Beneath me, the stars
a pattern scattered upon the waters,
a labyrinth etched behind closed eyelids

I stand,
awoken by the briefest touch,
distance broken,
a vessel that held everything,
in a moment,
shattered into tiny specks,
beneath my feet.

The Gnosis Archive is online again.
First impression is that it will take a little reconstruction work.
It also gave me a moments pause – it actually means something
that both “our side of the story”, that contemporary human beings
respond to, rediscover deep meaning,have a sense of affiliation
with a two thousand year old hushed down,slandered religious
,philosophical and metaphysical tradition – and find a praxis and a
reorientation in it – as well as the fact of these texts, the access
to them in the English language, would become lost.

The Gnosis Archive developed in tandem with my social interaction
and continued dialogue with people who have gone through the same
experiences,troubles and triumphs that I had gone through: In the
autumn of 1994 I met several subscribers of the Gnosis magazine
in a forum dedicated to on-topic/off-topic banter in the ambience
of the topical issues of that magazine; one of the first to present a
less sectarian, less biased, less doctrinaire investigation of the Western mystical traditions… from those discussions, from that exchange of material – an affluence accrued,grew – Thomas Leavitt put it on a site
on the server of his company, Web Communications. Eventually Right Revd.Lance Owens took over editing, announcements was made for the lectures Dr.Stephan Hoeller held at the Gnostic Society, about mid-1996 I was exasperated with the Societas Gnostica Norvegia webpages, I was trying, after all,to create,to make way for a physical space for communication and exchange – so I donated what was then a significant amount of material of transcribed material to the Gnostic Society Virtual Library, from that project/site.
In that way, countless hours spent musing over the wisdom of these tradtions travelled across Atlantic and into a legacy which was greater than anything I could have made on my own. I am very relieved that we are on the way of recovering it. Pax Pleromae

I.

Whenever a Chalice is lifted,
and a

Bread broken, in the memory of Christ
and according to the type of the

Logos,

the chains of the authorities are

broken,
the portals to Hades burst open, and all
the dead

arisen and put in the presence of
Almighty God.

Whenever a Soul enter the world, Light

and Life
enters with Her. Whenever a Soul departs from
this

World, the Light and Life restores itself,
its semblances, its

forms and all of its offspring,
who had fallen beforehand, to its

own.

• We hear the words spoken in the

  Gospel of John, receiving these words
  in the respect and

  perspective that we as modern individuals can afford them.
  We

  hear spoken of, through these words, the Word, out of which the all

  arrives
  , take shape and enter into life all around us.

  Inspecting Space, afforded a new
  perspective through the

  uncommitted stance of our witness, we discovered that

  nowhere is the place where this Life

  and this Light is received in this universe.
  Although it is from

  the Word, Logos, that they have their existence and continuity,
  the

  All does not recognize its own root, its own foundation.
  Therefore

  it is us that hears these words, therefore it is to us that

  they are spoken.
  Inspecting Time, afforded a new perspective

  through the committed stance of our
  witness – we discovered

  that there are myriads of generations spoken to; we
  are bidden to

  acknowledge the great descent of messengers, prophets and

  sages
  throughout the entire expanse of the generations; each of

  whom may have spoken
  and each of which might have received

  the words spoken thusly. But it is to us
  that it is given a new

  foundation, a new root, and a new structure of consciousness
  through

  the anointed Logos, who came amongst us, entered into our birth,

  in
  its Life and its Light, and who enter our death – and

  thusly becomes, verily,
  as foreshadowed in our reception, our

  assimilation, our appropriation and our
  living the Light-Life of

  Christ, our Resurrection.

II.

O Soul, while you are in the midst of

this life,
do not be hesitate to seek access to

your
redemption – with which word I intend to
speak of

The Resurrection.
The words spoken through the body

of
generations address it as the

Cross.
They raise their eyes up to the Cross,
and

fixed to its crossbeam, its centre,
they see a light that endures

all of history,
this they call Salvation.

Ask to what does all that lives in

you goes,
Ask to what death all that dies through you go.
Ask

what is returned to the Eternal, the Good,
Truth herself

and Being, through you, O Soul.

– Concerning this Cross, it is where

the dying of the world meets the resurrection to the real.
The

sacredness of the treasures of the Holy of Holies is not that of a

refined and super-essential
metal, but that of a light that

descends upon it.
This light is essentially different from all

light in the world outside of the Temple; It is
prefigured and

accentuated through all the spaces of the Temple, in each of the

Holies,
in the antechamber and in the courtyard in front of the

Temple proper. Wherefore not a jot
nor a fragment of that which is

made holy by its participation in light within the Temple might ever

be desecrated,

decreased or destroyed; for each exists truly in its

participation in the sacrosanct
light, while none of them exists

outside of this light. The Temple itself is rubble, ruin and

deprecit
– it’s architectural, ritual and ceremonial beauty, its

glory and its function of transfiguring the senses,

the mind and the

bodies of whichever soul sees,approaches or touches – remains

transcendent, unapproachable,

unsullied and intangible with anything

worldly.
Wherefore, I speak of a specific Cross which elevates,

rather than sinks into the ground,
whose verticality can only be

compared to the verticality of super-essential,divine Light

itself.
Which is to say, its descent is the decent into the

proximity of The Soul; it goes nowhere else,
for nowhere else is

established on account of receiving it.

Contrast against that image the horizontality of history; We learn at an increasing rate from the studies made of the past

that the Idea of the Sacred and Divine, of God, itself cannot be restored from History, rather that which exists of religious

ideas exists in tandem, but also independently, of the progression of events which make up recorded History,and which

bolster our “historical identification”. Wherever there is a dissolving

of the ties with the historical in human consciousness,

individual or in a more collective capacity,wherever the fixtures of Tradition itself is shaken to its very foundation –

what arise is not new news as such, but an acute, immediate yet pre-historical identification

with the Sacred as primary rather than secondary capacity in the

experiential, creative and imaginative life of our civilizations.

The Soul persists longer than the idea of God.

There is always someone left who could cry out at the sight of the vacated,desecrated and destroyed sanctuary ; “Woe is unto us“,

Always a widow, or a mother lamenting at the unmarked grave of some

Prophet or friend of God. Always a generation that asks questions whose

answers have become a crime to give, always some mind which dreams the ancients alive again. This will not die.

It will, however, in the course of its living moment, be fixed to the

world; lifted up on the crossbeam of existence and bidden to

contemplate its living and dying. This befalls the Soul. This also

befalls its relationship with God. If this does not happen to its

relationship

with God, with Divine Reality, it is no relationship at all. What it

beheld when it was first spoken of, what it sees when it addresses it

outwardly,

and what it goes to meet at the threshold of this life will be the

selfsame abstraction, a spectre that is not quite dead because it was

never quite alive.

That is not to say that The Soul does not go to dissolution with the contents it carries,but in a world

dominated by the Soul and fed as if by a fuel the tension in the Soul

between incarnative and de-incarnative movement; descent and ascent,

materialization and spiritualization – the idea of God, the perception

of a centre, the dissolution of local contextuality (in the

immanent/incarnate “God”

theologies and theogonies) – fluctuates with the Soul’s movement.

III.

Pain sits in the Soul,

the Soul rests in Life,

Life dwells in the Body.

– Wherefore you must look for the Son

of Man in Man, through the eyes of spirit
rather than the

eyes of flesh. This indwelling of Life in the Body
consists in the

animation of dead tissue.The Body is on its own already a corpse at

birth but through this extended existence it develops and express

diverse forms, even beautifully –

despite its condition, rather

than because of it.

The Soul’s experience of the Body

depends on the continual Sacrifice in the Mind and Senses

of power and consciousness.

This progression through forms, which

through the mind assumes kinds and varieties – is what Nature is.

Such a paradox, that Reason in order to be understood, takes upon itself the flesh, elevate it to a world,

situates the centre of consciousness within it; filling it up completely with Wisdom. Drunk from Reason, Drunk with Wisdom,

the Soul sees itself scattered, torn, spread out thin – into a world

which does not receive it, which resists, which rejects, which

blasphemes

against it; a world full of rulers that demand justice and tribute for

a theft of power and light which never belonged to them, a power and

a light that does not belong among them. But it is there that the Soul

discovers its mate, there She sees Reason, and does receive Him,

there She resist Him not, there She accepts Him fully and there where She sings thanksgiving and glorifying hymns unto Him.

A Manichaean Hymn to Jesus

We stand all of one mind

and we will reach out our hands in invocation,

And rest our eyes upon thy form.

And our mouths we open invoke Thee,

and our tongues prepare for praise.

Thee we invoke, who art the fullness of life.

Thee we praise, Jesus the Brilliant! New Aeon!

Thou art, Thou art the God who performs Truth,

a noble Healer, the most beloved Son, the most loved Self.

Come with grace, liberated Lord!

Come with aid, good Spirit, Apostle with Peace,

Helper of the frail and Conqueror of Aggressors!

Come with grace, new Lord!

Come with grace, Redeemer of the subjected!

Healer of the wounded!

Come with grace, Awakener of the Sleeping and

Arouser of the Fatigued,

Thou who Causeth the dead arise!

Come with grace, mighty God and hallowing Voice!

Come with grace, true Word, great Luminary, and

flooding Light!

Come with grace, new Lord of the new Day!

Come with grace, Gift of the good, Blessing of the frail, Revered of the Holy!

Come with grace, Loving Father and Just Judge

of those who have sought refuge with thee!

Come with grace, Father, Thou wh art our stout protection and firm faith!

Now, Just dealer, peace be upon us!

And have mercy upon us and love us, Benefactor who Himself art all Love.

And reckon us not together with the rebels.

Save thouse who have sought refuge and have mercy upon us, O most Beloved and Loving!

We have beheld Thee, New Aeon, And we have fallen at thy fet, Thou who art all Love.

Drunk with joy we have seen Thee, Loving Lord.

And we avow Thy name, Messiah, sunder us from amid the deficient, and free us from

amid the aggressors!

O Lord, we are thine own, have mercy upon us!

Hasten hither and subdue the rebellion!

For it has become insolent and have spoken thus:

“We are the ones and there is none like us!”.

Therefore exercise Thy power, and cast the aggressors and enemies down.

We praise Thy name, that is all Light, and Thy name, Father!

Praise be to thy name, Father!

And devotion to Thy Greatness!

So be it, Now and Ever More!

AMEN.

Continue reading →

On Friday the 3rd March, in El Gouna, Egypt , Exhausted from pneumonia contracted in a foreign, but beloved land
-the persona (mask) slipped, the body released back into the embrace to its mother, our earth – ‘
and the mind returned to its star. Professor Gilles Quispel left us behind.(Jim West’s Petros Baptist Church Blog has an English translation of the Obituary published in the Dutch papers on Saturday)

I feel I have been fortunate to hear respecting and almost doting voices speak of Professor Quispel,
it bears thinking about today – since to my experience he was an animate presence behind
the words and sentences I read in a book, or an article. These fortunate associates and friends
of mine has heard his presentations, lectures and table talks, I have read a few lucid articles
and papers presented in topical anthologies..So I am, needless to say, perhaps not the most
qualified to speak of the recently liberated soul.

Having been born, the 30th of May, 1916.
He has throdden the selfsame soil and breathed this air for
an , from our perspective, admirable 89 years.
Professor Quispel discovered quite early in his youth that while
hard and honest labour were difficult to him, he was better equipped
for working with languages, concepts and interrelationships.
Steadily he ascended the often perilous staircase of academic study –
studying the ancient languages of the scriptures, the ancient middle
east, and theology.

While his accomplishments, within this brief space, is too numerous and exhaustive to mention in
detail – I feel, that – Without reservation, It should be stated that Gilles Quispel singlehandedly handed us the Coptic
Gnostic Library discovery from Nag Hammadi, with all its repercussions and consequences.
It was the Professor who purchased , on May the 10th, 1952, the Codex which due to its custodian and protector in the earliest phase of its discovery is called the Jung Codex – which contained 5 Gnostic scriptures, the
first of 53 which would later see the light of day. It also found a temporal home in Zürich,
which eventually lead to a bargain being struck between the Egyptian authorities and the
European scholars, they would get full access to the manuscripts over the expanse of time it
took to take photographs and other preparation necessary, only would they please hand the Jung
Codex back.. Initial work with the Nag Hammadi discovery, thus, were done in a kind of mischiveous,
“secret agent” atmosphere – in addition to the fact that the studies on the Jung Codex contributed to
an increasing academical interest in Gnosticism, Early Christianity and the Sayings tradition.

Four years later, in 1956, Quispel brought back from
Egypt photographs of the first page of the Gospel of Thomas in Coptic, and translated that quite readily.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Professor set off the Thomas bomb on latter day Christianity.
To many thousands of contemporaries, the event of discovering that particular scripture and its
message had, and continues to have – a great dramatic impact on their spirituality, religiousity
and appreciation of religious history.
His perspective on the Logia contained in the Gospel of Thomas, his critics may say – is possibly
affected by his proximity to the find – he thinks the Gospel may be first century in origin
and that it was participant, on some stage¨, in the developement of the four canonical gospels.
He was also convinced that the early Gnostics were discerning about a, to us, very important
aspect of developement – namely liberation; from being slaves (both metaphorical and actual sense)
to becoming free men and women, Gnosis is a means for this liberation – Gnosis were, and is
participant in our developement towards a more observant,ethical and human civilization.
Thats the reverse of what theologian N.T. Wright thinks of it – he thinks that basically the Gnostics
couldn’t be bothered with anything worldly and was sitting around doing nothing but obsessing about their own importance.. I think I can see evidence of this behaviour some place else, but nevermind about all that.
Gilles Quispel remained in the Dutch Reformed Church all his life, while engaging in this kind of work
with _enthusiasm_ and personal investment – it takes a certain kind of integrity,to do that.

Before I read the brief note of Gilles Quispel’s death on Stephen C.Carlson’s blog
Hypotypoesis, I was thinking it would
be useful, as an experiment or meditation – to consider what message the Gospel of Thomas had
to the specific area of time when it was unearthed and subsequently published (it was published
only in a matter of a few years afte the discovery, later interesting archeological finds of this
nature remains obscure to the rest of the world for decades!); what does the Gospel of Thomas
say to people, in say, 1952 – also, is there a specific difference between now and then, and
almost two thousand years… after which I thought the best possible input, perhaps, for that
would be to ask Professor Quispel for his personal experience, which to me would mean to return
again to his books.

I am a regretful writer of anyone’s recent obituary.
I would, childishly, wish minds and hearts and hands to be
active, fervently, in whatever increases the good and decrease
the bad, never idle.. all round, no matter my own prejudices and
other flaws in vision.. I feel I do owe ..words.. and thanks to
Gilles Quispel, for inspiring me during a period of my life that
was quite despairing.

Wikipedia entry on Gilles Quispel in Dutch

Last Friday I began listening to Stephan Hoeller‘s free lecture entitled The Secret Teachings of Yeshu, available from BC Recordings.

The blurb for it reads “Shortly before the year 2000 a document surfaced from out of China containing 72 alleged sayings of Jesus which show Gnostic influences. This document, translated from the original Greek was entrusted to Dr. Hoeller by his book publisher for evaluation for possible publication. Genuine or not, this beautiful material has by its Gnostic merits an authenticity of its own.”

It’s an presentation of a hitherto unknown apocryphal gospel translated from Greek. It were handed an

undisclosed Professor by two Chinese colleagues who wanted his assistance in

translating the entire manuscript into English.

Briefly stated this scripture is an edited anthology of Logia ascribed to Jesus, much alike what is imagined to be the contents of the elusive Gospel Q(for Quelle, “Source” in German), the Gospel of Thomas unearthed first with the Oxyrhynchus papyri cache in the mid 19th century and later completed in its presently known form by the find of the Nag Hammadi Library. The sayings of Yeshu (Yeshu, a Chinese variation upon the latin Jesus), in Greek and translated by a person well acquianted with the genre, contained in this unknown find – shares several characteristics with those found in the Gospel of Thomas – especially the existencial and psychological tangents: the world is drunk, human beings are addicted to the world, human beings do not possess their full faculties of perception _therefore they are unable to discern what has happened_ (i.e. the entry of Christ into the world and the coming of the Kingdom); religious men and women are conditioned to follow commandments and rules as a safeguard against minor evils and affirmation of worth – both commodities traded for their spiritual integrity being but a puff of stale air since they have no substance, either in this world nor the next. In short, the disciples showing off their ,to the Gnostics, famous ignorance (prior to their coming around to their senses) – mimic the compact ignorance and arrogance of the “Pharisees” and Scribes, while Jesus warns them against their potentionally fatal superficiality.

This may be hard to stomach, and when I heard James complaining about the presence of “effeminate men” and his worry about the contagion of their ritual impurity – being answered with a warning about judgement and neglect to seek purity and recti tude on account of own necessity rather than that of society – just a breather away from Hoeller’s comment that he thought the topicality were too up-to-date to our own time and our modern concern about understanding, tolerating and adapting to the multitude of ways in which each individual is human in all of this world…it added to my expectation that the scripture in question will remain without affirmation, either to its being a forgery or authentic, until the end of time, basically.

Be that as it may be.

I contend that as far as perspective goes – Apocrypha is Good for You.