CHAPTER XV

THE GNOSTICS
Difficulty in defining Gnosticism — Magic and astrology in Gnosticism — Simon Magus as a Gnostic — Simon's Helen — The number thirty and the moon — Ophites and Sethians — A magical diagram — Employment of names and formulae — Seven metals and planets — Magic of Simon's followers — Magic of Marcus in the Eucharist— Other magic and occult lore of Marcus — Name and number magic — The magic vowels — Magic of Carpocrates — The Abraxas and the number 365 — Astrology of Basilides — The Book of Helxai — Epiphanius on the Elchasaites — The Book of the Laws of Countries — Personality of Bardesanes — Sin possible for men, angels, and stars — Does fate in the astrological sense prevail? — National laws and customs as a proof of free will — Pistis- Sophia; attitude to astrology — "Magic" condemned — Power of names and rites — Interest in natural science — "Gnostic gems" and astrology — The planets in early Christian art — Gnostic amulets in Spain — Syriac Christian charms — Priscillian executed for magic — Manichean manu- scripts— The Mandaeans.
Gnosticism ^ is not easy to define and the term Gnostic appears to have been applied to a great variety of sects with a confusing diversity of beHefs, Many of the constituents and roots at least of Gnosticism were older than Christianity, and it is now the custom to associate the Gnosis or superior knowledge and revelation, which gives the movement its name, not with Greek philosophy or mysteries but with oriental speculation and religions. Anz ^ has been im- pressed by its connection with Babylonian star-worship; Amelineau ^ has urged its debt to Egyptian magic and
* A good account of the Gnostic sources and bibliography of sec- ondary works on Gnosticism will be found in CE, "Gnosticism" (ig09) by J. P. Arendzen.
* Anz, Zur Frage nach dem Ursprung des Gnosticismus, 1897,
112 pp., in TU, XV, 4-
^ Amelineau, Essai sur le gnos- ticisme cgypticn, ses developpe- mcnts ct son origine egyptienne, 1887, 330 pp., in Musee Guimet, torn. 14 ; and various other publi- cations by the same author.
360
CHAP. XV THE GNOSTICS 361
religion ; Bousset ^ has argued for Persian origins. The main features of the great oriental religions which swept west- ward over the Roman Empire were shared by Gnosticism: the redeemer god, even the great mother goddess conception to some extent, the divinely revealed mysteries, the secret symbols, the dualism, and the cosmic theory. Gnosticism as it is known to us, however, is more closely connected with Christianity than with any other oriental religion or body of thought, for the extant sources consist almost entirely either of Gnostic treatises which pretend to be Christian Scriptures and were almost entirely written in Coptic in the second or third century of our era,^ or of hostile descrip- tions of Gnostic heresies by the early church fathers. How- ever, the philosopher Plotinus also criticized the Gnostics, as we have seen.
What especially concerns our investigation is the great Magic and use made, or said to be made, by the Gnostics of sacred ^^ Gnof- formulae, symbols, and names of demons, and the preva- ticism. lence among them of astrological theory as shown by their widespread notion of the seven planets as the powers who have created our inferior and material world and who rule over its affairs. Gnosticism was deeply influenced by, albeit it to some extent represents a reaction against, the Baby- lonian star- worship and incantation of spirits. The seven planets and the demons occupy an important place in Gnostic myth because they intervene between our world and the world of supreme light, and their spheres must be traversed — much as in the Book of Enoch and Dante's Paradiso — both by the redeeming god in his descent and return and by any human soul that would escape from this world of fate, darkness, and matter. What encouragement there is for such views in the canonical Scriptures themselves may be
* Bousset, Hauptprohleme der although announced to be edited
Gnosis, 191 1 ; and "Gnosticism" by C. Schmidt in TU. Grenfell
in EB, nth edition. and Hunt will soon publish "a
*The dating is somewhat dis- small group of 21 papyri . . .
puted. Some of the Gnostic writ- among which is a gnostic magical
ings discovered in 1896 have, I text of some interest" : Grenfell
believe, not yet been published, (1921), p. 151.
362 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
inferred from the following passage in which Christ fore- tells His second coming: "Immediately after the tribula- tion of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall he shaken. And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven; and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He shall send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." ^ But in order to pass the demons and the spheres of the planets, who are usually represented as opposed to this, one must, as in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, know the pass- words, the names of the spirits, the sacred formulae, the appropriate symbols, and all the other apparatus suggestive of magic and necromancy which forms so large a part of the gnosis that gives its name to the system. This will be- come the more apparent from the following particular accounts of Gnostic sects and doctrines found in the works of the Christian fathers and in the scanty remains of the Gnostics themselves. The philosopher Plotinus we have already heard charge the Gnostics with resort to magic and sorcery, and with ascribing evil and fatal influence to the stars. At the same time we shrewdly suspect that Gnosticism has been made a scapegoat for the sins in these regards of both early Christianity and pagan philosophy. Simon Simon Magus, of whose magical exploits as recorded by
Magus as many a Christian writer we shall treat in another chapter, a Gnostic. ...
is also represented by the fathers as holding Gnostic doctrine,
although some writers have contended that Simon the magician named in Acts was an entirely different person from Simon the heretic and author of The Great Declara- tion? Simon declared himself the Great Power of God, or
^ The Gospel of Matthew, ^ St. George Stock, "Simon
XXIV, 29-31. Not to mention Magus," in EB, nth edition. See
Paul's "angels anH principalities also George Salmon in Diet. Chris.
and powers." Biog., IV, 681.
XV
THE GNOSTICS 363
the Being who was over all, who had appeared in Samaria as the Father, in Judea as the Son, and to other nations as the Holy Spirit.^ In the Pseudo-Clementines Simon is rep- resented as arguing against Peter in characteristically Gnos- tic style that "he who framed the world is not the highest God, but that the highest God is another who alone is good and who has remained unknown up to this time." ^ Accord- ing to Epiphanius Simon claimed to have descended from heaven through the planetary spheres and spirits in the manner of the Gnostic redeemer. He is quoted as saying, "But in each heaven I changed my form in accordance with the form of those who were in each heaven, that I might escape the notice of my angelic powers and come down to the Thought, who is none other than she who is likewise called Prounikon and the Holy Spirit." Epiphanius further informs us that Simon believed in a plurality of heavens, assigned certain powers to each firmament and heaven, and applied barbaric names to these spirits or cosmic forces. "Nor," adds Epiphanius, "can anyone be saved unless he learns this mystic lore and offers such sacrifices to the Father of all through these archons and authorities." ^
The fathers tell us that Simon went about with a woman Simon's called Helena or Helen, who Justin Martyr says had for- merly been a prostitute.^ Simon is said to have called her the mother of all, through whom God had created the angels and aeons, who in their turn had formed the world and men. These cosmic powers had then, however, cast her down to earth, where she had been confined in various successive human and animal bodies. She seems to have obtained her name of Helen from the fact that it was for her that the Trojan war had been fought, an event which Simon seems to have subjected to much allegorical interpretation. He also spoke of Helen as "the lost sheep," whom he, the Great
^ Irenaeus, Against Heresies, I, XXI ; Petavius, 55-60 ; Dindorf,
23. II, 6-12. ^Homilies, XVIII, i-.
* Epiphanius, Paiiarion, A-E- * First Apology, cap. 26.
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MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
The num- ber thirty and the moon.
Power, had descended from heaven to release from the bonds of the flesh. She was that Thought or Holy Spirit which we have heard him say he came down to recover. Simon's Helen also corresponds to Pistis-Sophia, who in the extant Gnostic work named after her descends through the twelve aeons, deceived by a lion- faced power whom they have formed to mislead her, and then reascends by the aid of Jesus or the true light. It seems fairly evident that the fathers ^ have taken literally and travestied by a scandalous application to an actual woman a beautiful Gnostic myth or allegory concerning the human soul. At the same time Simon's Helen reminds us of Jesus's relations with the woman taken in adultery, the woman of Samaria, and Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdalene, it may be noted, in the Gnos- tic writing, Pistis-Sophia, takes a role superior to the twelve disciples, a fact of which Peter complains to his Lord more than once. But Simon's Helen was that spirit of truth which lies latent in the human mind and which he endeavored to release by means of the philosophy, astrology, and magic of his time. May modern scientific method prove more suc- cessful in setting the prisoner free !
We find in the Pseudo-Clementines other details con- cerning Simon and Helen which bring out the astrological side of Gnosticism. We are told that John the Baptist had thirty disciples, a number suggestive of the days of the moon and also of the thirty aeons of the Gnostics of whom we elsewhere hear a great deal.^ But the revolution of the moon does not occupy thirty full days, so that we are not surprised to learn that one of these disciples was a woman and furthermore that she was the very Helen of whom we have been speaking. At least, she is so called in the Homilies of the Pseudo-Clement ; in the Recognitions she is actually
^ Irenaeus and Epiphanius as cited above; also Hippolytus, Philosophumena, VI, 2-15; X, 8.
^ See, for example, Irenaeus, Against Heresies, I, i, 3. where we are told among other things that
the disciples of the Gnostic Valen- tinus affirm that the number of these aeons is signified by the thirty years of Christ's life which elapsed before He began His pub- lic ministry.
XV THE GNOSTICS 365
called Luna or the Moon.^ After the death of John the Baptist Simon by his magic power supplanted Dositheus as leader of the thirty, and then fell in love with Luna and went about with her, proclaiming- that she was Wisdom or Truth, "brought down . , . from the highest heavens to this world." ^ The number thirty is again associated with Simon and Dositheus in a curiously insistent, although ap- parently unconscious, manner by Origen, who in one passage of his Reply to Celsus, written in the first half of the third century, expresses doubt whether thirty followers of Simon, the Samaritan magician, can be found in all the world, and in a second passage, while asserting that "Simonians are found nowhere throughout the world," adds that of the fol- lowers of Dositheus there are now not more than thirty in all.3
Similar to Simon's account of the heavens and of his Ophites descent through them were the teachings of the Ophites and Sethians. Sethians who, according to Irenaeus,* held that Christ "descended through the seven heavens, having assumed the likeness of their sons, and gradually emptied them of their power." These heretics also represented the "heavens, potentates, powers, angels, and creators as sitting in their proper order in heaven, according to their generation, and as invisibly ruling over things celestial and terrestrial." All ruling spirits were not invisible, however, since the Ophites and Sethians identified with the seven planets their Holy Hebdomad, consisting of laldabaoth, lao, Sabaoth, Adonaus (or, Adonai), Eloeus, Oreus, and Astanphaeus, — names often employed in the Greek magical papyri,^ in medieval incantations, and in the Jewish Cabbala. The Ophites and Sethians further asserted that when the serpent was cast down into the lower world by the Father, he begat six sons
^ Homilies, II, 23-25 ; Recog- " G. Parthey, Zzvei griech. Zau-
nitions, II, 8-9. berpapyri des Berliner Museums,
^Homilies, II, 25. i860, p. 128; C. Wessely, Griech.
^ Reply to Celsus, I, 57, and VI, Zaubcrpapyrus von Paris und