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the ascent of the soul, the description of which concludes the revelation. The antithesis of the creator and the highest God is absent here: the demiurge has been commissioned by the Father, and his creation seems to be (as it was still represented later in Mani-chaeism) the best way of coping with the existence of a chaotic darkness. Yet the unplanned inclusion of the divine Man in the cosmic system is distinctly tragic; and even the character of the most genuine product of the demiurge, the seven spheres and their governors, turns out to be much more problematic than one would expect from the account of their origin. There are considerable difficulties in integrating the different parts of the composition into a consistent doctrine, and perhaps a certain ambiguity, due to the combination of contradictory material, is of its very substance. We shall deal with these questions after having rendered the main body of the text.
(a) THE TEXT
(1) Once, when I had engaged in meditation upon the things that are and my mind was mightily lifted up, while my bodily senses were curbed ... I thought I beheld a presence of immeasurable greatness that called my name and said to me: "What dost thou wish to hear and see and in thought learn and understand?" (2) I said, "Who art thou?" "I am," he said, "Poimandres, the Nous of the Absolute Power. I know what thou wishest, and I am with thee everywhere." (3) I said, "I desire to be taught about the things that are and understand their nature and know God. . . ." And he replied, "Hold fast in thy mind what thou wishest to learn, and I shall teach thee."
(4) With these words, he changed his form, and suddenly everything was opened before me in a flash, and I behold a boundless view, everything become Light, serene and joyful. And I became enamored with the sight. And after a while there was a Darkness borne downward . . . ,* appalling and hateful, tortuously coiled, resembling a serpent. Then I saw this Darkness change into some humid nature, indescribably
1 "having originated in one part" or ". . . part by part," i.c, gradually (?).
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agitated and giving off smoke as from a fire and uttering a kind of sound unspeakable, mournful. Then a roar [or: cry] came forth from it unarticulately, comparable to the voice of a fire. (5) From out of the Light a holy Word [logos] came over the nature, and unmixed fire leapt out of the humid nature upward to the height; it was light and keen, and active at the same time; and the air, being light, followed the fiery breath, rising up as far as the fire from earth and water, so that it seemed suspended from it; but earth and water remained in their place, intermingled, so that the earth was not discernible apart from the water; and they were kept in audible motion through the breath of the Word which was borne over them.
(6) Then Poimandres said to me: ". . . That light is I,Nous, thy God, who was before the humid nature that appearedout of the Darkness. And the luminous Word that issued fromNous is the Son of God. ... By this understand: that whichin thee sees and hears is the Word of the Lord, but the Nous[thy nous?] is God the Father: they are not separate from eachother, for Life is the union of these. . . . Now then, fix yourmind on the Light and learn to know it."
(7) Having said this, he gazed long at me intently, so thatI trembled at his aspect; then when he looked up, I behold inmy nous2 the Light consisting in innumerable Powers and become a boundless Cosmos, and the fire contained by a mightypower and under its firm control keeping its place. . . .
(8) He again speaks to me: "Thou hast seen in the Nousthe archetypal form, the principle preceding the infinite beginning."3 ... "Wherefrom then," I ask, "have the elements ofnature arisen?" To which he replies: "From the Will4 of God,who having received into herself the Word and beheld thebeautiful [archetypal] Cosmos, imitated it, fashioning herselfinto a cosmos [or: ordering herself] according to her own elements and her progeny, i.e., the souls.
"(9) But the divine Nous, being androgynous, existing as Life and Light, brought forth by a word another Nous, the
s I.e., "in my own mind" as identical with the absolute Nous. *Or, perhaps, "the infinite principle preceding the beginning"? * boule, a word of feminine gender.
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Demiurge, who as god over the fire and the breath fashioned seven Governors, who encompass with their circles the sensible world, and their government is called Heimarmene [Destiny]. (10) Forthwith the Word of God leapt out of the downward-borne elements upward into the pure [part of the] physical creation [the demiurgical sphere] and became united with the Nous-Demiurge, for he was of the same substance. And thus the lower elements of Nature were left without reason,5 so that they were now mere Matter. (11) And together with the Word the Nous-Demiurge, encompassing the circles and whirling them with thunderous speed, set his creations circling in endless revolution, for it begins where it ends. And this rotation of the spheres according to the will of the Nous [-Demiurge] produced out of the lower elements irrational animals, for those elements had not retained the Word. . . . [air, water, earth— the last two now separated—each producing its own animals: androgynous ones, as appears later.]
"(12) Now the Nous, Father of all, being Life and Light, brought forth Man like to himself, of whom he became enamored as his own child, for he was very beautiful, since he bore the Father's image; for indeed even God became enamored of his own form, and he delivered over to him all his works. (13) And Man, beholding the creation which the Demiurge had fashioned in the fire [the celestial spheres], wished himself to create as well, and was permitted by the Father. When he had entered the demiurgical sphere where he was to have full authority, he beheld his brother's works, and they [the seven Governors] became enamored of him, and each gave him a share in his own realm.6 Having come to know their essence and having received a share of their nature, he then wished to break through the circumference of the circles and to overcome [?]7 the power of him who rules over the fire. (14) And he [Man] who had full power over the world of things mortal
5"without logos," since the Logos (Word) had departed from them: logos meaning "word" and "reason," the argument is not fully apparent in the English render-
ing.
6 Or: "of his own endowment." 7Or: "fully comprehend."
and over the irrational animals bent down through the Harmony8 and having broken through the vault showed to lower Nature the beautiful form of God. When she beheld him who had in himself inexhaustible beauty and all the forces of the Governors combined with the form of God, she smiled in love; for she had seen the reflection of this most beautiful form of Man in the water and its shadow upon the earth. He too, seeing his likeness present in her, reflected in the water, loved it and desired to dwell in it. At once with the wish it became reality, and he came to inhabit the form devoid of reason. And Nature, having received into herself the beloved, embraced him wholly, and they mingled: for they were inflamed with love. (15) And this is why alone of all the animals on earth man is twofold, mortal through the body, immortal through the essential Man. For though he is immortal and has power over all things, he suffers the lot of mortality, being subject to the Heimarmene; though he was above the Harmony, he has become a slave within the Harmony; though he was androgynous, having issued from the androgynous Father, and unsleeping from the unsleeping one, he is conquered by love and sleep."
[There follows a circumstantial account of the origin of the present race of men (16-19), and a moral instruction (20-23),
81 stick to the astrological and dynamic meaning of the term. The most recent interpreters take harmonia here in the concrete sense it had in the language of the carpenter: "joint," "fitting together"; thus Nock, proposes the translation "composite framework," Festugiere translates "armature des spheres." Both these excellent scholars, though tentative as to the most suitable translation, are certain that the word throughout our treatise denotes a particular material structure and not, as I understand it, the general essence of a power system, viz., the law of the interrelated motions of the macrocosmos represented by the seven planets (the latter, however, considered mainly in their "psychological" aspect, as the subsequent account of the soul's ascent makes clear). Of the reasons I have against the newer interpretation, I indicate only two: that supplied by the phrase "[Man] having in himself the nature of the harmony of the Seven" (16), which makes sense only in connection with the abstract meaning first given to "harmony" by the Pythagoreans; and its additional support by the close correlation in which our text repeatedly (15; 19) puts "harmony" to "heimarmene" (destiny). In brief, harmonia stands for a totality of forces (the Governors) denoted by its unifying characteristic (the form of their collective government), and not just for a partitioning wall or any more complex entity of that kind, like a scaffolding. Incidentally, the spheric system was fashioned out of fire, which hardly goes well with a framework.
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153
which we here summarize as follows. Since the Man, now intermingled with Nature, "had in himself the nature of the harmony of the Seven," Nature brought forth seven androgynous men, corresponding to the natures of the seven Governors. We pass over the details of the respective contributions of the elements earth, water, fire, and ether to the constitution of these creatures. As to the contribution of Man as a part of the begetting mixture, he turned "from Life and Light into soul and mind (nous), into soul from Life and into mind from Light" (17). This condition of creation lasted to the end of a world-era. The new world-era was initiated by the separation of all the androgynous creatures, animals and men alike, into male and female. And here occurs the only instance in which the author shows his familiarity with the Greek Old Testament in something like a direct quotation: on the model of Gen. 1:22, 28, God admonishes the new bisexual creation, "Be fruitful and multiply," then continues in a very different vein: "And [man] endowed with mind shall recognize that he is immortal and that the cause of death is love" (viz., ultimately the love which drew the Primal Man down into nature) (18). He who has come thus to know himself has come into the supreme good; he, however, who has cherished the body issued from the error of love, he remains in the darkness erring, suffering in his senses the dispensations of death. What then is the sin of those ignorant ones, that they should be deprived of immortality? The first cause of the individual body is the hateful darkness, from which came the humid nature, from which was constituted the body of the sensible world, from which death draws nourishment. Thus the lovers of the body actually are in death and deserve death. On the other hand, he who knows himself knows that the Father of all things consists of Light and Life, therefore likewise the Primal Man issued from him, and by this he knows himself to be of Light and Life, and will through this knowledge return to the Life. The knowing ones, filled with love for the Father, before they deliver the body to its own death abhor the senses, whose effects they know; and the Poimandres-Nous assists them in this by acting as a warder at the gates and barring entrance to the evil influences of the body.
The unknowing ones are left a prey to all the evil passions, whose insatiability is their torment, always augmenting the flame that consumes them.]
[The last part of the instruction (24-26) is devoted to the soul's ascent after death. First at the dissolution of the material body you yield up to the demon your sensuous nature (?)9 now ineffective, and the bodily senses return each to its source among the elements.] "(25) And thereafter, man thrusts upward through the Harmony, and to the first zone he surrenders the power to grow and to decrease, and to the second the machinations of evil cunning, now rendered powerless, and to the third the deceit of concupiscence, now rendered powerless, and to the fourth the arrogance of dominion, drained of [or: now impotent to achieve] its ambition, and to the fifth the impious audacity and the rashness of impulsive deed, and to the sixth the evil appetites of wealth, now rendered powerless, and to the seventh zone the lying that ensnares. (26) And then denuded of the effects of the Harmony, he enters the nature of the Ogdoas [i.e., the eighth sphere, that of the fixed stars], now in possession of his own power, and with those already there exalts the Father; and those present rejoice with him at his presence, and having become like his companions he hears also certain powers above the eighth sphere exalting God with a sweet voice. And then in procession they rise up towards the ...
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