General Index
A SYNOPSIS
OF THE VALENTINIAN TEACHING
Before proceeding, a summary of the Valentinian Teaching concerning God, the universe and man is useful. We shall try to reinterpret its mythological contents in more rational terms, mainly drawing from the Excerpta ex Theodoto (ExTh - see the Bibliography) whose underlying philosophy we will try to reconstruct. The Excerpta are fragments collected by Clement of Alexandria from the work of an otherwise unknown Gnostic Author, Theodotos. Despite their fragmentary character, casual distribution and Clement's insertions, they contain a wealth of information and are a source of profound doctrine and inspiration.
For the transliteration, pronunciation and numerical value of the Hebrew letters see
The Hebrew Alphabet.
Contents:
The Father-Mother
The Son
Sophia
The Saviour
The Limit or Cross
The Demiurge and the Schêma
The Nazarene and the Seed
The Hieròs Gàmos
The Three Natures
The Baptism
Gnosis: What it is
The Synthesis
The baptism alone cannot make us free,
the Gnosis is necessary too.
Who were we? What did we become? Where were we?
Whereto have we been cast? What aim are we striving after?
Whence our liberation?
What is the generation? What the regeneration?
(Excerpta ex Theodoto, 78:2)
What is the cause of the universe? From what have we come to be?
What are we living for? Where is our final rest?
Who decides that we should be subject to happiness and suffering?
(Shvetâshvatara Upanishad, I:1)
The Father-Mother. According to the Valentinian Teaching, the Divine Being is the One and Only Reality, described as unfathomable (Bàthos or Býthos - "Abyss") and ineffable (Sigê - "Silence"). Although two terms are thus used that exclude any definition of the Divine Being, the Valentinian Gnosis sees nevertheless in them but two modes of the One. The Abyss (also called "Father") is the One as Absolute Consciousness, while the Silence (also called "Mother") has more complex functions described by Her two other names: Chàris ("Grace") and Enthýmësis ("Introspection" -- also called Ennoia, "internal reflection").
Chàris is the Power and Will of the One to become the Many, to give Its Being to other beings in an eternal loving act of self-abnegation, hence the root of every form in which the absolute Consciousness may manifest itself as finite Consciousness. In other words, Consciousness and Energy are inseparable modes of the One, which not only means that the One is eternally active, but also implies that in this world every mode of Consciousness is simultaneously an outpouring of Energy which, enveloping Consciousness as its seat and the vehicle of all its manifestations, may appear as a "body" (of whatever substance or subtlety).
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The Son. Enthýmësis is the act whereby the absolute Consciousness looks at Itself, thus knowing Itself as infinite Being (Bàthos), Consciousness (Enthýmësis) and Love (Chàris). Gnostic mythology describes this divine Self-consciousness saying that the Father sees an Image of Himself in the Mirror of the Mother (Enthýmësis). That Image, being God as seen by Himself, is necessarily identical to the Prototype; therefore, on the analogy of the human "I", which is simultaneously the subject and the object of its self-consciousness, one might call it the "I" of God. This is the "Son", the "Only Begotten" (Monogenês), who, being seen in the Mother, is therefore said to be "in the Bosom of the Father" (John 1:18), which "Bosom" (also called "the Holy Spirit") means the Mother according to The Gospel of Truth (Nag Hammadi) 24:9-11.
The Son is a Trinity, and Himself androgynous like the Father-Mother. As conceived through Enthýmësis He is the divine Thought (Noûs) whose Form is Truth (Alêtheia). As born from the Silence He is the Word (Lògos) that expressing the otherwise concealed divine Thought shines forth as the sum total of the models (archetypes) of all the individual beings He creates, while He sustains them all through the power of His "feminine" aspect: the Life (Zöê, also called Aiônios Zöê, "Life eternal" or "Aeonic Life", since all the divine modes are called Aiônes, "Aeons"). As conceived through Chàris, the Son is the Anthröpos ("Man"), for three reasons: (1) He is God as the supreme Person; (2) He is the Saviour God who becomes man out of compassion for His creatures; (3) To the firm existential reality conferred by the Noûs and to the mere individuality created by the Lògos, He adds the personal dimension culminating in the highest of all the living beings, man. His "feminine" aspect is the Ekklësìa (literally "Church", but better "Communion"): the Prototype of all the organically structured, collective units in which the radical One-Many may manifest itself: societies, cultures, species, organisms, and so on.
The Noûs is the Centre from which the innumerable rays of the Logos depart. These become in the Anthropos the Selves of all living beings and, although many, are really One Self in the Centre. As contrasted, as it were, with the paternal Abyss that is the Only One without any second, and therefore not a number, the Noûs is, as it were, the number One from which all multiplicities issue. Therefore He is also called the Archê ("Principle"), for in Him, beyond all space and time and causality, God is the primeval Seed and beginning of everything.
As Archê, the Noûs is said to emanate the Logos-Life, which in turn emanates the Man-Communion. This emanation occurs obviously through the feminine Aeons as modes of the Mother. But this must be correctly understood in the sense that the Truth precedes ontologically the Word which has to express it, while the Life ontologically precedes the living beings, man in the first place.
All the divine Couples, the virtual Couple of the Father-Mother and the three modes thereof that are the three Couples of the Son (Thought-Truth, Word-Life, and Man-Communion), constitute in total eight Aeons, which Totality is therefore called the "Ogdoad". Each Couple is called a Syzygy (Greek Syzygìa, "Conjunction"; Latin Coniugium). It should be clearly understood, however, that the Aeons are not individual beings, like gods in a pantheon: they are modes or aspects of the One, the Pleroma ("Fulness") of the Divine seen from different points of view.
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Sophia. According to the valentinian Gospel of Truth (Nag Hammadi), all beings owe their existence to a Gift that God bestows them. Now a gift implies a recipient, but there is no recipient ready to receive the Gift "before" this is bestowed, for nobody and nothing exist besides God who is the One and Only Being. Therefore God can only give Himself, and that only to Himself, thus being the Giver, the Gift and the Recipient at one and the same time. This Self-giving is an act, therefore a manifestation of Energy, that is of the Divine Mother as Chàris. Thus the Mother becomes the vehicle of that Self-giving and simultaneously the Recipient of the Gift, for She is but a mode of God, who is One.
In this function or mode of Hers the Mother is called Sophìa ("Wisdom"). Sophìa is the Wisdom that reflects the divine Self-identity (Noûs), echoes the divine Word (Lògos) and translates the divine Person into living souls of which She is the Mother, the common substance, and the collective unity. Sophìa, in other words, actuates all the potentialities present in the Son: She makes actual the virtual Many contained in the One. Now since there can be nothing beyond the One, nor can there be anything below the actual Many, Sophìa is necessarily the last Aeon of the divine Fulness (Plêröma), that is of the totality of the modes of the One Being.
Her genesis and nature can be explained as follows. Since the Plêröma is the only Reality (and Plêröma means just that: fullness, infinitude, outside which there is nothing), whatever Sophia can generate cannot be anything new: it can only be something obtained by cutting fragments, as it were, out of the Fullness. This is what would happen if, for instance, someone wanted to create images in a homogeneous mass of light: the only way of doing it would be that of creating zones of obscurity, i.e. gaps in the light, in order to obtain the contrasts necessary to give images their shape.
Of course, the "gaps" created by Sophia have no substance whatsoever: with respect to the divine Fulness they are mere Emptiness (Kénöma), absolute Lack (Hystérëma): the Void that Gnostic teachers imagined to lie "outside" the Fullness. A new mode of the divine Mother is therefore necessary, the mode whereby the Mother can achieve a partial negation of Herself, so that the shadows and contrasts may be produced which are required for the creation of images.
The relationship between Fullness and Void is the same as that between "Yes" and "No", or between Self and Other. Sophia is a two-faced Aeon that therefore is said to be situated on the "Limit" (Hòros) of the Plêröma, the Limit ideally separating the divine Unity from the created Multiplicity. Sophia is at the same time Identity and Alterity, Self and Other, Being and Non-being, that is individual souls, relations, change.
Sophia's two Faces should not be understood as being two separate parts: they are the two modes of each soul's self-consciousness, the two directions in which the soul can look. They can be symbolically described as the two sides of the Mother's mirror, now revealing itself as capable of reflecting from both of them. Sophia's Shining Face is the soul's Identity or Communion aspect, at one with the divine Fulness. It is Sophia in Her unity and universality, the soul conscious of its unity with God. Sophia's Dark Face looks at the Void, that is at the divine Abyss as reflected by it in reverse: the world of the innumerable individual appearances of the One Soul, the universe of time, space and causality. Sophia's Dark Face is Her alterity or separation aspect (the "Fallen Sophia" according to the Myth).
From what has been said it is clear that the "individual" souls are many in Sophia's Dark Face, but one soul in Her Shining Face. They are not detached pieces; therefore whatever can be said of Sophia can be said of each one of them, and vice versa.
Sophia's Shining Face is called "the Holy Spirit", which is also a generic name for the divine Mother in all Her modes.
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The Saviour. The existence of creatures depends in the first place on the activity of the Logos, who therefore is ultimately responsible for error, suffering, division and death. Shall one then trace evil back to God? The Gnosis faces bravely the problem of evil, without looking for silly solutions in the existence of other fanciful causes, since ultimately there is no cause independent of God's will and God's foreknowledge of whatever may happen. Evil and suffering are the price each creature must pay in order to exist independently and finally, perfected, return to God. But there is no evil in God: evil and suffering are part of the world at which Sophia's dark Face looks, and depend on relations within that world. There cannot be any relation between God and anything else, because there is nothing outside God, the Absolute. Thus there is no relation between God and evil. Relations can only be established within the created world, and have no existence, nor even any significance, outside it.
However, should the Creator not make Himself a creature in Sophia, if He would remain apart from suffering, if He would leave the creature alone to suffer under the weight of error and sin, the creation would be an unacceptable horror. On the contrary, by assuming Himself the creaturely nature, God comes to share every moment of the life of the creatures, every joy, hope, torture of body and soul of theirs. This only, one would dare say, gives God the right of plunging into error and suffering the beings He takes out of Himself, even if suffering is a means to call them back to Him.
So, as Sophia presents two Faces, double must be the work of the Son: to the creative impulsion of the Logos must correspond a divine Principle of Love and Compassion that, both under the form of a divine Presence within the heart of every creature and in the persons of perfected human beings among men, comes to share our sufferings, to help us, to accompany us, unfailing keeping us bound to Him so that none of His creatures may ever be lost, and all reach the final Redemption.
Gnosis calls Sötêr ("Saviour") that Principle of Compassion which is embodied in the Son who, in this function of His, is called Christòs and P h ô s ("Light"). When present on earth as a human Saviour, He is called the Hyiòs toû Anthrôpou, that is "Son of the Man", of the Man above, the Anthröpos. In the Hebrew language He is called ye$ùwa° (Jesus), that means just "saviour".
The Greek Christòs means "anointed", exactly as the Hebrew ma$ìyaH ("Messiah"): two languages, identical concept.
More precisely, three aspects of the Saviour are distinguished.
The first is the Christòs holòklëros (ExTh 39), the Saviour in His transcendental aspect.
Then comes "Jesus": the Saviour in His immanent aspect, which is twofold: (a) as a manifestation of the Anthropos He is an "Angel" (see below: The Nazarene and the Seed), that is the "Christ within", the inner Self of every living being, ultimately the only and true Saviour; (b) as a manifestation of the Ekklësìa He presents Himself as a personal Incarnation among men.
The third aspect is the "Psychic Christ" (ExTh 47:3, 59:3, etc.), called the "Nazarene" or "Jesus disseminated" (see below). This is the Christic presence in the universe under the form of innumerable "Seeds" that are the nuclei of the souls, without which matter would be a meaningless and purposeless chaos.
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The Limit or Cross. The act by which Sophia produces the apparent fragmentation of the One Life is called "The Thought of the Lack" (Ennoia tês hysterêmatos) in ExTh 22:7. We have good reasons to identify it with the "Limit" (Hòros) referred to above. In fact, by "cutting fragments, as it were, out of the Fullness", Sophia, necessarily, sets limits and boundaries. But Hòros means more than just a limit. Hòros means also "term", in the sense of a word meant to define (from the Latin finis, "boundary") a concept. This reveals the deeper sense of Hòros: as "term" He is a partial translation of the Word or Lògos. Synonyms are the Greek térma and the Latin terminus, both meaning "boundary" (but tèrma means also "target", which is meaningful).
Hòros defines the nature of every creature and sets up its profile. Every created being is perfectly defined by the limits of its properties or qualities: by how much it is long or heavy or useful or intelligent, etc. Therefore everything reduces itself to the Limit, but no limit can ever be final, for no "term" can ever be the perfect translation of what the divine Word means. Therefore Sophia tends continually to cross the Limit, in vain trying to achieve that perfect translation. This is the universal change, in virtue of which nothing remains ever equal to itself, not even for an instant however short.
The Limit has two components: one horizontal, as it were, ideally separating Sophia's two Faces, and one vertical on the dark Face, distinguishing every individual being from all the others, and from each other the two elements of every couple of contraries. The two components, in other words, reproduce the shape of the letter T, that is of the primitive form of the cross. Therefore another name of the Limit is Stavròs ("Cross"), and since the Saviour must descend Himself on the Limit in order to reach the creatures to be saved, the Gnosis says that He is there crucified.
It would be a gross mistake to understand that supernal Crucifixion to be a devaluation of the "wooden cross" of the Golgotha, or its negation through a "symbolical interpretation" thereof. On the contrary, the Gnosis is very serious in affirming even the necessity of a so-called "wooden cross", or some equivalent thereof, once its pleromatic Model has been established, and this just because time and eternity are simultaneously present in Sophia as the two faces of a coin. Thus the Gnosis goes so far as to state that God would not be God unless He were also the Crucified One. And since all that belongs to time and history is within Sophia, that is internal to the divine sphere, no dualistic view is possible of an eternal Model being "up there" and an event having occurred "here". All the "here" is totally comprehended in the "up there".
However, the Cross of the Golgotha was one of the possible translations in time and history of the eternal Cross of the Son, which on earth can take many forms. And it is not the suffering in itself, or its source in natural factors, or the horrible ways of inflicting it that human cruelty may devise, that are significant: the marks of Divinity are the readiness to face them, and the voluntary acceptance of suffering and death for the welfare of all the creatures.
Also, there is only one Christòs, who can deny that? But how can one impose limits to His compassion, forbidding Him to visit any people or place or age or world that might need His self-sacrifying Presence? "And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, one shepherd (mìa poìmnë, heìs poimên - John 10:16)" - the one Shepherd being obviously the One Christòs -- not indeed some human being -- while the one fold is the universal brotherhood of the Ekklësìa.
To every Christian, whether "orthodox" or Gnostic, the Cross and the Crucifix should have the greatest importance as symbols of the very nature of God Who is Love, Compassion and Self-sacrifice, and as describing the path to be followed by anyone wanting to approach God. Thus understood, the Cross and the Crucifix could be accepted as worthy symbols by all men, whatever their beliefs. It is fashionable nowadays to speak of the "three great monotheistic religions", meaning Christianity, Islam and Judaism, forgetting however that the very idea of the Incarnation is anathema to two of them, and that the three are not the only monotheistic religions on earth. A better grouping would be that of those religions, like for instance Christianity and, in India, at least the Vaishnava religion, that accept the idea of a divine Incarnation, of a God being both "up there" and "here" -- here, we add, not only for the human beings but also for the poor dog under vivisection.
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The Demiurge and the Schêma. Sophia's dark Face is the world of reflections or mirror images, which means the partial or wrong apprehension of Reality on the part of the soul. The Son too is reflected there, and this reflection is called the "Demiurge", the "creator" of the lower world in the sense that He, inspired by Sophia, establishes the patterns according to which everything in the universe takes shape and follows set patterns. The Demiurge is the World Soul, within which all the other souls are hierarchically ordered.
How is the Son reflected in Sophia's dark Face? Here we see primarily the "feminine" Aeons reflected: the immutability of Truth finds its expression in the constancy of the laws ruling the universe; Life becomes the actual force ensouling all living beings; the Ekklësìa manifests Herself in all the organized structures: cells, organisms, living species, societies, etc.
But the vertical component of the Limit determines two sections or sides in Sophia's dark Face. These are traditionally called "the Right" and "the Left", respectively, the former constituting the Psychic sphere, and the latter the Hylic ("earthy") one. The Psychic sphere is in equilibrium between the shining Face and the "Left". The latter is definitely turned downwards. As a consequence, one of its characteristics is that in it every reflection is likely to be further inverted or deformed or corrupted: Life - for example - becoming death, strife taking the place of association, error that of truth, and so on. An example is cancer: here the healthy reflection of Life and Ekklësìa in the form of living cells and organs gets corrupted into an unhealthy and disorderly growth. In the Left side the traditional teaching places the Antìmimon Pnèvma, the "Spirit who counterfeits", the Liar, the Adversary, the Devil of mythology.
The Gospel of the Truth says that the Father keeps within Himself the Perfection (i.e. the Fulness or Pleroma) of all the created beings, only to bestow it to them as a boon for their return to Him. Before then all the creatures are in a condition of "Lack" (Void), which means lack of Truth, that is Ignorance. Ignorance generates Error (plànë) that, accompanied by Forgetting, Anguish and Fear, in its turn feeds Ignorance, so that a self-perpetuating chain is formed: Ignorance -- Error (Forgetting, Anguish, Fear) -- Ignorance -- ...... This chain is called the Schêma ("form", "pattern"): "The schêma is the world in which He came as a Servant" (Gospel of the Truth). It is tò schêma toû kòsmou toùtou ("the pattern of this world") of 1 Cor. 7:31.
Ignorance means ignoring our true nature and identity, identifying ourselves with our empirical ego, itself a part of the schêma. It is then obvious that such a self-perpetuating chain cannot break by itself. Having recognized its nature, one has to abandon all self-centred interests and open oneself to the saving Presence of the Christ within. Only His "vertical" intervention can break the schêma.
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The Nazarene and the Seed. Crucified on the Limit, the Christ is thereby present in all that owes its existence to Sophia through Hòros. "Jesus said: I am the All, and All has to be traced back to Me. Split a piece of wood: I am there; lift up a stone: you will find me there" (Gospel of Thomas 77). "(The Lord), talking to me, said: I am thee, and thou art Me; wherever thou art, there I am. I am sown everywhere" (Gospel of Eve, Erbetta, p. 537 - Bibliogaphy). The words "sown everywhere" of the latter quotation is very important, for it corresponds to a fundamental valentinian teaching. Each soul's substance comes from Sophia, but its living Centre, the Spirit, is a fragment, as it were, of the very Life of the Son as Christ. This fragment is called either "Spark" or "Seed". "After the psychical body had been formed, a male Seed was placed by the Logos in the chosen sleeping soul. That Seed is an outflow of the Angelic Being, so that there would be no Lack (Hystérëma)." (ExTh 2: 1).
It is our conjecture that the Lord "sown everywhere" translates a lost Hebrew expression ye$ùwa° hanizra°, that is "the Jesus sown" or "disseminated", whose "birthplace" is obviously the nizrà°at (the Hebrew feminine for "scattered"), that is Sophia fragmented into individual souls. To nizrà°at then would "Nazareth" allude, and the One born there would naturally be "the Nazarene", that is hanizrà°. The same can be said of "Bethlehem", in Hebrew beyt-lèHem, literally "the house of bread". But lèHem = 78 = haHokmah, that means "the Wisdom", in Greek hë Sophìa !
We find a support to our conjecture in the inscription on Jesus' Cross, written, according to John 19:20, Ebraïstì, Römaïstì, Ellënistì, that is "in Hebrew, Latin and Greek". The inscription was: "Jesus the Nazöraios, the King of the Jews". If our conjecture is correct, that inscription, Ebraïstì, would have been: ye$ùwa° hanizra° mèlek hayehuwdiym. If we calculate the value of this sentence, we obtain the number 888, so important in the Gnostic symbolism.
Incidentally, this number is also that of the expression ye$ùwa° ma$ìyaH uwben-&elohiym ("Jesus Christ and Son of God" - cp. John 20:31 !). See also the page
Further Examples, under (1), and that concerning the number 888.
The Seed "placed" by the Logos in the soul is the Pneumatic ("spiritual") Seed.
Its place is Sophia's shining Face, but a reflected image of it is present in each one of the two halves of the dark Face. These are the Psychic and the Hylic Seed, around which Sophia's substance gathers, so that there are three "souls" or, better, three components of the soul: the Pneumatic or spiritual, the Psychic or rational, and the Hylic or irrational (ExTh 50 - 55).
Symbolically, the Psychic element is said to be "of the Right", that is imagined to be situated on the right side of the vertical axis of the Cross, for analogous reasons the Hylic element is said to be "of the Left".
See some figures illustrating the Three Seeds.
The Pneumatic Seed (above the horizontal arm of the Cross) is of a totally different nature from the Psychic and the Hylic ones, and for that it is called the "different Seed" (diaphèron spèrma) in the Excerpta. The difference is due to the fact that while the Son is actually, substantially as it were, present in the Pneumatic Seed, He is not so in the others, that are images wrought out by the lower Sophia. This is why the soul is called an "abortion" until it is "chosen" (i.e. fit for receiving the Pneumatic Seed) and so long as it is "sleeping", so long, that is, as the "Spark" has not been revived or set aflame by the Saviour (ExTh 3). Only then will the Pneumatic Seed be able to act as a leaven uniting (to itself) the soul and the body (meaning the respective Seeds) which had been produced separately by Sophia (ExTh 2:2).
ExTh 2:1 quoted above states that the Pneumatic Seed - "an outflow of the Angelic Being (apòrrhoia toû angelikoû)" - has been placed in the soul by the Logos. It is useful to explore this teaching in some depth.
ExTh 2:2 says that the Pneumatic Seed was placed there by the Saviour, and in fact the Saviour and the Logos are one. ExTh 22:1 states that we are "parts" (mèrë) of the Angels. ExTh 25:1 says that the Valentinians define an Angel (àngelos, "messenger" ) as "a Logos that has been assigned a mission by 'Him Who Is' ". In ExTh 35:1 we read that the Saviour came accompanied by the "Angels of the different Seed" (who in fact are one with Him). Thus the Pneumatic Seed, as the "outflow of the Angelic Being", is directly linked to the Plêröma. The Saviour brought the Angels with Him "for the diòrthosis ("straightening, correction") of the Seed".
Summing up, the Angel is one of the "rays" issuing from the one Centre that is the Son as Noûs. An Angel is an inseparable limb of the Son, an eternal moment in the one Life in the Pleroma. He is the "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27), the highest Self of every living being, the point where God and soul coincide. The Angel's "outflow", the Pneumatic Seed, is just an extension of the Angel's Life, his direct presence in the Pneumatic component of the soul, in Sophia's shining Face.
The Seeds - collectively the "Psychic Christ" or "Nazarene" - are the identity-preserving, dynamic centres of the souls, allowing them to remain coherent structures despite their continuous changes. This actually applies to the whole universe, and is evident wherever we meet an organized structure of whatever kind or level. In other words, the Seeds prevent matter from being an aimless and meaningless chaos. This is the "formation according to the substance", to be followed in due time by the "formation according to the Gnosis", thanks to which the diòrthosis of the Seed can take place.
The diòrthosis is the process of purification and redemption whereby the lower Seeds are aligned to and harmonzed with the Pneumatic Seed; when, in other words, body and soul are made subservient to the Spirit within. This happens when the Psychic soul's conscious appeal addressed to the Saviour gives the latter the opportunity to "wake up the (Pneumatic) Soul (that was "sleeping" -- see ExTh 2:1 quoted above) and set the Spark (the Pneumatic Seed) aflame" according to ExTh 3:1.
Finally the two lower Seeds are resorbed into the highest one, and then the "outflow" re-absorbed into the Angel. The condition of one in whom such diórthösis has occurred is called anástasis, that is "resurrection" - literally "standing" (stasis) "up" (anà), while ortòs also means "upright, standing up". The human soul is now one with the Angel (Hieròs Gàmos), free from all connections with the Void "outside", but enriched by the glorified synthesis (in the Pneumatic Seed) of the whole history of his life through all nature's kingdoms.
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The Hieròs Gàmos. That final re-union is the Sacred Wedding (Hieròs Gàmos), whereby the syzygy Christòs-Sophia is established: "Then the Pneumatic beings, having taken their psyches off, while the Mother (Sophia) unites to the Bridegroom (the Christ), take likewise the Angels as their husbands (*): they enter the Bridal Chamber within the Limit (**) where, being now Aeons of the same nature as the Noûs, proceed towards the Vision of the Father, towards the eternal (aiônios), spiritual union of the Syzygy" (ExTh 64). (***)
(*) The soul being considered feminine.
(**) Which implies that they had taken their Cross upon themselves.
(***) The Hieròs Gàmos is thus a purely spiritual event. This has to be contrasted with what one has to read in recently published indecent "best sellers".
This is man's final redemption, the liberation from this world of suffering and death, the "death" into which the Mother (Sophia) had plunged us and from which the Christ delivers us (ExTh 80:1). Liberation from death means the liberation from the cycle of repeated births and deaths (ensömatôseis - plural - ExTh 28).
In the quotation above it is said that the liberated souls "enter the Bridal Chamber within the Limit"; in other words, they have to cross the Limit, to pass through the Cross, in order to "proceed towards the Vision of the Father". This has a profound significance: salvation is inseparable from taking upon oneself the Cross of the Saviour. The "rest" (anàpausis - ExTh 63) promised to the saved ones is rest from the aimlessly toiling along the deadly path traced by self-centred interests in this world of darkness and suffering. But the reached Communion with the Lord implies the becoming compassionate and self-sacrificing as He is.
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The Three Natures. The threefold structure of the soul leads directly to the traditional concept of three classes of human beings: the "Pneumatics", the "Psychics", and the "Hylics".
A common misconception is that the Pneumatics would be "saved by nature", while the Hylics would be "lost by nature". But salvation and loss are not for human beings, but for the souls components. The Excerpta ex Thedoto (50-56) are very clear on this subject. What is "saved by nature" is tò pneumatikón (neuter), that is the pneumatic element, while "lost by nature" is tò hylikòn, the hylic component. The psychic element is autexoúsion, that is endowed with free will, which allows man to move either toward spirit or toward matter, thus choosing either the uppermost or the lowermost class. It should also be clear that "loss" in Gnosis does not mean damnation, but the permanence in the condition of "death", that is the cycle of repeated births and deaths (reincarnation). Thus the class to which any human being belongs depends on which of the three "souls" he chooses to let prevail in him.
Again ExTh 56:2 is very clear: "Many are the Hylics, not many the Psychics, rare the Pneumatics": This is precisely the distribution one would expect to result from a group of people facing a series of difficult trials or tests: many would remain behind, a few only passing them all.
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The Baptism. According to ExTh 1:1, the Saviour descended "clothed with the Pneumatic Seed". For the Valentinians, this descent is symbolized by Jesus' Baptism, water being the known symbol of the psychê or soul.
ExTh 36 explains: "Our Angels were emanated in the Unity, for they are one, since they were issued from the One. But since we were in a condition of division, then Jesus was baptized dividing the Undivided, until He unites us with the Angels, in the Pleroma, so that we all, the multitude, having become one shall reunited with the One that was divided for us".
Together with Jesus the Angels, who are nothing else that the Son's limbs, are baptized: "The Angels, of whom we are parts, are baptized ... for the deads, for we are dead, we whom the existence here has put in a condition of Death. ... They were baptized in the beginning (en archê - that is "in the Principle" i.e. in the Noûs), in the Redemption of the Name descended upon Jesus under the form of a dove ... Even Jesus needed Redemption, in order not to be detained by the Thought of the Lack (ênnoia toû hysterêmatos) in which He had been put ..." (ExTh 22).
Cp. 1 Cor. 15:29.
The Name is the Son, the supreme Identity or divine Self. It is the "invisible (i.e. transcendental) part of Jesus, according to ExTh 26:1. The "Redemption in the Name" is the manifestation in the soul of its true Self. The "One" of ExTh 36, the Undivided that gets divided for us through Jesus' Baptism, is the Christòs Holòklëros, the transcendental Christ. The Angels were baptised en archê, which means that the Baptism is a fact beyond time. The "condition of division" is that of the Nazarene or "Jesus disseminated". The division of the Undivided is the emission of the Pneumatic Seed. The baptized Jesus of the first quotation (ExTh 36) is the Saviour; the one of ExTh 22 is the Nazarene. The "Thought of the Lack" is, as we have seen, the Limit whereby Sophìa transposes Herself into particular souls, the paradigmatic Cross of the Saviour.
The Pneumatic Seed is present ab aeterno in Sophia's shining Face, and there accessible to every individual soul. There is a relationship between the Pneumatic Seed and the Psychic one, simply because the latter is an image of the former. But until a real communion is established between the two, the presence of the Pneumatic seed in the soul is purely virtual. This situation is described in ExTh 44:1 in a mythical way: "When Sophìa saw Him (the Saviour) ... was full of joy and adored Him; but seeing the male Angels sent with Him she was ashamed and covered herself with her veil" - thus excluding the lower Seeds from the direct contact with the Pneumatic one. The veil of Sophia will be removed, i.e. the presence of the Pneumatic Seed in the soul, the communication between it and the Psychic Seed, will be actual, when the soul will have irreversibly opened itself to the divine compassion. This is Sophia's "demand for Light" (i.e. for the Christòs) mentioned in ExTh 40. Then the diórthösis of the Seed (ExTh 35, 2) will take place.
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Gnosis: What it is. The word "Gnosis" can be the object of a gross misconception, unless properly understood. "Gnosis" is knowledge; but this knowledge is no collection of pieces of information about metaphysical facts. ExTh is very clear on this subject: "Since the Father was unknown ... He emitted the Only Begotten Son through His own Enthýmësis -- for so He knows Himself -- as Spirit of Knowledge (Pneûma Gnôseös). So He who has proceeded from the Father's Enthýmësis has become Gnosis, and this is the Son, for through the Son has the Father been known (7:1)".
The Only Begotten Son is the Noûs, here said to have been emanated as "Spirit of Knowledge". His "feminine" counterpart in the syzygy is Truth, and ExTh 7:2 says that from Truth emanates the "Spirit of Love" (Pneûma Agàpës). Thus, while we find it stressed that "Gnosis" means the Knowledge of the Father, we are taught that Knowledge and Love, Gnôsis and Agàpë, are like the two faces of a coin in the Son. There is no Gnosis without Love.
The proper appreciation of what Gnosis is holds the key to the correct understanding of what "the New Covenant" means -- to a Gnostic at least.
"And he took the bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them saying: This is my body which is given for you; this do in remembrance of me. Likewise also the cup after supper, saying: This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for you" (Luke 22:19-20).
"Do this in remembrance of me" (toûto poieìte eis tên emên anàmnësin): does "this" refer to the repetition of a meal, or -- gnostically understood -- to the continuation, in the life of a disciple, of the self-sacrificing attitude -- the Pneûma Agàpës -- of a Son of God?
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The Synthesis. To our knowledge, a fundamental aspect of the Valentinian Gnosis has received little or no attention or appreciation. The Valentinian Gnosis has achieved the remarkable result of unifying Theology, Cosmology, Anthropology, Psychology and Soteriology: the description of the elements of any one of these is directly applicable to all the others. The absolute Father-Mother is the unfathomable sphere of any soul's superconscious planes. Sophia is both the Universal Soul and the individual soul of any living being. The Demiurge is both the Ruler of the universe and the human empirical ego. The Saviour is both a compassionate God and the inner Self of man.
Thus there is nothing that is extraneous to anybody: Life is one, all is one, the animals are ourselves, God is everywhere, Love must be the Law.
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General Index