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 ONOSTIOISM

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GNOSTICISM

dspism. No Gnosis was essentially complete without the knowledge of the formulse, which, once pro- nounced, were the undoing of the higher hostile powers. Magic is the original sin of (gnosticism, nor is it difficult to guess whence it is inherited. To a certain extent it formed part of every pagan religion, especially the ancient mj-steries, yet the thousands of magic tablets unearthed in Ass.vria and Babylonia show us where the rankest growth of magic was to be foimd. Moreover, the terms and names of earliest Gnosticism bear an unmistakable similarity to Semitic soimds and words. Gnosticism came early into contact with Judaism, and it betrays a knowledge of the Old Testament, if only to reject it or borrow a few names from it. Considering the strong, well-organized, and highly-cultured Jewish colonies in the Euphrates valley, this early contact with Judaism is perfectly natural. Perhaps the Gnos- tic idea of a Redeemer is not unconnected with Jewish Messianic hopes. But from the first the Gnostic con- ception of a Saviour is more superb imian than that of popular Judaism; their Manila d'Haye, or Sotcr, is some immediate manifestation of the Deity, a Light- King, an ^on (Aiuy), and an emanation of the good God. When Gnosticism came in touch with Ghris- tianity, which must have hajipcned almost immedi- ately on its appearance, Gnosticism threw itself with strange rapidity into Christian forms of thought, bor- rowed its nomenclature, acknowledged Jesus as Sav- iour of the world, simulated its sacraments, pretended to be an esoteric revelation of Christ and His Apostles, flootled the world with apocryphal Gospels, and Acts, and Apocalypses, to substantiate its claim. As Chris- tianity grew within and without the Roman Empire, Gnosticism spread as a fungus at its root, and claimed to be the only true form of Christianity, unfit, indeed, for the vulgar crowd, but set apart for the gifted and the elect. So rank was its poisonous growth that there seemed danger of its stifling Christianity alto- gether, and the earliest Fathers devoted their energies to uprooting it. Though in reality the spirit of Gnos- ticism is utterly alien to that of Christianity, it then seemed to the unwary merely a modification or re- finement thereof. When domiciled on Greek soil. Gnosticism, slightly changing its barbarous and Semi- tic terminology and giving its "emanations" and "syzygies" Greek names, sounded somewhat like neo-Platonism, though it was strongly repudiated by Plotinus. In Egypt the national worship left its mark more on Gnostic practice than on its theories. In dealing with the origins of Gnosticism, one might be tempted to mention Manichseism, as a number of Gnostic ideas seem to be borrowed from Manichsism, where they are obviously at home. This, however, would hardly be correct. Manichjeism, as historically connected with Mani, its founder, could not have arisen much earlier than A. D. 250, when Gnosticism was already in rapid decline. Manichseism, however, in many of its elements dates back far beyond its com- monly accepted founder; but then it is a parallel development with the Gnosis, rather than one of its sources. Sometimes Manicha-ism is even classed as a form of Gnosticism and styled Parsee Gnosis, as dis- tinguished from Syrian and Egyptian Gnosis. This classification, however, ignores the fact that the two systems, though they have the doctrine of the evil of matter in common, start from different principles, Manichseism from dualism, while Gnosticism, as an idealistic Pantheism, proceeds from the conception of matter as a gradual deterioration of tlie (oillie:Hl.

Doctrines. — Owing to the multiplicity iiml diver- gence of Gnostic theories, a detailed exposition in this article would be uns:il isfactory and confusing and to a certain extent even misleading, since Gnosticism never possessed a nucleus of slabl(! doctrine, or any sort of ileponitum fiilei round which a number of varied devel- opments and heresies or sects might be grouped; at most it had some leading ideas, which are more or less

clearly traceable in different schools. Moreover, a fair idea of Gnostic doctrines can be obtained from the articles on leaders and phases of Gnostic thought (e. g. Basilides; Valentinus; Marcion; Docet.e; Demi- urge). We shall here only indicate some main phases of thought, which can be regarded as keys and which, though not fitting all systems, will unlock most of the mysteries of the Gnosis.

(a) Cosmogony. — Gnosticism is thinly disguised Pantheism. In the beginning was the Depth; the Fulness of Being; the Not-Being God; the First Father, the Monad, the Man; the First Source, the unknown (Jotl {(Svd6s irXripoj^a, ovk Cjv 6e6s, TrpowdTiop, ixdvas^ &v6p(i)iro^^ irpoapxv, &yvii3(TTo% ^^^^), Or by whatever other name it might be called. This undefined infinite Something, though it might be addressed by the title of the Good God, was not a personal Being, but, like Tad or Brahma of the Hindus, the "Great Unknown" of modern thought. The Unknown God, however, was in the beginning pure spirituality; matter as yet was not. This source of all being causes to emanate (■n-pofidWei) from itself a number of pure spirit forces. In the different systems these emanations are differ- ently named, classified, and described, but the emana- tion theory itself is common to all forms of Gnosti- cism. In the Basilidian Gnosis they are called sonships (vlSTTjTes), in Valentinianism they form antithetic pairs or "syzygies" (ffiifi/701) ; Depth and Silence produce Mind and Truth; these produce Reason and Life, these again Man and State (^kkXijo-^o). According to Marcus, they are numbers and sounds. These are the primary roots of the ^ons. With bewildering fertil- ity hierarchies of iEons are thus produced, sometimes to the number of thirty. These ^Eons belong to the purely ideal, noumenal, intelligible, or supersensible world ; they are immaterial, they are hypostatic ideas. Together with the source from which they emanate they form the ir'hripwpa. The transition from the imma- terial to the material, from the noumenal to the sensi- ble, is brought about by a flaw, or a passion, or a sin, in one of the jEons. According to Basilides, it is a flaw in the last sonship; according to others it is the passion of the female ^Eon Sophia; according to others the sin of the Great Archon, or .<Eon-Creator, of the Universe. The ultimate end of all Gnosis is metanoca, or repen- tance, the undoing of the sin of material existence and the return to the Pleroma.

(b) Sophia-Myth. — In the greater number of Gnos- tic systems an important role is played by the ^on Wisdom — Sophia or Achamoth (niDDD)- In some sense she seems to represent the supreme female prin- ciple, as for instance in the Ptolemaic system, in which the mother of the seven heavens is called Achamoth, in the Valentinian system, in which ^ Ufa So0(a, the Wisdom above, is distinguished from n Kara loipla, or Achamoth, the former being the female principle in the noumenal world, and in the Archontian system, where we find a "Lightsome Mother" (^ Mijrijp ^ (puTCLvq), and in which beyond the heavens of the Archons is ii nv"np ^^ iravruv and likewise in the Barbelognosis, where the female Barbelos is but the counterpart of the Unknown Father, which also occurs amongst the Ophites described by Irenieus (Adv. Ha;res., Ill, vii, 4). Moreover, the Eucharistic prayer in the Acts of Thomas (ch. 1) seems addressed to this supreme female principle. W. Bousset's sug- gestion, that the Gnostic Sophia is nothing else than a disguise for the Dea Syra, the great goddess Istar, or Astarte, seems worthy of consideration. On the other hand, the .Eon Sophia usually plays another role; she is v UpoiveiKos or "the Lustful One", once a virginal goddess, who by her fall from original purity is the cause of this sinful material world. One of the earli- est forms of this myth is found in the Simonian Gnosis, in which Simon, the Great Power, finds Helena, who during ten years had been a prostitute in Tyre, but who is Simon's Ikcoio, or understanding, and whom