Hermetic Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth

What were see in this Discourse is the preface of an initiation ceremony; a gnostic sage is speaking to his student right before his ascension into a higher realm of enlightenment. In antiquity, the seven planets were known as the seven spheres while the eighth was thought to be where the fixed stars resided. It was also a pivotal, transformative place. The ninth sphere was literally 'god's realm' and what all gnostics reach for when learning, praying, and considering the nature of life itself. In regard to these 'spheres'-- think of an onion.

Hermes Trismegistos is the teacher and the student is unknown. The student could be anyone. The student could be you. (Note: I have an article about Hermes Trismegistos coming up next.)

I find this text, as well as the rest of the Hermetic Literature, to be especially instructive when contemplating lay gnosis(search 'lay gnosis' in the search engine in the blog). Lay gnosis is a physical manifestation of a spiritual transition, and I think it is the eighth realm touched upon by Hermes. This is one of the most esoteric works of his which has survived.

It is lamentable that more Hermetic Literature has not survived the centuries because supposedly there are hundreds of texts which are hidden or were destroyed. Here is what is translated as of today. The complete Hermeticum is available now as well as verified fragments. It's really no wonder that Cosimo de Medici was neck deep in the collection and restoration of the texts, they're such a unique spiritual work. If not for Cosimo then more likely than not the small dialogues in the Nag Hammadi codices would be all we would be left with.

Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth

(The Ogdoad and the Ennead)

"My father, yesterday you promised you would take my mind to the eighth heavenly sphere and after that you would take me to the ninth. You said this is the sequence of the tradition." 

"Yes, my child, this is the sequence, but the promise was made about human nature. I said to you when I first made the promise, 'If you remember each of the stages.' After I received the spirit through the power, I established that action for you. Clearly understanding dwells within you. In me it is as if the power were pregnant, for when I conceived from the spring that flows to me, I gave birth."

"Father, you have spoken every word rightly to me, but I am amazed at what you said. You said, 'The power is in me.'"

He said, "I gave birth to it as children are born." 

"Then father, I have many siblings if I am to be counted among the generations."

"Right, child. This good thing is counted... always. So, child, you must know your siblings and honor them rightly, since they have come from the same father. For each of the generations have I addressed. I have named them, since they are offspring like these children."

"Then, father, do they have a day?"

"Child, they are spiritual, for they exist as forces that nurture other souls. That is why I say they are immortal." 

"Your word is true. From now on it cannot be refuted. Father, begin the discourse on the eighth and ninth, and count me also with my siblings."

"Let us pray, child, to the father of the universe, with your siblings, who are my children, that the father may grant the spirit of eloquence."

"How do they pray, father, when they are united with the generations? Father, I want to obey." 

"... It is right for you to remember the progress you have experienced as wisdom in the books. Child, recall your early childhood. You have posed, as children do, senseless and foolish questions."

"Father I have experienced progress and foreknowledge from the books, and they are greater than what is lacking- these matters are my first concern." 

"Child, when you understand the truth of your statement, you will find your siblings, who are my children, praying with you." 

"Father, I understand nothing else than the beauty I have experienced in the books." 

"This is what you call the beauty of the soul- the edification you have experienced in stages. May the understanding come to you, and you will teach."

"I have understood, father, each of the books, and especially...." 

"Child... in praises from those who raise them."

"Father, I shall receive from you the power of the discourse you will utter. As it was spoken to the two of us, let us pray, father."

"Child, it is fitting for us to pray to god with all our mind and all our heart and our soul, to ask god that the gift of the eighth reaches us and that each receive from god what belongs to god. Your job is to understand, mine is to be able to utter the discourse from the spring that flows to me."

"Christ and the Soul" in Gospel of Philip

I believe gnosis is universal, timeless, and didn't only begin in the Christian era of when Christ lived and died. How could it be that Plato and all the dozens of other proto-gnostics wrote allegories using symbolism Christians and other Mystery religion sects did centuries later? One followed the other, yes, but there are such gaps in time and space that it almost seems impossible to reconcile. 

It doesn't make sense because they were so removed from one another, despite the evidence that a few of them maintained a correspondence and became on again/off again teachers. These schools were wiped out time and time again. Gnosis can't be learned or felt with only a few letters exchanged. Momentum needs to be built, forward thinking and actions are needed to propel a thing like gnosis into a community affair or even be accepted as a 'muse' which one can count on for truth and comfort.

The best theory about how gnosis has traveled through time is that these themes are universal to the human psyche and within pleroma these thoughts are a constant. Time is not linear within him and I think this is the most difficult concept to accept. Daydreams and nightdreams are used as vehicles for communication. With us being so interconnected, if you consider that as a possibility then it all comes into focus quite sharply that there is no true original thought or idea. No one has a patent on anything! We're just very good at recycling and re-finding/re-imagining and refurbishing what has already been imagined countless times before. 

Think of the many 'renaissances' which have existed before now.  Count the many monuments left behind by civilizations which have flourished and then fallen- too many to count, really. We have all the evidence we need to say definitively: human beings are endlessly creative and tirelessly spiritual in nature. We are not atheist in nature! We are creative beings who want to connect to the divine in every way. It's what we long for when we are awake and when we dream. Why else would we go to such extremes, swinging madly between dark chaos and filth all the way over to courtly love and saccharine sweet paintings of rather naughty flying dresses?

Enchantingly beautiful, isn't she? Flirty and living in the moment on that swing. And the shoe! Do you see it? She's so happy and carefree that she is smiling even as her left shoe goes flying off her foot. Of course the paramour she's teasing in front of her is enjoying the spectacle of her happiness. Pleroma is like that handsome lover, grinning at us saying, "There you go! Live and love and laugh. I wants to see it and experience it with you!"

Is there gnosis in paint? What about in a bottle of Smirnoff? .... I have to say 'yes' to both of those. I tend to get a little more lyrical with my own paintbrush when I combine it with a good stiff drink or five. And you know what? There's nothing wrong with that!! It's the experience which matters; the internal dialogue which takes place and in which we find answers. It's the experience of life itself which drives us higher and higher, like the lady on that swing, to reach toward the gentle light of love which we feel deeply within us. A lot of times it difficult to see pleroma around us but when we center ourselves once more we can branch out from there and learn to truly live again.

When you have a run in with a person or even a group of people and you think: "Man, they really need to retract that stick up their @#$%. They'd be happier."  You are on the path of gnosis. Seeing unhappiness and gnowing(<-- My fingers slipped on the keyboard but it's funny so I'm keeping it) the solution to it is gnosis demystified. Truly, it is that simple. What brings you peace? To be exclusive or to be inclusive? Are you happy hating other people? Don't you think the divine wants us to be One or to be many and fight endless wars with one another?

And those riddle-like verses in the gnostic gospels aren't always built with a hundred layers like a french Opera cake. Some, like the  Gospel of Philip can be read quite literally- but only if you know the players. 

Christ as the Savior of humanity:

"Christ came to buy. He rescued and redeemed,
redeeming aliens. He made strangers his own.
He brought his own and made promises,
construing a strategy, and gave his life
when he appeared and when the world began.
Then he came and took back what he promised,
which fell into the hands of thieves. They captured it,
but he rescued it back. Then he redeemed
both the good and evil people of the world."

Could Philip be talking about literalists overtaking the gnostic sects with the line 'came and took back what he promised which fell into the hands of thieves'? Or maybe he's speaking of Judas 'stealing' what belonged to the world and which left the world(at least in the flesh) because of his deeds?

Either way you want to interpret this passage, the crucifixion story is not original only to Christian tradition. Nearly every religion has a holy person which is sacrificed in some way for knowledge or need of a group of people for what their death can offer. Why is that? Why this need for sacrifice?

Part 1 of Gnostic Defininitions

Aeons??! Who are they? What are they? And who the heck is Sophia? I never heard of her in my Sundays School class as a child.

When I first began to delve within gnostic texts there were so many confusing new terms to learn I thought I'd go nuts. Gnostic literature is entrenched in metaphor and pseudonyms to both distance the reader from the question of "who is the author?" and grab their attention concerning the real meaty substance of their writing. A double edged sword, really.

This rampant use of metaphor, personification, directional paradox, and other literary tools confound most beginners. They think they're reading riddles which are purposely created to drive them insane. Gnostic writing is another language and flavor of communication altogether than what modern readers are accustomed to. Equate it with elaborate poetry; something which takes time and patience in order to unravel. Think it's another language? You're right. Most terms are, coincidentally, in Greek. That is the difficult thing to consign yourself to. There is studying involved in the search for gnosis.

I'd like to put together some simplified definitions and examples of basic concepts in gnosticism. There are variations within different sects and even within time frames between gnostic text authors. Once these main ideas are learned and well thought out, real gnosis begins. So yes, you are reading words based in the Greek language. But only because that is where the written ideas began to take shape on paper.... er.. papyrus. You're reading about a completely different way of thinking. And this demands a different discipline of the mind. So relax... and get ready for your brain to be twisted into a knot. I promise it'll be worth it.

Gnosis: Knowledge. To know. To explore learning. Insight. Intuition. Intuitive reasoning. Enlightenment. Knowledge via contemplation.

Gnostic: Person who pursues gnosis. Because of the radical anti-Nicene views of gnostics this has led to quite a bit of trouble for them through the centuries. Dubbed as heretics by the Vatican and often pursued for trial, even today.

Proto(first)-Gnostics: Valentinus, Philo, Basilides, Simon Magus, Cerinthus. Menander of Antioch, Zostrianos, early Sethian leaders, Ptolemy, Heracleon, Mary Magdalen, John the Evangelist, Jesus Christ, St. Paul, Plato .... and dozens more. Too many to name. Many of them were philosophers you've seen and heard of all your life. They all have connections to one another in some way. A great many of them even wrote to one another. And as you can tell from that eclectic list several of these were martyred for their beliefs.

Later Gnostic Leaders: the prophet Mani, St. Augustine of Hippo(until he turned tail and decided he wanted to be a bishop of the Christian Church instead), and the in-hiding leaders of the Manichean, Sethian, Archontic, Basilidean, Cerdonina, and Valentinian sects. After the third century announcing you were a gnostic was akin to putting a neon Shoot Me sign on your forehead. By the fourth century all gnostic books were banned and gnostic meetings were illegal. In the Roman Empire such religious leanings were met with a death penalty. There are many other sects of gnosticism. This list is by no means complete. For example: William Blake is a known gnostic. However he was a cryptic one. A closet gnostic.

Pleroma: Greek, meaning "the fullness." The totality of divine powers. The Divine Principal. The good god. The one who is incomparable and incomprehensible. The All. The one who made the elements that the universe is made from but not the one who made the universe itself. He did not give it form. He simply exists as The All.

Yahweh/God/Jehovah/demiurge/the arrogant one: the Judeo-Christian God described in the New Testament who said in Exodus, "for I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God." The child of Sophia and the grandchild of pleroma. The one who formed the universe from the elements pleroma made. Also known as the "half-maker" because he had taken the divine substance and fashioned out of it a world. He is the spiritual being who had become forgetful of his origins, even of the ultimate God. He thinks that he is God and there is no other God before him.

Archons: servants of the demiurge. False rulers. The angels and demons of the Old Testament. The lures and distractions of this material world.

Sophia: Greek for "wisdom." This female personality is a bit tricky to pin down. In some Eastern Orthodox Christian sects she is seen as the Virgin Mary. In some gnostic texts she is also known as Eve, in that she was duped or made a mistake which lead to the flaws and separation of man from God. In others she is described as the female child of the Divine Principal. There are correlations between these variations but some are subtle while others are more blatant. The cross over from the Christian tradition into the Gnostic tradition is that "Eve" was the first female child of a god and so was Sophia. Both gave birth. Sophia's childbirth was virginal whereas Eve's was not. So this calling Sophia "Eve" is more of a half-truth based descriptive, merely letting readers know that Sophia was The First of her kind.

The gnostic Sophia was formed out of the mind of The All. Sophia then makes a decision to do some action(text explanations vary widely) and in the process of attempting this, she creates the demiurge(God/Yahweh). Embarrassed, and fearing reprisals from The All, she hides Him away in a void all by himself. God, thinking he's all alone and the only god in existence creates the earth and heavens as well as human beings to worship Him. That's the extremely short and sweet version.

Aeons: emanations of The All. In the various systems these emanations are differently named, classified, and described, but the emanation theory itself is common to all forms of Gnosticism. They are described as existing in layers(like an onion) between human beings and The All. Complex hierarchies of Aeons are thus produced, sometimes to the number of thirty. These Aeons belong to the purely ideal, noumenal, intelligible, or supersensible world; they are immaterial, they are hypostatic ideas. Together with the source from which they emanate they form the Pleroma ("region of light"). The lowest regions of the Pleroma are closest to the darkness—that is, the physical world.

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In the Letter of Peter to Philip, Peter is relating a mystic occurrence on the Mount of Olivet in which the spirit of Jesus appeared to teach them.

On The Deficiency of the Aeons:

"To begin with, concerning the deficiency of the aeons, this is the deficiency. When the disobedience and the foolishness of the mother(Sophia) appeared, without the command and majesty of the father, she wanted to set up eternal realms. When she spoke, the arrogant one(demiurge) followed. But when she left behind a portion, the arrogant one grabbed it, and it became a deficiency. This is the deficiency of the aeons.

"When the arrogant one took a portion, he sowed it. He placed powers and authorities over it, and he confined it within the mortal realms. All the powers of the world rejoiced that they had been brought forth. But they do not know the preexistent father, since they are strangers to him. Rather, he was given power, and they served him and praised him.

"But the arrogant one grew proud because of the praise of the powers. He was jealous and wanted to make an image in place of an image and a form in place of a form. He assigned the powers within his authority to mold mortal bodies. And they came into being from a misrepresentation of the appearance."

On Fighting The Rulers, Peter relays:

The messengers worshiped again, saying, "Lord, tell us, how shall we fight against the rulers, since the rulers are over us?"

A voice called out to them from the appearance, saying, "You must fight against them like this, for the rulers fight against the inner person. You must fight against them like this: come together and teach salvation in the world with a promise. And arm yourselves with my father's power, and express your prayer, and surely the father will help you, as he helped you by sending me. Do not be afraid. I am with you forever, as I already said to you when I was in the body."

(Deficiency is also synonymous in gnostic texts with "smallness" or "pettiness.")