6

THUNDER

Thunder, or Thunder: Perfect Mind, 1 is a sacred poem of paradox and antithesis. Gnostic themes, such as liberation from the material world, a pantheistic deity that permeates matter and life, and the promise of salvation of return inform the poem, and some scholars consider these themes to echo a Sethian gnostic perspective. The speaker of the poetic lines of Thunder is female, and while there are diverse views of her identity, she may be compared with Sophia, the personified wisdom of god, revealing herself, commonly with paradoxical “I am” statements, to all who will hear.

I was dispatched from the power

and have come to you who study me

and am found by you who seek me.

Look at me, you who study me,

and you who hear, pay attention to me.

You waiting for me, take me to yourselves.

Don’t banish me from your sight.

Don’t let hatred enter your voice against me

nor let anger enter your hearing .

In no place, in no time, be unknowing of me.

Be alert. Don’t be ignorant of me.

I am the first and last.

I am the honored and scorned.

I am the whore and holy.

I am the wife and virgin.

I am the mother and daughter.

I am the members of my mother.

I am a barren one with many sons.

I have had a splendid wedding

and have not embraced a husband.

I am a midwife and do not give birth.

I am the solace of my birth pains.

I am bride and groom,

and my husband engendered me.

I am the mother of my father

and sister of my husband,

and he is my offspring.

I am the servant of him who fashioned me.

I am the ruler of my offspring.

He produced me prematurely,

and he is my offspring born on time,

and from him is my strength.

I am the staff of his power in his youth

and he the rod of my advanced years,

and whatever he wants happens to me.

I am silence incomprehensible

and insight with fine memory.

I am the voice whose sounds are many

and the word whose appearances are multiple.

I am the utterance of my name .

Why do you who hate me, love me

and hate those who love me?

You who deny me, confess me,

and you who confess me, deny me.

You who tell the truth about me, lie about me,

and you who lie, tell the truth.

You who know me,

be ignorant of me,

and those who have not known me,

let them know me.

For I am knowledge and ignorance.

I am shy and bold.

I am shameless, I ashamed.

I am strength, I am fear.

I am war and peace.

Listen to what I say.

I am disgraced and grand.

Note my poverty and wealth.

Don’t be arrogant toward me

when I am cast down on the ground,

and you will find me

in those who are to come.

If you see me lying on a dung heap,

don’t run away and leave me there.

In the kingdoms you will find me.

If you see me when I am cast with the disgraced

in the most filthy places,

don’t laugh at me.

Don’t discard me with those in need.

I am compassionate, I cruel.

Be careful .

Don’t hate my obedience,

but love my self-control.

When I am weak, don’t forsake me,

don’t fear my power.

Why do you despise my fear

and curse my pride?

I am a woman present in every fear

and I am strength in agitation.

I am a woman, weak,

and I am carefree in a pleasant place.

I am senseless, I am wise.

Why have you hated me in your counsels?

Because I will be silent among the silent

and appear and speak?

Greeks, why do you hate me?

Because I am a barbarian among the barbarians?

For I am the wisdom 2 of Greeks and knowledge of barbarians.

I am the judgment of Greeks and barbarians.

My image is great in Egypt, and I have no image among the barbarians.

I am hated everywhere and loved everywhere.

I am called life 3 and you have called me death.

I am called law and you have called me lawless.

I am one you pursued, and I am one you seized.

I am one you scattered, and you gathered me together.

I am one before whom you are ashamed,

and to me you are shameless.

I am a woman who attends no festival,

and I am she whose festivals are many.

I am godless, and I have many a god.

I am one you confessed and you scorn me.

I am unlettered and you learn from me .

I am one you despise and you confess me.

I am one you hide from and you appear to me.

When you hide I show.

When you appear I hide.

As for those who have behaved foolishly,

take me from their understanding, from grief,

and accept me, from understanding and grief.

Receive me from what is lowly in creation,

and take from the good, even though in lowliness.

Out of shame take me to yourselves shamelessly.

Without shame and with shame, put to shame

what is mine in you.

Come to me, you who know me

and you who know my members,

and make great ones among small first creatures.

Come to childhood

and don’t despise it because it is small and tiny.

Don’t make the great turn, piece by piece, from the small,

for the small is known from the great.

Why do you curse and honor me?

You wound me and have mercy.

Don’t separate me from the first you have known.

Don’t cast out or turn away

Turn away and do not know

what is mine.

I know the first ones,

and those after them know me.

I am perfect mind and rest

I am the knowledge of my quest,

the discovery of those who look for me ,

the command of those who ask of me,

the power of powers, through my knowledge,

of angels, through my word,

of gods among gods, through my counsel,

of spirits of all who dwell with me,

of women who dwell within me.

I am honored, praised, and scornfully despised.

I am peace, and war has come because of me.

I am alien and citizen.

I am substance and a woman of no substance.

Those connected to me are ignorant of me,

and those one with my being know me.

Those close to me are ignorant of me,

and those far away have known me.

On the day I am close to you, you are far away,

and on the day I am far away, I am close to you.

I am      the heart’s lamp.

I am      of natures.

I am      of the creation of spirits,

the request of souls.

I am control and uncontrollable.

I am union and dissolution.

I abide and dissolve.

I am descent, and people come up to me.

I am judgment and acquittal.

I am sinless,

and the root of sin comes from me.

I am desire outwardly, yet within me is control.

I am hearing for all, and my speech cannot be grasped.

I am an unspeaking mute

and enormous in my many words .

Hear me in gentleness

and learn from me in roughness.

I am the woman crying out

and I am cast upon the face of the earth.

I prepare bread and my mind within.

I am knowledge of my name.

I am the one who cries out

and I listen.

I appear      walk in

utterance      refutation.

I am judge, I am defense.

I am called justice, but my name is violence.

You the vanquishing honor me,

and you the vanquished whisper against me.

Judge before you are judged,

because in you the judge and partiality exist.

If you are condemned by one, who will acquit you?

If acquitted by one, who will arrest you?

What is in you is outside,

and one who fashions you on the outside

shapes you inside.

What you see outside you see within you.

It is visible and your garment.

Hear me, listeners,

and learn my words, you who know me.

I am the hearing all can reach;

I am speech that cannot be grasped.

I am the name of the sound

and the sound of the name .

I am the sign of the letter

and the designation of the division.

I      light      and shadow.

Hear me, listeners,

take me to yourselves.

As the lord the great power lives,

the one who stands will not change the name.

The one who stands created me.

I will speak his name.

Look at the words of this one

and all the writings completed.

Be alert, hearers and angels and those sent

and you spirits arisen from the dead.

I alone exist and have no one to judge me.

Many pleasures exist in many sins,

uncontrolled passions and disgraceful desires

and fleeting pleasures

embraced by people until they sober up

and float up to their place of rest.

There they will find me and live, and they will not die again.