Gnosis

GNOSIS

Preface

Christian Gnostics do not entertain any idea of "progress". A Spiritual Principle is
journeying through time and matter without its destiny necessarily being intertwined
with them. In this way, we pre-empt the disillusion which we are heirs-to. This Spiritual
Principle, which we Gnostics call "gnosis", seems at first sight to be identical to some
suitably vague "Spirit" which is present in equal measure in all humankind. In this view,
revelation is simply a matter of furnishing human beings with an authoritative
statement of the truth accessible to reason, thereby eliciting an awareness of the Spiritual
Principle within them as the necessary preamble to its needs and aspirations coming to
expression in worship and philanthropic endeavour. But true Gnostics do not believe
that the "gnosis" - an inherent "knowledge" or "insight" into the true nature of the reality
which transcends the cosmos - is present in all human beings. By an accident of nature
which Gnostics have been willing to express in one way or another in mythological
terms, only a limited number of human beings share the "gnosis". In other words.
Gnostics are sustained by an elitism wholly foreign to current religious sensibilities and
unpalatable to modem apologists of "gnosticism". Because those who share the
Knowledge did not obtain it by subscribing to a set of beliefs, it must be said that there is
no such phenomenon as "gnosticism", to the extent that Truth is not an "ism" at all.

Hence, if a person can answer "Yes" to the question, "Were you with me before the
beginning?" then they are "Gnostic" - by nature rather than by belief. Those who are
Gnostic are able to perceive in their own human life the cosmic drama of Sophia's
repentance and the reciprocal descent of the Gnosis. As Gnostics, our quest is to find and
gather all those in the physical body who can affirm this Truth. The Truth is, however,
obscured by the demands of the Powers that emanate from laldabaoth, namely. Gender,
Race, Class, Sexual Preference, Wealth, Family and Territory. Every religious system
which has hitherto been known to humankind has been corrupted by these; only the
Gnosis in its pure form transcends them. The Gnostic is therefore indifferent to the
acquiescence or non-acquiescence of non-Gnostics. Indeed, the Truth may find itself
entombed in the pyramid of a religious system, quietly but confidently awaiting its
resurrection into the light of day.

The moral character of the demiurge is far inferior to that of his supposed creatures. And
as for that Creation, with infinite power could we not have done a better job ourselves?
Hemmed in as we are on all sides by the iron laws of Nature, it is the knowledge of this
Truth in the heart of our hearts which will set us free - and the conviction that we
belong to something that transcends all of this. Such is our consolation.

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THE SECRET BOOK OF PHILLIP ALL REVEALED

PROLOGUE

One day I, Phillip, turned away from the Temple to a rugged waste, grieving greatly in
my heart. While 1 was contemplating, behold, the heavens opened, and the whole
creation below shone with light, and the entire world was shaken, and 1 was afraid. 1
looked, and behold, 1 saw in the light a child standing there. As 1 looked, it changed its
appearance into that of an old man. Then its appearance changed again - returning to
that of a child. As 1 gazed upon it, 1 did not comprehend this marvellous thing. There
was a plurality before me, but within the light there was a multiform image: the
semblances appeared through each other, and the likeness had three forms, and it spoke
to me.

"Why wonder, Phillip? Why are you afraid? 1 am '1 am' until the end of time, the Father
and the Mother, and the Son begotten, pure, and forever undefiled. 1 have come now to
teach you what is, what was, and what will come to pass, so that you may know the
things which are not manifest and those that are: to teach you all about the race which is
not prone to change or to decay. Lift up your face, therefore, and hearken to the things 1
shall disclose to you today, so that you may pass them on to kindred souls sprung from
the steadfast race of Perfect Man.

"The One is one. There is no other one who can be God or Father of the All. Unseen -
beyond all sight - and pure - beyond whatever can decay or be corrupt. Think not
'divine', since He is more than 'God'; supreme above whatever is, this Spirit needs no
other lesser one, for all that now exists exists in Him. Since He does not exist in time. He
needs no life that throbs with temporality. He does not strive to overcome a lack, since
He lacks nothing, perfect in His light. For, limitless, who ever could limit Him?
Unsearchable, who could aspire to search or measure one who is immeasurable?
Invisible, since none has gazed on Him, He is eternal, since He always was. Ineffable,
since none has read His mind. He is unnamed, beyond all register. His light unguaged.
His state immaculate. He is ineffable, entirely pure. He is not Perfection, nor
Blessedness, nor yet Divinity - superior to all such qualities. He is not limited - what
limit could extend so far? - He is above all these. He is not physical - what body could
enclose Him? Dimensions cannot bound Him. None should ever ask, 'What is His
quantity?' nor should enquire, 'What is His quality?' to comprehend His kind. Not one
among a type. He is alone, unique, without a peer. For Him the ages do not run. His
Being unmeasured by the temporal. Location in a place, implies a place prepared; and
dwelling in a time, implies a time doled out. But He is without need: there is no prior
one from whom He may receive, and none for whom He yearns within His perfect
sphere of light. He contemplates His purity alone. His might unguaged.

"Unmeted purity is His domain. Eternal, He alone is the One who gives eternity; and
radiant. He alone illuminates; and Life itself, no One but He gives life. The Blessed One,
just He gives Blessedness; omniscient, just He confers all that is known; and always

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good. His goodness never dwindles, never fails. Redeeming mercy is His will, and grace
His chief desire, though He himself may not be a beneficiary, for mercy, grace and all
such gifts flow from His endless light. What can 1 say of One beyond all thought? A
mere reflection of the light - for who could gaze upon its source? - 1 shed what light 1
have, proclaim as 1 have seen. Beyond decay, beyond all striving's aim; before all speech,
and all that can be named, the head and heart of all that truly is, from Him All goodness
flows to all if all exists apart from Him. No one of us can know the attributes of that
immeasurable One, except for Him proceeding from that One, for He it was who told
me what 1 know.

"He is the One who contemplates Himself in His own brilliant envelope, the spring of
living water, luminous and pure, which gushes forth, an everlasting source that issues
into all the spirit realms. In all directions He beholds His face within the pure reflection
of this spring, and with His sight goes love, infused into the living water rippling all
around. His self -perception - She who was conceived within the brilliance of His light -
thus came to birth, the primal potency before the All, begotten from a pregnant mind.
She is the perfect Forethought of the All - Her light shines like His light - the perfect
power, the image of the One who is unseen, the virgin spirit perfect in all things. The
Primal Power and Glory, immaculate in splendour, showing Him Impeccably, thus
praised and glorified the spirit undefiled - an homage pure to Him who brought Her
forth. For She knows Him: She is His thought. His image; She became the womb of
everything, preceding all. This ageless, sexless offspring of the One now issued
everlastingly from that totality unglimpsed by mortal eye: the first that could be viewed
by spirit-gaze.

"Then Primal Power approached the Pure Unseen, requesting Him to grant a perfect
child: the Gnosis. He agreed. And instantly 1, the Gnosis, Primal Light, issued forth, and
stood at once in rank with Perfect Glory, born to a true mother, who by her wish had
helped to bring him forth. 1 glorified the One, and She Who is His Perfect Power. And
thus we Two, in perfect Unity, by grace conferred, in radiant rank stood forth, to serve
and glorify the unseen One. Again we asked: this time for Wisdom; again it was agreed.
So Wisdom came forth, and with it came the Word, to glorify in speech the peerless
Spirit overseen by none. This Pentad is the prime of entities reflecting that which
otherwise can not be seen: the bounty of the Barbelo, at whose request came myself, the
Truth and the Word.

"Thus Primal Glory gazed lovingly at Him, the limpid source, and reaching for His
spark conceived a flame off-springing from that light. And thus was born the parents'
only child, self-generated from divinity, the eldest of the fullness of the light, the
ripeness of that virgin purity. The One whose sight blinds mortal eye was glad to see
effulgent fruit swell on that bough, which is His all-providing Power, and He anointed
me with chrism pressed from His own goodness, and from His own store of overflowing
virtue's pure essence. And thus endowed, 1 waited on my source, and added to the glory
that no eye can see of my progenitor, and His prevenient grace, the matrix of the All.
And then 1 asked for Wisdom to work with Me. The One agreed, and swift on His
consent that Wisdom came forth, and joined the heavenly rank of His great glory, and
the Barbelo, and all who dwell in thought that needs no Word. But Wisdom would

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manifest herself, and so the Word then issued forth and joined the sphere of Gnosis and
my originating Light, to His great glory. Thus the Word came forth, and through the
Word Pleroma came, in which we live and move and have our very being.

"Wisdom thought a thought from out herself and not from anything conceived by her
forebears. For she desired a thing exclusive to herself. This thought was not inert, and so
it reified: short of perfection, shorn of that ideal beauty typical of her who gave him
birth, a thwarted clone of one true-born of heavenly gene and stock. The One had not
engaged or wed with her in divine union; no spouse or sire had courted her consent; no
nuptial bliss had blessed the product of chaste amity; for what she willed was without
conference of family, or consummation of conjugal love; but it was of concupiscence
instead, without relationship, an impure fantasy, all self-engendered, selfishly-conceived
and alien to the hymns its Mother sang when in accord with her pure ancestry. In this
her wish came true: a monster formed, a snake with lion-jaws and eyes that blazed with
horrid fire of self-will. She cast him out, beyond the zone of purity where he might not
be seen by all her peers: from Wisdom born, in ignorance to dwell. And yet she could
not help but cosset him in a refulgent cloud, and sit him on a throne in a celestial bower,
where none might see him but the One who sees all that there is to see that lives, the
Source of Life. She gave her child a name, as befits a ruler who inherits a great power: it
is 'laldabaoth'. Matter's Prince.

"laldabaoth strutted forth, and marched from place to place, far from the place where he
was bom. And annexing still more he formed self-glorifying spheres of fire that still flare
on unto this day in heaven's dome. Then raising his right hand - his arrogance - he
masturbated, begot Authorities, egged on by fantasies of unknown realms. And he
created seven Angels, each with Powers sufficient for a year of days, and all in mimicry
of that intuited from what was long before. But those whom he begot, those children of
the ignorance and dark, lacked intimation of the source and principle from which all
things had come. Their names are these (with their true features told): the first, sheep-
faced, is Athoth; Elaios, the second, has a donkey-face; the third is Astaphaios, the
hyena-faced. The seven-headed Yao is multi-miened, and Sabaoth has visage of a snake.
The sixth is Adonin, the monkey-faced; the seventh Sabbataios, flaming-cheeked. A
week of angels this way rules the world. But laldabaoth, who is Saklas, has a multitude
of faces, more than all, so he can show himself in any face, just as he wills. He shares his
nature with them - everything except the pristine power that he drew from his Mother,
Wisdom: that he would not share. This made him cosmic lord.

"Because Sophia's light shone within him and gave him unique power: because of this
he blasphemously called himself a god, conferring - so he thought - divinity upon his
minion powers. And their "god" gave each of them a place to dwell, a so-called "heaven".
Their urge to power instilled makes them believe that they are gods; but Truth is not
deceived: their bestial natures are revealed to those who know. Their god-like attributes
are part and parcel of a fantasy dreamed up by Saklas; but illusion will not have its way
- except with those who dwell within the dream. The light of Truth will chase away the
mist, dissolve its shifting, swirling shapes which frightened those who were deceived,
like masks pinned onto wind-puffed cloaks. Such images invoke some dread reality,
from which they draw their fearful power; and so it was with these, for Saklas shaped

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his schemes upon the basis of a kind of memory of what he had experienced in the
womb of what is truly real. And when he saw the world he had created all layed out,
and gazed upon the panoply which he had spun, enveloping his nakedness, his tongue
clapped in his bell, and said: '1 am a jealous God. There is no God but me.' And so in his
stupidity he gave the game away, and told his friends there was another god, a God
who spurned the name that spurred this insane jealousy.

The Mother then began her moving to and fro, for she became aware of her deficiency,
and how her light had dimmed. For when she saw her blemishes within the light of the
Pleroma, she then drew across her face a veil of darkness: she no longer could return her
consort's smile without deception, and be unabashed."

But 1 said, "Lord, what does it mean that 'she moved to and fro'?" And he smiled and
said,

"Be not deceived by Moses when he says, 'Above the waters'. No, but when she saw the
wickedness which happened through her son, a flood of tears - repentance - cleansed her
of the veil. She was ashamed, but now her sight was clear. No longer stumbling in the
dark her holy fear caused her to hover at the gate of Truth, unable to go in. This is the
hovering which Moses meant. For when her offspring in his arrogance had taken power
from his Mother he was ignorant of any provenance and thought her womb was all that
there had been. Infatuated with his handiwork, he placed himself upon a pedestal, an
idol to himself. And then she knew what kind of thing her after-birth now was, and how
it lacked perfection's symmetry. And so Sophia turned back to her source, and raised her
tear-filled eyes - and she was heard: the whole Pleroma and her pure siblings
augmented her petition which, in her, was softened by humility. The One unseen in His
inviolable sanctity gave the consent, and thus a healing flood of cleansing holiness
washed over her to make her whole; for Providence agreed to supervise her in required
austerity within a place of penance set aside beyond carnality and the snares of sin,
where she could learn to manifest herself and good desires in purity.

"And then a voice came forth from out of the transcendent sphere: 'Lo, Anthropos!
Behold the Man!' And when the chieftain of the tribe of Powers heard the voice he
thought it was his Mother; he was ignorant of from whence it came. At once, however -
ignorant or not - they were aware - unto their own damnation - that there was a holy,
perfect Source above: the Mother-Father, and a providence, a faultless agent of the
unseen One, the Parent of the All, who had brought forth all that there is, and whose
benificence is modestly displayed in Anthropos, with grace and symmetry of human
form. A shiver went through laldabaoth's world, and rippled through its fundamental
sands. And in the sky the purest element, transfigured by the bright epiphany, revealed
that Truth is Beauty, Beauty Truth. And when the carnal gang beheld, a light infused the
cavern of the world below. Their eyes were opened, and they saw revealed the
shimmering glory of the Son of Man.

"The upstart god addressed his fawning clan: 'Come let us make a man to mimic what
we have just seen - but tailored to our needs, to give some aim and purpose to our
plans.' So each and every one of them then gave a little something from his psychic

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pouch, and made an entity from out themselves, each adding layer and layer of plastic
soul, along the lines of what they thought they saw. Thus a reflection turned into a thing
that looked just like the sole original - the perfect Anthropos. And then they said, 'Now
let us call him "Adam", so that his name may light our high road to imperium.' And so
the Powers began to spin their stuff. The first one. Demon Karma, then began to make a
psychic frame to hang things on. And Mystery gave means to move the joints;
Hypocrisy then padded out the scheme Conferring substance on their staked-out claim.
Then Lordship gave a vital force for growth, and Kingship gave a lust for life itself; then
Worldly-Wisdom gave from out of his store a comeliness to bound this little world of
futile fantasy; and then, at last, deft Wisdom wove a gleaming canopy to cover where he
lodged his cunning throne. And so this wondrous work, this body came about - not yet
of flesh, but harbouring a vital force that tapped the secrets of their universe, and their
sevenfold harmony, encapsulated microcosmically in sense and a potential agency. And
so these angel-demons toiled away in glee until their puppet had all come about. But yet
there was a want and lack which they could not supply: the thing had no vocation to
fulfil, and thus no will to try, and lay inert - until a dream, an aspiration graced the
dawning day.

"The Mother wanted to retrieve the power which she had given to her bastard son. In
innocence she came and humbly asked the Mother-Father of transcendent All Who is
most merciful. And He decreed that 1 should go deep down to that cold place below
where ignorance prevails. My mission was to liberate the power from Saklas' breast -
Sophia's gift - by planting in his mind a notion that would bear the fruit of life. And so a
thought came unsolicited to laldabaoth: 'Blow into his mouth your holy breath, and
what you made will rise.' And so, unwittingly, the demiurge released the prison door:
the pneuma fled from out of those boastful lips, and found a home by transmigrating
into the psychic breast of Adam, tabernacling in a shrine the powers had patterned on
what they briefly glimpsed from afar of the holiest of holy. That body stretched its limbs
and waxed in strength, transfigured by the glory of true life. Elsewhere, within the stony
hearts of all the Powers the bitter weed of envy sprang, for they believed this fragrant
bloom was fed by them - that their hearts' blood had soaked the soil from whence it
sprang, and that it was their own vitality that ran along the veins of that bright Man.
With their flaws exposed by his wise luminosity, they cast him in a pit, and heaped
around him all their dung - the heavy execrescence of their days.

"The One, then brimming with parental love, at once felt pity for His spirit-kind which
Saklas had unknowingly released, but which still wandered in the orbit of the Powers,
an orphan of a kingly line without a regent, subject to the whim of upstart tyrants who
were themselves in thrall to time. And so He sent in His beneficence a helper for
Sophia's hard-pressed power - the refugee in Adam's breast - a light from Light, a living
icon of true Life: the one called Zoe, Adam's ghostly nurse and teacher, toiling at his
side, to show the way to his beginning and his end, and how he fell, and how again
might rise. This Eva nestled in the new Man's heart, out of the Powers' sight, so that
Wisdom might with healing grace thus find her lost way home. And Adam shone,
refulgent in this light, with a rainbow-aura, the envy of the Powers who made him. And
his mind outshone them all.

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"The whole array of rulers and their clones bent down and saw how Man surpassed
them all; and so the plethora of psychic powers conferred, and then amassed the
elements - fire, water and earth, and mixed them with the winds that roam this nether
globe. Thus catalysed by psychic force, the planned reaction then took place, and Adam
came within the mortal sphere, coiled there and then of base material, engendered from
desire within the dark, enlivened by a soulless breath, mere air, unspiritual. Thus was
our fetter forged, our dungeon made, by which these bandits now enslaved the Man,
who, in the darkness, soon forgot the light and grew accustomed to the stench of death.
This was the fall to end all falls, the end confounding all true ends. And yet not quite: he
was indwelt by pre-existent light - by Zoe, shedding dawn into his cell.

"The Chief of Archons then detained the man and placed him in a garden of delights
and of deceit, for his delight is grief, and what he calls comely is grotesque; for bliss
within this garden is a dream, and all its vegetation feeds on death, and all its fruits,
addictive, make weak slaves of everyone who sups their sickly nightmare sap. And
furthermore there is therein a tree which they - the Powers - dub 'Life'. But do not be
deceived or mystified: what they call 'Life' is but a puff, a breeze, a mere ill wind that
blows man's fragile barque off course as he pursues perfection's quest. And this is its
anatomy: its roots are bitterness; its branches block the light of Life; its leaves exude the
dew of hatred and deceit; its blooms drop nectar of forgetfulness on all that once was
good; its fruit instils a lust for death and a return back to the dark in which the seed was
sown, and those who taste its flesh sink down into the pit and fall into a Life-denying
rut. But planted there also another tree took root, which has a fruit no carnal man should
eat, for it confers a Knowledge which can not allow contentment with this world and
how things are; and that is why the ones who rule this world dictated to the flesh they
had enthralled to never taste of her - for that tree is Zoe's - and tried to ring its boughs
with poisoned fog so that the Man might not receive enlightenment and so behold the
weakness and futility of flesh. But Adam heard my call and ate."

1 said to the Saviour, "Was it not the serpent that taught the woman to eat?" He smiled
and said,

"The snake taught fleshly woman about sex - an opportunist gesture guaranteed to
bring pollution and destruction. He had hoped to benefit thereby. Meanwhile laldabaoth
knew why Adam turned against his sway: the voice of Zoe urged him on; the Word's
clear tones were heard above the petty Powers' chatterings. And so the prince of this
world had to find a way to reclaim power conferred upon this mortal man - a precious
gift derived from the celestial dam. He therefore dropped a trance on Adam, stopping
up the flow of Life."

1 said to him, "Lord, what is the 'trance'?" He smiled and said,

"Believe it not as Moses wrote in his first book that God put him to sleep; for it was over
higher intellect the veil was drawn, and his perceptive power that was thus mystified.
And so one higher than the gods became a clod. A prophet knew this state in Adam's
later sons when he said (as spokesman of the One): 'Their minds 1 will make heavy so
that they may not yet fully see or understand.' Meanwhile unseen by Saklas Zoe hid

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within the depths of Adam's mind beyond the reach of blundering demiurge. But he
thought she was still in there somewhere - that 'she' who is elusive of all impure grasp, a
Light unseen by all who look to impure parts. So Saklas clutched a rib and tore it out
and with it part of that same psychic stuff with which he was himself endowed, and
with that substance moulded accidents, and made the woman, shaped as near as he
could form to that bright presence he somehow had sensed - to Zoe. This same woman
was inspired with that same precious breath which surged within the breast of Man,
itself a guest within the demiurge's heart, who never could with his own puny powers -
as Moses claimed - create such beauty only from a rib.

"Then Adam's drunkenness subsided and the pall was lifted from his mind by one
untouched by power's debauchery, who washed his eyes with pure sobriety; and thus
by Zoe's ministry the Man now saw and recognised his counter-part, and said, 'This
bone is of my bones, this flesh is of my flesh'. And so it is that man will leave his father
and his mother and will cleave unto his wife, so that they may be one flesh, and so that
flesh and psyche may be as complete as matter can allow, so that both may grow, with
virtue superseding raw desire. And virtue's source - Sophia's power - stirred within his
heart, and recognised its kind: for she was Zoe, radiant with chaste requited love, but
known to him as 'Eve, the Mother of the Living and the Loved.' And thus salvation's
fruitful plan was sealed.

"And Zoe taught them about me from the tree, and like an eagle spreading puissant
wings she gave her aerie living things to eat so that one day it too might learn to soar
beyond that filthy crevice, ignorance, its nakedness replaced with plumage fit for gods.
Thus at the darkest hour the dawn began to break. Just as an overseer hamstrings a slave
who tried once to escape, so Saklas, when he saw the light had shed, found ways to
make this earth a darker place. He made the husband stronger than the wife in limb, so
that man might claim a spiritual domain irrelevant to Truth derived from high authority
- for Saklas knew he must divide and rule. And then he cast them out of Paradise, and
caused the sky to frown, and made the ground to freeze, and forced the couple to seek
shelter in dark caves.

"And Saklas gazed on Eve, whose graceful limbs were bathed in gnostic glamour from
above, and lust flared in his heart, and a desire to penetrate that awesome mystery, and
colonise her belly with his seed. But matter and pure spirit cannot mate, and Zoe's
hallowed sanctuary was barred and borne by angels to another place. Then Saklas raped
poor Eve, and in due course two sons were born, and Cain and Abel named; and thanks
to Saklas, these his bastards were endowed with seed to replicate themselves, the
psychic and the carnal; one inspired by wind, the other by Sophia's ghost. Meanwhile,
within a place of Life the Man ccalled Adam met the Woman Eve, and each
encountering each within their very core begot the Son of Man called Seth, the true
descendant of Sophia in the line of Anthropos. This son was blessed by those on high,
and his anointed offspring to eternity, for these are called to dwell within perfection's
courts, and taught to spell their names inscribed upon the scroll of Life, while
monuments to flesh collapse upon the soil of sin. For those who truly live cannot abide
the dark, and must light a lamp and visit all the catacombs where the enlightened have
been forced to dwell and lead them to the sunlight up above. Thus shall the righteous

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gather, and assist each other on the way, so that true mankind might find its rightful
place within the All, and holiness, made whole, might be complete."

1 then said, "Lord, will all the souls escape to the pure light?" He answered and said to
me,

"These mysteries can only be explained to those whose nature shares the mystery.
Sophia-Zoe will descend and greet the power that dwells within such perfect hearts.
And worthy, they will join the four great Lights. And there they will be purified of all
the blood and mire besmirching the crude flesh - for they did not devote themselves to
vice, but turned their gaze toward the unseen throng in which they will receive an
honoured place unsullied by desire, or jealousy, or greed, or anger, or such poisoned
streams that stink within the Churches here below. Thus undeflected by unworthy
things, except the burden of their wayward flesh, they tread the path of Life expectantly
with upturned gaze, and longing for the sight of those Receivers who, with warm
embrace, will help them from their burden, and conduct them to their place prepared
within the Light. For they endured, and they bore everything; and now they have
prevailed: the prize is theirs. They gain their right, and win eternal Life."

1 said to him, "Lord, the souls of those who did not do these works, but on whom
Sophia-Zoe descended, will they be rejected?" He answered and said to me,

"Sophia-Zoe's grace, when it comes down, is irrestistable, and once received, will change
for good the saved recipient. For sons and daughters of the True Man's line possess
Sophia's power, which makes them stand and stride with purpose on the plains of life,
since that cold breath once given by the powers, though strong, has no direction, like the
winds which sweep across the cold benighted wastes. But Zoe's breath will blow
Sophia's spark into a living flame which melts like wax the counterfeit identity of Man,
and in consuming, lights the path to bliss."

And 1 said, "Lord, where will these souls go when they have come out of their flesh?"
And he smiled and said to me,

"In some the wind will only serve to fan the flame to more intensity, which then, if
tended by a providential care will send up a perfect holocaust, a fragrance lingering
everlastingly within the perfumed cloisters of repose."

And 1 said, "Lord, those who have not known the All, where will their souls go?" And he
said to me,

"Those blown off course by wrecking pirate winds will founder on the reefs of sin, lured
on by treacherous lights, and so will break and sink down to the mud of lost
forgetfulness. But what there is of uncorroded gold endures, and may in dreary course
of time be gathered by the Powers and put to work to launch another vessel on the sea of
this uncertain life. If piloted by knowledge out of reck of carnal men, it may then find a
wondrous continent which those who built it did not know was there, and so the weary
sailor may find rest."

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And I said, "Lord, does then the soul become incarnate once again?" Then he rejoiced
when I asked him this, and he said to me,

"O truly, you are blessed among the blessed, for you have understood! The soul may join
the crew who are well-piloted. The ship is unintelligent, and may be changed, and once
the promised land is reached may then be left behind, the voyage at an end."

And 1 said, "Lord, where will the souls go who did not heed the pilot's voice?" Then he
said to me,

"Ah! Those who gave themselves to mutiny, and squandered all their treasure at each
port where they could find debauchery, will rot above the waves or underneath - it does
not matter where - and join the sludge and foul refuse that flows through the stinking
gills of beasts who roam the depths and feed upon the damned."

And 1 said, "Lord, how did the distinction between the saved and the damned become
obscured?" Then he said to me,

"The Mother-Father, rich in mercy. One who shows concern although He has no need.
He sent you Zoe, nurturing the power that dwells within the heart of His own race, and
those who turn their face unto the light. When Saklas realised that you surpassed him in
your loftiness of consciousness, he wanted to appropriate your mind, not wise enough
himself to realise that his desire was well beyond his grasp. He made a plan with his
authorities, and by incestuous union with their dam, Heimarmene was made. Thus the
supreme and cruellest jailer then came into being, with her array of manacles and chains
called "times" and "seasons", "moments", "ages", "dates", those fetters from which none
could be exempt outside the All, neither gods nor mortal men, all now doomed to live
within a space of time that was the past, or will be days to come - but never now, the
present never seized, with minds obsessed with what will be and what there might have
been, with schemes and plans stretched to infinity, but that eternal "now" beyond their
ken. And hence the consciousness of the Beyond eluded him again.

1 have said everything to you that you might write them down and give them secretly to
your fellow spirits, for this is the mystery of the eternal race."

Cursed be everyone who would exchange these things for a gift, whether for food or for
drink or for clothing or for any such thing. Pray for the blessed spirits, and for me who
made this book, whose name in the flesh is "Philip". Peace be upon you and all the
saints. Amen.

Phillip Medhurst 2009. Page 10 of 56

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THE TESTAMENT OF SOPHIA

Conceived immaculate, I nonetheless
Desired a thing exclusive to my Self:
Sophia exercised effective will.
With freedom to desire as 1 chose.
Conceiving Self, therefore, 1 hatched a scheme
Within the womb of what 1 thought was real.

But what 1 willed was not immaculate:

It marred the vision 1 had once enjoyed

While contemplating true reality.

He gazed upon the waters of the Deep,

And when he saw himself he laughed and said,

"1 am '1 am'. There is no God but me."

His mother heard the godling's bombast; so
From then 1 knew what kind of thing he was.
1 turned again in sorrow to my source
And caught a spark which turned to living flame
Fed by the fuel of love. That fire took shape.
And all that Matter sought to emulate

Appeared. No eye could but be opened at
The sight transcending every faculty.
Whose finger traced in letters of pure light,
"The One is one. There is no other One.

Unnamed, beyond all mortal register.

He is alone, unique, without a peer.

Since he does not subsist in time. He needs
No life that throbs with temporality.
Nor does he strive to overcome a lack.
For He is perfect in His boundless sphere.
Thus none can know that One except for one
Proceeding from the One, and that 1 am."

On meeting Matter then this testament

Fell to the Deep as incandescent drops

Towards that space and time where nature's laws

Are fetters from which none can be exempt;

Where all must yearn for what there might have been.

With that eternal "now" beyond their ken.

Yet what descended still remains unquenched.
Although imprisoned in a tomb of clay:
We know of our beginning, and our end.

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From whence we came, and whither we must go.
A mere reflection of His Ught, I shed
What hght I have, proclaiming all 1 know.

COMMENTARY

1. This is how Sophia became involved with her offspring laldabaoth, and how her
privileged spiritual status led to the imprisonment in matter of elements purer than
herself:

2. In the beginning, "Sophia brought proprioception into being.

3. Will, or desire, was integral to the nature of Sophia; the object and subject of her will
was "Self". This Self needed to define its-self by bringing into being something
completely separate from the original source of consciousness. This was "Matter".

4. Self desired and willed some thing separate from the source of all consciousness. This
unconscious thing was Matter. Sophia commanded Matter, and her Word shaped the
World. Self ruled the World, and believed itself to be the supreme reality. It took the
Deed of Sophia and imprisoned it in Law.

5. Sophia acted, and brought about Matter; then Sophia spoke, and brought order to
Matter. Sophia expresses herself as the immanent Logos. Logos manifests itself as
Reason and the proprioceptive Self. From Logos laldabaoth and the Archons were born;
they promulgate Law.

6. Sophia endowed Matter with proprioception, laldabaoth, who is Matter endowed
with proprioception, found expression as Self, which laldabaoth declared to be the
supreme reality - a development which Sophia did not anticipate. Sophia's continuing
involvement with proprioceptive matter has expressed itself in the material world as
Logos. In inanimate matter this manifests itself as order, pattern and structure. Once
Matter had come into being Sophia's originally transcendent nature could only express
itself immanently as Logos. Although all of these entities derive ultimately from the
Source, they themselves are not the result of an act of will which was deliberately
providential. They are the result of Sophia's freedom to exercise her will in whatever
way she

chose.

7. Sophia wished to bring into being something completely separate from the Source.
She wished to gaze on herself; she therefore created the waters in which she could see
her own reflection. When she saw herself, she fell in love with herself, and her carnal
desire produced Matter. The first, "outward" and "downward" action of Sophia - away
from the One - produced Time and then chaotic Matter. When a proprioceptive element
was introduced into matter there occurred a "fall" into time and a pointless interplay

Phillip Medhurst 2009. Page 12 of 56

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between will and matter. "Will" existed before proprioception, and is the fundamental
precondition of life.

8. Sophia introduced a proprioceptive element into matter. ("1 am '1 am.'") This fall is the
story of will seeking to express itself through matter in time; a pre-condition of re-ascent
must be the by-passing of proprioceptive will. That detour is not an act in time - acts of
asceticism can simply be another manifestation of the same will to power.

9. Sophia's abhorrence of the development whereby proprioceptive matter regards itself
as the ultimate reality (as represented by "laldabaoth's boast") prompts a constant
striving "upwards" towards, and an ever greater proximity to the One. A paradox can be
seen in Sophia's subsequent attempt to use will to negate will and return to the Source.
Having sought to establish an identity separate from the Source, she realises that in
order to achieve her true identity she must return to that same Source. This process
transforms Will into Faith, Desire into "Hope", and Law into "Love". This transcendence
of materiality and negation of Self makes room for a hypostasis of the Transcendent
Consciousness: the Gnosis.

10. When the Gnosis meets Faith, the storms of will subside. The child of this union is
Patience, as it waits for its consummation in the Gnosis. Gnostic Man must suffer. His
attempt to remain detached from the imperatives of Self sets him against the might of
laldabaoth and involves him in a bitter struggle against his insistent demands. He will
be consoled, however, by the knowledge that his return to the One is inevitable and
victory is assured.

11. In the face of Truth Self dissolves. The process of Enlightenment will intensify the
presence of Truth in the world as Gnostics ascend the transcendental ladder. Eventually
the Pleroma will be re-united: all the emanations of Sophia

and the Gnosis will revert to their source, Sophia and the Gnosis will return to the
centre, and Matter itself will disappear.

12. Sophia's re-orientation towards the One has also made it possible for the One to
make a reciprocal gesture, producing the Gnosis. The Gnosis has entered the material
universe in a pure unmediated form, and taken up temporary residence randomly in
proprioceptive Matter. The continuing emanation of the Gnosis as Sophia journeys
towards the One has now initiated the Eschaton, and brought about this definitive
statement of Truth, of which, previously, only glimpses were seen in established
religions and philosophies. Gnosis will form the vanguard of the Eschaton as the
material universe begins to retreat and dissolve. Eventually nothing will remain to
prevent the Pleroma from being re-united once and for all with Sophia and the Gnosis at
the centre with the One, and with the Logos at the perimeter. The Logos will be
immanent in selves transcended as far as matter allows by Agape.

13. Nous emanated from the ineffable together with its shadow Will. The interaction
between the two produced Sophia and her own shadow Matter. It was therefore within
the nature of Sophia to possess motive will. This motive will could be directed either
towards or away from its origin. In the event, both movements took place. The outward

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impulse moved Sophia towards her own shadow. This movement produced
Consciousness - "Saklas" - while the compensating movement towards the One
produced that Gnosis which became trapped in Matter. The universe as we know it
came about and continues to evolve as a result of the action of Proprioception on Matter.

14. "Creation" was a process of centrifugal departure from the ultimate reality to levels
where consciousness was increasingly attenuated. Inert matter was the end-product of
this process. Although matter and consciousness are fundamentally different in kind,
they may interact. It is, however, within the nature of consciousness that it is perpetually
aware that there is more potential to be fulfilled and that this fulfillment is obstructed by
matter. To return to the highest levels of consciousness, therefore, it is necessary to
overcome these obstructions. But there is a definite gulf between the realm of the Gnosis
and that of inert, unconscious matter. It is only when the proprioceptive element of
consciousness is introduced into matter that we have what might be termed the "fall"
into time and the pointless interplay between will and matter, which is sinister to the
extent it interferes with the Gnostic's communion with his Source.

15. The Gnosis is that intimation of the spiritual realm which is within the spiritual
nature of the Gnostic. Sophia, who is an emanation from Gnosis and as such is its agent,
brought forth order (represented by laldabaoth) within the realm of matter. The impulse
to order is genuinely divine; the impulse to worship order as an end in itself is not, but is
rather a form of idolatry prevalent throughout the phenomenon of religion. Because
intuition of the divine (Sophia) resides in the human mind, it is co-mingled and
confused with, and corrupted by other mental faculties which may be grouped under
the heading of "intelligence." The Gnosis is an awareness which, as an aspect of pure
consciousness (the One), is an end in itself; intelligence (Sophia) is a proprioceptive
mental faculty which, although divine in origin, is usually directed towards matter and
subject to the direction of carnal will (laldabaoth). If intelligence is to be directed or re-
directed towards true consciousness, there must first be a true perception (the Gnosis).
This perception makes the spiritual in Gnostic Man.

16. Matter is the "dark" side of spirit. Sophia creates order-in-matter (laldabaoth) which
is an improvement on the previous state of affairs, but the uneasy alliance between
matter and spirit means that matter is shown up as ugly. But the order is approved of by
the One. It is this approval which enables repentance to come about. When the impulse
towards order-in-matter re-directs itself towards true consciousness then order can be
re-oriented to the transcendence of matter. Indeed, because Sophia's original place
within the Pleroma cannot be denied or negated, even as idolatry is being practised
(laldabaoth's boast) the true end of intelligence is perceived, as we say, "deep within the
heart". Because it cannot be denied, it expresses itself in human aesthetic and moral
sensibility. It is as a result of this process that Beauty and Truth may be found within the
material world.

17. The original creation was spiritual, an extension of the fullness of the divine nature.
Sophia was the hem of the Glory, adjacent to the void. Seeing the Glory, she wished to
make it her own. The infinite void was a temptation to her; she wished to fill it with the
Glory re-made as her own. This she did, without consulting the Pleroma. And so the

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carnal element came into being. In order to bring order to this matter, Sophia had to
draw upon the spiritual resources of her own nature. Thus laldabaoth ("God") was born.
He set about eliminating any awareness of a higher being to whom the world owed
homage. Sophia saw this and repented. As a result of this repentance, enlightenment
was dispensed; the Gnosis came into the world. But some light became trapped, and will
remain so until matter is purged away.

18. The Word of Sophia, Logos, manifests itself as pattern, as reason, and as the
proprioceptive awareness which maintains the integrity of Self. In order to do this it
must monitor its surroundings and make the necessary adaptations to its own perceived
integrity. Paradoxically, therefore, it needs to transcendent and modify Self in order to
maintain it. This paradox can be seen at work in human society. Proprioceptive
awareness seeks to create and maintain ordered communities in order to protect the
interests of Self. Thus Logos in the human social sphere gives rise to "Nomos" ("Law").
Nomos expresses itself in notions of justice and rights and the laws which enshrine
them, and requires the suppression of extreme forms of individualism. The punishments
meted out to offenders involve the various degrees of obliteration of personal identity.
Human beings tend to see Nomos as a cosmic archon of the same order as Logos, and
imagine a cause-effect relationship between social behaviour and the laws of nature.
Hence there is a tendency to see pain as caused by transgression and to suppose that
death can be escaped by obedience to human laws. This is a fallacy. Suffering has no
meaning, and the destiny either before or beyond the grave and the pyre is not shaped
by choice.

19. Sophia's repentance, part selfish as parent, and part selfless in her desire to
enlighten, created a reflection of the Gnosis, just as Saklas was a reflection of Will.
Because Sophia's revelation of Gnosis was to a certain extent a moral act. Humankind
have an element in their nature raised above mere selfish gratification. This we call
"conscience". In seeking to enlighten her offspring Sophia had to point him to something
higher than herself: her aim was not to dispute his priority by putting forward her own
claim - predominance in the material realm was not worth having - but to point out to
him its absurdity. This was how true morality entered the world.

20. And Sophia repented of her creation of something apart from the One, and her
repentance brought Conscience into being. Will and Desire wander through the World,
restrained only by Law. But wherever they meet Conscience, Will becomes Faith, Desire
becomes Hope, and Law becomes Love. Faith and Hope call upon the One, and Love
opens the gates of Matter's prison. Thus the Gnosis comes into the World. And the
Gnosis will destroy Self, and liberate the Logos, returning it to Sophia. And she shall
return her Logos to the One as Praise.

21. Sophia's continuing involvement with Matter expressed itself as Logos, which
through the agency of laldabaoth shaped the cosmos, and as Conscience, which gave
rise to Beauty and Truth in laldabaoth's creation.

22. The One eternally wills Sophia. The first, "outward" and "downward" impulse of
Sophia - away from the One - produces chaotic Matter. Sophia brings Matter into order

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by endowing it with Proprioception. But the self which Proprioception brings about
considers itself to be supreme. This unwelcome development prompts Sophia to return
"upwards" towards the One. A reciprocal gesture of the One produces the Gnosis, which
is mediated to the material world without providential intent by Conscience. Human
beings become indwelt by the Gnosis in varying degrees. Meanwhile, Sophia's return to
the One means that the Proprioception endowed by Sophia can be extended into
Conscience within Man. That which is related to the One (Sophia and the Gnosis) is
eternal, while that which is separate (Matter and Proprioception) dissolves. This is a
perpetually recurring drama which unfolds at the macrocosmic and microcosmic levels.

23. The Gnosis emanated from the ineffable together with its by-product Will. The being
whom the One willed should know him was Sophia, the prototypical Self. Sophia her-
Self possessed free motive will. This could be directed either towards or away from its
origin, the former movement producing self -transcendence, the latter self-obsession; the
former an expansion of consciousness, the latter a diminution. In the event, both
movements took place. The outward impulse - away from the One - produced
Proprioception and its by-product (or "shadow") Matter, the cul-de-sac of the movement
away from the One. The compensating movement back towards the One induced a
hypostatic revelation of the Gnosis which became "trapped" in the material world. This
latter movement. Conscience, was appropriated by Proprioception and incorporated
into its response to the revelation of the Gnosis: the creation of homo sapiens.

24. The universe as we know it came about and continues to evolve as a result of the
surges in consciousness and pattern produced by the interaction between
Proprioception and its by-product Matter. The Gnosis, which as a result of the Will of
the One manifested itself as Sophia, is therefore not to be confused with
"Consciousness", the child of Sophia. The latter is the means whereby Matter was made
aware of its Self. Consciousness's primary impulse is towards its own offspring Matter,
in which Self is ultimately manifested as an inert Gestalt, a stolid lumpishness. If
Conscience seeks to ascend towards Sophia and then on towards the Gnosis,
Proprioception wishes to descend towards Matter as Will seeks to assert itself on
suitable "material". Sophia invested Proprioceptive Matter with Conscience when she re-
turned to her source. Conscience is therefore attuned to principles which transcend
material Self-ishness. It points to an order which is both different and superior to the
material order, and which makes

demands incompatible with it. It therefore perceives that "God" - the personification of
proprioceptive will - is at a far lower level than the supreme reality. Sophia therefore has
a pivotal role both in the revelation and corruption of the Gnosis. Sophia tends to bring
into being systems and their related hierarchies and terminologies. But the True Reality -
the One - is beyond, and is perceived by the Conscience which Sophia instills by her
repentance.

25. Proprioception is the prime characteristic of Carnal Man. Conscience is the hall-
mark of the Psychic in Man. He who is indwelt by the Gnosis, to the extent that he
becomes aware of the fact, is called "Gnostic", the Spiritual Man. While all may move
between the poles of Matter and Conscience, the gulf between the Gnostic and the
Carnal in Man is unbridgeable. The Logos may become incorporated into existing

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religions out of the compassion of Gnostics for Psychic Man and conscientised Matter,
but the Gnosis in its purest form manifests itself as detachment, since any attempt to
gratify (or, indeed, to suppress) even the worthiest of desires is an expression of carnal
self-will. The Gnosis brings no worldly consolations: neither a sense of moral superiority
to motivate; nor a covenant with a personal god to inspire; nor a divine providence to
wait upon. The Spiritual in Man needs no solace, however, because he knows that his
eventual return to the One is inevitable.

26. "Conscience" is the active manifestation in moral decision-making of an innate
spiritual nature. This spiritual nature is identical with, and participates in, the nature of
a Spirit which transcends the material universe. Conscience is the voice of an "alter ego"
emanating from a differently-constituted identity. As the voice of our spiritual nature, it
may conflict with the demands of our carnal nature.

27. The gulf between the Carnal, the creations of the demiurge laldabaoth, and the
Spiritual, emanations from the Ultimate One, is explicable. The existence of a middle
order in humankind, verifiable in the persons who, spiritually speaking aspire to so
much in organised religion in all its various manifestations, and yet so consistently
contradict their declared ideals, is not so easy to explain. The descent of the Spiritual
into Matter by means of Sophia's repentance had a sacrificial element, laldabaoth
believed himself to be supreme. In order to enlighten him (and to simultaneously
chastise him) Sophia had to reveal the Spiritual to the Material, thereby causing some of
the latter to be ensnared and temporarily abandoned in the return of the Immaculate to
the Fullness. As well as a providential act, Sophia's act was also an act of proud
foolishness. She had become involved with her offspring laldabaoth, if only to discipline
him. (Sophia, although herself an Immaculate Conception, is subordinate to "The
Spiritual" because she needs to effect a "movement towards" the Spiritual. "The
Spiritual", on the other hand, do not and do not have to "move" anywhere: they simply
"are", and need "do" nothing.) But the action of a Being of Spirit - Sophia herself - in an
impulse part parentally selfish, and part selfless in its desire to enlighten, created
something hybrid, both Carnal and Spiritual, a reflection of her rightly-directed Will,
just as laldabaoth was a reflection of her Desire. Because Sophia's revelation of the
Spiritual was a moral act, it brought about the Psychic. This has a moral element which
raises it above mere Desire. But this is contaminated by Sophia's Desire. The Carnal and
the Psychic therefore emanate from the same source, but are of a different order. The
Psychic is at its best when the moral element is combined with laldabaoth's impulse to
order and shape; we see it exemplified in the reforming saints and other "spiritual"
leaders of all religions. It is, nevertheless, not of the same order as the Spiritual, which is
a seed which grows and bears fruit secretly.

28. The fall of Sophia is an eternally recurring process; the descent of the Spiritual and
its return likewise. The journey of the Gnostic to the One is a solitary way; as he arrives,
another departs. He who arrives takes nothing of Matter with him; nothing of the world
is redeemed.

29. Sophia brings forth order within the realm of matter. This order has divine approval.
It is this approval which enables repentance to come about. When the impulse towards

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order-in-matter re-directs itself towards true consciousness (the Wholeness) then order
can be re-oriented to the transcendence of matter.

30. The way to salvation is through transcendence of the self through knowledge. A
precondition of authentic consciousness is a recognition of the fundamental
inconsequentiality of the material order. Consciousness therefore brings few
consolations: there is no sense of moral superiority to motivate; there is no covenant
with a personal god to inspire; and there is no divine providence to comfort. Only pure
Knowledge saves: the Knowledge that knows itself by itself, uncontaminated by
emotion. It is not a gift. It is the right and the burden of those imprisoned yet already
free.

31. True consciousness is a cross to bear. There is comfort, nevertheless, for the Spiritual
in recognising the cause of his exile, and the nature of his destination. Revelation brings
news of home.

32. Humankind are ultimately separated one from another not by race or religion or
culture, but by the degree of their response to ultimate questions. They may either
ignore them altogether, content themselves with answers which are comforting but
unsatisfactory in the light of both Reason and Conscience, or

face up to answers which satisfy as far as is possible both Reason and Conscience, but
which are disturbing and unsettling. All of the answers may be subjected to the reason
which serves us so well in our day-to-day living. But this faculty can take us only so far;
it cannot lead us to the ultimate answer. Only Reason combined with Conscience can
take us further.

33. Only when the selfish anthropocentrism of the major world religions and ideologies
has been abandoned, and the human race settles for a more modest place in the
ecosphere, will its habitat be assured. Only those whose minds participate in that which
transcends all species are able to sustain this awareness.

34. Proprioceptive will manifests itself in systems and their related hierarchies and
terminologies. Beneath all there is one system, one illusion. It has a demonic beauty, and
torments all life with false promises. Its manifestations rise and fall. Its exponents say
that the root of their system is "God" - a god made in their own image. Those who
worship him, worship themselves. But the True Reality is beyond; it can not be
perceived by anything other than the Gnosis.

35. "The Spiritual" can not be identified by any external physical or mental
characteristics. It cannot therefore form any identifiable group in society. The host is
perhaps from time to time able to recognise in others the traits which it has identified
living within itself, but this is no guarantee that what he has perceived is a decisive
indication: the more authentic the trait, the less perceptible it is to the senses of another
being.

36. Proprioception is self-consciousness which, together with Will, typifies the "higher"
forms of life. Proprioceptive matter - the living organism - is aware in its more complex

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manifestations that the Will has a vital role in survival. It is also aware, however, that
there is no guarantee of its successful domination of its environment and the elimination
of competition. "Successful" Will is therefore projected as an external entity which is at
once revered as being the key to survival, and feared as an elusive entity which can
assist in the material agent's struggle for dominant survival. This externalisation of the
Will is not entirely fantasy: the Will is a genuine mystery as a vital constituent of the
higher forms of animate matter, and there is a universal principle which transcends its
individual manifestations. This principle may be personified as the demiurge
"laldabaoth", also known as "Saklas" and "Samael".

37. The Supreme Being and the material order are of different categories. The Ultimate
Consciousness may reveal Itself through the veil of matter, but if God became part of a
creation then it would come within the power or possession of some men, for such may
be the fate of anything created.

38. Because the material world is irredeemable, there is no point in forming a Church
which promotes the cause of faith in redemption. Those who organise themselves into
such a "Church" will fall prey to corruptions which are the inevitable result of admitting
people who see entry either as a means of improving their material situation, or of
extending material blessings into eternity, or as a way of seeking endorsement of their
own supposed specialness.

39. The world and its events are irrelevant. The Truth can express itself in myths - any
number, in any configuration. Any appropriate vehicle will do. But the debased
salvation of "orthodoxy" must demonstrate results. It therefore needs supposed
actualities, even if they do not abide by the normal rules of nature. It also needs
"history" for another reason. "History" relies on witnesses. Witnesses have a unique
authority. If the power-seekers can reduce salvation, which in essence is a non-temporal
spiritual transformation, to a merely physical event, and establish a claim to be
witnesses of that event, their power is secured.

40. The Spiritual in Man does not regard matter as "evil", neither does he regard it as
"good". He may categorise it as "inferior" or even as "degenerate". This is a way of
expressing its distance from pure consciousness by using a kind of ethical metaphor: as
"evil" is distant from "good" in the perception of psychic man, so matter is distant from
consciousness. The Carnal seeks to bring order into matter. This is an expression of a
will to power. It is only when this purely carnal order-in-matter is measured over
against the non-material realm that morality is born. If there is a knowledge that there is
a spiritual realm present, and there is an impulse towards it, then the material realm will
be measured over against the spiritual realm by those who apprehend it. Dissatisfaction
with things as they are in the material sphere engenders morality and is codified by the
Psychic into Law. The Psychic then extend its provisions to the Carnal by promoting
sanctions, real or imagined.

41. Anything experienced is, by its nature, less than true reality. The enlightened possess
true perspective as part of their nature - it cannot be acquired by effort.

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42. The universe was created by a demiurge from unconscious matter. The demiurge
emanated ultimately from the Supreme Being. The carnal or "hylic" in Man is ignorant
of the supreme being. The Psychic in Man is able to comprehend the existence of a
demiurge. The Pneumatic in Man has the capacity to know fully the Supreme Being.
Hylic man will return to entirely to matter. Psychic man may be re-born within the
material universe. Pneumatic man uniquely within the material universe shares the
nature of the Supreme Being. The material universe and events within it are without
meaning. The providence of the demiurge is imperfect. Pneumatic man's ultimate
destiny is to enter into complete union with the Supreme Being.

43. Nature is morally neutral. Balance between the species is maintained by a deliberate
wastefulness. Human beings, like all species, are designed to produce more offspring
than can be supported in the expectation that most will die before reaching sexual
maturity and old age. The Petrine view that the procreative process has been designed
by a benign creator is not supported by the observable facts. The current success of the
human species in enabling its offspring to survive is a temporary phenomenon. In the
long term, nature is indifferent to the survival of Man. Man, however, is not indifferent
to his own survival. Over-population threatens the survival of the species. Love
demands that we limit our procreative activity until adequate resources can be available
to all the human population. This limitation includes artificial contraception and
abstinence; it does not include abortion. Killing an existing life for the benefit of those
who have a survival-advantage (ie the mature parents) is an unloving act. Killing for
meat falls into the same category. It is palliated only by the victim's lack of awareness of,
and therefore anxiety about, the actuality of death. Those who oppose abortion are
selfishly anthropocentric; they should also oppose meat-eating. Regrettably, nature
upholds meat-eating; it also upholds the culling of offspring to assist survival. Only
those whose consciousness transcends nature can knowingly and willingly desist from
both as far as the burden of their flesh allows.

44. The material and spiritual orders make incompatible demands. If Man is to move
closer to the Ultimate One, which is his destiny, he must seek to raise himself up to the
spiritual, and not seek to abase the spiritual to the level of the material. Material
considerations will always distort the Truth about Eternal Life.

45. Pneumatic man is, by dint of his physical nature, drawn into the preoccupations of
hylic and psychic man. But because he shares in higher consciousness he will be
detached from their power-games. He will see the material organism in context, and
appreciate how its behaviour is determined by matter and will. He will therefore be
detached from "this world", and perceive its dictates as stemming from a lower order of
reality. Such a stance will confuse psychic man. On the one hand, he will associate
detachment with altruism, since the psychic man will often ignore his own need for
physical gratification in order to obey the imperative of his own will to power. He will
therefore identify the higher consciousness with what he has categorised as "good". On
the other hand, the pneumatic man's apparent refusal to engage totally with the psychic
man's own agenda the latter will associate with the hylic man's inability to transcend his
own immediate self-interest - in other words, with what he has categorised in ethical
terms as "bad". How then does psychic man resolve this apparent contradiction? - He

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accuses the pneumatic man as regarding the world as "bad". The Gnostic's unwillingness
to engage with matter is branded as escapism or indifferentism. The psychic man
therefore becomes a kind of hero who is willing to soil his hands for the good of
mankind while the Gnostic sits on the sidelines. Hence the oft-repeated but quite
erroneous statement that Gnostics regard matter as evil. The terminology is psychic
man's own; it is irrelevant to pneumatic man's fundamental concerns. For the Gnostic,
such ethical patterns are an illusion. The only priority of the material sphere is survival
and self-perpetuation. True Knowledge is in fact an end in itself. Those who seek it can
have no other genuine motivation other than that it is in their nature to do so. Such is the
nature of the Spiritual.

46. Transcendence of this world is not open to all. It derives from a perspective rather
than an experience. Hence the quest for an induced enlightenment is fruitless.

47. The religions assume that all human beings are in one way or another capable of
access to the transcendent entity at the heart of their belief-system, and various
procedures are proposed, cultic or ethical, to assist the believer in gaining access. The
truth is that the "Knowers" have already gained access to - indeed were never apart from
- the transcendent entity of the Gnosis, while those without "Knowledge" never will gain
access. This makes sacraments, cultic organisations or ethical injunctions useless. Those
varieties of religion which pursue such practices do so because they confuse the Gnosis
with proprioceptive awareness and aim to promote the "happiness" and "success" of the
body-mind entity.

48. In the human sphere, intuition of pure "divine" consciousness may reside in the mind
of man, but is always co-mingled and confused with, and corrupted by other mental
faculties which may be grouped under the heading of "intelligence." Tue intuition is an
awareness which, as an aspect of consciousness, is an end in itself; intelligence is a
proprioceptive mental faculty which, although divine in origin, is usually directed
towards matter and subject to the direction of carnal will. If intelligence is to be directed
or re-directed towards true consciousness, there must first be a true perception. This
perception is a gift (or "grace") solely possessed by the spiritual man.

49. The will's subject dreams of its successful domination of its environment. "God" is
self-interest in its most successful form imaginable - "success" being defined by longevity
and domination. He is immortal and omnipotent, and promises power and eternal life to
his worshipers. He is essentially the will to power, laldabaoth is a nightmare of
proprioceptive matter.

50. History is irrelevant to Life. It is an empty promise that events are significant and
each human life is a progression which can be altered by petitioning an all-powerful
God. Because it reveals the true meaninglessness of supposedly salvific events, the
Gnostic revelation will always meet with violent hostility.

51. The return of the Spiritual to their source is not an "election", nor is it the result of
some accumulated "merit". The Spiritual are what they have been and always will be
without beginning and without end. Their essential nature is not something created

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from nothing, but rather an emanation from the Ultimate. Their physical prison has
enclosed them by accident.

52. Sophia does not promote the "success" of a physical organism favoured by her - that
is, its survival or the domination of its environment - even if her Logos does shape the
material universe. Sophia is not some kind of "spirit" sent by a god to intervene in nature
or to confer blessings on a favoured group. The laws of nature are inexorable, and
beyond a shared perspective on the world, those in whom Faith, Hope and Love
develop do not necessarily have any characteristics in common in terms of ethnicity,
social class, intelligence, language, gender or age. And their ultimate detachment from
such groupings inevitably attracts the hostility of corporate or individual Self, including
those debased repositaries of bogus revelation which are the established religions. The
fanciful "truths" purveyed by them in their various schemes of education, together with
the charades used to initiate new entrants - mostly juveniles who do not know better -
can achieve nothing but to create an organised hypocrisy which at best nurtures
gullibility and superstition, and at worst supports a power-hungry elite who derive their
livelihood from the structures which they serve and by which they are served. True
Faith walks away from such activities.

53. Gnostics may wish to celebrate their shared nous in myth. Since Nous is eternal, the
stories will centre on "events" before time. But the true meaning of these stories and
meditations cannot be fully apprehended by non-Gnostics.

54. The universe and events within it are without meaning. There is no good news to
proclaim. An account of primeval events merely enables whoever has ears to hear it to
derive some comfort from understanding his true predicament in this material universe.

55. Sophia's re-orientation towards the One brought about the reciprocal gesture and
grace of the Gnosis. The Gnosis is the only emanation of the Transcendent
Consciousness uncontaminated by will. It does not reside in any physical organ nor is it
dependent on any individual material Self. Self is made aware of the Gnosis through
Faith. In its incipient stage Faith may focus on the human construct "God", the
personification of those aspirations within the lower end of the spectrum ranging
upwards from Desire-Law to Hope-Love.

56. The Gnosis enters the mind of Man randomly as Truth, creating The Sons of Seth. In
them, the power of Truth transforms Logos into Enlightenment.

57. The Logos brings into being systems and their related hierarchies and terminologies.
But the True Reality - the One - is beyond, and can not be perceived by anything other
than what is of Itself. These systems promote the belief that the Gnosis can somehow be
willed through the use of certain techniques of meditation. But they simply end up
promoting that Will's interests, which reside solely within the material domain. True
enlightenment is not a willed process. The higher consciousness which is Gnosis cannot
be "experienced" other than by one who is Gnostic.

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58. There is a division between those who are Gnostic and those who are not. Although
the Gnostic is, because of his physical mantle, drawn into the preoccupations of
carnality, he remains aloof from them. He sees the organism in context, and understands
how its behaviour is determined by Matter and Will. He is therefore detached from this
world, and perceives its dictates as stemming from a lower order of reality. He listens
and observes, but hears no message and sees no reason which will enable him to be
reconciled to it.

59. No-one can "opt into" the Gnosis. Gnostics are not adherents of a religion. "Gnostic"
is a description of a person's nature. This can not be identified by any external
characteristics. Gnostics cannot therefore form any identifiable group in society. The
only sign of a Gnostic is recognition of the fundamental inconsequentiality of the
material order.

60. There is an eternal non-material Being whose nature is detached and uninvolved
with matter. But a part of the non-material Being's totality has become scattered and
temporarily detained by matter as the result of an accident. That which shares the nature
of the non-material Being is capable of becoming at one with the Gnosis. This is not the
work of a mental faculty: it is independent of the material universe. It does not reside in
a body: it resides in a mind. But it can only reside in that part of a mind which is
"selfless", detached from "worldly" considerations. This state of mind is characterised by
a disinterested and altruistic recognition of the existence and needs of the independent
"other". The mind may then become aware of the existence of a Truth beyond itself, the
"Gnosis". Gnosis creates its own potential to be known only in the minds of those who
share the nature of the non-material Being. Those who possess the potential for
becoming at one with the Gnosis do so by their very nature throughout their lives and
are, by dint of this possession, aliens or strangers in this world.

61. The Carnal seek to bring order into Matter. This is an expression of Will. It is only
when this purely carnal order-in-matter is measured over against the non-material realm
by Conscience that morality is born. Dissatisfaction with things as they are in the
material sphere is codified by the Carnal into Law. The Gnosis, on the other hand, is
characterised by a preoccupation with the existence of a Truth beyond the self. Gnostics
show their true natures by detachment from carnality and a compassion for those who
suffer false hope about the possibilities of this world.

62. The Gnosis, although ultimately its higher source, is not simply consciousness.
Consciousness dreams of its successful domination of its environment. "God" is self-
interest in its most successful form imaginable - "success" being defined by longevity
and domination. He is immortal and omnipotent, and promises power and eternal life to
his worshippers. He is essentially the will to power.

63. Does the Gnosis enter the organism at its conception, or later, at some critical stage of
its development? Since the Gnosis is not dependent on the existence of the organism, the
former cannot be the case. Nor can material circumstances dictate the descent of the
Gnosis. And so the latter is not true. The alighting of the Gnosis is purely random, and
may occur at any stage in the life-cycle of the organism - the only condition being that

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for whatever reason the receiving organism is surviving on the mental periphery of the
cosmos. (If this is not the case, the Gnosis will be driven away even before it has had time
to settle.) It therefore follows that, depending on his cognitive development at the time,
the Gnostic may remember the point in time when the Gnosis came.

64. Language is a high-level cognitive activity which deals with the interface between
Mind and "the World", and it expresses our knowledge and understanding of the world.
It assists us in ordering our perceptions and, ultimately, of the things perceived. But the
world, our senses and our brains are all the creation of laldabaoth. Language is therefore
a participation in his ordering activity. His is the Logos. The Spiritual person's
apprehension of the Ultimate Truth is not a cognitive function; in the Gnosis like is
simply drawn to like. Human language can not adequately express this spiritual truth
because it is "of the World"; those who know the Truth are iconoclastic; they undermine
existing ideas and images to point beyond them, but there is no identifiable technique to
this. Language is primarily laldabaoth's, but if for whatever reason we decide to express
in language genuine spiritual truth we must accept that it will suffer debasement. This
debasement can be seen even in the use of pronouns. In writing about the Ultimate
Truth ("the One") it is necessary to avoid using personal pronouns at all, because they
lead to idolatry, as does all language. It is also necessary to avoid using the term
"Father", and even the term "God" in referring to the One. Only the Gnosis is "of the
One". We rely, however, on the Logos to express this.

65. Are we to suppose that, for the Gnostic, beyond meaningless suffering only oblivion
awaits? For the body and its consciousness, or proprioceptive awareness, the answer is
"Yes"; but for those who share in authentic consciousness the truth is more complex. The
Gnosis is conscious of the body-mind being aware of itself. In other words, it is a level of
consciousness above and beyond proprioceptive awareness. This consciousness is also
aware of the fact of the death of the body-mind and that its proprioceptive awareness
will cease. This consciousness, or "Gnosis", does not need to be conscious 0/ anything; it
is an end in itself. It does not need space or time; it can exist without either. It is
therefore eternal and infinite. (It is not, however, ubiquitous, since there are places - such
as inanimate matter - where the higher consciousness is not.) Indwelling the mind-body
vortex of some men, the Gnosis is not subject to death. When the vortex dissolves, the
Gnosis migrates randomly to another "self", retaining an imprint of its former dwelling.
This imprint can be passed on from one self to another by means of carnal reproduction.
In other words, psychic men (but not the carnal) have ancestors who were indwelt by
the Gnosis - that is, ancestors who were among the Spiritual.

66. Gnosticism is not a religion. Religions generally assume that all human beings are in
one way or another capable of access to the transcendent entity at the heart of their
belief-system, and various procedures are proposed, cultic or ethical, to assist the
believer in gaining access. The Gnostic, however, has already gained access to - indeed
was never apart from - the transcendent entity of the Gnosis, while those without never
will gain access. This makes sacraments, cultic organisation or ethical injunction useless.
That "gnosticism" which introduces such practices does so because it confuses the
Gnosis with proprioceptive awareness and has an implicit or explicit aim to be "life-
enhancing" - that is, promoting the "happiness" and "success" of the body-mind entity.

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67. The Gnosis is not static and inert. As a dynamic entity it is affected for ever by its
"place" of residence while remaining unaffected by physicality and its demands.
Something of the spiritual mind of the host lives forever as part of the non-material
Being's immortal and eternal totality. Meanwhile, an heroic - and in worldly terms,
ultimately hopeless - struggle continues against the forces of carnality both within and
without. Yet transcending all is the Gnosis, which leads us to the One called "Father" by
the Gnosis made Word.

68. The Gnosis is not to be confused with "consciousness", the latter being the function
whereby matter may be aware of itself. Howbeit consciousness is itself a mysterious
phenomenon; it is different in nature to the Gnosis. Consciousness is a process with an
end in mind: to sustain the continuity of a material object in its current form by
monitoring its surroundings and making changes compatible with the survival of its
own perceived integrity. This is done by a series of incredibly complex chemical
interactions. It is, indeed, the only material function which is autonomous, transcending
the evolutionary process of natural selection. Its motive force may be identified as "will",
and it is this "will" which provides the only link between matter and consciousness. For
authentic consciousness, however, the will is unnecessary, because the primary
allegiance of the will is to matter.

69. If the Logos directs itself towards Sophia and is subject to the direction of the Gnosis,
Consciousness directs itself towards Matter and is subject to the direction of Will.

70. It is on the perimeter of the sustaining environment that the Gnosis settles. Those
who have the least success in the mainstream physical and social environment are in fact
the saviours of homo sapiens. The truest sacrifice is that of the Spiritual, who suffer in
their own flesh the consequences of their knowledge of the designs of the Powers: the
hostility of the Powers towards them.

71. The evolution of homo sapiens into a species with a mental capacity far beyond that of
other species, and beyond its own survival needs, came about as a result of the Gnosis.
Consciousness is a faculty which owes its genesis to the

presence of the spiritual in matter. It is not identical with the Gnosis; the former is a
consequence of the presence of the latter, since the fruit of the Gnosis is detachment
from material circumstances. It is the stepping-out-of this physicality which resulted in
the growth of cerebral material. Why did the Gnosis concentrate itself in homo sapiens?
Certain members of the species had been pushed to the perimeter of the sustaining
environment, and it was here that the Gnosis settled. It has followed this pattern ever
since. Those who have the least success in the mainstream physical and social
environment are in fact the saviours of the species.

72. The primary allegiance of the will is to matter. It was only when a proprioceptive
element was introduced into matter that we had what might be termed the "fall" into
time and the pointless interplay between will and matter. This is sinister to the extent it
subverts pure consciousness's contemplation of itself. Proprioceptive matter - the living
organism - is aware in its more complex manifestations that the will has a vital role in

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survival. Will is a genuine mystery as a vital constituent of the higher forms of animate
matter, and a universal phenomenon which transcends its individual manifestations.
This phenomenon may be personified as the demiurge "laldabaoth", also known as
"Saklas" and "Samael". The will to power manifests itself in hierarchies, systems,
strange terminologies, and all the paraphernalia which gives the pilgrim cause to
stumble.

73. Intimation of the spiritual realm is innate only in those who share its nature. The true
centre of their being resides elsewhere. This is both their peace and their restlessness,
their stillness and their urge.

74. What is the nature of the interaction between the Gnosis and animate matter? The
elements of Matter, Will and Consciousness, exist in different proportions in individual
organisms. The ratio of juxtaposition will be species-determined in "lower" forms of life.
In the "higher" forms of life such as human beings, the ratio appears to vary. There are in
fact three categories of human being: the hylic, the psychic and the pneumatic. In carnal
(or hylic) persons matter is dominant. This dominance manifests itself in a
preoccupation with the consumption necessary to maintenance of material integrity. In
psychic persons the will to power is dominant. The impulse to gain control over the
environment of survival may lead to forms of action which are socially very useful, such
as servicing and maintaining social organisms, or investing energy and ingenuity into
technical innovation. When these benefit other individual organisms such actions will
win general approbation, and may be described as "good", or "right", or what "should"
be done. On the other hand, the hylic person's preoccupation with a more limited self-
interest which cuts across such beneficial actions may be described as "bad", or "wrong",
or what "ought not" to be done. Such ethical language is often legitimised by reference to
that "God" who is the supreme manifestation of the will to power. "Good" is determined
by the group. Definitions are suspended for those outside the group. This is what we
would expect of a survival-mechanism, and may be observed in all species. In human
beings the process is less obvious for two related reasons. Firstly, social leaders are not
exclusively biologically determined. Human leaders will have a strong will to power,
but need to legitimise their dominance. They will therefore appeal to ethics to justify
their actions. But such an appeal is useless if the ethical categories are not perceived as
absolute and universally applicable. The leader will therefore attempt to affirm that
actions are not just for this good of his own group, but for "the good of mankind". It will
be seen, therefore, that ethical justification is fundamental to the activity of psychic man.
It is not surprising, therefore, that he should apply ethical categories to actions which he
finds threatening or which he cannot understand.

75. Those who share in the Gnosis show their true natures by detachment from carnality
and a compassion for those who suffer false hope about the possibilities of this world. A
pale reflection of this is found in all human beings, whether

Gnostic or not, in the form of Conscience.

76. How can the brain pursue what is beyond thought when its very purpose is to think?
Only that which is outside the brain can apprehend that which is beyond thought. Such
is the Gnosis, which knows what is to be known because the knower is the known.

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77 . Sophia made Self.
Self's shadow was Matter.
Sophia gave it Logos,

And their creature Man, Nomos.
Sophia turned again.
Giving men Conscience,
To make Faith from Will,
Hope from Desire,
And from Nomos, Love.

78. Sophia's return to the One elicits the Gnosis.
The Gnosis enters some men.

Some minds experience the Gnosis:

They "know" something beyond

The material world of the self.

And perceive the Powers at work

Within their environment.

The minds which experience the Gnosis

Feel impelled to seek a communion

Which assists in the liberation

And re-union of the All

Of which they are a part.

In Gnostics Self will dissolve forever

As they surrender to the Gnosis.

Nomos and Logos, and Conscience,

Will return to Sophia.

Matter will end.

Sophia and the Gnosis will return to the All.

79. When Sophia turned.
The One sent the Gnosis,
Which dwells in some men.
They hasten the End.

80. Receive these messages
From my true self to our true self.
This is the Gnosis made Word.
Those who know

Will recognise what they know:

Argument is vain.

Come forth those who share the Gnosis!

Gather together, people of insight!

Celebrate here with me

What we always have shared.

That we may enjoy it together

At our Source, in greater measure, to all eternity.

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THE TESTAMENT OF VALENTINE

1. The world is a place of wounds. Wounds to the spirit bleed venom in the soul.
Staunch the flow of venom into a poisoned world.

2. Pay heed to the words of those whom men call "Saviour" and "Enlightened" -
provided that they help you towards liberation. But beware the Powers. Their subtlety
enables them to invade every corner of the universe, and turn even the most opulent of
gifts into an engine of slavery.

3. Beware those who claim detachment, but are in fact disaffected. Spurned lovers of the
world, they gladly return to her arms if beckoned.

4. Beware answers. Beware guides. Beware the Powers, whose gifts are snares. Beware
the leaders of men. Beware schemes and systems. Beware rewards and punishments.
Beware the world.

5. Behold the idiot who leads men to the Truth! Behold the man of intellect who beckons
to his sty!

6. Suffer much, say little, understand most.

7. The will to power manifests itself in hierarchies, systems, strange terminologies, and
all the paraphernalia which gives the pilgrim cause to stumble. Beware such "gnosis"
and its occult science.

8. The way to salvation is through transcendence of the self. This may be through
thought or action. Transcend the will to power and thus find freedom.

9. In your heart is a hungry worm that grows until your heart is gone, then feeds upon
itself. Trust what your heart tells you, yet deny it. Sharpen your wit, then throw it away.
Exercise your mind, then let it be at rest. Welcome the paradox, but do not worship it.
Our world was made by Samael. We name the parts with the tongue he gave. His is the
Word, but his is not the Truth.

10. Understanding is obscured by the delirium brought on by wealth, power, or worldly
beauty. Those most committed to the illusion, and who fail to grasp the true nature of
things, succeed in the eyes of the world. Those who sit in judgment always find for
themselves. Seek the spiritual man, therefore, among those whom the world condemns.
The man who turns his back on the rewards of this world must also bare it to stripes.

11. Bend beneath the blows of the Powers, and so avoid hurt.

12. You sift the dust for tiny nuggets of truth. But you stare at the ground because you
walk on all fours. Raise your head above the earth and look to the stars, where you may
contemplate the Wisdom already known to you.

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13. Forgive! - know the cause of injurious deeds, or your heart will be a worm that feeds
upon itself.

14. Do not suppose that spiritual status is in any way related to worldly
accomplishments. Behold the crippled idiot who leads men to the Truth! Behold the man
of intellect and prowess who uses the gifts of nature to extend his sty!

15. There are those who deny the gods, but few can escape the Powers. Refusing to enter
the labyrinth of deception, they bivouac in the vestibule. Rejecting the greater gods of
the Temple, they fall prey to the meaner gods of the hearth. Clear the grime from the
window and gaze on the world outside.

16. Let the mind of carnal man be leavened by the powers-that-be to feed the self. We
instead share the simple fare of detachment as we journey together to the Truth.

17. Be compassionate. To understand folly is to forgive.

18. These are not "revelations". These are rather messages from my true self to my true
self witnessed by the rest of the world. They are Gnosis made Word, and the waters that
are drawn from this well will quench the thirst of many.

19. Sacrifice on the altar of matter is in vain. Yet perhaps Sophia has a place for which
her carnal offspring are destined.

20. The Gnostic will not run with the herd or the pack; the wrath of the Archons is
therefore inflamed.

21. Those who know say least. But for those who share in the nature of the One there is
eternity. "Show us the One who brings freedom", you demand. 1 can not. The One finds
a path.

22. The spirit suffers in flesh the emnity of the Powers. Our souls cry out at injury to the
flesh, but these injuries dissolve with the flesh that gave them birth. None are victims of
"evil". All are victims of the world.

23. The fool Creates patterns of cause and effect - the fat are blessed, the lean are cursed -
then traces all to "God". But the fat are not praiseworthy; the lean are not to blame.

24. When laldabaoth made the cannibal coil within eternity, it was on the basis of laws
neither right nor wrong.

25. Without map, without scrip, without shoes, some arrive before they set out. The land
is theirs; they are the kingdom. The One can only be perceived by those who share by
their very natures in the transcendent Reality.

26. All things rise from and fall into the dust, with a beauty that cannot be seized.

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27. Decay is part and parcel of the material world: ideas decay; beliefs decay. These
things do not matter to the Spiritual; neither does it matter if, over aeons of time, the
Truth is buried. Indeed, at times the Truth should be prepared for burial.

28. Wisdom can never be seen by all; the quest is in vain.

29. The One can only be perceived by those who share by their very natures in the
transcendent Reality.

30. The Truth is not to be discovered through any personal relationship - for the root of
all bonding of separates is carnal. Only pure Knowledge saves: the knowledge that
knows itself by itself, uncontaminated by affection.

31. There is no appeal to reason here; there is only an appeal to knowledge. Those who
know will recognise what they know: argument is unnecessary.

32. The issue is freedom. "Show us the One who brings freedom", you demand. 1 can not.
Only the One knows the One. The One trapped in flesh seeks liberation, and finds a
path. The slave dreams of becoming the master. Yet the master is also a slave. The true
goal is to transcend the will to power and so find

freedom.

33. For the spiritual man "salvation" is not an issue. The spark can never be lost, thought
the whole world fall back into confusion. The issue is liberation. The means of liberation
is knowledge.

34. Can the unborn child picture its birth? Can the Spiritual imagine the freedom which
will be theirs?

35. No "God" will release his slaves. His chains are subtle. They are forged with fear.
And the anger of his priests is unbounded against those who will not accept his
manacles. For the priest is a slave who dreams himself master; awake from all dreams
and you will be free.

36. Through knowledge, the spiritual man will avoid that which makes thickens the
prison walls. And he will turn his gaze to he window, and the stars beyond, and see
what his captors, to their perpetual rage, will never see.

37. Spurning the vows of the devotee, they make their pledge to wealth, family and
status. They hear the roar of the beast and serve it. We are called to slay it, and to press
on to the gate that leads to Life.

38. laldabaoth has a multitude of colours, and can present foliage according to his desire.
And yet he is a stump. His branches decay, his fruit is rotten.

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39. Can all men be saved? - The carnal and the psychic will always worship the Archons.
(The spiritual man may also be seduced along this path). These powers, including the
demiurge, are but the vices of such men elevated to a principle.

40. You entertain a doubt that the alleged powers and the supposed path of liberation
exist only in the mind. How can this be so? If the mind of man is a product of nature, is
it not impressed with the shape of things from outside itself? If the powers exist in the
mind of man, then they were put there by the powers. If the path of liberation leads
beyond the mind, is it not a liberation from the powers? Admire the Powers, and spurn
them. Never underestimate them: their vigour is real.

41. The Carnal, ever limited by their nature, see only idols that may gratify their
manifold needs.

42. The lips of the messenger are frozen in stone.

43. The bellies of the Carnal need leavened bread.

44. Those most committed to the illusion, and who fail to grasp the true nature of things,
succeed in the eyes of the world.

45. That which overturns matter is seen as a destroyer by those in thrall to the Powers.

46. Though there is more than one path, there is only one goal: transcendence of "self".

47. The Spiritual meets enlightenment as logos, the Psychic as mythos.

48. To leave the womb is to escape a grave. To abandon security is to leave death behind.

49. The slave dreams of becoming the master. Yet the true goal is to transcend the will to
power and so find freedom.

50. The Gnostic "revelation" is provisional - a celebration of the riches of the Truth in
currency whose value fluctuates, and much of which is base metal. No-one has a
monopoly which it comes to the manner in which the truth is expressed.

51. The three human kinds exist because of the way that the universe has come about,
and not by election.

52. Gems of Truth may be lodged in poor settings.

53. Your "good" is self-serving, your "morality" an instrument of prey.

54. The Carnal is the world. The Psychic perceives a world. The Spiritual knows a
prison.

55. Being order in matter, laldabaoth's is the Word.

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56. Notions of "good" are corrupted by consideration of the provisional, the transitory,
the self-serving. Yet there is a kind of "good". That which tends towards the One is
"good" because it tends to what is real.

57. To the tribes the spiritual is of no account; to the leaders he is invisible. The virtue of
the spiritual man is detachment, and this leaves no mark for the eyes of the world to
behold. The spiritual man does not pursue wealth, so all the

world sees is poverty. The spiritual man does not pursue power, so all the world sees is
weakness. The spiritual man does not seek fullness, so the world despises an empty
thing.

58. The spirit is trapped in this world, and the flesh demands belonging. And so the
spiritual man chooses his place of belonging on the grounds of compassion.

59. There are three paths to the One: the path of action, the path of devotion, and the
path of knowledge, but the surest of these is the path of knowledge. Yet none is strong
against idolatry.

60. Our detractors accuse us of negativity, of pessimism, of denial. So be it. It is they who
refuse to confront the dissatisfaction that eats at their hearts like a hungry worm.

61. The benighted may not see the light, because their eyes have closed in the darkness.
And yet to those who eyes are pierced by the light he gives power to become sons of
light: the flame already in them grows stronger.

62. Where, then, is healing to be found? The Pneuma is present in the world - not only in
some men, but in the order of events. But to the world, its order is disorder.

63. To side with the Demiurge is to side with order. A tyrant is benevolent as long as we
enjoy his favour. But the supporter of a tyrant should always be ready to see himself put
to death for the sake of order.

64. Souls are not hedged by race or by class, by gender or by age; Faith- Wisdom does not
spring from brain or tongue.

65. The material world is real enough, but that reality is hierarchical. That is, matter is
not evil - simply inferior.

66. The Truth, like the royal state, does not reside in the flesh of one person. "The king is
dead. Long live the king!"

67. The criminal and victim are one. The judge must select by caprice, then assert a
justice beyond reproach. But the fat are not worthy of praise nor the lean of blame. The
righteous men slain by the oppressor even as they offer sacrifice, or the pilgrims crushed
by the falling tower at the holy place - they do not receive their just desert.

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68. The world is a place of deception. This deception is promoted by the angels of
laldabaoth and their servants, and is expressed in superstitious practices: idols and
altars and temples and sacrifices and libations to the Powers. Religious language itself
may be a stumbling-block in the path of Truth: thus one who hears the word "God" does
not perceive what is correct, but perceives deception. It is necessary to turn away from
deception in order to be free of the powers; the Spiritual are able to overcome deception
with Truth. What do you perceive the emptiness with? Perhaps you apprehend it with
the Truth within - if there is Truth within. If, on the other hand, there is no Truth within,
then you only see and feel what your flesh and its psychic servant likes or loathes.

69. That which overturns matter is seen as a destroyer by those in thrall to the Powers.

70. The Carnal, ever limited by their nature, see only idols that may gratify their
manifold needs.

71. The true centre of our being resides elsewhere. This is both our peace and our
restlessness, our stillness and our urge.

72. The spark can never be lost, thought the whole world fall back into confusion.

73. The impulse to order is genuinely divine; the impulse to worship order is not.

74. The powers do not change men for the better. They simply confirm them in their
corruption. Those who worship the powers worship their own carnal natures and are
controlled entirely by instinct.

75. The tyrant is himself a prisoner.

76. The One knows the One. What need has the One to pray? Our wills attend on the
One; what need have we to pray?

77 . Despair of the world brings hope.

78. Will is the fundamental principle of all independent life.

79. The Psychic may choose the Light, and because this choice transcended nature,
something may be reborn.

80. Enlightenment is the gift of the few to the many.

81. Though there is more than one path, there is only one goal: transcendence of "self".

82. Nothing can come between the Spiritual and eventual bliss.

83. To the tribes the spiritual is of no account; to the leaders he is invisible.

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84. Zeal in reform is commendable; holy war is good. But this is not our way, for we are
the ultimate subversive.

85. Some ages may sink into a depravity which guarantees their eventual extinction in
the way of all flesh.

86. As regards prayer: what need have those whose wills attend on the One to ask for
anything?

87. It is those most committed to the illusion who succeed in the eyes of the world. It is
those who succeed in the eyes of the world who fail to grasp the true nature of things.

88. There is one System, one illusion. It has a demonic beauty, and torments us.

89. The fool Creates patterns of cause and effect - the fat are blessed, the lean are cursed -
then traces all to "God". God is not supreme. Miracles do not happen. This is because
matter came into being before God, and God himself cannot change the iron laws of the
material universe. Because he does not possess the ultimate spiritual supremacy, he is
unable to "save" us.

90. A mediator may take a costly gift to appease a tyrant and win favours from him. To
suppose that God is such a ruler is a notion unworthy of God or of His true
worshippers, and will attract only those intent on suing the Deity for favours. There are
always those who seek to make a profession of mediation. Entry to the Kingdom by
those who are its citizens needs no such mediation and therefore no priesthood.

91. laldabaoth is not the ultimate authority. But being order in matter, his is the Word.

92. None are victims of something called "evil". All are victims of the way the world is -
the inexorable laws of nature. Events may be purgatives for the purification of Spirit, but
pain refines the gold; it does not place it in the heart.

93. True consciousness is a cross to bear: there is no sense of moral superiority to
motivate; there is no covenant with a personal god to inspire; and there is no divine
providence to comfort. Consciousness is an end in itself.

94. In the flesh the gap between saint and sinner is imperceptible. "God" must base his
selection on caprice, then assert a justice beyond argument and reproach. Such is the
way of the tyrant laldabaoth, himself the prisoner of iron laws.

95. The Spiritual can not be identified by any physical, mental or moral characteristics.
And because the world is irredeemable, there is no point in forming an organisation
which promotes faith. There can be no scripture, no sacrifice, and no priesthood.

96. Anything experienced is, by its nature, less than true reality. The enlightened possess
true perspective as part of their nature - it cannot be acquired by effort or by
manipulation of the cognitive, emotive or sensory environment.

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97. If the existence of neither Revealer nor Revealed can be recognised as authorities
higher than the allegedly "supreme" laldabaoth, then both, dimly perceived, have to be
imported into the deity. But their subjection makes idols of them.

98. There are those who say, "We have the keys to salvation. Salvation is easy. Simply do
as we say!" There are those who say, "You enjoy a worldly prosperity. That in itself is a
sign of grace. Come and join our ranks, and add to that the assurance of salvation!"
There are those who say, "Salvation is an amusing game that adds spice to our
comfortable lives. Come and join us: realise your full potential!" How subtle and
persuasive are the powers! - not the dumb idols we habitually suppose them to be!

99. Those who are supposed to be guardians of spiritual matters - the scribes, the
teachers, the priests - are no less open to corruption than the infidels. Only the gift of
suffering strips such corruption away and raises head and voice above the

edge of the prison wall.

100. The comfort of rites is a comfort of sleep, where materiality is dreamed as order and
justice.

101. People may use a mediator in their dealings with God, but to do so presupposes
that there are two classes of human beings, one of which is closer to God.

102. If you pray to God, then it is laldabaoth; if he comes to your aid then it is Saklas.

103. Knowledge is not the gift of a just god. It is that which offers refuge from an unjust
Demiurge, who disposes of his illusory riches capriciously, and leads the recipients to
ignorance and eternal night.

104. "Show us the One who gives liberation", you demand. 1 can not. Only the One
knows the One. The One trapped in the mind of flesh seeks liberation, and finds a path.
Knowledge is not a gift. It is the right and the burden of those imprisoned yet already
free.

105. We say "Not this" and "Not that", and dissatisfaction eats at your heart like a hungry
worm.

106. The One is unnamed and ineffable, the source of all being.

107. The One is pure. He does not strive, since He lacks nothing. He is unnamed, and
there is none for whom He yearns.

108. The Carnal and the Psychic will always worship the Powers, for they are their vices
raised to a principle. The carnal man who sacrifices his own self for his family or friends
does a noble thing, even if he is acting under instinct. This instinct is indeed a higher
impulse than the drive to self-preservation. There is some sense in which nature is

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refined by it. It creates a window in matter for the Fullness to be revealed. But the carnal
man himself is not "saved" by sacrifice. He has no "self" to save.

109. The Eternal Being's fullness is by nature apart from matter, but has become widely
scattered and briefly detained in the world because of an accident.

110. Purity was divided; thus "He" became "they".

111. The One in us perceives beyond mortal ken; this is "Gnosis".

112. From the One came the All. Only the One knows the One. And those who seek
proof of the One need only to acknowledge their yearning.

113. The utterances of the spiritual are the Word of the One.

114. Transcendence of this world is not an experience open to all. Wisdom derives from
a perspective rather than an experience. Hence the quest for induced enlightenment is
fruitless.

115. For true Gnostics there is no providence. The Spiritual are trapped and are
returning through the aeons by paths of liberation which are difficult, and known only
by themselves. Yet liberation is assured.

116. May the One reach out to the knowledge within you and draw you to the ultimate
goal.

117. The True Reality is beyond us. This One can not be perceived by anything other
than the One. The One can only ever be described in terms of the One.

118. The material world is real enough, but that reality is hierarchical. That is, matter is
not evil - simply inferior. This perspective on the material world is related to an insight
into the way things have come to be as they are.

119. Myth must negate itself in the telling if idols are not to be engendered.

120. There are no sacraments. "Salvation" is in knowledge, a knowledge that cannot be
conferred.

121. In the first phase survival is all. Ruled by the Powers, whom we name as gods, we
seek to bend them our will by bribes and flattery, by submission or intimidation. Then
we create patterns of cause and effect. Gratification is reward, denial is punishment: the
fat are blessed, the lean are cursed. And we trace all causes to one cause, whom we call
"God". Soon we see that the fat are not praiseworthy nor the lean worthy of blame. So
our patterns become more tenuous: our ancestors were righteous or sinners, or we
ourselves in a previous life. But this rightly offends a sense of justice, and so we find a
second source for evil, or propose that god's ways are inscrutable to men. And so we
wait in vain for the overcoming of the one, or the revelation of the other.

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122. Nomos is not a cosmic force: human behaviour is affected by but cannot affect the
laws of nature.

123. Suffering is not caused by transgression, and death cannot be overcome by
obedience to law.

124. It is not possible for anyone to state the destiny of humankind beyond death. But
because God is eternal, that destiny too is eternal, for true mankind is in the mind of
God. Those who seek the truth about their destiny in order to fulfill it join their wills
with the Will of God and may therefore participate in the eternity of the Divine Nature.

125. The principle which guides us has no beginning and no end. We are heirs to eternal
Truth and Life, and we are trustees of the Way.

126. If the Powers exist in the mind, were they not put there by the Powers? The path
that leads beyond is a liberation.

127. The universe and events within it, are without meaning. There is no good news to
proclaim. An account of primeval events merely enables whoever has ears to hear it to
derive some comfort from understanding their true predicament in this material
universe.

128. None are victims of something called "evil". The Petrines seek to exonerate their
God by blaming man. But when Jehovah manufactured this cannibal coil within
eternity, he made it on the basis of laws which had nothing to do with right or wrong.
All are victims of the way the world is - the inexorable laws of nature.

129. It would be nonsense to say that the carnal man is "saved" by sacrifice. He has no
"self" to save.

130. Some ages may strive towards understanding in the manner of the animate man.
Such cultures may become transfused with enlightenment, but such enlightenment is the
gift of the few to the many.

131. The enemy is "in here" as well as "out there". Mark well how the Powers are at work
in our hearts. Admire them while spurning them. Never underestimate them: their
strength is armed with cunning. Yet bend beneath their blows, and so avoid hurt.

132. The most primitive religion seeks the renewal of nature by fertility. The more
advanced religion seeks the renewal of society by justice. The highest religion seeks the
transcendence of matter by Spirit.

133. If we cling to these notions of "good" and "justice" we merely increase the suffering
of the self. Leave good and evil behind with the self, and go to where no thing exists,
and yet All is.

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134. There is a question which you dare not ask because you know it is foohsh. Let me
frame it for you: "Where is God to be found?" It has been answered many a time by the
sages, but heard only by fools. God is within ourselves.

135. My aim is not to establish systems. My aim is to call forth those who share the
Gnosis, to summon the invisible community of knowledge and insight. 1 invite all the
Spiritual to celebrate here with me the Consciousness which we always have shared,
and always will, that we may enjoy it together at our Source in greater measure to all
eternity.

136. Struggle from the chrysalis of this world and take wing to regions which are
intimated only by yearning. Those who seek proof of the One need only to acknowledge
this yearning. Their despair is the harbinger of hope.

137. Marriage to the world is prostitution, in which the whore demands not only a fee,
but a retainer for her services, and the husband is client to his own pimp.

138. Notions of "good" are corrupted by consideration of the provisional, the transitory,
the self-serving. These weave the sticky thread of the illusory reality of this world.
Morality may be an instrument of prey for the freedom of the self.

139. That which overturns the iron necessity of matter is seen as a Destroyer by those in
thrall to the Powers. Men of knowledge, however, are able to read such events as signs
which are effective to the healing of the Spirit.

140. The land is ours; we are the kingdom. What need have we of a king?

142. If we cling to notions of "good" and "justice" we merely increase the suffering of the
self. Leave good and evil behind with the self, and go to where no thing exists, and yet
All is.

143. Discourse with one's fellow spiritual beings brings the purest pleasure this world
can offer: it is memories of youth and dreams of happy old age. For the spiritual man
knows that one day, no matter how long the term of the sentence, and how protracted
the torments inflicted by those who for a day lord it over him, he will return to his home
in the One, to be lost - and found - forever in the bliss of union.

144. Three things are necessary to start out on the path to enlightenment: first, a culture;
second, a religion; third, suffering. One is the soil, one the sunshine, the other the rain.
But the seed comes only from the One.

145. We perceive, we analyse, we interpret, we mould, we subjugate reality to ourselves.
And we say that the root of our systems is "God" - a god made in our own image. When
we worship this image, we worship ourselves.

146. Where, then, is Truth to be found? 1 can only tell you - since 1 can only use words
out of falsehood - where Truth is not to be found.

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147. The Eternal Being's Fullness is by nature apart from matter, but has become widely
scattered and briefly detained in the world because of an accident. Those who share the
Transcendent show their true natures by detachment from carnality and a compassion
for those who suffer false hope about the possibilities of this world.

148. The spirit suffers in flesh the emnity of the Powers. Our souls cry out at injury to the
flesh, but these injuries dissolve with the flesh that gave them birth. None are victims of
"evil". All are victims of the world.

149. We hear the cries, laldabaoth is powerless to overcome the iron laws which lead to
suffering and death.

150. The enlightened are so by nature.

151. Because the original Intuition cannot be denied or negated even under the sway of
idolatry, the true end of intelligence is perceived deep within the heart. Because it
cannot be denied, it expresses itself in human aesthetic activity. It is as a result of this
that Beauty may be found within the material world.

152. The message is an expression of the spiritual man's sublimity. Worship of the
messenger shows the psychic man's mendacity aided and abetted by the carnal man's
stupidity.

153. Transcendence of this world is not an experience open to all. Wisdom or
"enlightenment" derives from a perspective rather than an experience. Hence the quest
for enlightenment as an experience induced by meditation is fruitless.

154. Though there is more than one path to the goal, the ultimate aim and end of all true
Life is to transcend that illusion which we call the "self". The Way is not to give up one's
own "self" in order simply to be absorbed into another "self". Religion offers many such
illusory paths.

155. The benighted may not see the light, because their eyes have closed in the darkness.

156. laldabaoth believed himself to be supreme. In order to enlighten him (and
simultaneously to chastise him) the Pleroma had to reveal the Spiritual to the Material,
thereby causing some of the latter to be ensnared and temporarily abandoned by the
return of the Immaculate to the Fullness.

157. We hear the cries, laldabaoth is powerless to overcome the iron laws which lead to
suffering and death.

158. When laldabaoth manufactured this cannibal coil within eternity, he made it on the
basis of laws which had nothing to do with right or wrong. None are victims of
something called "evil". The criminal and victim are one. Such events may be purgatives
for the purification of Spirit, but pain refines the gold; it does not place it in the heart.

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159. Only those who know are saved - not from pain, but from the deeper torment and
waste of self-delusion.

160. The three kinds of men - carnal, animate and spiritual - exist because of the way that
the universe has come about, and not as a result of some capricious act of election on the
part of a demiurge.

161. If there is good news to be brought to the world concerning its redemption, its
messenger must speak the same language as the world and be at home with its ways.
The Gnostic, however, is a stranger and alien in the world. He can in no way proclaim a
message which will enable his hearers to be reconciled to the world.

162. There is comfort, nevertheless, for the Spiritual - and only the Spiritual - in knowing
(or rather, recognising, since he already knows) the cause of his exile, and the character
of his home. Reclining in the walled garden of the gathered, the Teacher brings the
purest pleasure of this world: shared memories of youth and dreams of labours past.
The sage brings news of home.

163. Man is mortal, but Pistis-Sophia can never die; Man is weak, but Pistis-Sophia has
mastery of all that endures.

164. Pistis-Sophia is not hedged by race or by class, by intelligence, language, gender or
age.

165. The carnal man is part of the material world. The animate man perceives that he is
part of this world and seeks either to alter or retain his position within it. To the spiritual
man, however, the natural world is a prison. But the spark can never be lost, though the
whole world fall back into confusion.

166. Carnal man is ignorant of the supreme being and will return to entirely to matter.
Meanwhile, ever limited by his nature, he clings to idols that may gratify his manifold
needs. For, in him matter is dominant. This dominance manifests itself in a
preoccupation with the consumption necessary to maintain material integrity. His desire
to bring order into matter is simply an expression of a desire to dominate it.

167. The Psychic may remove his self from the centre of things, and by so doing turn his
back on the world.

168. Spiritual man has the capacity to know fully the supreme being, and his ultimate
destiny is to enter into complete union with that supreme being; for spiritual man
uniquely within the material universe shares the nature of the supreme being.

169. The prime virtue of the spiritual man is detachment, and this leaves no mark for the
eyes of the world to behold.

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170. The difference between the Spiritual and the non-Spiritual is not simply one of
belief: the non-Spiritual is actually incapable of grasping what the Spiritual is talking
about.

171. The insights of the spiritual may be manifest as deeds, utterances or decrees. They
may be enshrined in histories, codes or rituals. Their form may be poetic, philosophical
or legislative. But beyond all these is the Word of enlightenment which comes from the
One.

172. The Carnal seek investment, not beauty.

173. The Carnal Man is subject to laldabaoth's laws. The Spiritual Man has to overcome
the world. But the Psychic Man strives actively to promote the principles on which the
world was founded, and thereby compounds its suffering.

174. The animate man who re-orders his universe may become a means for the Light to
shine in the darkness. And because this choice transcended nature, something of him
may be saved for re-birth further along the path to the One.

175. The spiritual man meets enlightenment as truth and is helped towards liberation.

176. Those who sit in judgment always find for themselves. Seek the spiritual man,
therefore, among those whom the world condemns.

177. For the spiritual man salvation is not an issue. The spark can never be lost, thought
he whole world fall back into confusion. The issue is liberation. The means of liberation
is knowledge.

178. The animate man meets enlightenment as mythos. This myth may enable him to
shape his life into the pattern of Truth, thus making way for the Logos.

179. Those who are heirs to the Truth are not recipients of some inscrutable "grace": they
participate in Truth by nature. The question then is not the root of the Creator's caprice,
but how the Heirs of Truth became trapped in matter.

180. The gifts given by the spiritual man are in themselves their own proof of value to
the discriminating, the recipient possessed of inbred taste. The carnal are like the vulgar
who need advice on how to furnish their house and are seeking

investment rather than beauty.

181. It may be that in some way which is beyond our comprehension the sacrifice made
by the carnal man creates a door (1 speak metaphorically) in matter for the emissary of
the Fullness to enter.

182. The insights of the spiritual may be focused into gems which attract the light,
although these jewels may be lodged in poor settings.

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183. Those who are non-Knowers will get no further than the outer portals; those who
Know are already within the inner sanctum.

184. Sophia entered the Void,
(The Void holds Matter;)
Sophia gave Nomos,

And he gave rise to Flesh.
Logos entered Matter,
(Matter holds the World;)
Faith turns it to Vision,
Vision transcends Sense.
Conscience entered Flesh,
(Flesh holds Man;)
Faith turns it to Agape,
Agape transcends Self.
Gnosis entered Men,
(Man holds the Gnostic;)
Gnosis will become the One.
The One transcends All.

185. The One willed Sophia.
Her descent produced Matter.
Her will made Nomos.

Nomos endowed some Matter with Sense.

Sense made Flesh; Flesh made Self.

Sophia's return to the One produced Logos,

And Logos the World.

Logos developed Sense into Conscience.

It raised Man from the beasts.

Those who join Sophia in her journey

In an act of Faith

Turn Logos into Vision,

And Conscience into Agape.

186. The Fullness, not matter, is widely scattered.
Detained in the world, not sent.

Some minds know beyond their self.
See forces at work in their flesh.
These knowing ones seek communion
To re-unite the All, their source.

187. O truly, you are blessed among the blessed.
If you have seen and heard and understood!

188. Our world was made by laldabaoth.
We name the parts

With the tongues he gave us.

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His is the Word.

And through it the Truth is debased.

189. Though there is more than one path
The aim and end of all true Life

Is to transcend that illusion
Which we call the "self".
(The Way is not
To give up one's own "self"
For another "self".)

190. The religions follow false paths.
The light needs no refraction

To show its glory.

But the benighted can not see it.

Because their eyes have closed

In the darkness. And yet

In those whose eyes are pierced by the light

The flame already flickering grows.

The psychic also may become a means

For the Light to shine:

When his choice transcends nature.

Something may be saved for rebirth

Along the path to the One.

191. We must go on

To what has no beginning
And has no end.
We are heirs to what is eternal.
And trustees of a deathless prize.

THE PRE-APOSTOLIC CONGREGATION OF JESUS GNOSIS

The real betrayer of Jesus was Peter.

Jesus was a Jewish reformer, the logical outcome of whose teachings found expression in
the teachings of Gnostic which were suppressed by the "apostolic" heirs of Peter. Peter's
prime interest was power - the power that derived from being the principal follower of
the Messiah and one of the twelve leaders of a re-constituted Israel. Unfortunately for
Peter's ambitions, Jesus himself never claimed to be the Messiah. And to make matters
worse, Peter's efforts to promote Jesus as the Messiah only resulted in Jesus's
ignominious death. Peter and his henchmen James and John therefore had to fabricate
certain incidents to legitimise their claims: the Raising of Jairus's Daughter, the
Transfiguration, the Last Supper, the Agony in the Garden and, above all, the
Resurrection. By such stories, attested by three male witnesses, they were able to
perpetrate the fiction of a man who had power over death, whose divine authority was
legitimised by Moses and Elijah, whose suffering and death was part of God's plan, and

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who was vindicated by being raised from death. The story of the betrayal by Judas (ie.
Thomas) and the tales of the chastening of "doubting" Thomas (ie. Judas) were invented
as a polemic against those disciples of the party of Judas the Twin (Greek "Didymos",
Aramaic "Thomas") who dissented from Peter's lies and misrepresentations.

What was Jesus's real mission? His aim was to gather the true Israel. The True Israelites
were those who, whatever their material circumstances, had existed as the Chosen in the
mind of God since before the beginning of time. Wealth was no indicator of
righteousness; neither was power. Ritual purity was no guarantee of salvation, or good
works such as fasting and sacrifice. To the true God spoken of by Jesus they counted as
nothing. The focus of this newly-gathered Israel was to be the Herodian Temple,
"cleansed" by Jesus and his followers in preparation for the Jubilee of the 49* (7X7)
anniversary of its founding. It was this "messianic" action - the making ready of the
outer courts for those apparently "cursed" with uncleanness by Yahweh - which
ultimately sealed his fate with the Jewish establishment. But what of Jesus's suffering -
what is its true meaning?

Jesus's own sufferings were meaningless except insofar as they showed forth the
meaninglessness of suffering in this world - for is not true suffering by definition pain
without meaning? If you are in pain and you don't know why, you suffer. If, on the
other hand, there is a purpose to your pain, then the only issue is endurance. The one
who cannot endure meaningful pain is a coward. The one who can endure it is brave.
The one who endures pain himself in order to reduce the pain of others is a hero. Only a
fool, however, would endure meaningless pain if it could be avoided. One who is God,
or is privy to the mind of God, must know the meaning (as distinct from the scientific
cause) of everything. He should also not be a fool. He therefore willingly embraces pain
that has meaning while avoiding suffering. He is brave if the pain is great; he is a hero if
his pain benefits others; but he is a fool if he wills suffering on himself. If the God-Man
venerated by the Petrine Church suffered willingly, he is a fool - and God is a fool. If he
heroically endures pain, he is great, but does not suffer. The Christ of the "apostles" can
not suffer; in telling his tale, therefore, it is necessary to multiply the pains he endures:
by such sorrows is his heroism augmented - a heroism befitting a king.

But is it possible to ascribe another kind of heroism to Jesus, a heroism that entails
genuine suffering? When confronted by the meaningless pain of others we make choices
as to how we react to it. If we choose not to ignore it we may ascribe a meaning to it in
order to alleviate our own anguish in the face of another's pain. One sure way of doing
this is to see another's pain as self-inflicted. The meaning of their pain is that they earned
it; one way or another, by karma or by retribution, they brought it upon themselves.
This "meaning" alleviates our pain in beholding suffering, even as it adds to the pain of
those who suffer. Who can accept that they have deserved their pain? The sense of a lack
of justice only adds to meaningless pain, to suffering. But the one who cares about the
suffering of others - and why should he, unless he is a real hero? - empathises with
meaningless pain. He rejects any "meaning" which denigrates the sufferer. He does
what he can to reduce or palliate their meaningless pain. But in so doing - and this
augments his heroism - he increases his own pain, his anguish in the face of suffering,
by undermining the meaning which reduces his own suffering. Jesus took this stance.

Phillip Medhurst 2009. Page 44 of 56

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which needed to be expressed within the terms of his Judaism as an end to retribution, a
denial of messianic expectation, and a new sacrifice prior to a destination-less exodus.

Engagement with the suffering of others without indulging in self-palliative
interpretation of it, thereby bringing empathic suffering upon oneself, is a truly
altruistic and selfless stance. (The ultimate test of its altruism is whether the person in
solidarity with the suffering can also dis-engage when this is what is required to benefit
the object of their concern. The person who is not altruistic will often refuse to disengage
because it does not serve their hidden motive.) By declaring this to be the root of
morality, expressed in the key word "agape" ("love") and placing it firmly in a religious
framework, Jesus and his prophetic forbears are more than suggesting that the path to
fulfilment is trod only through the abandonment of self by immersion in the plight of
the helpless. Morality is in fact the means by which the self is transcended, and it is at
this point that the messages of Jesus and Gautama converge.

Within the terms of his contemporary Judaism, the stance adopted by the Galilean rabbi
required three theological innovations which, if allowed to go unchallenged, would
have destroyed the foundations of the religion whatever its sectarian manifestation,
whether Pharisaic, Sadducaic or Essene. The first was to sever the connection between
pain and sin by declaring a jubilee of divine forgiveness. 1 believe that the jubilee
announced by Jesus was unconditional. (The seven-times-seventh anniversary of the
foundation of Herod's Temple probably provided the justification for this.) The
condition of a required "repentance" was developed by the Petrine faction after Jesus's
death - after all, who is inclined to repent? And why? Presumably the inclination and
inspiration to do so is dependent on the unfathomable grace of Jehovah. The jubilee
would in fact have acknowledged that absolution of a debtor is not dependent on the
debtor's worthiness of absolution.

But if God forgives unconditionally, why is there pain in the world? - surely not because
God is tardy, incompetent or sadistic in not lifting the sentence of a reprieved felon? If
God is not to be decried, then the logical inference is that there is no inevitable cause-
effect relationship between sin and apin; or, if there is, God - being all-powerful - can
suspend it at will. A true God need not be a slave to his own justice. But if the
unfortunate are not blameworthy, neither are the fortunate worthy of praise - a
proposition intolerable to the Jewish orthodoxy of Jesus's day.

Or course, only a person who had God's very own authority in its fullness could declare
such a jubilee - such as the Messiah. 1 do not believe that Jesus claimed such authority,
or indeed that he claimed to be the Messiah (except in the imaginings of the Petrine
faction). There is no record of such a claim in the Petrine Gospels apart from the suspect
story of Peter's declaration at Caesarea Philippi (after the equally suspect story of the
Transfiguration), and Jesus nowhere uses the title of himself and his mission. This is
because Jesus was not concerned with the issue of authority. He was driven to declare a
jubilee as the theological expression of his over-riding sense of solidarity with the
suffering - those supposedly cursed by God, and therefore excluded from the
community by their inability to fulfil the obligations of the ritual law.

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So, if Jesus's pains were embraced deliberately as part of a divine plan can it be said that
the Messiah proclaimed by Peter really suffered? Rather, just as the Israelites
slaughtered their new-born livestock before leaving Egypt and following Moses into the
desert, so the true followers of Jesus abandoned the Messianic dream that died with the
death of Jesus. This is the true meaning of the pascha effected by the death of Jesus of
Nazareth. If Jesus colluded with this "sacrifice" - and we have no way of knowing
whether he did or not - then the priest who offered it was not Jesus himself, but Judas.

The essential message of the Nazarene was corrupted by his disciples, and in particular
by those who called themselves "apostles"; and above all by Peter, James and John.
Their assertion, motivated by a desire for power, that Jesus was the Jewish "Messiah"
sealed his fate (which they blamed on Judas Iscariot), led to the intrusion of the
miraculous, and created the entity known as "The Holy Spirit". These in turn have led to
the creation of a "church" which has all the vices of the institutional Judaism which
Jesus set out to reform by his words and actions. Now that Judaism and Christianity are
drenched in the blood of the innocent they can be seen for what they are. The time has
come for those who share with Jesus the nature of the Gnosis to declare the Truth in its
pristine purity.

THE CONSOLAMENTUM

Gather at an agreed time in a private place.

Attend on all those gathered with an ewer of water and a bowl. Pour water upon the
head, hands and feet of all present. During the cleansing recite the following: "Be thou
washed in that which is without colour, odour and savour, and be cleansed thereby of
all that is seen, smelled or tasted."

Dry all and say: "1 wipe away all that is warm and all that shall be cold. May you be
cleansed of all that has touched you and of all that you have touched."

Then rend the napkin and say: "The veil of our impurities shall be torn from top to
bottom. The upper realm shall be opened for us in the lower realm, so that we might
enter into the pure realm of Truth."

Remove all garments and say, "1 put aside all worldly things."

A white cloth shall be tied around the temples and forehead. (For modesty's sake, the
cloth shall hang to the ground.) The crown of the head shall have chrism poured over it
with the words, "1 seal you into knowledge, which is life." The Spiritual shall then dress
in a white robe.

Take unleavened bread and place it on the table with these words: "May the seeds which
grew secretly, and bore the fruit of knowledge, and were milled by the Powers, now be
gathered into one bread."

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Then take unfermented juice of the grape and place it on the table, and say this: "May
the fruit of the one vine, which was not fermented by worldly passion when trampled
by the feet of the Powers, now be collected into one cup."

Then take olive oil, and pouring it over the bread, say: "May the fruit of the many
branches of the tree of knowledge, which when crushed by the Powers brings forth
light, imbue this loaf with healing and strength."

Consume the bread and wine with the words, "We are one bread" and, "We are one
cup".

Conclude with the kiss of peace.

APOCRYPHON

Prologue

Four-times-four centuries out of view.
First born, then buried, then born anew,
Seth was my father, Eugnostos my groom,
Gongessos my midwife, Charaxio my tomb.
Through six-times-ten summers the dust-cloud of gold
Released at my re-birth has brightly rolled
Around the globe - the Nile's gift of reeds
Kindled by knowledge and sowing light's seeds.
Though delivered third-hand to your perception,
1 am, nonetheless, the Immaculate Conception.

1.

The One is one. No one can be His peer.

Unseen, beyond all sight, and pure - beyond

Whatever can decay or be corrupt.

Think not 'divine', since He is more

Than 'God'; supreme above whatever is.

This Spirit needs no other lesser one.

For all that now exists exists in Him.

Since He does not persist in time. He needs

No life that throbs with temporality.

He is ineffable, entirely pure.

Not limited - what limit could extend? -

He is beyond all these. Not physical -

What body could enclose His boundless might?

None should ask, 'What is His quantity?'

Nor should enquire, 'What is His quality?'

To comprehend His kind. Not one among

A type. He is alone, unique, without

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A peer. For Him the ages do not run.

His Being unmeasured by the temporal.

Location in a place, implies a place

A time doled out. But He is without need:

There is no prior one from whom He may

Receive, and none for whom He yearns within

His perfect sphere of light. He contemplates

His purity alone. As Life itself.

No One but He gives life. Beyond Decay,

Beyond all striving's aim; before all speech.

And all that can be named. The head and heart

Of all that truly is, from Him all flows

To all if all exists apart from Him -

As His beneficence has said it should.

2.

He did not strive to overcome a lack.

Since He lacks nothing, perfect in His light.

For, limitless, who once could limit Him?

Unsearchable, what compass could aspire

To measure one who is immeasurable?

Invisible, no-one has gazed on Him.

He is eternal, since He always was.

Ineffable, no-one has read His mind.

He is unnamed, beyond all register.

His light unguaged. His state immaculate.

He is the One who contemplates Himself,

The source, the spring of living water, pure.

That issues into all the spirit realms.

In all directions He beholds His face

Within the pure reflection of this pool.

The living water rippling all around.

Yet self-perception - She who was conceived

Within the brilliance of His brightness - came

To birth, the primal potency before

The All, begotten from a pregnant mind.

She was the perfect Forethought of the All -

Her light shone like His light - the perfect power.

The image of the One who is unseen.

The virgin spirit perfect in all things.

She was His thought. His image; She became

The womb of everything, preceding her

Who thought a thought proceeding from herself

And not from anything brought from the One.

3.

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This ageless offspring now approached the One,

Requesting Him to grant a perfect child:

The Gnosis. He agreed. And instantly

The Gnosis issued forth, and stood at once

In rank with Forethought, born to mother true.

Who by her wish had helped to bring him forth.

The One whose sight blinds mortal eye was glad

To see effulgent fruit swell on His bough.

And He anointed him with chrism pressed

From His own goodness, and from His own store

Of overflowing virtue's essence, pure.

And thus endowed, he waited on his source.

And added to the glory that no eye

Can see of his progenitor, and His

Prevenient grace, the matrix of the All.

And Gnosis asked for Truth. The One agreed.

And swift on His consent that Truth came forth.

And joined the heavenly rank of all who dwell

In thought that needs no Word. But Truth would speak.

And so the Word then issued forth and joined

The sphere in which Truth lives and moves and has

Its being. And from that Word, imbued with Light

And Life, came what could turn a Word to Deed.

By active Word Sophia came to be.

For she desired a thing exclusive to

Herself. This thought was not inert, and so

It reified: short of perfection, shorn

Of that ideal beauty typical

Of her who gave him birth, a thwarted clone

Of one true-born of heavenly gene and stock.

All self -engendered, selfishly conceived.

4.

The One had not engaged or wed with her
In union divine; no spouse or sire
Had courted her consent, no nuptial bliss
Had blessed the product of chaste amity;
For what she willed was without conference
Of family, or consummation of
Conjugal love; concupiscence instead.
Without relationship, a fantasy impure.
And alien to the hymns its Mother sang
When in accord with her pure ancestry.
In this her wish came true: a monster formed,
A snake with lion-jaws and eyes that blazed

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GNOSIS

With horrid fire of self-will. She cast

Him out, beyond the zone of purity

Where he might not be seen by all her peers:

From Wisdom born, in ignorance to dwell.

She gave her child a name, as it befits

A ruler who inherits a great power:

It is laldabaoth. Matter's Prince.

laldabaoth strutted forth, and marched

From place to place, far from the place where he

Was born. And annexing still more he formed

Self-glorifying spheres of fire that still

Flare on unto this day in heaven's dome.

Then raising his right hand - his arrogance -

He masturbated, got Authorities,

Egged on by fantasies of unknown realms.

And as Sophia's light within him shone

And gave him unique power: because of this

He blasphemously called himself a god.

5.

So he created seven Angels, each with Powers

Sufficient for a year of days, and all

In mimicry of that intuited

From what was long before. But those whom he

Begot, those children of the ignorance

And dark, lacked intimation of the source

And principle from which all things had come.

A week of angels this way rules the world.

But laldabaoth, who is Saklas, has

A multitude of faces, more than all.

So he can show himself in any face.

Just as he wills. He shares his nature with

Them - everything except the pristine power

That he drew from his Mother, Wisdom: that

He would not share. This made him cosmic lord.

Conferring - as he thought - divinity

Upon his minion powers. And their "god"

Gave each a place to dwell, a so-called "heaven".

Their urge to rule instilled makes them believe

That they are gods; but Truth is not deceived:

Their bestial natures are revealed to those

Who know. Their god-like attributes are part

And parcel of a fantasy dreamed up

By Saklas; but illusion will not have

Its way - except with those who dwell within

The dream. The light of Truth will chase away

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GNOSIS

The mist, dissolve its shifting, swirling shapes
Which frightened those who were deceived, like masks
Pinned onto wind-puffed cloaks. Such images
Invoke some dread reality, from which
They draw their fearful influence and power.

6.

And so it was with these, for Saklas shaped

His schemes upon a kind of memory

Of what he had experienced in the womb

Of what is truly real. And when he saw

The world he had created all layed out.

And gazed upon the panoply which he

Had spun, enveloping his nakedness.

His tongue clapped in his bell, and said:

'1 am a jealous God. There is no God

But me.' And so in his stupidity

He gave the game away, and told his friends

There was a God who spurned divinity

The title to this insane jealousy.

The Mother then became aware of her

Deficiency, and how her light had dimmed.

For when she saw her blemishes within

The light of the Pleroma, she then drew

Across her face a veil of darkness: she

No longer could return her consort's smile

Without deception, and be unabashed.

Her holy fear caused her to hover at

The gate of Truth, unable to go in.

For when her offspring in his arrogance

Had taken power from his Mother he

Was ignorant of any provenance

And thought her womb was all that there had been.

Infatuated with his handiwork.

He placed himself upon a pedestal.

An idol to himself. And so she turned;

And so was heard in her humility.

7.

For now she knew what kind of thing he was.
And how he lacked perfection's symmetry.
Up to her source she raised her tear-filled eyes.
He gave the consent, and so a healing flood
Of cleansing holiness washed over her
To make her whole; for Providence agreed

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GNOSIS

To supervise her in austerity
Within a place of penance set aside
Beyond carnaUty and snares of sin.
Where she could re-acquire her modesty.
And then a voice came forth: Behold the Man!'
And when the chieftain of the Powers heard
He had no inkling of from whence it came.
At once, however - ignorant or not -
They were aware - to their damnation - that
There was a holy, perfect Source above:
The Mother-Father, Parents who brought forth
All that there is, and whose benificence
Was now displayed in dazzling Anthropos.
A shiver went through laldabaoth's world.
And rippled through its fundamental sands.
And in the sky the purest element.
Transfigured by the bright epiphany.
Revealed that Truth is Beauty, Beauty Truth.
And so the carnal gang beheld a light
Infuse the cavern of the world below.
Their eyes were opened, and they saw revealed
The shimmering glory of the Son of Man.
The upstart god addressed his fawning clan:
'Come let us make a thing like what we saw
To give some aim and purpose to our plans.'

8.

So each and every one of them then gave
A little something from his psychic pouch.
And made an entity from out themselves.
Each adding layer on layer of plastic stuff.
Along the lines of what they had just seen.
Thus a reflection creaturely became.
And looked just like the sole original -
The perfect Anthropos. And then they said,
'Now let us call him Adam, that his name
May light our high road to imperium.'
And so this wondrous work, this body came
About - not yet of flesh, but harbouring
A vital force that tapped the secrets of
Their universe, their sevenfold harmony.
Encapsulated microcosmically
In sense and a potential agency.
And yet there was something in short supply:
The thing had no vocation to fulfil.

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GNOSIS

And thus no will to try, and lay inert.

No aspiration graced the dawning day.

Sophia wanted to retrieve the power

Which she had given to her bastard son.

In innocence she came and humbly asked

The Mother-Father of transcendent All

Who is most merciful. And He decreed

That Gnosis should go down to that cold place

Where ignorance prevails. His mission was

To liberate the power from Saklas' breast

Sophia's gift - by sowing in his mind

A seed of thought which he, unwittingly.

Would think his own, and thereby bring forth Life.

And so this thought came unsolicited

To laldabaoth: 'Blow into his mouth

Your holy breath, and what you made will rise.'

And so, unwittingly, the demiurge

Released the prison door: the pneuma fled

From out those boastful lips, and found a home

By transmigrating to the psychic breast

Of Adam, tabernacling in a shrine

They patterned on what they had briefly glimpsed

Of holiest of holy from afar.

That body stretched its limbs and waxed in strength.

Transfigured by the glory of true life.

Elsewhere, within the stony hearts of all

The Powers the bitter weed of envy sprang.

For they believed this fragrant bloom was fed

By them - that their hearts' blood had soaked the soil

From whence it sprang, and that it was their own

Vitality that ran along the veins

Of that bright Man. Their flaws exposed by his

Wise luminosity, they cast him in

A pit, and heaped around him all their dung.

The heavy execrescence of their days.

So Adam came within the mortal sphere.

Coiled there and then of base material.

Engendered from desire within the dark.

Enlivened by a soulless breath, mere air.

Thus was our fetter forged, our dungeon made.

By which these bandits now enslaved the Man,

Who, in the darkness, soon forgot the light

And grew accustomed to the stench of death.

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10.

This was the fall to end all falls, the end

Confounding all true ends. And yet not quite:

The One, then brimming with parental love.

At once felt pity for His spirit-kind

Which Saklas had unknowingly released.

But which still wandered in the orbit of

The Powers, an orphan of a kingly line

Without a regent, subject to the whim

Of upstart tyrants thrall themselves to time.

And so He sent in His beneficence

A helper for Sophia's hard-pressed power -

The refugee in Adam's breast - a light

From Light, a living icon of true Life,

The one called Zoe, Adam's ghostly nurse

And teacher, toiling at his side, to show

The way to his beginning and his end.

And how he fell, and how again might rise.

This Eva nestled in the new Man's heart.

Out of the Powers' sight, that Wisdom might

With healing grace thus find her lost way home.

And that Life was the Light of men. And so

Now Adam shone, refulgent in this light.

With rainbow-aura, envy of the Powers

Who made him. And his mind outshone them all.

The Mother-Father, rich in mercy. One

Who shows concern although He has no need.

He sent us Zoe, nurturing the power

That dwells within the heart of His own race.

And those who turn their face unto the light.

And Saklas, when he saw a light had shed.

Found ways to make this earth a darker place.

11.

For when he realised that we surpassed

Him in our loftiness of consciousness.

He wanted to appropriate our mind.

Not wise enough himself to realise

That his desire was well beyond his grasp.

He made a plan with his authorities.

And by incestuous union with their dam,

Heimarmene was made. Thus the supreme

And cruellest jailer then came into being.

With her array of manacles and chains

Called "times" and "seasons", "moments", "ages", "dates".

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Those fetters from which none could be exempt

Outside the All, nor gods nor mortal men.

Now doomed to live within a space of time

That was the past, or will be days to come -

But never now, the present never seized.

With minds obssessed with what will be and what

There might have been, with schemes and plans stretched to

Infinity, but that eternal "now"

Beyond their ken. And hence the consciousness

Of the Beyond eluded us again.

And furthermore Man was engenderised,.

By which the husband, stronger than the wife

In limb, for males might claim a spiritual

Domain irrelevant to Truth derived

From high authority - for Saklas knew

He must divide and rule. And then he cast

Them out of Paradise, and caused the sky

To frown, and made the ground to freeze, and forced

The couple to seek shelter in dark caves.

12.

And Saklas gazed on Eve, whose graceful limbs
Were bathed in gnostic glamour from above.
And lust flared in his heart, and a desire
To penetrate that awesome mystery.
And colonise her belly with his seed.
So Saklas raped poor Eve, and in due course
Two sons were born, and Cain and Abel named;
And thanks to Saklas, these his bastards were
Endowed with seed to replicate themselves.
The psychic and the carnal; one inspired
By wind, the other by Sophia's ghost.
Meanwhile, within a place of Life the Man
Called Adam met the Woman Eve, and each
Encountering each within their very core
Begot the Son of Man called Seth, the true
Descendant of Sophia in the line
Of Anthropos. This son was blessed by those
On high, and his anointed offspring to
Eternity, for these are called to dwell
Within perfection's courts, and taught to spell
Their names inscribed upon the scroll of Life,
While monuments to flesh collapse upon
The soil of sin. For those who truly live
Cannot abide the dark, and they must light
A lamp and visit all the catacombs

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Where the enhghtened have been forced to dwell
And lead them to the sunlight up above.
Thus shall the righteous gather, and assist
Each other on the way, that true mankind
Might find its rightful place within the All,
And holiness, made whole, might be complete.

Phillip Medhurst 2009. Page 56 of 56