FIVE

THE DIRTY PEOPLE

Masochism, too, is normal to man;
for the sex-act is the Descent into Hell of the Savior.

ALEISTER CROWLEY, DIARY, 1920

In matters of doctrine, whatsoever is truly new is certainly false.

ARCHDEACON RALPH CHURTON (1754–1831), A DEFENSE OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND, OXFORD, 1795

Irenaeus believed that a group of sects he more or less lumps together, namely the Barbeliotes (or Borborians), the Cainites, the Ophites, and the Sethians, were but offshoots, like the Lernaean hydra, of the school of Valentinus.¹ This the bishop apparently deduces from similarities of language, theme, tone: from ideas evincing elaboration of aeon or emanation theory and from the attention given to the exiled Sophia and her part in the creation of the cosmos and of men and women. This must have been quite a “school,” for Irenaeus already maintained that Ptolemy, Marcus, and Heracleon, each with his own sphere of influence, were also students of Valentinus. Clement of Alexandria asserts as much for Theodotus.

It is impossible for us to tell how accurate Irenaeus was being in this matter since the heretics themselves do not name their immediate influences, other than to assert privileged access to secret, unverifiable, apostolic, and messianic traditions. Thus Clement of Alexandria further informs us that while Basilides claimed a transmission of secret tradition through Glaucias, hearer of Peter, Valentinians claimed Valentinus to have been a hearer of Theudas (or Theodas), pupil of Paul, privy to the latter’s otherwise unwritten mystery gnosis.² According to Hippolytus, the Naassenes, or serpent-worshippers, received secret matter through Mariamne—presumably Mary Magdalene—from James, the brother of the Lord.³ This claim fits very well with titles of several extant Gnostic works (two Apocalypses of James, the Pistis Sophia, and the Gospel of Mary, for example).

Sethians claimed intimate access to the supernatural mind of Seth, or the Great Seth, identified also with Jesus since they claimed to be heirs of the Sethian seed, that is, spiritual descendants of the glorious, perfect man Seth whose birth consoled Adam and Eve after the horror that befell Abel through Cain’s wickedness. The Sethian seed constituted a pre-Hebraic alien race of unmovable ones (reminiscent of Simonian stood-stands-will stand language), strangers in, but not of, the world: children of their true heavenly Mother, Barbelo.

It is, however, notable that Tertullian attributes the plethora of sects—which plethora Clement of Alexandria complained was keeping potential converts from approaching Christianity—to the influence of Greek philosophy. Thus while Tertullian calls Marcion a Stoic, Valentinus is denigrated as a pupil of Plato; Aristotle too is suspect: “Unhappy Aristotle! Who has furnished them with sophistry.” Tertullian jibes with triumphalist amusement, believing the days of philosophy numbered.⁴ The nature of the Socratic method is what has made for perpetual novelty of exposition, Tertullian asserted. He blames Athens and Alexandria for corrupting the simplicity of the faith, a position Clement of Alexandria would seriously wish to qualify. The suspicion remains then that the sects above named did not stem from one teaching source in their immediate contexts, but came out of a shared culture, a kind of spiritual marketplace at the Egyptian crossroads of East and West that was Alexandria, drenched in competing—but often fundamentally similar—exoteric and esoteric philosophies: Greek, Jewish, Syrian, Persian, Indian, Greco-Egyptian, and so on, illuminated by star names, in the manner of 1960s radical students brandishing paperbacks: Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Friedrich Nietzsche, Louis Pierre Althusser, Mao Zedong, Karl Marx, Jack Kerouac, Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley.

Through the Gordian-knotted foliage, it is nonetheless possible to discern a certain dynamic of transmission. We seem to have a movement of ideas sited in the early to mid-second century in Samaria, Syria, and Upper Mesopotamia (the Edessa region toward the border with Parthia) with connections to Alexandria. Perhaps consequential upon the Romans’ vastation of Judea (135 CE) and the war with Parthia (161–166 CE), when Emperor Lucius Verus sacked Edessa, the center of gravity shifted to Alexandria and Egypt in general, whence the philosophically worked-on hydra of esoteric ideas spread to Rome and the rest of the Empire, insinuating itself into the Pauline and Jewish Christian churches while establishing independent circles.

From the mid- to the late-second century, the Alexandrian phase may have seen a broad divergence of sects into two major streams that, in their ferment, lapped into one another nonetheless: first, those sects stemming from, or associated with, the theologian Valentinus and, second, those sects with a more distinctly magical and libidinous character. One gets the impression that the Valentinian-related groups saw themselves as the master class of a superior, spiritual, esoteric Christianity, still expecting to be accepted as members of the church—albeit as its avant garde—while the Sethian, Naassene, Ophite, Simonian, Carpocratian, and Borborite groups appropriated broadly Christian material merely as it suited them; they were more likely to think of themselves as Gnostics, one suspects, than be bothered about recognition from the Catholic Church, which many of their number may have loathed anyhow. This generalizing picture does not include or place every possible sect, and we must suppose considerable overlap, morphing, and, probably multi-membership, in the way that eager Freemasons tend to join a number of orders in search of an ideal, or simply from curiosity or hunger for fresh experiences.

We might also suspect that some of the above names were used indiscriminately by heresiologists and may have been different names, or nicknames, for essentially the same group (who might well have called themselves something else), for if their gnosis was indeed “falsely so-called,” as the heresiologists pronounced, there was no harm in the orthodox calling them according to their works. Hippolytus, for example, says that Naassenes “styled themselves Gnostics.” Since Ophite comes from the Greek for serpent (ophos), and Naassene comes from the Hebrew for serpent (nahas), and since a veneration for the serpent of Eden was common among Gnostics, we are right to be cautious about naming names and believing in them too strongly. Spin-offs are rife where sects are concerned, and with so little respect for authority beyond the inner voice or superstitious awe for arcane mysteries, we must presume that sectarian splits were common. Too many novelties inhibit consistency. For Gnostics, dynamic imagination and variegated originalities were assets to be proud of; for the outraged orthodox, they indicated insanity.

SETHIANS, SEED-GATHERERS, AND SERPENT-WORSHIPPERS

Chapter 29 of Irenaeus’s Adversus Haereses opens with a cry of alarm: “A multitude of Gnostics have sprung up and have been manifested like mushrooms growing out of the ground.” Mushrooms traditionally appeared after a storm, and were associated with devils, so the metaphor may indicate the storm of Aurelian persecutions in Gallia Narbonensis in 177 CE that preceded Irenaeus’s arrival in Gaul. Similar outgrowths had, however, already occurred in Rome under Bishop Anicetus (who served as bishop from ca. 157 to ca. 168), when the Carpocratian female magician Marcellina had “led multitudes astray” with “magical arts and incantations; philters, also, and love-potions . . . [and] recourse to familiar spirits, dream-sending demons, and other abominations,”⁵ all employed to prove Gnostics had power over “the princes and formers of this world” and all things in it. We are in Simonian-type territory again.

Carpocratians, as we have seen, were taught that for the soul to be ultimately free, it had to undergo all experiences through successive incarnations (cf. the myth of Helena). If, as a reasonably responsible citizen, you didn’t wish to commit criminal acts in this life, it was probably because you’d already done so in former lives. One suspects the doctrine was predominantly applied to sex and relationships, where it might be welcomed, for Irenaeus seldom refrains from portraying the Gnostics as both seducers and seduced.

According to the heretical doctrine favored by Marcellina, the sex instinct had to be fully experienced in all its facets, even exhausted, so souls could eventually come to indifference to it, for everything palls in the end, save the absolute desire of the soul, itself impassible to these passing affairs, however addictive might be one’s desire for “salvation” via this path! The doctrine, of course, may serve to justify every failing, weakness, and surrender to temptation as education crying for tolerance—not at all far, I think, from the current, dubious notion of “moving on” after calamitous follies and crimes, with the unspoken suggestion that life is punishment enough. One is reminded of Dean Inge’s uncharacteristically overgenerous logion: “The punishment for being a bad man is to be a bad man.” But you won’t ever recover the good man until you fully realize what being a bad man means. QED, says Carpocrates, above it all, with a wicked wink, indifferent to the damage done, for damage becomes the world.

Followers of Carpocrates, wrote Irenaeus, branded themselves inside the lobe of the right ear, an erotic locus, with what we now call a tattoo. Interestingly, with respect to this affectation, the Vatican’s Liber Pontificalis records that Bishop of Rome Anicetus ordered priests not to wear their hair long, possibly because that fashion prevailed among heretical teachers or followers in the city.

Irenaeus implies in chapter 29 of his work that the appearance of Barbeliotes, or Borborians, was a recent affair. No founder’s name occurs.

Now “Borborians” can hardly be a group’s self-designation, since the Greek word Borboros means “mud,” “filth,” “dung,” and it would be as fair to translate Borborian as “shitty” as it would “filthy.” The dung fly family Sphaeroceridae are also known as “Borborites.” So we may be right in suspecting that the name for the “shitty people” is a severe, mocking pun on the name of the goddess whose story dominates heresiological accounts of their beliefs, namely Barbelo (sometimes Barbelos), whose opponents wish to stain the goddess’s name indelibly with their opinion of the Barbelo-worshippers’ practices. And since Barbelo appears in a variety of Gnostic works, especially Sethian works, we may see that this is a cultus or series of cults being viewed at something of a remove. It is notable that Irenaeus does not know the true meaning of the name Barbelo, even writing it as a masculine noun and referring to the figure as a “he.” He is clearly thinking of the characteristic Gnostic tendency to ascribe bisexuality to heavenly powers. A heavenly Father is also a heavenly Mother (a growing movement of the period many discern in the Catholic assumption of the Virgin Mary, mother of God, to the heavenly realm as a soul-comforter, through the Holy Spirit, of course).

I shall save my research into the meaning of Barbelo for chapters 10 and 11, when my discoveries in this regard will make the most sense to the illuminated reader. For now, we shall see what we can learn about the sexual practices of the range of Barbelo-worshippers from Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus, and Epiphanius.

As far as we can discern, the Barbelo Gnostic wished to attain to the light of Christ through embrace of the divine Mother. That this could be enacted derived from the belief, related by Irenaeus,⁶ that the Unknown Father wished to reveal himself, that is, be known, to his First Thought Barbelo, or Barbelos, a virgin spirit. A practical question is thus answered: How do I receive the light? Answer: Attain to the virgin spirit; be cleansed of the Earth and the archons. It helps enormously to see the myths of these Gnostics as serving to answer practical questions, “how-to” kinds of questions, related directly to ritual practices.

Irenaeus then tells us that the Ennoea (First Thought, or Mind) went forward and stood before the Father’s face. This going forward idea is central to understanding Barbelo. She is a little precocious, to say the least: too quick off the mark at times. She asks the Father to his face for prognosis, or prescience, which the Father gives. They are face-to-face, and yes, we may think of sexual embrace. There are now two powers working together: Barbelo, the virgin spirit, and Prognosis, the power to prophesy. Able now to see in advance, to envision and create, together Barbelo and Prognosis request incorruption and eternal life to secure the purity of their vision. Barbelo is now well filled, overflowing with delight in her knowledge of the Father; she recognizes and experiences throughout her being the glorious bliss of the Father’s previously unknown nature. The allusion is sexual. The myth specifies sacramental intercourse between male and female exalted to a plane above the world. Devotees may well have employed entheogens to stimulate rising to the divine embrace amid collective incantations.

Out of her stimulated excitement and amazement, she, Barbelo, generates a light, similar to the light characteristic of the Father’s nature. But it is not the same: for though she has received the seed of the Father, it is combined with her own reflected light. (We may think of classical comparisons of significance given to male sperm and female sexual fluids.) Her light is, nevertheless, sufficient to generate all things. All things come from the light from Barbelo, and this light is effectively an invisible seed (sperma), the seed within the seed (pneuma), for in absolute spiritual light, no thing is seen. The Light is generative. This Light, followers believe, is also Christ, not the man Jesus (who sows the seed among men), but the Christ whom Jesus served to express and give temporary form to. The Light becomes discernible as Christ only after the Father, approving of, that is, taking pleasure in, the light-illuminating Barbelo, anoints her generative light with his own grace. The unmistakable suggestion here is one of divine fertilization: perfection of the seed. The account presented by Irenaeus as baloney probably served as the basis and justification for a sacrament of anointing within the Barbelite community. But . . . Holy Mother of God! What kind of anointing is this?

Christ in the light of Barbelo—she is his mother—requests Nous (spiritual Mind) of the Father to assist him. The Father also grants Logos (the generative Word). One can almost hear a Barbelite catechumen asking a priest: “What is meant by the words ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God’”? Think sacramentalized sperm.

The Ennoea is joined to the Logos, Incorruption (Aphtharsia) to Christ. Eternal Life (Zōē Aiōnios) is made a syzygy with Thelema (Will, or divine will; cf. “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”). Nous is paired up with Prognosis: Mind and Foreknowledge, the essence of prophecy. Were, I wonder, these syzygies enacted by couples in a secret collective ritual, combined with chanting?

By all of these supernal powers, the great light surrounding Barbelos is magnified. One can almost hear intoned solemnly Luke 1:46–47: “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,” a Gnostic solemnity that the orthodox would take for sheer satanic audacity, for the implication of a sexual sacrament, however innocently practiced, is luminously present in the Barbelo myth. This was not simply metaphysical philosophy run wild; this was justification for spiritualized sex. For Barbelo has effectively become the burning bush of the Simonians, from whose core the voice of God could be heard. We can tell this from Irenaeus’s somewhat veiled statement following his account of the generation of the Barbelite aeons: “Hence also they declare were manifested the mother, the father, the son; while from Anthrōpos [Heavenly Man] and Gnosis that Tree was produced which they also style Gnosis itself”⁷ [my italics].

Gnosis is a tree. The significance of this will become plain in due course.

The branches extend downward, bearing fruit. In the descent, a breach in the harmonies occurs, as always in Gnostic systems. The result is the lower world the Gnostic must overcome, first by awareness of the dimensions of the predicament, then by sacraments, preenacting, and so preparing for, the eventual ascendance of the spirit when the body has passed away. Gnostics saw that the dark powers evident in the world of material generation, the shadow of spiritual generation, might overcome the alienated spirit, so divine characters enter the world under various names or guises.

But how had things gone wrong, and how could the way of escape be accounted for?

Barbelo sends the “Holy Spirit,” whom, Irenaeus tells us, Barbelites also call Sophia (Wisdom) and Prunicus (which is not explained). Interestingly, Irenaeus uses the masculine pronoun for this figure, a figure we are used to regarding as feminine, and usually taken to be the same figure as Barbelo in most accounts of Gnostic systems. Irenaeus also uses masculine pronouns in reference to Barbelos, probably on account of the masculine form of the Greek noun ending (os). There may be another reason. He may want to distract his readers from the seduction of the ideas. By suggesting an androgynous, ambiguous, or masculine figure, the sensual resonance of the myth is obscured, and he can coolly expose it as subphilosophical claptrap.

On the other hand, the conclusion of the creation myth Irenaeus gives us next also suggests that there may have been a male counterpart to a feminine Barbelo, insofar as, though he does not say it, Barbelo was probably conceived of as androgynously bisexual, if only because she had absorbed the seed of the Father, for she had been given knowledge of him, face-to-face. These subtleties tend to get lost in many superficial accounts of the Gnostics.

Furthermore, in Irenaeus’s account, the dual nature, or male nature, of Barbelos allows the myth to be concluded where the fallen Holy Spirit becomes also the Demiurge, an unusual, indeed unique, twist for a Gnostic system. This occurs because the mother Sophia leaves him because of his error.

Next they maintain, that from the first angel, who stands by the side of Monogenes, the Holy Spirit has been sent forth, whom they also term Sophia and Prunicus. He [the Holy Spirit] then, perceiving that all the others had consorts, while he himself was destitute of one, searched after a being to whom he might be united; and not finding one, he exerted and extended himself to the uttermost and looked down into the lower regions, in the expectation of there finding a consort; and still not meeting with one, he leaped forth [from his place]; in a state of great impatience, [which had come upon him] because he had made his attempt without the good-will of his father. Afterwards, under the influence of simplicity and kindness, he produced a work in which were to be found ignorance and audacity. This work of his they declare to be Protarchontes [the Demiurge or first Archon], the former of this [lower] creation. But they relate that a mighty power carried him away from his mother, and that he settled far away from her in the lower regions, and formed the firmament of heaven, in which also they affirm that he dwells. And in his ignorance he formed those powers which are inferior to himself angels, and firmaments, and all things earthly. They affirm that he, being united to Authadia [audacity], produced Kakia [wickedness], Zelos [emulation], Phthonos [envy], Erinnys [fury], and Epithymia [lust]. When these were generated, the mother Sophia deeply grieved, fled away, departed into the upper regions, and became the last of the Ogdoad, reckoning it downwards. On her thus departing, he imagined he was the only being in existence; and on this account declared, “I am a jealous God, and besides me there is no one.” Such are the falsehoods which these people invent. [my italics] (Adversus Haereses, I.29, 4)

Note again the leaping forth from his place by Holy Spirit-Sophia-Prunicus. There is perhaps the implication here not only of a feminine promiscuity but of a masculine premature, uncontrolled ejaculation, for the result is a poor child—a shadow of its mother, the neighbors might say: the universe into which the Gnostic soul has been born, asleep.

The way out is to regenerate the link with the Mother who had not fallen, but whose nature could be found, if awoken, within the fallen, lower regions. There may well be a pun there too. That which bound humankind to Earth held within it the seeds of salvation from the Earth, so long, that is, as the lower angels, or negative tendencies, could be, literally, overruled. This system is not without ethics, but they are probably to be applied quite specifically to effective, concentrated pneuma-sexual practice whose aim is union, or reunion: the healing of the wounded psyche or inner universe through uninterrupted concentration of the subject on a supercelestial objective. The climax may thus be expressed as the union of the microcosm with the macrocosm. The heresiologists were probably right to hold a magician as the fons et origo of the practice.

Irenaeus’s rather confused account of the Sethians points out different twists of the basic mythic itinerary with which we are now familiar. We have offspring of Barbelo called Sinistra, Prunicus, Sophia, or “masculo-feminine.” She/he, though lower than her source, is yet dignified by divine “besprinkling of light.”⁸ This suggests a visual analogue in the phenomenon of the stars in the otherwise dark cloak of night. The position of the stars, in those days note, dictated conditions of generation. However, the idea seems to be that what light exists in the dark universe is a fugitive light, the result of Ialdabaoth’s curious envy of the besprinkled light—which he views rather like a savage gazing at alien cargo on the seashore—lavished on those above him, whom he is too blind to see. Knowing only his own work, he is “a jealous god.”

Ialdabaoth is the Demiurge’s name and the plural ending suggests its ultimate derivation from the Elohim (= “Gods”) of Genesis, fashioner of earthly man. Perhaps the name is a pun derived from “begetter of Sabaoth” (= “the hosts”: angels and/or stars), while combining Aramaic ialad for “child” and baōth for “chaos” into “child of chaos,” is no more than suggestive. William Blake apparently concocted his demiurge “Old Nobodaddy” the “Ancient of Days” who as “Urizen” sets bounds to the universe out of the name “Ialdabaoth,” finding therein puns on the Aramaic for “daddy” (abba), the Germanic and Old English “alt” or “eald” (for old), and the “Ia” or “Ja” denoting the shortened name of the Mosaic Law-giver and judge. Blake got the idea well enough.

Ialdabaoth is so jealous of his Adam that he makes Eve just to empty him, but Prunicus empties Eve of her power, so as to frustrate Ialdabaoth. We then find others coming to admire Eve and falling for her, and begetting children of her who are angels. This development is clearly inspired by the Genesis 6 story of the transgressive sons of God and Nephilim, a story transformed into the Watchers narrative in the first Book of Enoch: the primary literary origin, I suspect, of Gnostic archon theory.

Determined to get Adam and Eve to awaken from Ialdabaoth’s soporific power, Sophia induces the serpent to ensure Ialdabaoth’s command not to eat of the tree is transgressed. The serpent becomes thereby a symbol of Sophia’s will, while, according to Irenaeus,⁹ some other Sethians asserted that Sophia actually became the serpent. She thus implanted gnosis in men, “for which reason the serpent was called wiser than all others.” These Gnostics even said our serpentine intestines through which food is conveyed revealed the “hidden generatrix.”

Eve follows the serpent’s advice as though from a son of God (note again the Genesis 6 reference), and persuades Adam to do likewise. On eating, they “attained to the gnosis of that power, which is above all, and departed from those who created them.”¹⁰ The Sethian is likewise to eat of the tree to depart from the grip of the mediocre powers of the world. Again, it must be understood that this is not all mythology for mythology’s sake, as Irenaeus presents it. It is rationale for eating taboo substances: sexual therapy to reattain the powers of the Sethian seed and be reunited with the angel who is above and beyond this shadowy world, superior to all created things, including the fashioner of those things. This gnosis, Jesus-Seth had passed literally to his disciples: “Take, eat, this is my body which I give to you.” It was probably part of Irenaeus’s intention to sever deliberately the rationale from the practices themselves, lest he abet his enemies. Thus, accounts of Gnostic filth are presented primarily as blasphemous and fundamentally meaningless acts of deviance.

The Sethian take is, of course, very different. Prunicus rejoices in having proved that since the true Father is incorruptible, Ialdabaoth, who claimed to be the Father, was a liar. Irenaeus then adds an intriguing and rather odd, unexplored snippet. While the divine man (anthrōpos) and the first woman (presumably Barbelo) “existed previously,” which seems to mean they were of eternity (aeons), Eve, the earthly reflection of her ultimate Mother, “sinned by committing adultery.” The sin would in context appear to be paradoxical, for while, according to Genesis, the sin of Eve condemned her in the eyes of God to the cycles of painful birth and death, Eve’s “adultery,” her transgression of the command, assures her, in Sethian terms, of freedom. We may have here the first clear indication of romantic love being necessarily adulterous (contra mundum) love in the annals of Western literature, for this is a love that goes beyond the lusts of the body and the distribution of property. What Eve attains, she pays for by surrendering her chains. Marriage is clearly regarded then as part of the chains of the Demiurge, serving his intentions. This was as subversive in the second century as it is today to traditional social structures. These Gnostics are not Christians, shout the heresiologists, and it is difficult, on encountering more deeply their peculiar path to their enlightenment than has become widespread, to disagree with the heresiological position here.

Irenaeus’s account now offers what we may suppose was given as guidance to new members of the Sethian community. How do we tell ourselves apart from everybody else? Why are we, Sethians, superior? What’s wrong with Mr. and Mrs. Average?

While Adam and Eve originally had spiritual bodies, entry into the world made them opaque, gross, and sluggish. Now open to only mundane inspiration, their souls became feeble, languid. However, Prunicus, “moved with compassion towards them, restored to them the sweet savor of the besprinkling light.”¹¹ Coming to remembrance of who they really were, they realized their nakedness, that they were enveloped in temporary material bodies. The body, subject to time, would be transcended; the imprisonment would be over. In the meantime, Sophia (like the “Peacock Angel” Melek Tawus of the Yezidis) taught Adam and Eve about food and carnal knowledge: so were born Cain and Abel. Unfortunately, their births brought to light the evil inherited from the substance of Ialdabaoth. But by the prognosis of Prunicus, Seth was begotten, beginner of the perfect race of aliens, strangers to the world.

Prunicus offers another Gnostic saint in the form of Norea, taken by Sethians as Noah’s wife, and thus the ancestress of all races. The Thought of Norea is a work found in the Nag Hammadi Library. It is a prayer of Norea to the Father and Barbelo that she be rejoined to the “imperishable ones”; it is dated to the late second or early third century in Egypt. One may easily imagine her prayer being employed in a Sethian service.

However, Prunicus/Sophia is paying a high price for involving herself in the lower world. Distressed, cut off from her spiritual home, she invokes her heavenly Mother. One can again imagine the therapeutic value of this myth on disturbed or alienated women suffering in late antiquity. To Sophia is sent Christ into the world for the “besprinkling of light,” announced by John, who prepares the baptism for turning again to God, and adopts Jesus, so Christ will have a pure vessel to appear through. Even though the man (qua man) Jesus is “son of that Ialdabaoth,” Ialdabaoth will be outwitted as Christ announces “the woman.” Christ clothes his sister in the “besprinkling of light,” and with a strong implication of an erotic union of Christ and Sophia, “both exulted in the mutual refreshment they felt in each other’s society: this scene they describe as relating to bridegroom and bride.”¹² The Sethian allegorical Christology is intriguing. Jesus is begotten of the “Virgin through the agency of God” with the suggestion that the Virgin here is Barbelo. Because of this, Jesus was “wiser, purer, and more righteous than all other men: Christ united to Sophia descended into him, and thus Jesus Christ was produced.”

On the Hermetic principle “as above, so below,” this supercelestial union is mirrored on Earth in Gnostic circles in the special relations ascribed to Jesus and Mary Magdalene; there is no reason to imagine such relations existed historically, though history to the Gnostic expresses within its sundry patterns, drenched in illusions, a secret codex of the real. What had become obvious to the redeemed Gnostic was scarcely visible to the mundane disciples whose life in the synoptic gospels and in John was lived without benefit of holy pneuma, that is to say, in spiritual blindness.

There is evidence to suggest a pre-Christian Sethian system. In Hippolytus’s account of the Sethians,¹³ he mentions a book called the Paraphrase of Seth, wherein their secret doctrines are adumbrated, based on a trinity of Light, Spirit, and Darkness, whose mixture generated the cosmos (since the Darkness “knew not the Light,” it attacked the Spirit). This work must have been very close indeed to the Paraphrase of Shem, found in the Nag Hammadi Library, for it concurs well with Hippolytus’s account. However, in the extant version of the book, apart from the fact that the Seth figure has been transformed into the son of Noah whose name gave us the word Semitic, the savior figure is called “Derdekeas.” However, the basic theme of a pure light that is also a seed, distorted through admixture, predominates.

The higher potential of the hidden light must be released from the grip of the demon that manifests through images of a false god. Thus, in this work, the Sodomites had knowledge of the true seed, and it was for this knowledge that Sodom was burned by the demon (an early example of “conspiracy theory”—itself virtually an invention of the Gnostics; odd then that contemporary evangelical conspiracy theories—“Illuminati” &c ad nauseam—blame Gnostics for everything!).

Author and scholar Frederik Wisse considers the Paraphrase of Shem important for the formation of early Christology, since it appears that Sethian, or Shemian, philosophy was Christianized to some degree. The question of the degree is significant. There are cunning references to John the Baptist’s baptism, and therefore that of Christians generally, being of mere water and therefore of the demon, yet through this deficiency, the true baptism would be revealed. The work breathes a heady, rebellious spirit of transgressive liberation theory, and since Seth simply represents the transmundane seed, the Christian content is practically irrelevant, and I should think it post-Christian, since it parodies and ridicules the Catholic faith—including the theology of the first chapter of John’s Gospel.

Something also tells me that we should not dismiss the suspicion that the “woman” beheaded, undoubtedly Wisdom, is also a possible stand-in for an arguably androgynous John the Baptist. While John the Baptist is claimed as the source of the testimony of “John’s” gospel (John 1:19), John had his own Gnostic followers in this period (their probable descendants now widely known as the persecuted sect of “Mandaeans”) and such could account for the work’s apparently “pre” or non-Christian character or origin, since the Mandaeans venerate John as an “envoy of light” while eschewing any worship of Jesus.

The work is almost certainly based on a conceit that ordinary sex is unchaste because it deals only with corrupted matter, but an enlightened Sethian sex sacrament restores the power of the seed through the invocation of the spiritual light that is hidden in the sperm whose source is beyond this world. There is the woman who knows: “And they will behead the woman who has the perception, whom you [Shem] will reveal on the earth.” This woman is apparently Sophia, among other names, elsewhere in the text called bluntly “a whore.” “For the woman whom they will behead at that time is the coherence of the power of the demon who will baptize the seed of darkness in severity that it [the seed] may mix with unchastity.”¹⁴ The enemy of the text is nature, whose violent fire, precipitated by a struggle with Spirit in the Darkness, is emitted from her “dark vagina,” the echoing signs of which are present in the womb of women who suffer the regular torments of nature’s bullying hysteria.

Curiously, further echoes of this idea are alluded to in Irenaeus, following his treatment of the Sethians: curious insofar as the foundation of the Sethian seed was based on the assumption that that of Cain had shown its evil root in the murder of Abel, and yet Irenaeus presents us with what is apparently another Gnostic group called “Cainites.”

Chapter 31 of Adversus Haereses asserts that the Cainites produced a Gospel of Judas, which finally came to sensational public notice in 2006 (see my 2008 book Kiss of Death: The True History of the Gospel of Judas). Since the revelation of Barbelo is a central feature of Jesus’s discourse in that “fictitious history” (Irenaeus), it is considered by scholars as a Sethian rather than Cainite work. Irenaeus himself distinguishes his Judas gospel authors by saying they identified themselves with the sinners of scriptural history since it was they who were “assailed by the Creator,” albeit that none of them suffered injury, but the inclusion of Esau, anti-Moses rebel Korah (Numbers 16:1–40), the annihilated Sodomites (cf. The Paraphrase of Shem), and Judas Iscariot does not concur with the claim, but it is probably spiritual injury that is referred to. Sophia “was in the habit of carrying off that which belonged to her from them to herself”—this being presumably their light. Judas apparently alone knew the truth, and “accomplished the mystery of the betrayal,” and by him “all things, both earthly and heavenly, were thus thrown into confusion.” So Judas outwitted the Demiurge too: a concept of outwitting the “rulers of this age” doubtless derived from the incendiary writings of Paul (I Corinthians 2:6–8) as well as the Book of Enoch.

That the Cainites practiced sexual magic is made explicit by Irenaeus in his conclusion, and we might best conclude that there is no essential difference between Irenaeus’s Cainites and the Sethians, for whom Seth, as we have seen, could manifest in any number of transgressive individuals, whose thing in common was the ability to excite the powers of the world to destroy them—hence Jesus is naturally included as a Seth. Since the Gnostics were opposed by the orthodox, that too clearly indicated they were on the right side, while the orthodox were the servants of Sakla the fool, keen to “behead” the woman, that is, deprive her of life and voice.

It is fascinating that in Irenaeus’s brief exposition of Cainite writings, “Cainite” thought attributes the creation of the universe to Hystera, meaning “womb,” whose works Cainites advocate abolishing. This may be a development on the Simonian Eden-paradise-womb discussed earlier. There is also an allusion to the prevalent Gnostic idea that women’s menstruation reflects a primal wound in the heart of Sophia herself and her breach with the Pleroma (“Fullness”) of God, below the navel, or Unity.” Whether dysfunctions in the reproductive organs, giving rise to disturbed psychology, were implied originally—giving us our inherited word hysteria—is unknown, but its usage is suggestive of a possible therapeutic aspect to Sethian sexual rites, aimed at linking Gnostics to their transmundane angel beyond the pollutions of time, space, and matter, to recenter the troubled mind on its true Mother:

They also hold, like Carpocrates, that men cannot be saved until they have gone through all kinds of experience. An angel, they maintain, attends them in every one of their sinful and abominable actions, and urges them to venture on audacity and incur pollution. Whatever may be the nature of the action, they declare that they do it in the name of the angel, saying, “O thou angel, I use thy work; O thou power, I accomplish thy operation!” And they maintain that this is “perfect knowledge,” without shrinking to rush into such actions as it is not lawful even to name. (Adversus Haereses, I.31, 2)

We can probably name them now: sexual intercourse (predominantly heterosexual), cunnilingus, spermatophagy, manual and assisted masturbation, consumption of mixed vaginal fluids and sperm, consumption of menstrual blood, prolonged intercourse.

Put coldly like that, of course, we might want to reach for the heresiologists’ bucket, but if we pause a moment, is it just possible to consider what our feelings might be if any of the above actions were shared equally with someone we truly loved, inwardly and outwardly, and whom we knew truly loved us—and whose spiritual aspiration to a beloved cause was shared also as the highest good? Sophia is, after all, understood by Gnostics then and now as the ever-existing archangelic wisdom of love. Her wisdom was also understood to reside in medicine and healing, in balms and herbs and ointments, and it may be that the story of Jesus’s healing of the woman with the issue of blood indicated to Gnostics therapeutic possibilities for sexual healing, while the orthodox, on the other hand, accepted the Genesis account at face value that women’s gynecological sufferings were the proper punishment for the sins of Eve and were intended to be endured as such. The Sethians, to the contrary, regarded the baptismal waters of the orthodox as unclean because they were mixed, when seen, that is, through the eyes of Shem, who was “from an unmixed power,”¹⁵ and who was above the “darkness” that “was on the face of the deep” (Genesis 1). Seth, Shem, Jesus, Sophia—they came to heal: “For the knowledge of the things which are ordained is truly the healing of the passions of matter.”¹⁶

HIPPOLYTUS ON THE NAASSENI

From Hippolytus, we first learn that it was priests of this persuasion who were called Naasseni (by whom?) but who subsequently “styled themselves Gnostics.” We have the usual Gnostic inversion. That is, since the serpent, according to the orthodox Christian and conventional Jewish understandings, was condemned for the “error” that begat Adam’s Fall, so the serpent must have been, for those in the know, the enemy of the one who deprived Adam of his birthright: spiritual knowledge, awareness, freedom. In opposing the Elohim (Demiurge), the serpent proved himself/herself Adam and Eve’s friend. This made the serpent the revealer of their freedom: carnal knowledge, freedom of choice, self-knowledge. And the Demiurge showed his true colors by attacking Adam and Eve.

As revealer, the serpent is thus linked to Jesus, who, say the Naasseni, spoke to the three parts of man simultaneously—earthly, psychic, and spiritual—with the idea of the intellectually rational included in the latter. Each type, or part, of humanity hears a message pertaining to that nature. Naasseni got their message from the serpent’s tongue directly and have created a superior church, for the three natures have manifested in three churches: angelic, psychical, and earthly. And clearly, once you accept this point, we can see there has been confusion, or mixture, in the other two; this more than compares with the three-principle primal conflict of the Sethians. Indeed, it is clear that we are dealing again with Sethian Gnostics, for Hippolytus advises readers requiring further elucidation on the Naasseni to consult the Gospel of the Egyptians, which by the miracle of the Nag Hammadi Library, has come down to us and may again be consulted. Therein, the figure of the great Seth predominates: “Then the great Seth came and brought his seed.”¹⁷ “And it was sown in the aeons, which had been brought forth, their number being the amount of Sodom.” This is now familiar territory to us. Preserved in Sodom and Gomorrah was the seed of Seth: “This is the great incorruptible race, which has come forth, through three worlds to the world.” We find again the male virginal spirit, Barbelon, and the uncallable virginal Spirit (unnameable also, presumably, Barbelo).

We also find in Hippolytus ample confirmation of what has been averred consistently, that the interest in Seth’s seed evinces a concern with sexual rites interpreted as a transformation of mundane sexual fluids into holy sacraments.

Hippolytus notes the scandalous, staggeringly brazen manner in which the Naasseni quote from Paul’s letter to the Romans regarding perversion of divinely instituted sexual relations into sodomy, lesbianism, and orgiastic excesses familiar to hedonistic pagans: “Wherefore also God gave them up unto vile affections; for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature.” What, however, the natural use is, according to the Naasseni, we shall afterward declare. “And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly” (Romans 1:26–27). Apparently, these very texts the heretics themselves used to assert that Paul had indicated “the entire secret of theirs, and a hidden mystery of blessed pleasure!” For to the Naasseni, sex had indeed been perverted. The devil of the world had perverted the true relations of man and woman, for he had deprived them of the true “washing,” that is, seed baptism:

For the promise of washing is not any other, according to them, than the introduction of him that is washed in, according to them, life-giving water [sexual fluids], and anointed with ineffable ointment into unfading bliss. But they assert that not only is there in favor of their doctrine, testimony to be drawn from the mysteries of the Assyrians, but also from those of the Phrygians concerning the happy nature—concealed, and yet at the same time disclosed—of things that have been, and are coming into existence, and moreover will be—[a happy nature] which [the Naassene] says, is the kingdom of heaven to be sought for within a man. (Refutatio, V, 2)

Fascinatingly, Hippolytus shows how these folk were employing the gospel according to Thomas, expressing themselves thus: “He who seeks me will find me in children from seven years old; for there concealed, I shall in the fourteenth age be made manifest” (cf. Nag Hammadi, Gospel of Thomas, logia 4–5). Hippolytus continues, correctly:

This, however, is not [the teaching] of Christ, but of Hippocrates, who uses these words: “A child of seven years is half of a father.” And so it is that these [heretics] placing the originative nature of the universe in causative seed, [and] having ascertained the [aphorism] of Hippocrates, that a child of seven years old is half of a father, say that in fourteen years, according to Thomas, he is manifested. This, with them, is the ineffable and mystical Logos. (Refutatio, V, 2)

If it is not plain to the reader, the text is saying that those looking for the living Jesus will find him in the sexual emissions that characterize the transition from physical childhood to sexual maturity. This, to the Naasseni, is how the innocence of children manifested divine wisdom. Hippolytus evidently understood something many theologians and Gnostic commentators today have not grasped, that the Gospel of Thomas is plainly a sectarian work, as can be discerned by anyone consulting it, after having fully comprehended what the Sethians or Naasseni were advocating, namely, spermatic rites. Once the taboo references are understood, many of the gnomic games with canonical texts are exposed. This will shock many, I know. But serpents, even very old ones, still bite.

Hippolytus goes on to explain how the Naasseni interpret any and every philosophy that comes their way according to a phallocentric principle, having found the primal substance in their groins. Thus Hermes’s, or Mercury’s, golden wand is a phallic symbol, for this is the transformative power, the giver of life and death. So also the phrase “Thou shalt rule them with a rod of iron” plainly indicates the divine erection to the initiated. This is the rod that can “awake the dead”; thus do they interpret Ephesians 5:14: “Awake thou that sleepest, and arise, and Christ will give thee light.”

We should now be getting a vivid impression of the “besprinkling of the light” as understood by Sethian Gnostics. The Naasseni condemn “terrestrial intercourse.” To indulge in sex in the ordinary manner is to blaspheme a great mystery. The children of Israel must escape the bondage of Egypt, that is, the body, before they can embrace the holy Jordan, the life-giving waters, whose earthly direction, downward, must be inverted so its properties are reassigned to heaven—possibly a specific formula for retention of sperm, as has been practiced by Tantric yogis, or taking sexual fluids orally rather than scattering them or leaving them to nature. The sexual fluids, anyway, must be redirected, as Jesus commanded the waters to go whither he willed them before transforming earthly water into spiritual wine, so prefiguring the true sacrament, administered by purified priests.

According to the Naasseni, those who return to Egypt—that is, those who engage in earthly intercourse—“shall die as men,” even because “that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit” (John 3:6). This, says Hippolytus, is for them the “spiritual generation,” as opposed, presumably, to the “generation of vipers.” Unredeemed seed is poison. The seed must be liberated from servitude to the power of the world, and this is not to be achieved, as with the Encratites, by abstaining from the precious substance, but by redeeming it in the secret chrism or anointing in the bridal chamber.

And lest anyone be in any doubt as to the sacramental intentions of the Naasseni, Hippolytus makes it very explicit when he asserts how “these most marvellous Gnostics, inventors of a novel grammatical art,” have appropriated the Eucharist, in terms of the temple of the Samothracians wherein two naked men stand with penises erect, with both hands stretched upward to heaven, like the statue of Mercury on Mount Cyllene. These images, says a Naassene commentator, indicate the “primal man” Adam, the spiritual one who is born again, “in every respect the same substance as that man,” so Jesus says:

“If ye do not drink my blood, and eat my flesh, ye will not enter into the kingdom of heaven; but even though,” He says, “ye drink of the cup which I drink of, whither I go, ye cannot enter there.” For He says He was aware of what sort of nature each of His disciples was, and that there was a necessity that each of them should attain unto His own peculiar nature. For He says He chose twelve disciples from the twelve tribes, and spoke by them to each tribe. On this account, He says, “the preachings of the twelve disciples neither did all hear, nor, if they heard, could they receive. For the things that are not according to nature, are with them contrary to nature.” (Refutatio, V, 3)

The grave is the body, and the resurrection is from the body, and the means of rebirth is the Holy Spirit. To receive it is to “enter through the gate of heaven.”

One can only imagine that these people had discovered an ecstasy that conformed to their picture-making. Would it be going too far to suggest that something like what is today called kundalini yoga was central to their practice?

The Sanskrit adjective kundalin means “circular” and has been used as a noun for a snake, insofar as it is coiled. According to Hippolytus, one aspect of their “novel grammatical art” was to note that the Greek for temple (naos) was clearly (for them!) derived from naas meaning “serpent,” so that all temples therefore worshipped the serpent without knowing it! And the serpent is “a moist substance,” like water an originating principle, from which all things may draw on to live. Thus the Naassene serpent is a synonym for life at its source, soured by the darkness of the world, but capable of being redirected to the brain, which, according to Hippolytus, was understood by them as a metaphor for Edem, whence the four rivers flowed out into the world. As far as we can possibly know, no Naassene practitioners ever saw a single human sperm (from Greek sperma = “seed”), but had they done so, they would not have been surprised! Seen in terms of kundalini yoga, the Naassene myth is a positive redemption myth with the advantage of possible proof in practice.

An alabaster bowl of 22cm diameter has survived from third- to fifth-century Syria or Asia Minor whose intricate carving ties in with the Ophite perspective. On the inside of the bowl, sixteen naked adults of both sexes stand in a circle, some with one hand on heart, some with one hand raised openly upward from the elbow, others making both gestures, while other hands cover genitals or navels. At the center is a coiled serpent with little wings, surrounded by two concentric circles of what appear to be solar rays beaming out to the feet of the celebrants ( Journal of Hellenic Studies 54 [1934]: 129–39, plate III).

KUNDALINI GNOSTICS?

Links to kundalini-type yogic practice are more explicit in Hippolytus’s account of another Gnostic group, close in thought to the Naasseni, which he calls the Peratae, or Peratics, whose name is obscure, though Clement of Alexandria¹⁸ says it derives from a place considered as being east of the Euphrates: Media or Persia—the latter since Sophronius of Jerusalem¹⁹ speaks of the sect’s alleged founder, Euphrates, with the Latin Persicus or Persia suffixed.

In chapter 12 (book V) of the Refutatio, Hippolytus, possibly oblivious to the fact, outlines the basic theory of how kundalini spiritual life-force energy, coiled at the spine’s base, is induced by pranayama (breath discipline) to mount upward to the seventh chakra, called the crown, activating the golden cord linking the pituitary and pineal glands. Anyone familiar with this branch of yoga will recognize in Hippolytus’s account an only slightly garbled version of something closely akin to the practice that, in its Hindu formulation, is recorded only from the fifteenth century CE:

No one, then, he [Hippolytus’s source] says, can be saved or return [into heaven] without the Son, and the Son is the Serpent [a spiritual-physiological practice is likely being referred to here]. For as he brought down from above the paternal marks, so again he carries up from thence those marks roused from a dormant condition and rendered paternal characteristics, substantial ones from the unsubstantial Being, transferring them hither from thence. This, he says, is what is spoken: “I am the door.” And he transfers [those marks] he says, to those who close the eyelid [meditate?], as the naphtha drawing the fire in every direction towards itself; nay rather, as the magnet [attracting] the iron and not anything else, or just as the backbone of the sea falcon, the gold and nothing else, or as the chaff is led by the amber. In this manner, he says, is the portrayed, perfect, and con-substantial genus drawn again from the world by the Serpent; nor does he [attract] anything else, as it has been sent down by him.

For a proof of this, they adduce the anatomy of the brain, assimilating, from the fact of its immobility, the brain itself to the Father, and the cerebellum [skull] to the Son, because of its being moved and being of the form of [the head of] a serpent. And they allege that this [cerebellum], by an ineffable and inscrutable process, attracts through the pineal gland the spiritual and life-giving substance emanating from the vaulted chamber [in which the brain is embedded]. And on receiving this, the cerebellum in an ineffable manner imparts the ideas, just as the Son does, to matter; or, in other words, the seeds and the genera of the things produced according to the flesh flow along into the spinal marrow. Employing this exemplar, [the heretics] seem to adroitly introduce their secret mysteries, which are delivered in silence. Now it would be impious for us to declare these; yet it is easy to form an idea of them, by reason of the many statements that have been made.

This leaves us with the possibility that such a practice may have originated in Media or Persia, transplanted to India possibly during the Sassanid invasions, or may have been transplanted to the Roman Empire via Persia, possibly from India, or even China. It is possible that an exponent of the knowledge came west during the second-century wars with Parthia.

Evidence for the portrayal of sexual intercourse as a divine mystery is not lacking in the period. A reference to “thrice-wretched people” may have been Clement of Alexandria’s joke at the expense of followers of Hermes Trismegistus (Thrice-Greatest Hermes), or even of Sethian priests when he wrote in Strōmateis (III, 4):

There are some who call Aphrodite Pandemos [sexual intercourse] a mystical communion. This is an insult to the name of communion. To do something wrong is called an action, just as also to do right is likewise called an action. Similarly communion is good when the word refers to sharing of money and food and clothing. But they have impiously called by the name of communion any common sexual intercourse. The story goes that one of them came to a virgin of our church who had a lovely face and said to her: “Scripture says, ‘Give to everyone that asks you.’” She, however, not understanding the lascivious intention of the man, gave the dignified reply: “On the subject of marriage, talk to my mother.” What Godlessness! Even the words of the Lord are perverted by these immoral fellows, the brethren of lust, a shame not only to philosophy but to all human life, who corrupt the truth, or rather destroy it; as far as they can. These thrice wretched men expound like hierophants carnal and sexual intercourse as a sacred religious mystery, and think that it will lead them upwards to the kingdom of God.

Clement reckoned it would simply carry them to the brothels, perhaps a knowing reference to the place where Simon found his queen of heaven, Helena. Nearly two centuries later, Bishop Epiphanius would have agreed wholeheartedly with Clement’s point. For Epiphanius, finding an antidote to the heresies of Barbelo-worshippers, had entailed him in an unhappy flirtation with the fleshpots of Egypt.

EPIPHANIUS ON BARBELIOTES AND BORBORITES

Epiphanius’s detailed account of Gnostic heresy is frequently discredited in scholarship, but while he has no qualms about expressing his total disgust, and naturally has no pretensions to “objectivity” in the modern sense, he nonetheless gives forth what he thinks are the facts of the practices in the expectation that decent people will hardly be interested in the interpretation of those practices once they are aware of the practices themselves. Thus he speaks of the “filthy people” (Borborians):

For after having made love with the passion of fornication in addition, to lift their blasphemy up to heaven, the woman and man receive the man’s emission on their own hands. And they stand with their eyes raised heavenward but the filth on their hands and pray, if you please—the ones they call Stratiotics and Gnostics—and offer that stuff on their hands to the true Father of all, and say, “We offer thee this gift, the body of Christ.”

And then they eat it partaking of their own dirt, and say, “This is the body of Christ; and this is the Pascha, because of which our bodies suffer and are compelled to acknowledge the passion of Christ.”

And so with the woman’s emission when she happens to be having her period—they likewise take the unclean menstrual blood they gather from her, and eat it in common. And “This,” they say, “is the blood of Christ.”

And so, when they read, “I saw a tree bearing twelve manner of fruits every year, and he said unto me, “This is the tree of life,” in apocryphal writings, they interpret this allegorically of the menstrual flux.

But although they have sex with each other, they renounce procreation. It is for enjoyment, not procreation, that they eagerly pursue seduction, since the Devil is mocking people like these, and making fun of the creature fashioned by God.

They come to climax but absorb the seeds of their dirt, not by implanting them for procreation, but by eating the dirty stuff themselves.

But even though one of them should accidentally implant the seed of his natural emission prematurely and the woman becomes pregnant, listen to a more dreadful thing that such people venture to do.

They extract the foetus at the stage, which is appropriate for their enterprise, take this aborted infant, and cut it up in a trough with a pestle. And they mix honey, pepper, and certain other perfumes and spices with it to keep from getting sick, and then all the revellers in this herd of swine and dogs assemble, and each eats a piece of the child with his fingers.

And now, after this cannibalism, they pray to God and say, “We were not mocked by the archon of lust, but have gathered the brother’s blunder up!” And this, if you please, is their idea of the “perfect Passover.”

And they are prepared to do any number of other dreadful things. Again, whenever they feel excitement within them they soil their own hands with their own ejaculated dirt, get up, and pray stark naked with their hands defiled. The idea is that they can obtain freedom of access to God by a practice of this kind.

Man and woman, they pamper their bodies night and day, anointing themselves, bathing, feasting, spending their time in whoring and drunkenness. And they curse anyone who fasts and say, “Fasting is wrong; fasting belongs to this archon who made the world. We must take nourishment to make our bodies strong, and able to render their fruit in its season.”

They use both the Old and the New Testaments, but renounce the Speaker in the Old Testament. And whenever they find a text the sense of which can be against them, they say that this has been said by the spirit of the world.

But if a statement can be represented as resembling their lust—not as the text is, but as their deluded minds take it—they twist it to fit their lust and claim that it has been spoken by the Spirit of truth. (Panarion, 26, 4:6–6:2)

The details about cannibalism of aborted fetuses seem not only utterly scandalous, but also far-fetched in the extreme. However, in Roelof van den Broek’s study of Epiphanius,²⁰ van den Broek is prepared to accept the possibility that Epiphanius’s account may be based on experiences he had in Egypt when female members of a sect tried to seduce him into it, as Epiphanius maintains, though he does not state that he either observed such horrors or learned about them directly from members. It is always a possibility that some followers went beyond relatively harmless (arguably) symbolic acts and practiced enormities in secret. However, Epiphanius uses the information to tar every Gnostic sect with the charge, itself unproven in a Roman court. Outlandish things are always told of exclusive sects because the very suspicion works to condemn all and repel all.

The details about consumption of sexual fluids as a Eucharist chime in with other reports noted hitherto. There is the suggestion of a parallel between sexual passion and the passion of Christ, not entirely without a hint of masochism in both men and women, according to a pun on the Hebrew pascha (Passover) with the Greek paskein “to suffer” and the substantive pathos “passion.”

Sexual passion is equated with suffering, regarded as a means used by the Demiurge to enslave the soul to the chains of the body. This equation stems in part from the whole corpus of ideas about Sophia’s yearning to know the Father. Her passion ultimately leads to exile and the aborted cosmos in the basic Gnostic myth, mostly associated with Valentinus but by no means confined to his followers. That we have at once the idea of a spiritual yearning for knowledge and a passion of the heart and flesh for the flesh and heart transmuted brings us into the kind of explicit romantic territory explored in the spiritually heterodox Symbolist movement in art (late nineteenth–early twentieth century), itself inspired by such music as the aching, if rather sickly, intensity of the Liebestod in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde that threw French Occult Revivalists, and later, Salvador Dalí and his decadent ilk, to distraction. Religious aspiration and the sex instinct become fused, or are taken as being fused, resulting in an erotic religion far from the cultural mainstream’s taste.

And certainly not to Epiphanius’s: his take on spermatophagy and the like is simple. The “so-called gnosis” begins when a heresiarch makes excuses for his own uncontrollable lusts and burdens theology with them in self-justification. Thus, Epiphanius says the followers of Nicolaus, the Nicolaitans (condemned in Revelation 2:6, 15), were caught up in their progenitor’s lust for his beautiful wife, which he could not control, and instead of being ashamed and repenting for his incontinence, he declared instead that eternal life needs daily sex, while insulting his wife, imagining that men lusted after her as he did. While discussing Nicolaus, Epiphanius explains why the Borborians do what they do:

But others honor one “Prunicus” and like these, when they consummate their own passions with this kind of disgusting behavior, they say in mythological language of this interpretation of their disgusting behavior, “We are gathering the power of Prunicus from our bodies, and through their emissions.” That is, they suppose they are gathering the power of semen and menses. (Panarion, I, section 2, 25, 3:2)

We have seen in our investigation of the range of Sethian convictions that these Gnostics considered the divine element in human beings to exist in the procreative power: “In the beginning was the Word,” and the Word is understood as the potential of the seed, which is pneuma, whose virtue is, as the profoundly heretical Gospel of Thomas has it, spread out upon the world “but men do not see it.”²¹ No doubt, many scholars of gnosis have missed the point, including this one on many occasions!

Salvation is realized by bodily emissions offered to God, reminiscent of the Old Testament conviction that “without the shedding of blood [understood by heretics as life/semen] there is no forgiveness” (Hebrews 9:22). Epiphanius is quite blunt about why Prunicus is called the whore. She keeps appearing before the archons in beautiful form and “through their lust-caused ejaculation robs them of their seed.” She does this to recover her power “sown in” some of the jealous archons.²² According to Epiphanius, Nicolaitans followed Prunicus in this gathering process: “We [Nicolaitans] gather Prunicus’s power from our bodies through their emissions.”²³ Virginity is defined by these Gnostics as those in touch with untainted seed, like their heroine Noria, beloved of Barbelo, the Great Mother, sometimes virgin daughter of Eve—as in the Nag Hammadi Hypostasis of the Archons (Reality of the Rulers)—sometimes wife of Noah or Shem. The central interest is always the same: the destiny of the seed and the redemption of it from the corrupting powers of the world. According to Epiphanius’s accurate reading of Gnostic priorities:

For Noah was obedient to the archon, they say, but Noria revealed the powers on high and Barbelo the scion of the powers, who was the archon’s opponent as the other powers are. And she let it be known that what has been stolen from the Mother on high by the archon who made the world, and by the other gods, demons and angels with him, must be gathered from the power in bodies, through the male and female emissions. (Panarion, I, section 2, 26, 1:9)

According to one of the sect’s favored texts, The Greater Questions of Mary, the ritual was instituted by Jesus in Mary’s company, presumably the Magdalene. In a twist on the birth of Eve, Jesus took Mary up a mountain, produced a woman out of his side, then had intercourse with her before consuming the resultant fluids, saying: “Thus we must do, that we may live.”²⁴

When Jesus says to the disciples in their text: “Except ye eat my flesh and drink my blood,” the disciples back off: “Who can hear this?” they say. That’s why they were disturbed and fell away; the teaching was too exalted for them! They couldn’t get high enough, as Mary could on the mountain. The men were inhibited by the archons: “uptight” to use the argot of the Hair-brained hippies of the late ’60s and early ’70s. Transgression was “where it was at.” Followers should learn to take their clothes off as prefiguring the divesting of the body: soul to soul, man. They should strip with the innocence of children, as the Gospel of Thomas urges²⁵ (cf. the effect on Jim Morrison of Julian Becks’s Living Theatre productions).

The Gnostics quote Psalm 1:3: “He shall be like a tree planted by the outgoings of water that will bring forth its fruit in due season” to indicate that the fruit of the tree is the moment of emission: the orgasm is the fruit. The imagery of fruit and trees was in the marrow of the sect’s beliefs, as we shall see. Barbelo, we may recall, is the root and life of the tree that is the gnosis. Its fruit contains its seed. Among the “Barbelites” (better I think than the rather clumsy “Barbeliotes”) the seed is given up for the restoration (Greek: apokatastasis) of wounded being (the Pleroma). The wounds or passion of Barbelo and her daughters (particularly Sophia) are allegorized, then particularized as menstrual blood, representing the passion for God as well as the pain of the world under the law of the archons. The pain is healed by semen, the Word from above comes to redeem and makes fruitful the barren one, spiritually speaking.

It may be inferred that union leading to fertility stops the bleeding, becoming a higher passion in which the material self is surrendered and transcended in union, thus “healing the passions of matter.” Ordinary sex, on the other hand, is for Barbelites a surrender to nature, a victory for the archons, and a careless casting away of seed among the “weeds” and “dry land,” to be gobbled up by “the beast” (that is, the fleshly body). Epiphanius makes no distinction. Sex presupposes filth. He treats sacramental sex as sex disguised by perverts. Encratite in orientation, Epiphanius views bodily fluids as “dirt.” If you had asked him, “Who made these fluids?” he would doubtless have said, “You had better ask what they were made for.” He would then tell you they were made for procreation for the sinful many, as part of God’s dispensation for Eve’s sin, though the stronger spirits, the elect, would continue to abstain from sex because the Devil used it to ensnare and to corrupt. Some readers may feel driven to repeat the question Zoé Oldenbourg put in the introduction to her book Massacre at Montségur. What is the practical difference between a world made by God and perverted by the Devil, and a world made by the Devil whose denizens could be saved by God? Well, to Epiphanius, there was no difference at all. You do not achieve correct doctrine through blasphemy and lust.

The Gnostic might reply, “It depends what you’re ‘blaspheming.’” St. Paul said the cross outwitted the “rulers of the world.” The tree trapped them. He who was hung on a tree, according to Jewish custom, was accursed. If the “rulers of this world” had known what they were doing, they would never have crucified the Lord of Glory (I Corinthians 2:8). Paul supported the idea of the “messianic secret,” the ultimate salvation of humankind kept in the dispensation of Wisdom since before time, for God had prognosis: the eyes that see before we see. Jesus, according to John’s Gospel (8:23), was “not of the world.” He was “from above,” his enemies “from beneath.” Jesus knew about the archons, the rulers of the world; his mission was to execute God’s judgment upon them. As for lust, that is a travesty of what sacred sex is all about. Was it lust in the ordinary sense of the word that made the woman touch the hem of Jesus’s garment in order for her fountain of blood to be healed (Matthew 9:20)? And would not the Barbelite see the word garment and think “body”? If the Barbelite recognized that the “hem” or “tassle” of a priest’s garment was particularly sacred, he would doubtless particularize what part of the body the initiated interpretation of the text suggested.

The Barbelites had an X-rated Gospel of Eve, from which Epiphanius quotes:

They begin with foolish visions and proof texts in what they claim is a Gospel. For they make this allegation: “I stood upon a lofty mountain, and saw a man who was tall, and another, little of stature. And I heard as it were the sound of thunder and drew nigh to hear, and he spake with me and said, I am thou and thou art I, and wheresoever thou art, there am I; and I am sown in all things. And from wheresoever thou wilt thou gatherest me, but in gathering me, thou gatherest thyself.” (Panarion, I, section 2, 26, 3:1)

Thus the Barbelites explained all biblical references to gathering and lost sheep; Barbelites saw themselves, literally, as lifesavers. We may recall that Simonians saw Helena as Simon’s lost sheep. We seem to be seeing a development of that idea. And it would seem the idea went on being developed for the Gospel of Eve’s description of that which is distributed in all things, but which is also absolute self-knowledge, would in time be applied to the philosopher’s stone of the alchemist, if indeed such was not already the case, as legendary Persian alchemist Ostanes left a famous quote that there existed such a stone in Egypt; and what is it that exists at the heart of lush fruit?

Similarly, metaphors of harvesting and cutting of fruit from the tree were interpreted by Barbelites as the saving of the seed from falling to earth. Epiphanius insists Barbelites eschewed procreation, for it involved enveloping the seed in archon-made, corruptible flesh. This does seem somewhat contradictory of the notion of sacramentalized fertility. As we shall see when we come to approach the Valentinian obsession with holy seed, it was possible to hold such ideas and aim for the preservation of the seed within children raised spiritually within the community.

In Panarion I, section 2, 26, 16:4, Epiphanius says Barbelites “forbid chaste wedlock and procreation,” while having sex to suit themselves, and in doing so “hinder procreation,” a phrase which, while favoring contraception (possibly confining sex to the menstrual period where possible), is not as extreme as aborting every inadvertent fetus as a matter of course. However, we may suspect Barbelites shared the widespread Christian belief that virginity was the ideal to be venerated. However, their idea of virginity was peculiar. Epiphanius says they called their women virgins, a usage with a somewhat ironic twist on the usual understanding, since they were having sacramental sex, and pregnancies occurred when coitus interruptus was not interrupted for the gathering of the seed. How seriously we must take Epiphanius’s account of abortions and consumption we have discussed already. Of course, we might note that today we do not consume aborted fetuses ritually, accepting or reintegrating the products of fleshly unions; they are left with strangers to be disposed of clinically.

In the Barbelite view, losing one’s virginity meant to contribute willingly to the reproductive cycle of the archontic rule. This seems to have opened up an area of spiritual validity for homosexuals, otherwise condemned by Christians and Jews. According to Epiphanius, the sect had a class of Levites, who, he says, practiced homosexual sex, though there is no account of which I am aware to suggest that Levites were unmarried. Perhaps it was because the tribe of Levi was the only tribe at the conquest of Canaan denied landownership rights “because the Lord God of Israel is their inheritance” (Deuteronomy 18:2); also Levites are so by patrilineal descent, and the priesthood is thus literally passed from man to man.

Epiphanius offers a fascinating glimpse of actual conditions when he describes encountering real live Barbelites in Egypt in 330 CE. Highly attractive women attempted to seduce him, in both senses:

For I happened on this sect myself, beloved, and was actually taught these things in person, out of the mouths of people who really undertook them. Not only did women under this delusion offer me this line of talk, and divulge this sort of thing to me. With impudent boldness moreover, they even tried to seduce me themselves—like that murderous, villainous Egyptian wife of the chief cook—because they wanted me in my youth.

But he who stood by the holy Joseph then, stood by me as well. And when, in my unworthiness and inadequacy, I had called on the One who rescued Joseph then, and was shown mercy and escaped their murderous hands, I too could sing a hymn to God the all-holy and say, “Let us sing to the Lord for he is gloriously magnified; horse and rider hath he thrown into the sea.”

For it was not by a power like that of Joseph’s righteousness but by my groaning to God, that I was pitied and rescued. For when I was reproached by the baneful women themselves, I laughed at the way persons of their kind were whispering to each other, jokingly if you please, “We can’t save the kid; we’ve left him in the hands of the archon to perish!”

(For whichever is prettier flaunts herself as bait, so that they claim to “save”—instead of destroying—the victims of their deceit through her. And then the plain one gets blamed by the more attractive ones, and they say, “I’m an elect vessel and can save the suckers but you couldn’t!”)

Now the women who taught this dirty myth were very lovely in their outward appearance but in their wicked minds they had all the devil’s ugliness. But the merciful God rescued me from their wickedness, so that after reading their books, understanding their real intent, and not being carried away with it, and after escaping without taking the bait, I lost no time reporting them to the bishops who were there, and finding out which ones were hidden in the church. Thus they were expelled from the city, about 80 persons, and the city was cleared of their tare-like, thorny growth. (Panarion, I, section 2, 26, 17:4–9)

We get the picture. Epiphanius had always been a good boy. He just said no. One wonders if one of the bishops responsible for exiling the heretics might have been Athanasius, who occupied the see of Alexandria from 328 to 373 CE (with interruptions). If so, Epiphanius might just have been a catalyst for Athanasius’s Festal Letter of 367 CE, which was a possible cause of the burial of the Nag Hammadi Library, without which you would not be reading and I should not be writing this.

Roelof van den Broek has made the important point that two Gnostic texts, earlier than the Panarion, are forthright in condemning practices like those Epiphanius draws attention to.²⁶ In Pistis Sophia (Faith Wisdom), Thomas says to Jesus:

We have heard that there are some upon the earth who take male semen and female menstrual blood and make a dish of lentils and eat it, saying: “We believe in Esau and Jacob.” Is this then a seemly thing or not?

At that moment, Jesus was angry with the world and he said to Thomas: “Truly I say that this sin surpasses every sin and every iniquity. Men of this kind will be taken immediately to the outer dark ness, and will not be returned again into the sphere.” (Pistis Sophia, 147)

The Second Book of Jeu, 43, insists that no mysteries will be given to servants of the seventy-two evil archons: “neither give them to those who serve the eighth power of the great Archon, that is, those who eat the menstrual blood of their impurity and the semen of men, saying: ‘We have come to true knowledge and pray to the true God.’” “Their God, however, is bad.” These are important testimonies to a gnosis not dependent on the conflation of spiritual and physical seed. Van den Broek recognizes the polemical character of Epiphanius’s dismissive discourse but reckons the Panarion “may harbor some truth in these allegations.” The difficulty is that while we get quite a good idea of the way Epiphanius interpreted many of the practices, based on the heretics’ own writings, we do not know the precise context, especially the ritual context, for the acts described.

My own view is based on what I consider the inescapable likelihood that while one might abhor the literalism of the Eucharistic practice, it may not be entirely the parody it at first appears to be. Or certainly, not a parody without spiritual value for its adherents, though corruption of an original scheme may well have taken place. There is, I think, the plain inheritance of a theory, or several theories, of sexual magic, derived from a number of possible sources: Simon Magus, Persia, India, Egypt herself. Magicians tend to be eclectic: “if it does the trick, use it.” A potentially magical substance is charged sacramentally. This may be called sexual alchemy, and that might be what is really at issue here; it is hard to say with certainty. However, if we are dealing with magical sacramentalism, and I strongly suspect we are, the question of whether the nature of the Barbelite sexual practices is predominantly erotic or sacred seems beside the point, insofar as, for the magic to operate in the imagination of late antiquity, it would need to be both.

Remarkably, perhaps, sects of the Barbelite type survived in southern Asia, Syria, and Armenia, beyond the time of the bishop of Salamis, even when the Eastern Roman Empire had been completely Christianized, from the official point of view, and the state exercised a hand in the condemnation and punishment of heretics. Imperial legislation targeted them in the fifth century when Gnostic heretics were forbidden to hold services or erect churches.

One of the heretics’ late influences may have been connected to the persistent cults to elevate the Virgin Mary. In this regard, we might note that to Barbelites a virgin was someone who related to the Great Mother, rather than the material world, someone like Mary Magdalene, who offered herself to Jesus’s service. The growing enthusiasm for representing the Virgin Mary as a heavenly power or even a goddess for all intents and purposes, suggests a possible fusing of ideas of the Mother of God and the persistent Barbelo, Great Mother whose fruit was Jesus who promised the thieves hung on the tree that they would join the Son in paradise, identified by Sethian Gnostics as the womb, or gateway. Such ideas may have occurred both as a reaction to orthodox Mariolatry, and as an encouragement to it. Either way, Catholic Christianity has not been able to thrive without the woman and many now believe their future to be in her hands.