stands by bemused.
In the midst of all the excitement and confusion, one element
stands out with some measure of convincing realism: the
prospect of thermonuclear destruction. In many ways, one is
bound to feel somewhat jaded now by the coming and going of
antiwar and antinuclear
*For the complete passage see the concluding paragraph of the
present epilogue.
250
Epilogue

movements, replete with wishful thinking, sentimentality, and

unrealistic ways of regarding human nature. By this latter part
of the twentieth century, people have demonstrated for peace,
marched for peace, danced for peace, formed green political
parties, and more recently and interestingly, called mightily to
all and sundry with such slogans as "Visualize world peace!"
This latter shibboleth, so appealing in its quasi-spiritual aura of
meditative and positive imagery, was brilliantly analyzed by
the writer Dennis Stillings in 1988:
My interest in the antinuclear movement was awakened a
short time ago . . . when I went to a local lecture on these
issues. The speaker was a well-known representative of a New
Age organization. . . . As the talk went on. I found myself very
much interested in what was being said. The speaker began to
talk of the power of imagery in accomplishing the fire walk,
paranormal metal-bending, and remote viewing. . . . He
emphasized that clarity and definiteness of the image was
all-important, that with a clear and definite image you can
change reality. Again 1 agreed. He then moved into a
discussion of the use of imagery in preventing nuclear war.
stating that if you formed an image of peace, you can bring it
into reality. I became fascinated. As the lecture ended, I
realized that he had not suggested any clear and definite
image to work with. I was dumbfounded. The punch line to
the whole talk was missing.
Seriously disappointed that I had not been provided with an
image, I felt it incumbent upon myself to come up with one of
my own. But I could not do it. All I could get were bucolic
scenes like rolling hills in the sunshine with soaring birds,
and. perhaps, a farmer plowing behind an ox. Now, that may
be a peaceful image, but it is not an image of peace that can
"change reality." Try as I might, I could not come up with
anything 1 regarded as satisfactory. The closest I could come to
a clear and definite image of peace was the peace that followed
after nuclear war. This really distressed me, because if there
were anything to this imagery business, those people out there
thoughtlessly "imaging peace" might, in fact, be creating
disasterthe

From Hiroshima to the Secret Gospels

252

clear, definite peace that follows the storm, the fight, the
nuclear holocaust. . . . [Here the author inquires into the actual
scenes occurring at Hiroshima and Nagasaki some time after
the bomb and finds that they were frequently most
idyllicS.A.H.] In my opinion, there is no clear and definite
image of peace that does not also draw into consciousness
imagery of its opposite: violence and war. 3
Not only had the writer of this passage discovered in a practical
situation the coincidence of the opposites in the depths of his
psyche, but more importantly he came to realize that the naive
notions espoused by the well-intentioned may not only be
lacking in efficacy but also could be productive of results quite
contrary to those intended.
Some years ago, in the 1960s, the minstrels sang to us the words
"The times, they are a-changing," and so they did. Our
comfortable seat of nineteenth century manufacture, possessing
the beautiful cushion of evolutionary progress and the
fashionable contours supplied by technology, has begun to
smolder, and nuclear power sends its acrid odor into our
refined nostrils. The noted Jungian psychologist Gerhard Adler
said in a lecture in April 1946:
Don't we all still remember the one morning last year when we
woke up and found the world changed with one word,
"Hiroshima"? Don't we all remember the shock, the giddy
feeling as if the bottom had dropped out from underneath
somebody's feet, and each of us was this somebody just as
much as the wretched men. women and children far away on
an island in the Eastern hemisphere? Tragic and strange as it
may be. isn't it true to say that for the first time since endless
days mankind had felt and rediscovered its common fate? Had
felt and rediscovered the fact of communion, the fact of the
Indian "Tat twam asi" of the "This is you"? Alas! Our seat had
become very hot indeed to make us jump! 4

In the same lecture Gerhard Adler went on to point out that the
atom bomb was not an isolated phenomenon in time, but that it
was the natural result of a movement in mind that rejected the
unifying religious and spiritual
253
Epilogue
valuations of life and led to a position adopted by more and
more people, indicating to them the world no longer appeared
as an organic and meaningful entity. The ego and the conscious
mind were regarded as the whole personality: the meaning of
the superpersonal selfhood had been lost. The laws that govern
nature became ever more visible, but the laws that govern the
role of the human being in this world became ever more
blurred. The unity of life and meaning had been split. Human
beings were no longer in possession of their dignity as the
exponents and functions of a meaningful world. Marxism came
to add the final and most pathetic expression of this attitude of
meaninglessness and alienation when it reduced the
significance of the human being to an 'economic unit." Jung
wrote of this condition:
The twentieth century thus shows a devastating sense of
frustration and futility in the image of the world of the
average man. It can be defined as something like this: the
world is without divine direction; it is without imminent sense
or inner coherence (except the purely mechanical one); it is
without intrinsic responsibility. And this means that man had
no reality or function in this world beyond the one that his ego
had defined for himself. 5
A humanity that failed to acknowledge the existence of the
superpersonal and nonrational forces as a factor in life was
finally convinced of the reality of the irrational and the
unexpected. When the community of spirit fails, the community
of fear prevails. The British playwright of the 1940s. Ronald
Duncan, wrote aptly in his play. The Way to the Tomb.

I am treading an old path with new feet. I am standing in

footprints already in my mind. Is not the test of reason to put it
to a fear? And it was here the ferret's tooth of fear
struck at my bone. And the draught of alarm blew out my
reason. 6
From Hiroshima to the Secret Gospels

254

The decisive question is truly: Is not the test of reason to put it

to a fear? The virtue of fear has thus been restored to humanity.
Two devastating world wars and the threat of nuclear weapons
have brought fear back to the arrogant human ego. Gerhard
Adler said it well in 1946:
I can't help feeling that there is a deep symbolic meaning in
the story of the atom bomb. It is the shattering force that has
come out of our human autarchy, it is the enantiodromia to man
as the creator, it is the divine symbol of fate hidden in the
human sin of reliance on rationality and reasonability. It is a
tremendous and terrifying question mark to man. 7
Today, more than forty years later, the terrifying question mark
is still with us. With every year it grows somewhat larger and
more puzzling. In more recent times, dark puzzlements of an
ominous character have been added to this question mark. Not
only the alarmist fringe but also the balanced center of the
culture are increasingly aware of ecological crises that are only
marginally connected with the issue of nuclear power and quite
unconnected with nuclear war.
In addition, astrophysical speculation based on con siderable
research has increasingly brought into focus the likelihood of
the presence in space of something called "dark matter,"
represented as a massive presence beneath the visible universe,
a hitherto unknown quantity deduced only gravitationally but
not visible in any way. Scientific reporter Dennis Overbye
writes, quoting highly reputable sources: "The universe has a
shadow, and, because of that, it may also have an end."
Astronomers, he writes, "have slowly, reluctantly recognized a

darker, more passive presence beneath the pale fdm of the

visible universe." This shadow world of dark matter may be
"ordinary matter that failed to achieve the grace of light. . . .
And if there is enough of it, dark matter could some day cause
the universe to collapse in fiery and terminal splendour." 8
These passages with expressions such as "shadow" conjure up
visions of Jungian archetypal projections into the material
255
Epilogue
universe and also seem to run parallel to Jung's state ments in
Aion to the effect that the shadow of our culture may herald its
end. Mainstream religiosity has convinced us long ago that
while all good things come from God, all calamitous and evil
conditions come from ourselves. (There is even a Latin
theological saying: Omne bonum a Deo, omne malum ab homine\
all good from God, all evil from man.) Thus, we naturally
assume that large-scale devastation and destruction on the
planet must be caused by humanity, but it may be useful to
contemplate that science assures us dark shadows from beyond
the reach of our efforts may cause the earth's demise in a fiery
splendor surpassing all man-made nuclear explosions.
Distressing as this may prove to those ever desirous of placing
guilt upon the human race, the end may come and it may not
prove to be our fault at all!
It would appear that even as humanity has its psy chological
shadow the cosmos may possess its own great shadow and that
all of these shadows are potentially perilous. The Gnostic
wisdom has always held that the light will emerge from the
darkness by one means or another. One interesting, relatively
late Gnostic teaching within Kabbalistic Judaism has named this
principle of liberation, or gathering, tikkun, a concept closely resembling the Gnostic and Christian concepts of apokatas-tasis.
Tikkun is the process whereby the lost light-sparks are drawn
up from their imprisonment among the dark shards that
abound in the unregenerate realms of the cosmos. Tikkun is
primarily the task of the Messiah, but all wise and righteous

human beings play a vital role in it. This task of restitution is in

fact the Gnostic alternative to the forcible and violent extrac tion
of the light from darkness, such as may occur in man -made and
cosmic catastrophes alike. Unconsciousness, the unwillingness
to redeem the shadow within ourselves and in the world, leads
to destruction; egos, cultures, and worlds are equally shattered
by the pent-up force of the unmet darkness that lurks in psychic
and cosmic depths. Holocausts and cataclysms, whether
envisioned as the flood that
From Hiroshima to the Secret Gospels

256

submerges Atlantis or the nuclear conflagration that deva states

the earth: all of these are light extractors, extreme measures for
the freeing of surviving soul power when no other means are
available. Astrological imagery embodied in zodiacal ages thus
joins with the Gnostic myth of the trapped light in the wor ld
and is brought into the field of constructive vision by the
psychological Gnosis of Jung. As we are told in The Gospel of
Philip, if we know that which is within ourselves it will save us,
if we do not know it, it will kill us or at least destroy the fo rm
within which our life has chosen to embody itself.
Prima materia, original matter, primal chaos of being, such were
the expressions applied by the alchemists to that creative
condition from whence after many engagements of
transformative action the unitary stone of the philosophers is
destined to emerge. There is much evidence available to
indicate that our situation today is one where the alchemical
paradigm ought to find its redeeming application. As an
alternative to tragic, though perhaps life-and-light-liberating
destruction, we are faced now with the need to produce the
conjunction of the opposites, leading by way of their union to
the unus mundus, the alchemically reunited world. As noted in
the last chapter, the alchemist cannot subject the finis hed world
of the four elements (symbolic of the ego world or the culture at
an impasse) to a true creative change. The modern world is in
many ways in a spiritual cul-de-sac, in a dead-end street
coming from a glorious past but leading nowhere. To a major

extent this lamentable condition has come to pass because of

the wrong-headedness and spiritual aridity of the religious
structures in Western society. The root and cause of these
undesirable features are none other than the misunderstanding
of the nature of the Gnosis and its ensuing repression in early
Christendom. This Gnosis, we must remember, is not just a
vague term denoting some undefined spiritual insight but a
definite spiritual phenomenon with distinct and undeniable
characteristics. Gnosis and Gnosticism are one, and to separate
them is but
257
Epilogue
another sinister strategy, originating in obscurantism and
obtuseness.
Gnosticism as rediscovered by way of the discovery of its most
important documents; Gnosticism wedded to its immediate
predecessor, the alternative Judaism of the Essenes; and last but
not least. Gnosticism as amplified and brought into
psychological relevance by Jungthis is the missing alchemical
ingredient of Western spirituality and culture. In a very real
sense, it is the prima materia. the creative, existential matrix, out
of which the salvific transformational elements may emerge
that could save the West from its decline and fall. The terrifying
question mark of nuclear destruction and its related tragic
destructive modalities can only be answered by going back to
the kind of primal spiritual experiences that are the core of all
Gnosis, while abandoning reliance on superstructures and
overcompensations masquerading as dogma, commandment,
and ideology of whatever stripe.
It goes without saying that in this proposed task of restoration
of Gnosis and Gnosticism the teachings of C. G. Jung must play
a role of singular distinction. Catholic priest and Jungian writer
Fr. John P. Dourley rightly said:

It would be a significant step toward survival if every

discipline concerned with life on earth were to seriously
examine, in concert. Jung's conception of a personal and
historical Self intrinsic to the life of the psyche, an inner
center capable of bringing the Gods and Goddesses it
unleashes upon humanity into configurations of greater
harmony, wealth of being and consciousness. Should such a
psychic reality prove not to exist at all, or should humanity fail
to bring its power to consciousness, humanity would seem
destined to continue to wait for its redemption through the
intervention of an extrinsic deity.
Given the enmity bred between and within the traditions
historically spawned by such "divine" interventions, and
given humanity's current technological capacity to destroy
itself, this wait may now be short. 9
As we have seen throughout our journeyings among the myths
and metaphors, the scriptures, and the mysteries of the
Gnostics, the natural divinity of the individual
From Hiroshima to the Secret Gospels

258

human spirit is one of the chief themes running through the

images of the alternative reality presented to us by the Gnosis.
As Jung powerfully stated in his Answer to Job* the human spirit
(Job) is spiritually superior to the God of this world, who is in
need of the Gnosis that only humanity can supply. The human
spirit, said the Gnostics and affirms Jung, descends from the
supreme Godhead and as such is of supreme value in this
world. Self-knowledge is knowledge of God, and the discovery
and experience of the Divine and of the individual center of
essential Self are ultimately identical. Indoctrinated by the
dogmas enforced for century upon century by the devotees of
the monotheistic God, numerous contemporary persons resist
these Gnostic and depth-psychological insights, as Jung himself
recognized:
Whoever speaks of the reality of the soul or psyche is accused
of "psychologism." Psychology is spoken of as if it were "only"

psychology and nothing else. The notion that there can be

psychic factors which correspond to divine figures is regarded
as a devaluation of the latter. It smacks of blasphemy to think
that a religious experience is a psychic process. . . .
Faced with this situation, we must really ask: How do we know
so much about the psyche that we can say "only" psychic? 10
The breaking down of the superstructures of culture has thrown
contemporary humanity back into its own depths, and it is in
these profound and mysterious regions that we must look for a
new-old answer. The recovery of the wisdom of the Gnostics,
especially as illuminated by modern depth psychology, fulfills
two functions: On the one hand, it points to the need to return
to primal experiences, and on the other, it points to the
potential source of the creative answer. Gnosis leads us thu s
back to our roots and foundations, to the basic truths and facts
of our more than merely rational and deeper than merely
personal nature. In the final analysis, it is only experience
*See Chapter Ten of the present work.
259
Epilogue
that truly counts. Theologies, metaphysical assumptions, and
philosophical categories never equal experience. In the
individual and conscious experience of the super-individual
and primordial images of our inner world, the union of the
opposites, the synthesis of all binaries, including those of light
and shadow, has become possible.
Our time is perilous and disruptive. We do not know if the
instruments of destruction that have appeared in our day will
leave us enough time for Gnosis, for individuation. Still, Goethe
told us that all things transitory are meant for us as symbols,
and the present uncertain and insecure situation may in some
ways be just another attempt on the part of the human spirit to
face up to the creative chaotic state of the prima materia. It is not

impossible that as the dissolution of matter in the splitting of

the atom releases its imprisoned transcendental fire, so the
dissolution of the consensus reality of culture and conditioning
may release a transformative alternative reality, thus leadin g us
to the philosopher's stone in the uniting symbol of the Self that
gives meaning and unity to the scattered parts. Could it be that
our less than happy condition might turn out to be a heroic
attempt to heal the gap between the light and the dark inste ad
of a prelude to the doom of culture and cosmos? Could such
perils as the split atom, the ecological crisis, the cosmic perils of
"dark matter" be understood as symbols of terrifying potency,
forcing the human spirit to either accept world destruction or to
pluck wholeness out of danger and chaos?
Three seemingly unrelated events occurred within a short span
of time at the end of the greatest upheaval of human making.
World War II, synchronistically converging with their
mysterious connection of meaning: The exploding of the first
nuclear weapon at Hiroshima, the discovery of the Gnostic
collection of scriptures at Nag Hammadi, and the unearthing of
the Essene scrolls in the cave at Qumran. Destruction and its
alternative; liberation from form and redemption within form.
Those instructed by Jung's theory of synchronicity may readily
recognize within this meaningful coincidence a signal
From Hiroshima to the Secret Gospels

260

from the heavens. Risen from the sleep of the centuries and
emerging into the focus of consciousness, the other, alternative
reality beckons to us with its vision of transformative
redemption. We have nothing to fear but unconsciousness. The
Antichrists, Behemoths, and Leviathans threatening us are but
the creatures of our unconscious projections, which may vanish
like a nightmare when the process of individuation becomes
operative. The kingdom, the reconstituted world of wholeness,
opens its gates to us as the words of the archetype of the
individuated Self of humanity receive their final vindication:
When you make the two one, and when you make the inmost
as the outermost and the outer as the inner and the above as

the below, and when you make the male and female into a
single unity, so that the male will not be only male and the
female will not be only female, when you create eyes in the
place of an eye, and create a hand in the place of a hand, and a
foot in the place of a foot, and also an image in the place of an
image, then surely will you enter the kingdom."
Notes
Prologue
1. C. G. Jung. Psychology and Alchemy. Collected Works, Vol. 12,
par. 10.
2. C. G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious.
Collected Works, Vol. 9. part 1, par. 45.
3. C. G. Jung. "Psychological Commentary to W. Y.
Evans-Wentz, The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation" (Oxford:
Oxford Univ. Press, 1954), p. xxxi.
4. C. G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Collected Works, Vol. 12,
par. 8.
5. C. G. Jung in The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, p. xli.
6. C. G. Jung. Psychology and Religion: West and East, Collected
Works, Vol. 11. par. 17.
7. John P. Dourley. The Illness That We Are, (Toronto: Inner City
Books, 1984), p. 94.
8. C. G. Jung. "Transformation Symbolism in the Mass,"
Psychology of Religion: West and East, par. 444.
Chapter 1
1. Bhagavad Gita. Chapter 4.
2. International Symposium on Jesus and the Gospels, held at
the Michigan Union, Ann Arbor, Mich., April 1985.

3. C. G. Jung, "A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the

Trinity," Psychology of Religion West and East. par. 170.
Chapter 2
1. Joshua V, 14.
2. John M. Allegro. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth,
(New York: Prometheus Books. 1984), pp. 63-64.
3. R. Bultmann, Theologie des Neuen Testaments (1951). p. 361.
4. The Eighth Reveals the Ninth: A New Hermetic Initiation
Discourse/Tractate 6, Nag Hammadi Codex VI/Lewis S. Keizer,
247

262
Notes
trans.. (Seaside. CA: Academy of Arts and Humanities. 1974).
pp. 98-99.
5. Thanksgiving Hymns, Col. VIII.
6. Allegro. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Mvth. pp. 12. 13.
7. Ibid., p. 16.
8. Hugh Schonfield, The Essene Odyssey. (Shaftsbury, England:
Element Books. 1984). p. 2.
9. Bultmann. Theologie des Neuen Testaments, p. 361.
Chapter 3
1. Odes of Solomon. Ode 41.

2. See C. G. Jung. Letters. G. Adler and Aniela Jaffe. eds..

(Princeton. NJ: Bollingen Series XCV, Princeton Univ. Press.
1973-1975). Vol. 2.. especially pp. 6. 21. 89. 157. 275.
3. John M. Allegro. The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross: A Study of
the Nature and Origins of Christianity within the Fertility
CultsoJthe Ancient Near East(Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1970).
4. Morton Smith. Jesus the Magician (San Francisco: Harper and
Row. 1978).
5. (New York: Stein and Day. 1971.) Published in English as
Rabbi J.
6. Hugh Schonfield. The Passover Plot: New Light on the History
of Jesus (New York: Bernard Geis Assoc.. 1965).
7. Josephus. Antiquities III. II. 3. par. 49.
8. Joshua 3:7.
9. Ibid.. 10:14.
10. J. M. Allegro. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth.
p. 77.
11. Damascus Document V. 2-4.
12. Allegro. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth. p. 79.
13. Assumption of Moses, I. 16 ff.
14. The Gospel of Philip. Logion 19.
15. The Essene Odyssey, p. 37.
16. Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah. also Psalms.
17. The Essene Odyssey, pp. 10-11.

18. John Allegro. The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Reappraisal (London

and New York: Penguin Books. 1956). p. 47.
19. Allegro. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth. p. 107.
20. See Mysterium Coiunctionis; also Two Essays in Analytical
Psychology.
21. C. G. Jung. The Spirit in Man, Art and Literature. Collected
Works. Vol. 15. par. 127.
22. Ibid., par. 128.
Notes
264
23. C. G. Jung. The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche.
Collected Works. Vol. 8. par. 417.
24. The Gospel of Philip. Logion 67.
25. Lucindi Frances Mooney. Storming Eastern Temples: A
Psychological Exploration of Yoga (Wheaton. IL: Theosophical
Publishing House. 1976). p. 158.
26. C. G. Jung. "A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the
Trinity." Psychology and Religion: West and East. Collected
Works. Vol. II. par. 295.
Chapter 4
1. (Wheaton. IL: Theosophical Publishing House. 1944). p. 6.
2. See G. Quispel, "Gnosis," in Die Orientalischen Religionen I'm
Romerreich. (Leiden, Holland: E. J. Brill, 1981), p. 414.
3. Ibid., p. 419.
4. The Book of Wisdom. 8:3 (Duay Version).
5. Ibid., 8:2.

6. Ibid., 9:10 and 9:11.

7. Proverbs 1:20-22.
8. Ibid., Chapters 3 and 8.
9. Recension from "The Great Announcement." Hippolytus.
Refutations. VI. 18.
10. Gnosis als Weltreligion; die Bedeutung der Gnosis in der
Antike. (Zurich: Origo Verlag. 1972), p. 69.
11. Hymns of Thanksgiving. Col. VII.
12. Ibid., Col. IX.
13. Ezechiel I.
14. Allegro, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth. p. 99.
15. Josephus. War. II, viii, II. par. 154-55.
16. The Gospel of Philip. Logion 32.
17. Ibid., Logion 55.
18. Panarion, also The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth. p.
170.
19. Les Gnostiques (Paris: Editions Gallimard. 1973). trans, by
Stephan A. Hoeller.
Chapter 5
1. G. R. S. Mead. Fragments of a Faith Forgotten (New Hyde Park.
NY: University Books. 1960), p. 180.
2. Hippolytus, Refutations, as summarized by Mead. Fragments,
pp. 256-257.
3. Trans, by Hort. See also Mead. Fragments, p. 396.
265

Notes
4. Ibid., p. 243.
5. Myth and Today's Consciousness (London: Coventure Ltd.,
1984), p. 67.
6. Logion 85:1-4.
7. Adv. Haer. I. 21-4.
8. Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random
House. 1979). pp. xviii-ix.
9. E. S. Drower, The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran (Leiden: E. J.
Brill. 1962). Also E. S. Drower, Trans., The Canonical Prayerbook
of the Mandaeans. (Leiden: E. J. Brill. 1959).
10. Robert S. Ellwood. Jr.. "American Theosophieal Synthesis,"
in The Occult in America: New Historical Perspectives, Howard
Kerr and Charles L. Crow, eds., (Urbana and Chicago: Univ. of
Illinois Press, 1983). p. 124.
11. Ancient Wisdom Revived: A History of the Theosophieal
Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980). p.
vii.
Chapter 6
1. G. Quispel, "Gnosticism" in Man, Myth and Magic: An
Illustrated Encyclopaedia of the Supernatural, Richard Cavendish,
ed.. (New York: Marshall Cavendish Corp., 1970), p. 1115.
2. F. C. Burkitt, Church and Gnosis (Cambridge. England:
Cambridge Univ. Press. 1932). p. 45.
3. Hans Jonas, Gnosis und sp'atantiker Geist. Erster Teil.. p. 490.
Also Rudolf Bultmann. "New Testament and Mythology."
Kerygma and Myth, Hans Werner Bastsch. ed., (New York:
Harper and Bros., 1961), pp. 1-16.

4. C. G. Jung and C. Kerenyi, Essays on a Science of Mythology.

(Princeton: Bollingen Foundation and Princeton Univ. Press,
1949), pp. 22-23.
5. Joseph Campbell. The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor
as Myth and Religion (New York: Alfred Van Der Marck
Editions. 1986), pp. 56-57.
6. Ean Begg. Myth and Today's Consciousness, p. 71.
7. The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, Collected Works.
Vol. 9. part 1. par. 56.
Chapter 7
1. Svetasvatara Upanishad. 6:16.
2. Saddharmapundarikasutra, 7:32.
3. Al Biruni (about 1000 A.D), Athar ul Bakiya, English trans,
by C. E. Sachau.
Notes
267
4. Author's recension from several texts. C.F. The Hymn of Jesus,
Trans, with comments by G. R. S. Mead (London: John M.
Watkins. 1963), pp. 21-55.
5. The myth of the Savior here recounted has been reconstructed from the following scriptures: The Odes of Solomon;
Pistis Sophia; The Gospel of the Hebrews; The Gospel According to
Thomas; The Gospel of Philip; The Gospel of Truth; The Acts of John;
The Apocalypse of Peter; Oxyrynchus Papyrus; The Secret Gospel of
Mark; The Gospel of the Egyptians; The Gospel of Mary; Codex
Vencelliensis; Codex Sangermanensis; as well as quotations in the
writings of Irenaeus. Tertullian, and Epiphanius. The author
imposed his own style on these translated materials.

6. C. G. Jung. "A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the

Trinity." The Psychology of Religion West and East, Collected
Writings. Vol. 11, par. 233.
7. Hymn from the Greek Orthodox Menaion of the Liturgy for
December 25.
8. Adv. Haer. I. XXI, 2.
9. Mimaut Papyrus, Col. V. 130.
10. Fr. Schulze-Maizier, ed. Mystische Dichtung aus sieben
Jahrhunderten (Leipzig: n.d.), p. 78.
11. Psychology and Alchemy. Collected Works, Vol. 12. par. 24.
Chapter 8
1. H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine (Adyar, India:
Theosophical Publishing House, 1938) Vol. V, pp. 213-214.
2. For an excellent detailed exposition of the relevant content
of the Book of Noah and the Books of Enoch, see Neil Forsyth,
The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1987).
3. Josephus, Contra Apionem. 2, 167.
4. Schonfield. The Essene Odyssey, p. 137.
5. Edward Edinger, Ego and Archetype, Individuation and the
Religious Function of the Psyche (New York: Penguin Books.
1972). p. 15.
6. Joseph Campbell. The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Cleveland
and New York: The World Publishing Co., 1970), p. 391.
7. The Gospel According to Thomas. Logia 54 and 79.
Chapter 9
1. Hans Jonas. The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien

269
Notes
God and the Beginnings of Christianity (Boston: Beacon Press,
1963). p. 116.
2. The Odes of Solomon, James H. Charlesworth, ed.. (Missoula
Montana: Scholar's Press. 1977). p. 94/Ode 23: Stanzas 5-9.
3. Hans Jonas. The Gnostic Religion, p. 125.
4. Numerous translations of "Song of the Pearl" may be
recommended. For an adequate abbreviated version see
H.Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, pp. 112-129. For a very poetic and
complete rendering see Edgar Hennecke and Wilhelm
Schneemelcher. eds.. New Testament Apocrypha (Philadelphia:
The Westminster Press. 1963). Vol. 2. pp. 498-504.
Chapter 10
1. First published in German under the title Antwort auf Hiob
(Zurich: 1952) and later included in Psychology of Religion: West
and East. Collected Works. Vol. 11.
2. Apostolic Constitution "Munificentissimus Deus," promulgated by Pope Pius XII in 1950.
3. Logion of Jesus from the Oxyrynchus Papyrus.
4. "Answer to Job" in Psychology of Religion: West and East Vol.
11., par. 758.
5. Joseph Campbell. Myths to Live By (New York: Bantam
Books. 1975). p. i.
6. C. G. Jung. Mysterium Coniunctionis. Collected Works. Vol.
14. par. 788.
Chapter 11

1. The Apocryphon of John (two versions); The Hypostasis of the

Archons; The Gospel of the Egyptians: On the Origin of the World;
The Apocalypse of Adam; The Paraphrase of Shem.
2. The Gospel of Truth; The Treatise on the Resurrection; The
Tripartite Tractate; The Tractate of Eugnostos, the Blessed (two
versions); The Second Treatise of the Great Seth; The Teachings of
Sylvanus; The Testimony of Truth.
3. The Treatise of the Eighth and the Ninth; The Prayer of
Thanksgiving; The Valentinian Exposition; The Three Steles of Seth;
The Prayer of the Apostle Paul.
4. Thunder the Perfect Mind; The Thought of Norea; The Sophia of
Jesus Christ; The Exegesis of the Soul.
5. The Apocalypse of Peter; The Letter of Peter to Philip; The Acts of
Peter and the Twelve Apostles; The First and Second Apocalypse of
James; The Apocalypse of Paul.
Notes
270
6. The Dialogue of the Saviour; The Book of Thomas the Contender;
The Apocryphon of James; The Gospel of Philip; The Gospel of
Thomas.
7. c.f. Morton Smith, The Secret Gospel; The Discovery and
Interpretation of the Secret Gospel According to Mark (New York:
Harper and Row. 1973).
Chapter 12
1. Morton Smith. The Secret Gospel.
2. Plotinus. "Against the Gnostics." Enneads, 2.9.
3. C. G. Jung, The Symbolic Life, a seminar talk given on April 5,
1939. (London: Guild of Pastoral Psychology, lecture No. 80,
1954). pp. 8-9.

4. Ibid.
5. Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 121.5.ff.
Chapter 13
1. F. L. Cross, Ed. and trans. The Jung Codex; A Newly Discovered
Gnostic Papyrus. Three Studies by H. C. Puech, G. Quispel. W.
C. van Unnik (London: A. R. Mowbray Co.. 1955), p. 43.
2. Ibid., p. 53.
3. C.f. Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random
House, 1979). p. 95.
4. C. G. Jung. Psychology and Religion: West and East. Collected
Works, Vol. 11. par. 148.
Epilogue
1. Transcript of Matter of Heart, biographical motion picture on
Jung (Los Angeles: C. G. Jung Institute, 1983), pp. 25-26.
2. C. G. Jung, Aion. Collected Works. Vol. 9, Part 2, par. 76.
3. Dennis Stillings, "Invasion of the Archetypes." in Gnosis: A
Journal of the Western Inner Traditions. No. 10. (Winter 1989), p.
33.
4. Gerhard Adler. Psychology and the Atom Bomb (London: The
Guild of Pastoral Psychology, Guild Lecture No. 43. 1946). p. 3.
5. C. G. Jung, Uber die Psychologie des Unbewussten (Zurich:
1943), as translated by Gerhard Adler in Psychology and the
Atom Bomb. p. 15.
6. (London. Faber & Faber. 1945), p. 95.
7. Gerhard Adler. Psychology and the Atom Bomb. p. 17.
271

Notes
8. Dennis Overbye. "The Shadow Universe," Discover, May
1985, p. I3ff.
9. John P. Dourley. The Illness that We Are (Toronto: Inner City
Books, 1984). p. 82.
10. C. G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy. Collected Works. Vol.
12. pars. 9-10.
11. The Gospel According to Thomas. Logion 22.
Note: The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, trans, by R. F. C. Hull, in
entirety constitutes No. XX in Bollingen Series, published by
Princeton University Press between 1960 and 1979.