‘Withdraw into yourself and look; and if you do not find yourself beautiful as yet, do as does the sculptor of a statue …
cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is shadowed …
do not cease until there shall shine out on you the Godlike Splendor of Beauty; until you see temperance surely
established in the stainless shrine.

                                         Plotinus , Ennead, 1, 6, 9.

It is all too easy to invoke the image of a complete,featureless void as a contrast to the persona (Greek for “mask”, actually)
we carry, as Armour and utility set – into the world. If we think upon matters spiritual, we reject as a reflex – every flaw,
every ambiguity, every complication; sitting here thinking about the spiritual in man we are ourselves that flaw, that ambiguity,
that complication – that cloud before our eyes of vision. So looking within becomes an escape into judgment and rejection,
the more we reach the more bleak our self become, the more possessive we grow on an unconscious level. Modern man has
evacuated the superior value into pasts long exiled to memory and futures beyond imagination, his images becomes mere
abstractions, with the added density of number, measure and taxonomy. Thus images are emptied before they are truly
inspected, in the light of our vision. For images have a relationship with their transcendent cause, whose imprint they
have become in the world of the Psyche. Wherefore, instead of being invoked at the threshold into the contemplative
life; wherein the Logos, through which everything came into existence – becomes life and light to every man that enters
into this world; and remembered every time a holy book is opened – Theophany has been buried in the sciences of history
and comparative study. Events outside of the soul motivates the soul to reach towards solutions that are directed towards
outward things, the more concrete the situation is experienced as exterior and outside the extension of self – the stronger
the measure taken to make concrete and opaque the contents of its interior. I intend with this observation nothing less than
provide a diagnosis of the tendency to ignore the relational information contained in the treasurehouse of images which
remains the nature of our religions – the relations become visible when external judgment is suspended or detained, wherein
we can observe what they are in the light of what we know are, and hopefully also determine the relationship that which
we know has being, through being alert to our actual existence, within ourselves. The featureless, empty void, while allotting
all kinds of calm and peace and harmony to the mind – says precisely nothing about what is real, about others, and about your
self, or any kind of soul. There is a season for it, just as there is a season for the Angelic, and for Theophany – for visions,
revelations, interior dialogue and exchange. Beauty has no place to go but into the heart by the awakened eye of vision,
and this eye can only look when it reaches, and this reaching towards necessarily needs an object, a subject,an other.
Knowledge of relations requires a transparency of self – not the annihilation of self, we know others through our selves
, using the experiential, emotive and self-cognitant in us as a medium.
The theophanic vision requires a capacity for this recognition, which is determined by the measure of this knowledge; both as it
relates to ourselves, as it relates to others, and in which way it ever reaches towards the divine in either of them.
If we withdraw into ourselves, and strip these our selves naked of all that is appended to them, all that garbs them because
we wish to conceal this nakedness – we should be able to see Beauty not only in these our selves, but also in others.
These other human beings will thereafter no longer appear as strangers and unknown, but intimately known and familiar
by way of this recognition.
Plato writes, in his Phaedo:

“It seems to me, if anything else is beautiful besides the Beautiful itself, it is beautiful through
nothing else than that it participates in that Beautiful: and all things I say likewise…
Nothing else makes it beautiful than the presence or communion of that Beautiful…
but that all beautiful things are beautiful by the Beautiful”  (Phaedo, 100d4-8)

Thus recognition of the Soul, unattended by its tormentors, the passions and authorities, opens up Beauty at the level
of our participation; and likewise, recognition of Beauty in the Soul between us, opens up the Soul at the level of a communal
participation in Beauty.

The idealism of Plato informed the ancient Gnostics in their metaphysics, which counter to the
chauvinism against so-called Sophism in Antiquity, was rooted in a new Image of Man.
Coupled with this figure, which is of a different kind entirely than the self-image of preceding
generations (leaving Kings and Shamans be the category they are to themselves, as much as
they were laws unto themselves, that is) – were a new day, a new alertness, a new cosmology,
a new process of unveiling the true nature and reality of all mysteries, natural and supernatural.

In the Apocryphal accounts we find that when Adam is awoken from his sleep, which some Gnostic myths negate or translate into other things, he is addressed directly and replies to the call, either of his counterpart, Eve, or of
an angelic host. At the determining moment, which seals Adam’s fate and plight, Eve turns to him and teaches him a secret; this secret in turn, unifies them in the capacity of “understanding more than their creator(s)”.
Two people that are united in the confidence of a secret are unified continously, as they not only remind eachother of themselves, but also of the secret that they hold in common.
The same goes for the blessing of the brotherly bread and brotherly wine – given the context of a new covenant which is secret, which exist between a chosen company of friends, at the last supper. Here also Jesus divulges
a secret, and the secret which is shared is devoured and assimilated by his friends – this secret becomes Jesus among them, and Jesus in them – and will, with a bright flash of recognition, become the Christ in and among them through the mystery of Pentecost.

The Protennoia speaks of her first descent thusly:

I am the first one who descended on account of my portion which remains, that is, the
Spirit that dwells in the soul, which originated from the Water of Life, and out of the
immersion of the mysteries. And I spoke, I, together with the Archons and Authorities.

For
I had gone down below their language

,and I spoke my mysteries to my own – a hidden mystery –
and the bonds and eternal oblivion were nullified. And I bore fruit in them,
that is, the Thought of the unchanging Aeon, and my house, and their Father. And I went
down to those who were mine from the first, and I reached them and broke the first strands
that enslaved them. Then everyone of those within me shone, and I prepared a pattern for
those ineffable Lights that are within me. Amen. Trimorphic Protennoia, (NHC XIII,1.)

Christ became Silence, so that the secret that exists prior to that Silence might have an opportunity to
resurrect in us and ascend through us, and return as fullness which encompasses all stages of existence,
beyond the categories, and below language.

Blogging Hotspots: The Forbidden Gospels Blog

Professor April DeConick belongs to the new generation of scholars who have engaged the background for the New Testament and it’s reception with less filers and academic bias than their preceeding generation.

To be said for their predecessors is that they actually anticipated, and were pretty much agreed upon that such scholars were needed in the future.

Dr. DeConick teaches early Jewish and Christian thought to students at Rice University in –

Houston,Texas, I feel quite confident that her students will in the future become the new pioneers who will take over the heavy responsibility of opening up the past to their generation. The inheritance from the Jewish and Christian religion in our culture, even that of heterodox,heretic and “forbidden” – are formidable, and what is not brought into consciousness, good or bad, are bound to participate in us as an autonomous, dischordant presence, the better we have communicators, analysts, exegetics and discerning historians – engage the topic for us and give us occasion to realise what is going on.

I thoroughly enjoy Dr. DeConick’s occasional Apocryphote fragments from the heterodox/heretical/forgotten traditions of Christendom, which themselves merit a visit to her blog.