GNOSTIC IMAGERY AND SYMBOLIC LANGUAGE
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to exaggerate the importance of the Mandaeans in the general picture of Gnosticism.
Chapter 3. Gnostic Imagery and Symbolic Language
At his first encounter with gnostic literature, the reader will be struck by certain recurrent elements of expression which by their intrinsic quality, even outside the wider context, reveal something of the fundamental experience, the mode of feeling, and the vision of reality distinctively characteristic of the gnostic mind. These expressions range from single words with symbolic suggestion to extensive metaphors; and more than for their frequency of occurrence, they are significant for their inherent eloquence, often enhanced by startling novelty. In this chapter we shall consider some of them. The advantage of this line of approach is that it confronts us with a level of utterance more fundamental than the doctrinal differentiation into which gnostic thought branched out in the completed systems.
Especially rich in the kind of original coinage that displays the stamp of the gnostic mind with telling force is the Mandaean literature. This wealth of expressiveness is at least in part the obverse of its poorness on the theoretical side; it is also connected with the fact that owing to their geographical and social remoteness from Hellenistic influence the Mandaeans were less exposed than most to the temptation to assimilate the expression of their ideas to Western intellectual and literary conventions. In their writings mythological fantasy abounds, the compactness of its imagery un-attenuated by any ambition toward conceptualization, its variety unchecked by care for consistency and system. Although this lack of intellectual discipline often makes tedious the reading of their larger compositions, which are highly repetitious, the unsophisticated colorfulness of mythical vision that permeates them offers ample compensation; and in Mandaean poetry the gnostic soul pours forth its anguish, nostalgia, and relief in an unending stream of powerful symbolism. For the purposes of this chapter, we shall accordingly draw heavily on this source, without thereby wishing
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(a) THE "ALIEN"
"In the name of the great first alien Life from the worlds of light, the sublime that stands above all works": this is the standard opening of Mandaean compositions, and "alien" is a constant attribute of the "Life" that by its nature is alien to this world and under certain conditions alien within it. The formula quoted speaks of the "first" Life "that stands above all works," where we have to supply "of creation," i.e., above the world. The concept of the alien Life is one of the great impressive word-symbols which we encounter in gnostic speech, and it is new in the history of human speech in general. It has equivalents throughout gnostic literature, for example Marcion's concept of the "alien God" or just "the Alien," "the Other," "the Unknown," "the Nameless," "the Hidden"; or the "unknown Father" in many Christian-gnostic writings. Its philosophic counterpart is the "absolute transcendence" of Neopla-tonic thought. But even apart from these theological uses where it is one of the predicates of God or of the highest Being, the word "alien" (and its equivalents) has its own symbolic significance as an expression of an elemental human experience, and this underlies the different uses of the word in the more theoretical contexts. Regarding this underlying experience, the combination "the alien life" is particularly instructive.
The alien is that which stems from elsewhere and does not belong here. To those who do belong here it is thus the strange, the unfamiliar and incomprehensible; but their world on its part is just as incomprehensible to the alien that comes to dwell here, and like a foreign land where it is far from home. Then it suffers the lot of the stranger who is lonely, unprotected, uncomprehended, and uncomprehending in a situation full of danger. Anguish and homesickness are a part of the stranger's lot. The stranger who does not know the ways of the foreign land wanders about lost; if he learns its ways too well, he forgets that he is a stranger and gets lost in a different sense by succumbing to the lure of the alien world and becoming estranged from his own origin. Then he has
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GNOSTIC LITERATURE—MAIN TENETS, SYMBOLIC LANGUAGE
become a "son of the house." This too is part of the alien's fate. In his alienation from himself the distress has gone, but this very fact is the culmination of the stranger's tragedy. The recollection of his own alienness, the recognition of his place of exile for what it is, is the first step back; the awakened homesickness is the beginning of the return. All this belongs to the "suffering" side of alien-ness. Yet with relation to its origin it is at the same time a mark of excellence, a source of power and of a secret life unknown to the environment and in the last resort impregnable to it, as it is incomprehensible to the creatures of this world. This superiority of the alien which distinguishes it even here, though secretly, is its manifest glory in its own native realm, which is outside this world. In such position the alien is the remote, the inaccessible, and its strangeness means majesty. Thus the alien taken absolutely is the wholly transcendent, the "beyond," and an eminent attribute of God.
Both sides of the idea of the-"Alien," the positive and the negative, alienness as superiority and as suffering, as the prerogative of remoteness and as the fate of involvement, alternate as the characteristics of one and the same subject—the "Life." As the "great first Life" it partakes in the positive aspect alone: it is "beyond," "above the world," "in the worlds of light," "in the fruits of splendor, in the courts of light, in the house of perfection," and so forth. In its split-off existence in the world it tragically partakes in the interpenetration of both sides; and the actualization of all the features outlined above, in a dramatic succession that is governed by the theme of salvation, makes up the metaphysical history of the light exiled from Light, of the life exiled from Life and involved in the world—the history of its alienation and recovery, its "way" down and through the nether world and up again. According to the various stages of this history, the term "alien" or its equivalents can enter into manifold combinations: "my alien soul," "my worldsick heart," "the lonely vine," apply to the human condition, while "the alien man" and "the stranger" apply to the messenger from the world of Light—though he may apply to himself the former terms as well, as we shall see when we consider the "redeemed redeemer." Thus by implication the very concept of the "alien" includes in its meaning all the aspects which the "way" explicates in the form of temporally distinct phases. At the same
time it most directly expresses the basic experience which first led to this conception of the "way" of existence—the elementary experience of alienness and transcendence. We may therefore regard the figure of the "alien Life" as a primary symbol of Gnosticism.
(b) "BEYOND," "WITHOUT," "THIS WORLD," AND "THE OTHER WORLD"
To this central concept other terms and images are organically related. If the "Life" is originally alien, then its home is "outside" or "beyond" this world. "Beyond" here means beyond everything that is of the cosmos, heaven and its stars included. And "included" literally: the idea of an absolute "without" limits the world to a closed and bounded system, terrifying in its vastness and inclusive-ness to those who are lost in it, yet finite within the total scope of being. It is a power-system, a demonic entity charged with personal tendencies and compulsive forces. The limitation by the idea of the "beyond" deprives the "world" of its claim to totality. As long as "world" means "the All," the sum total of reality, there is only "the" world, and further specification would be pointless: if the cosmos ceases to be the All, if it is limited by something radically "other" yet eminently real, then it must be designated as "this" world. All relations of man's terrestrial existence are "in this world," "of this world," which is in contrast to "the other world," the habitation of "Life." Seen from beyond, however, and in the eyes of the inhabitants of the worlds of Light and Life, it is our world which appears as "that world." The demonstrative pronoun has thus become a relevant addition to the term "world"; and the combination is again a fundamental linguistic symbol of Gnosticism, closely related to the primary concept of the "alien."
(c) WORLDS AND AEONS
It is in line with this view of things that "world" comes to be used in the plural. The expression "the worlds" denotes the long chain of such closed power-domains, divisions of the larger cosmic system, through which Life has to pass on its way, all of them equally alien to it. Only by losing its status of totality, by becoming
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particularized and at the same time demonized, did the concept "world" come to admit of plurality. We might also say that "world" denotes a collective rather than a unity, a demonic family rather than a unique individual. The plurality denotes also the labyrinthine aspect of the world: in the worlds the soul loses its way and wanders about, and wherever it seeks an escape it only passes from one world into another that is no less world. This multiplication of demonic systems to which unredeemed life is banished is a theme of many gnostic teachings. To the "worlds" of the Mandaeans correspond the "aeons" of Hellenistic Gnosticism. Usually there are seven or twelve (corresponding to the number of the planets or the signs of the zodiac), but in some systems the plurality proliferates to dizzying and terrifying dimensions, up to 365 "heavens" or the innumerable "spaces," "mysteries" (here used topologically), and "aeons" of the Pistis Sophia. Through all of them, representing so many degrees of separation from the light, "Life" must pass in order to get out.
You see, O child, through how many bodies [elements?], how many ranks of demons, how many concatenations and revolutions of stars, we have to work our way in order to hasten to the one and only God.
(CM. IV. 8)
It is to be understood even where it is not expressly stated that the role of these intervening forces is inimical and obstructive: with the spatial extent they symbolize at the same time the anti-divine and imprisoning power of this world. "The way that we have to go is long and endless" (G 433) j1 "How wide are the boundaries of these worlds of darkness!" (G 155);
Having once strayed into the labyrinth of evils, The wretched [Soul] finds no way out . . . She seeks to escape from the bitter chaos, And knows not how she shall get through.
(Naassene Psalm, Hippol. V. 10. 2)
Apart from all personification, the whole of space in which life finds itself has a malevolently spiritual character, and the "demons"
xMandaean quotations are based on the German translation by M. Lidzbarski, "G" standing for Ginza: Der Schatz oder das Crosse Buck der Mandiier, Gottingen, 1925, "J" for Das Johannesbuch der Mandiier, Giessen, 1915. Numbers after the letter indicate pages of these publications.
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themselves are as much spatial realms as they are persons. To overcome them is the same thing as to pass through them, and in breaking through their boundaries this passage at the same time breaks their power and achieves the liberation from the magic of their sphere. Thus even in its role as redeemer the Life in Man-daean writings says of itself that it "wandered through the worlds": or as Jesus is made to say in the Naassene Psalm, "All the worlds shall I journey through, all the mysteries unlock."
This is the spatial aspect of the conception. No less demonized is the time dimension of life's cosmic existence, which also is represented as an order of quasi-personal powers (e.g., the "Aeons"). Its quality, like that of the world's space, reflects the basic experience of alienness and exile. Here too we meet the plurality we observed there: whole series of ages stretch between the soul and its goal, and their mere number expresses the hold which the cosmos as a principle has over its captives. Here again, escape is achieved only by passing through them all. Thus the way of salvation leads through the temporal order of the "generations": through chains of unnumbered generations the transcendent Life enters the world, sojourns in it, and endures its seemingly endless duration, and only through this long and laborious way, with memory lost and regained, can it fulfill its destiny. This explains the impressive formula "worlds and generations" which constantly occurs in Mandaean writings: "I wandered through worlds and generations," says the redeemer. To the unredeemed soul (which may be that of the redeemer himself), this time perspective is a source of anguish. The terror of the vastness of cosmic spaces is matched by the terror of the times that have to be endured: "How long have I endured already and been dwelling in the world!" (G 458).
This twofold aspect of the cosmic terror, the spatial and the temporal, is well exhibited in the complex meaning of the gnosti-cally adapted Hellenistic concept of "Aeon." Originally a time-concept purely (duration of life, length of cosmic time, hence eternity), it underwent personification in pre-gnostic Hellenistic religion—possibly an adaptation of the Persian god Zervan—and became an object of worship, even then with some fearsome associations. In Gnosticism it takes a further mythological turn and becomes a class-name for whole categories of either divine, semi-
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divine, or demonic beings. In the last sense "the Aeons" represent with temporal as well as spatial implications the demonic power of the universe or (as in the Pistis Sophia) of the realm of darkness in its enormity. Their extreme personification may sometimes all but obliterate the original time aspect, but in the frequent equating of "aeons" with "worlds" that aspect is kept alive as part of a meaning become rather protean through the drifts of mythical imagination.2
The feeling inspired by the time aspect of cosmic exile finds moving expression in words like these:
In that world [of darkness] I dwelt thousands of myriads of years, ...
adad.molo