Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing

271 Pages·2002·11.34 MB·English

by  Stephan A. Hoeller

GNOSTICISM
Quest ~ o o k s
Theosophical Publishing House
Wheaton, Illinois 6 Chennai (Madras), India
LearnmoreaboutStephanA.Hoeller’sworkaten.wikipedia.org/
wiki/StephanA.Hoellerandhttp://gnosis.org/welcome.html
Findmorebookslikethisatwww.questbooks.net
Copyright(cid:1)C 2002byStephanA.Hoeller
FirstQuestEdition2002
QuestBooks
TheosophicalPublishingHouse
P.O.Box270
Wheaton,IL60187-0270
Withoutlimitingtherightsundercopyrightreservedabove,nopart
ofthispublicationmaybereproduced,storedinorintroducedintoa
retrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyform,orbyanymeans
(electronic,mechanical,photocopying,recording,orotherwise),
withoutthepriorwrittenpermissionofthepublisherofthisbook.
Thescanning,uploading,anddistributionofthisbookviathe
Internetorviaanyothermeanswithoutthepermissionofthe
publisherisillegalandpunishablebylaw. Pleasepurchaseonly
authorizedelectroniceditions,anddonotparticipateinorencourage
electronicpiracyofcopyrightedmaterials.
Whiletheauthorhasmadeeveryefforttoprovideaccuratetelephone
numbersandInternetaddressesatthetimeofpublication,neitherthe
publishernortheauthorassumesanyresponsibilityforerrorsorfor
changesthatoccurafterpublication. Further,thepublisherdoesnot
haveanycontroloveranddoesnotassumeanyresponsibilityfor
authororthird-partywebsitesortheircontent.
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Hoeller,StephanA.
Gnosticism:newlightontheancienttraditionofinnerknowing/
StephanHoeller.—1stQuested.
p. cm.
ISBN978-0-8356-0816-9
1.Gnosticism. I.Title.
BT1390.H642002
299’.932—dc21 2001048901
ISBNforelectronicedition,pdfformat:978-0-8356-4029-9
8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 * 05 06 07 08 09 10
CONTENTS
LISTOF ILLUSTRATIONS VI
PREFACE Vll
1. LIGHT FROM BEYOND THEVEIL 1
2.THE GNOSTICWORLDVIEW 13
3. A CREATIVEVIEW OF CREATION: GENESIS REVISITED 25
4. SOPHIA: GNOSTICARCHETYPE OF FEMININEWISDOM 37
5.THE GNOSTIC CHRIST: SAVIORORLIBERATOR? 55
6.THEMYSTERYOF INIQUITY:THE GNOSTICVIEWOF EVIL 71
7. LIBERATING MYSTERIES: GNOSTIC INITIATORYSACRAMENTS 81
8. FROMSAMARIATOALEXANDRIA:SOMEEARLYGNOSTICTEACHERS 93
9. VISIONARIES AND PROPHETS:THE GREAT MASTERS OF GNOSIS III
10. GNOSTIC RELIGIONS: MANDAEANS, MANICHAEANS, AND CATHARS 129
11.THE HERITAGE OF GNOSTICISM: GNOSTIC REVIVALS 155
12. GNOSTICISMWESTAND EAST:
WILLTHE REAL GNOSTIC PLEASE STAND Up? 175
13. GNOSTIC LITERATURE: MYTH,TRUTH, AND NARRATIVE 191
14. GNOSTICISMAND POSTMODERNTHOUGHT 205
EPILOGUE: FROM DAYLIGHTTO MIDNIGHT SUN 217
ApPENDIXA: A GNOSTIC READING LIST 225
ApPENDIX B: A BRIEF GNOSTIC GLOSSARY 237
BIBLIOGRAPHY 241
INDEX 245
List of Illustrations
1. Gnostic gem depicting Abraxas
2. Icon of the Holy Sophia, the Wisdom of God
3. Contemporary Gnostic icon of Sophia
4. Gnostic gem depicting a many-armed Goddess figure
5. Anthropomorphic crosses of the Cathars
6. Cathar gravestone in the likeness of a man's head and trunk
7. Gnostic gem depicting Harpocrates
8. Gnostic gem depicting Abraxas
9. Gnostic gem depicting Abraxas with whip and shield
10. Gnostic gem depicting Abraxas with conventional symbols
1 1. Mani the prophet and painter
12. Contemporary Gnostic icon of the prophet Mani
13. Cathar symbolic designs from carvings on stones
and amulets
14. Cathar symbolic designs, circle and the encircled cross
15. Mountain and ruins of Montsdgur in the Languedoc
16. Ruins of the castle at Montskgur
17. Gate of the Cathar sacred stronghold of Montsdgur
18. Commemorative monument to the Cathar martyrs
19. Cathar medallions from Montsdgur
20. Cathar stele, possibly a grave marker
2 1. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
22. G. R. S. Mead
23. Carl Gustav Jung
24. Vestments of clergy of the French Gnostic Church,
circa 1890
This book is a concise and sympathetic presentation of the teachings
and spiritual ambience of the Gnostic tradition. In the twentieth cen-
tury, Gnosticism matured from a subject of antiquarian interest to a
topic that increasingly arrests the attention of persons in many places
and in all walks of life. There is today in many minds an affinity with
Gnosticism and an empathy with the attitudes of the Gnostics that
have not been present since the times when the great Gnostic masters
expounded their insight in the second and third centuries after Christ.
Only fifty years ago, the majority of those presently involved in
Gnostic studies would have shied away from serious consideration of
Gnosticism. Their main objections might have been: (1) that Gnosti-
cism represents a tradition that is extinct and can only be approached
historically; (2) that Gnosticism is so deeply immersed in cosmic pes-
simism that it is irrelevant in an age of progress; and (3) that Gnosticism
is a tissue of speculative fancy unrelated to reason and experience. Let
us glance briefly at each of these objections in turn.
In a certain sense, it may be said that no spiritual tradition be-
comes extinct. An insight that goes forth on the ocean of the human
soul is like an expanding circle in a pool caused by a fallen stone; it
proceeds outward forever, even when it is no longer perceptible to
our senses. The wisdom of the Gnostics is rather like this; it continues
to influence human thinking and intuition, whether it is acknowl-
edged as the source or not. Much of the alternative spirituality of the
West is in some way related to or derived from Gnosticism. (Notably,
none other than Pope John Paul I1 in his book, Crossing the Threshold
ofHope (90), acknowledges "the return of ancient Gnostic ideas under
vii
the guise of the so-called New Age.") The surviving and reviving ideas
of Gnosticism are thus among us. To them we might apply another
metaphor: that of a river. The nearer we come to the source, the purer
is the water. If we wish to discover the Gnostic wisdom in its pristine
expression, we must go to the fountainhead. This is what the present
work tries to do.
The so-called pessimism of the Gnostic worldview has been a stum-
bling block for many critics. A century or even half a century ago,
Western culture was full of hope; the expansion of science, coupled
with the desire for human advancement, acted like a heady intoxicant
spreading optimistic cheer. The upheaval of two world wars and the
accompanying psychological wreckage have made us think again. More
recent events have further exposed the fragility of the optimistic mind-
set. At the beginning of the new millennium, we are confronted with
sobering circumstances: Aircraft that were once viewed as heralds of
the "global village" have become destructive missiles; letters carried by
the postal service are revealed as death-dealing devices. "We are all
American at puberty" wrote Evelyn Waugh in his diaries, "but we die
French"-referring to how naive optimism changes into somber real-
ism as the result of experience. Such a maturing of our culture may
make us appreciate Gnosticism once more.
In their attempts to discredit Gnosticism, its earliest and most in-
fluential critics represented it as replete with useless philosophizing
and the products of an excessive imagination. These judgments were
seriously challenged by some of the leading thinkers of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. While biblical scholarship discerned much
that was of value in Gnostic scriptures, existentialist and phenom-
enologist philosophers came to recognize the common ground that
they shared with Gnosticism. In many ways, the most powerful
effort for rehabilitating the Gnostics came from the great psycholo-
gist C. G. Jung, who perceived original images of the collective
unconscious in the Gnostic scriptures and thus authenticated the vi-
sionary origin and content of Gnostic revelations. This last point is of
singular relevance to the concerns of this book and therefore needs
further elucidation.
The present work is being published almost exactly twenty years
after my first major book, The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to
the Dead, in which I explored Jung's exceptional interest in Gnosti-
cism as well as pointed out numerous convergences between Jungian
analytical psychology and Gnosticism. My work was received favor-
ably, on the whole, by the Jungian community and is generally regarded
as a pioneering study concerning Jung and Gnosticism. (One of my
dearest possessions is a letter, written to me by Jung's son, Franz, dated
January 3, 1989, in which he kindly thanked me for the way in which
I had represented his father's position concerning Gnosticism. The
letter was accompanied by an original, privately printed copy of Jung's
Septem Sermones ad Mortuos, the treatise upon which my book was
based.) In connection with these matters relating to Jung and Gnosti-
cism, certain issues have become clear to me over the years, and they
have a bearing on the present book.
Jung regarded the Gnostics as visionaries who expressed their in-
sights primarily in the form of myths. He wished to rehabilitate the
myths of the Gnostics even as he was in favor of rehabilitating other
myths-a task that was largely undertaken by his associates Karl
Kerbnyi, Heinrich Zimmer, and Joseph Campbell. Being a psycholo-
gist, Jung favored a psychological rather than a metaphysical
interpretation of religious myths; this means that he was opposed to
the prevailing religious interpretations of the Bible, which he consid-
ered concretistic and reductionistic. This orientation of Jung toward
the meaning of myths was in considerable measure responsible for his
positive interest in the Gnostics; the Gnostic myths lend themselves
with great ease to such symbolic rather than literal treatment.
It is here that a certain difficulty emerges. Jung insists that his
symbolic interpretation of myths makes no claim to metaphysical truth.
Gnosticism, on the other hand, occupies a strange region between re-
ligion and what today is known as psychology-a region where soul
and spirit meet and where dream and vision are transmuted into liber-
ating experience. The Gnostic myths, with their powerful symbols and
metaphors, invariably partake of both psychological and metaphysical
meaning. Often they might appear as sorts of endless loops wherein
the psychological meaning points to a metaphysical meaning that leads
us back in turn to the individual psyche. Cosmology and psychology,
deities and archetypes, metamorphose-at times pointing to each other,
at other times merging together only to separate again. The reader of
this book may be confronted time and again with the puzzling cir-
cumstance that the Gnostic mythic stories and their protagonists seem
to belong to the field of depth psychology and to that of religion at
one and the same time. Unlike Jung, the Gnostics make claims to
metaphysical truth in the interpretation of their myths, although they
also indicate avenues of interpretation that today would be seen as
depth psychological. The most likely solution to this enigma is the
view that the Gnostic myths may be interpreted in both an intrapsy-
chic and an external sense, and that both interpretations may be correct
and can coexist with each other. Both the metaphysical and the psy-
chological models are perhaps, as Jung would certainly agree, merely
attempts to formulate, express, and shape the inexpressible. It would
be wise if the reader kept these considerations in mind while reading
this work.
This book is not primarily a work of academic scholarship. I have
tried to limit references and documentation to an irreducible mini-
mum while expanding the list of recommended reading and annotating
it for the reader's convenience. The format and style of this book are
rather more simple than those of my other books, even simpler than I