Chapter 46. Gnosis and the Demiurge: Nag Hammadi, Sethians and Valentinians

For about sixteen centuries the Gnostics were known mainly through the books written to refute them. That changed in December 1945, when a find in Upper Egypt returned their own texts. This chapter reconstructs the main Gnostic movements of the second and third centuries: Sethian myth and its ignorant creator, Valentinian sacramental practice, and Gnostic anthropology. It then turns to the polemic that set Gnostics against the emerging Catholic Church, the scholarly dispute over whether “Gnosticism” is a valid category, and the modern revival in Jung and Thomas Mann. The textual basis is Marvin Meyer’s Nag Hammadi Scriptures and Ioan Petru Culianu’s history of the Western dualist gnoses. The esoteric and polemical readings of Luke Myers, Manly P. Hall and John Lamb Lash stand beside them and are attributed to their authors.

The discovery

James M. Robinson’s essay in Meyer’s edition describes the Nag Hammadi Scriptures as “a collection of thirteen papyrus codices—bound books, not scrolls—that were buried near the city of Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt” [Meyer (ed.), The Nag Hammadi Scriptures, #69839, “What Are the Nag Hammadi Scriptures?”]. The Berlin codex (Papyrus Berolinensis 8502) already held duplicates of the Secret Book of John and another tractate. Codex Tchacos came to light more recently. With the 1945 discovery, “for the first time in more than fifteen hundred years, scholars could open and read other gospels—the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Truth, the Gospel of Philip” [#69839]. The codices contain Christian, Sethian, Valentinian and Hermetic material; the Hermetic tractates of Codex VI were treated in the previous chapter. Robert Lloyd describes how “an Arab countryman accidentally discovered a large collection of Gnostic codices” and says the find “became responsible for an unprecedented amount of interest in the early Christian tradition usually known as Gnosticism” [Lloyd, The Knowledge That Leads to Wholeness, #62400, ch. 20]. Myers notes that the complete English translation, “The Nag Hammadi Library, published in 1977, is a result of this effort” [Myers, Gnostic Visions, #70923, ch. 10].

Sethian myth: Sophia, Yaldabaoth and the archons

The Sethian myth is the best documented, and it centres on a fault in the divine world. In the Secret Book of John the Wisdom (Sophia) of the Pleroma brings forth, without her consort, a misshapen offspring, Yaldabaoth. He creates the archons and the lower heavens. Meyer’s introduction notes that the first part of the revelation “concludes with Yaldabaoth’s boast, ‘I am a jealous god and there is no other god beside me’ (II 13, 8–9)”. The text itself says: “When he saw creation surrounding him, and the throng of angels around him that had come forth from him, he said to them, ‘I am a jealous god and there is no other god beside me'” [#69839, Secret Book of John]. Here the God of Genesis becomes an ignorant demiurge quoting Isaiah. On the Origin of the World presents the same scene. The ruler says “I am God, and there is no other but me”, and Pistis replies: “You are wrong, Samael—which means ‘blind god.’ An enlightened, immortal human exists before you” [#69839, On the Origin of the World].

Meyer’s introduction describes The Nature of the Rulers (Hypostasis of the Archons) as two narratives. The first (86,20-93,13) “gives a Sethian interpretation of the opening chapters of Genesis (1–6)”, with the Father of the All, Incorruptibility and Pistis Sophia among its characters [#69839, introduction to The Nature of the Rulers]. Culianu retells the episode from the Berlin codex in Romanian. Sophia “becomes aware of the evil (kakia) that follows from Ialdabaoth’s apostasy. Full of shame, she hides in the darkness of Ignorance, prey to chaotic motions (BG p. 130 Till). Then Ialdabaoth-the-Arrogant (Authades) learns of the existence of his Mother, but continues to ignore what is above her” [Culianu, Gnozele dualiste ale Occidentului, #87087, “Evanghelia Egiptenilor”]. Culianu identifies two founding dualist myths, that of “the Mother who errs” and that of her Son, “the ignorant and boastful Demiurge of this world”. Because the Demiurge’s “double characteristic is to be ignorant and boastful, arrogance being the logical consequence of the feeling of his uniqueness”, most versions say “he completely ignores his origin” [#87087]. Culianu’s larger project is a typology of dualism. It sorts dualisms into eschatological or dialectical according to whether the conflict ends or repeats, and it reads the dualist gnoses from antiquity to the medieval Cathars as one system “generated by the same premises” [#87087]. In the same tradition the archons, seeing “the spark of light that shines in Adam”, decide “to shut him in matter forever, creating for him… the physical body” [#87087].

Valentinian sacraments and Sethian rites

The Valentinians formed a Christian school rather than a separate religion. Valentinus (c. 100-c. 165) taught in Alexandria and then in Rome. He divided humanity into pneumatics, psychics and hylics, and his followers, including Heracleon and Ptolemy, “continued to consider themselves orthodox” [Wikipedia: Valentinus (Gnostic)]. The Gospel of Philip, which Meyer’s edition calls predominantly Valentinian, speaks in a sacramental language. It names five mysteries: baptism, chrism, Eucharist, redemption and bridal chamber. One passage reads: “Anyone who goes down into the water and comes up without receiving anything and says, ‘I am a Christian,’ has borrowed the name. But one who receives the Holy Spirit has the name as a gift”. The bridal chamber is explained in these words: “If the female had not separated from the male, the female and the male would not have died… Christ came to heal the separation that was from the beginning and reunite the two” [#69839, Gospel of Philip 64,22-31; 70,9-22].

Myers’ chapter on Gnostic ritual describes a Sethian baptismal sequence “which the texts often designate by the term ‘the Five Seals'”. He concludes that the Five Seals “were a five step ritual purification process” [Myers, Gnostic Visions, #70923, ch. 5 “Sethian Baptism”]. He goes further and argues for a “Gnostic Cup of Visions”. In his account the cup of the monad in the Hermetic texts and the “living waters” of Sethian texts both point to a visionary drink. He proposes that “if suitable psychoactive ingredients can be identified”, a theory “can be built to uncover evidence for the use of these substances in the visionary ritual experiences of the Gnostic and Hermetic traditions” [#70923, ch. 5-6]. In chapters 7–9 he names the candidate as Peganum harmala. He traces it through the Zoroastrian haoma and suggests that Ephedra later replaced the “more controversial and psychoactive plant Peganum Harmala” in the Zoroastrian rite during periods of persecution. He then links harmala to Gnosticism and the Mandaeans in “Identifying the Gnostic Sacrament” [#70923, chs. 7-9]. This is Myers’ own thesis.

Body, soul and spirit

Gnostic anthropology split the human being into three parts. The point is summarised in an unexpected place, the guide to a medical compilation in the library, Cancer Is A Fungus. In a section on the soul-body problem it contrasts “the well-defined Gnostic trichotomy of spirit, psyche, and body with the intermediate stance of Christian orthodoxy, which views soul-body separation as temporary and unnatural” [Cancer Is A Fungus (compilation), #63306, guide chunk 44 “Philosophical Dichotomies and the Soul-Body Problem”]. The orthodox hope for bodily resurrection thus stood against the Gnostic hope for the spirit’s escape. The Valentinian triad of pneumatics, psychics and hylics turned the same division into a ranking of persons [Wikipedia: Valentinus (Gnostic)].

Heresiology and the politics of suppression

Until 1945 the Gnostics were known chiefly through Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian and Epiphanius, and those authors shaped the picture. The chapter on the Gnostic Sophia in Carl Olson’s anthology warns that “Gnostic systems as we find them in the Nag Hammadi codices and the church fathers flourished on amalgamation and complexity”, and that “one cannot expect to find some single Gnostic Urmythos”. It adds in a note that patristic authors present Ptolemy “as Valentinus’s successor because they seek to make the Gnostic movement fit into a single chain of traditions”, citing Lüdemann [Olson (ed.), The Book of the Goddess, #39988, chapter on the Gnostic Sophia and n. 5]. Tertullian’s story that Valentinus turned heretic out of pique at losing a bishopric is rejected by “few modern historians” [Wikipedia: Valentinus (Gnostic)].

Manly P. Hall, writing as an esotericist, reads the polemic as persecution. The Gnostic teachers “have been men of exceptional brilliance, for they were singled out by the Church Fathers as the objects of particular and continued persecution”. Simon Magus “was subjected to an especially spiteful and unchristian tirade of abuse” [Hall, Wisdom of the Knowing Ones, #70964, “Gnosticism, the Key to Esoteric Christianity”]. Hall suggests that “Gnosticism may have originated in the Syrian teachings of Simon Magus”, and notes that the Fathers “seemed better informed on heresies than orthodoxies” [#70964]. Myers’ chapter 10 puts the conflict in institutional terms. Its sections are “Early Christian Conflict”, “Christian Persecution”, “Two churches”, “Extraction of Gnostic Rituals” and “The Destruction of Gnosticism” [#70923, ch. 10]. His thesis is that the orthodox church took over Gnostic rites while destroying the movement.

John Lamb Lash makes the strongest charge, writing from an avowedly Pagan and Sophianic standpoint. He sets out to “recover the Sophianic vision of the Pagan Mysteries”. Writing of Caesar’s destruction at Alexandria, he says it “dramatically demonstrated the license to destroy Pagan writings with impunity, and every Christianized Roman emperor followed his example”. Alesia (52 BCE) and Alexandria (47 BCE) were for him “the two definitive acts of political and intellectual genocide in Pagan antiquity” [Lash, Not in His Image, #64168]. In Hypatia’s lifetime, he writes, the dominant story “crystallized in favor of a patriarchal scheme of divine redemption, stamped with the imprimatur of Roman Empire. The authority of the off-planet deity suited imperial lust for power to a T. The fourth century saw the imposition of the death penalty on Pagan religion and heretical schism” [#64168]. In Lash’s account political power and theology work together: the Church allied with the empire (whose religious politics are traced in Chapter 44) suppresses the Sophia myth because it threatens the claim of a single sovereign god.

The pagan critique: Plotinus

Opposition did not come only from the Church. Plotinus wrote a treatise against the Gnostics (Ennead II.9), and Nock observes: “From Plotinus—or from Amelius—the opposition of Neoplatonism and gnosticism was clear: and many of the arguments used would be applicable to Catholic Christianity” [Nock, The Development of Paganism in the Roman Empire (CAH XII ch. 12), #60218, §VI]. Grimstad, summarising Hans Jonas, likewise stresses “the distinction between the catastrophic character of the Gnostic system and the closely related Neoplatonic system” [Grimstad, Thomas Mann and Gnosticism (Introduction), #44037]. Pagan philosophers and Catholic bishops thus shared one ground: the cosmos is good and its maker is not ignorant. This anticipates the Neoplatonism treated in the next chapter.

Is “Gnosticism” a real category?

Kirsten Grimstad sets out the two sides of the modern debate. One side holds that “in stamping out Gnosticism, Christianity lost the radiance and vitality that accompanies the individual’s experience of God”. On the other side, “in Rethinking Gnosticism: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (1996), Michael Williams contends that ‘Gnosticism’ as constructed by historians of religion is so rife with contradictions” that the category should be abandoned [Grimstad, #44037, part 6]. Olson’s anthology makes a related point when it says that many scholars define Gnosticism as “a particular hermeneutic, a radical reversal and revaluation of traditional symbols” rather than a single religion [#39988]. Culianu takes a middle position. He keeps “dualist gnoses” as a family of mythic transformations generated by shared premises, not as a single church [#87087].

Modern reception: Jung and Thomas Mann

The modern revival of Gnosticism began before Nag Hammadi. Grimstad traces “the first wave of the modern revival of Gnosticism” through European Aestheticism into “popular esoteric schools”. She reads a “Gnostic subtext in Doktor Faustus” and starts from the observation that “the first figure associated with the name Faust was none other than the legendary Simon Magus” [Grimstad, #44037]. Mann’s novel is set against Germany’s descent into National Socialism, and Grimstad treats the fate of Leverkühn, “loved but cursed”, as Mann’s judgement on a Gnostic-aesthetic sensibility in German culture [#44037]. Lloyd reads Gnostic myth through Jung. He writes that the Gnostics “realized that the Demiurge isn’t necessarily evil; rather he is simply deluded, ignorant of the facts of his own existence”. Because “the god image reflects the psychology of the human person”, the Demiurge “is the cause of tremendous suffering”. The task is to rescue the Valentinian “Achamoth, to heal her, and to help her to find her wholeness”, which Lloyd takes as an image of individuation [Lloyd, The Knowledge That Leads to Wholeness, #62400, ch. 3 and ch. 20].

Key points

• Thirteen papyrus codices found near Nag Hammadi in December 1945 (English edition 1977, per Myers) restored the Gnostics’ own voices: Sethian, Valentinian, Thomasine and Hermetic texts.
• In Sethian myth Sophia’s unauthorised offspring Yaldabaoth boasts “I am a jealous god and there is no other god beside me” and is rebuked as Samael, “blind god”. Culianu describes the ashamed Sophia hiding in “the darkness of Ignorance” while Authades remains ignorant of what lies above his Mother.
• The Valentinian Gospel of Philip names five mysteries, ending in the bridal chamber that heals the separation of male and female. Myers describes a Sethian rite of Five Seals and argues for an entheogenic “Cup of Visions” based on Peganum harmala, which is his own thesis.
• Gnostic anthropology split spirit, psyche and body, whereas orthodoxy treated the separation of soul and body as temporary and unnatural.
• Olson’s anthology argues that the Fathers built the Valentinian “chain of traditions”. Hall sees deliberate persecution, and Lash calls the destruction of Pagan and Sophianic writings “political and intellectual genocide” tied to imperial power.
• Plotinus also opposed the Gnostics, with arguments Nock judged equally usable by Catholic Christianity.
• Michael Williams (1996) argues for dismantling the category “Gnosticism”. Against him stands the view that Christianity lost its “radiance and vitality” by suppressing it. The Gnostic revival continues in Jung, as Lloyd presents it, and in Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus, as Grimstad reads it.