The Gnostic Gospels (13 page)

Followers of Valentinus prayed to her for protection as the Mother, and as “the mystical, eternal Silence.”
⁷
For example, Marcus the magician invokes her as Grace (in Greek, the feminine term
charis
): “May She who is before all things, the incomprehensible and indescribable Grace, fill you within, and increase in you her own knowledge.”
⁸
In his secret celebration of the mass, Marcus teaches that the wine symbolizes her blood. As the cup of wine is offered, he prays that “Grace may flow”
⁹
into all who drink of it. A prophet and visionary, Marcus calls himself the
“womb
and
recipient
of Silence”
¹⁰
(as she is of the Father). The visions he received of the divine being appeared, he reports, in female form.

Another gnostic writing, called the
Great Announcement
, quoted by Hippolytus in his
Refutation of All Heresies
, explains the origin of the universe as follows: From the power of Silence appeared “a great power, the Mind of the Universe, which manages
all things, and is a male … the other … a great Intelligence … is a female which produces all things.”
¹¹
Following the gender of the Greek words for “mind” (
nous
—masculine) and “intelligence” (
epinoia
—feminine), this author explains that these powers, joined in union, “are discovered to be duality … This is Mind in Intelligence, and these are separable from one another, and yet are one, found in a state of duality.” This means, the gnostic teacher explains, that

there is in everyone [divine power] existing in a latent condition … This is one power divided above and below; generating itself, making itself grow, seeking itself, finding itself, being mother of itself, father of itself, sister of itself, spouse of itself, daughter of itself, son of itself—mother, father, unity, being a source of the entire circle of existence.
¹²

How did these gnostics intend their meaning to be understood? Different teachers disagreed. Some insisted that the divine is to be considered masculofeminine—the “great male-female power.” Others claimed that the terms were meant only as metaphors, since, in reality, the divine is neither male nor female.
¹³
A third group suggested that one can describe the primal Source in either masculine or feminine terms, depending on which aspect one intends to stress. Proponents of these diverse views agreed that the divine is to be understood in terms of a harmonious, dynamic relationship of opposites—a concept that may be akin to the Eastern view of
yin
and
yang
, but remains alien to orthodox Judaism and Christianity.

A second characterization of the divine Mother describes her as Holy Spirit. The
Apocryphon of John
relates how John went out after the crucifixion with “great grief” and had a mystical vision of the Trinity. As John was grieving, he says that

the [heavens were opened and the whole] creation [which is] under heaven shone and [the world] trembled. [And I was afraid, and I] saw in the light … a likeness with multiple forms … and the likeness had three forms.
¹⁴

To John’s question the vision answers: “He said to me, ‘John, Jo[h]n, why do you doubt, and why are you afraid? … I am the one who [is with you] always. I [am the Father]; I am the Mother; I am the Son.”
¹⁵
This gnostic description of God—as Father, Mother and Son—may startle us at first, but on reflection, we can recognize it as another version of the Trinity. The Greek terminology for the Trinity, which includes the neuter term for spirit (
pneuma
) virtually requires that the third “Person” of the Trinity be asexual. But the author of the
Secret Book
has in mind the Hebrew term for spirit,
ruah
, a feminine word; and so concludes that the feminine “Person” conjoined with the Father and Son must be the Mother. The
Secret Book
goes on to describe the divine Mother:

… (She is) … the image of the invisible, virginal, perfect spirit … She became the Mother of everything, for she existed before them all, the mother-father [
matropater
 …
¹⁶

The
Gospel to the Hebrews
likewise has Jesus speak of “my Mother, the Spirit.”
¹⁷
In the
Gospel of Thomas
, Jesus contrasts his earthly parents, Mary and Joseph, with his divine Father—the Father of Truth—and his divine Mother, the Holy Spirit. The author interprets a puzzling saying of Jesus’ from the New Testament (“Whoever does not hate his father and his mother cannot be my disciple”) by adding that “my (earthly) mother [gave me death], but [my] true [Mother] gave me life.”
¹⁸
So, according to the
Gospel of Philip
, whoever becomes a Christian gains “both father and mother”
¹⁹
for the Spirit (
ruah
) is “Mother of many.”
²⁰

A work attributed to the gnostic teacher Simon Magus suggests a mystical meaning for Paradise, the place where human life began:

Grant Paradise to be the womb; for Scripture teaches us that this is a true assumption when it says, “I am He that formed thee in thy mother’s womb” (Isaiah 44:2) … Moses … using allegory had declared Paradise to be the womb … and Eden, the placenta …
²¹

The river that flows forth from Eden symbolizes the navel, which nourishes the fetus. Simon claims that the Exodus, consequently, signifies the passage out of the womb, and that “the crossing of the Red Sea refers to the blood.” Sethian gnostics explain that

heaven and earth have a shape similar to the womb … and if … anyone wants to investigate this, let him carefully examine the pregnant womb of any living creature, and he will discover an image of the heavens and the earth.
²²

Evidence for such views, declares Marcus, comes directly from “the cry of the newborn,” a spontaneous cry of praise for “the glory of the primal being, in which the powers above are in harmonious embrace.”
²³

If some gnostic sources suggest that the Spirit constitutes the maternal element of the Trinity, the
Gospel of Philip
makes an equally radical suggestion about the doctrine that later developed as the virgin birth. Here again, the Spirit is both Mother and Virgin, the counterpart—and consort—of the Heavenly Father: “Is it permitted to utter a mystery? The Father of everything united with the virgin who came down”
²⁴
—that is, with the Holy Spirit descending into the world. But because this process is to be understood symbolically, not literally, the Spirit remains a virgin. The author goes on to explain that as “Adam came into being from two virgins, from the Spirit and from the virgin earth” so “Christ, therefore, was born from a virgin”
²⁵
(that is, from the Spirit). But the author ridicules those literal-minded Christians who mistakenly refer the virgin birth to Mary, Jesus’ mother, as though she conceived apart from Joseph: “They do not know what they are saying. When did a woman ever conceive by a woman?”
²⁶
Instead, he argues, virgin birth refers to that mysterious union of the two divine powers, the Father of All and the Holy Spirit.

In addition to the eternal, mystical Silence and the Holy Spirit, certain gnostics suggest a third characterization of the divine Mother: as Wisdom. Here the Greek feminine term for
“wisdom,”
sophia
, translates a Hebrew feminine term,
hokhmah.
Early interpreters had pondered the meaning of certain Biblical passages—for example, the saying in Proverbs that “God made the world in Wisdom.” Could Wisdom be the feminine power in which God’s creation was “conceived”? According to one teacher, the double meaning of the term conception—physical and intellectual—suggests this possibility: “The image of thought [
ennoia
] is feminine, since … [it] is a power of conception.”
²⁷
The
Apocalypse of Adam
, discovered at Nag Hammadi, tells of a feminine power who wanted to conceive by herself:

 … from the nine Muses, one separated away. She came to a high mountain and spent time seated there, so that she desired herself alone in order to become androgynous. She fulfilled her desire, and became pregnant from her desire …
²⁸

The poet Valentinus uses this theme to tell a famous myth about Wisdom: Desiring to conceive by herself, apart from her masculine counterpart, she succeeded, and became the “great creative power from whom all things originate,” often called Eve, “Mother of all living.” But since her desire violated the harmonious union of opposites intrinsic in the nature of created being, what she produced was aborted and defective;
²⁹
from this, says Valentinus, originated the terror and grief that mar human existence.
³⁰
To shape and manage her creation, Wisdom brought forth the demiurge, the creator-God of Israel, as her agent.
³¹

Wisdom, then, bears several connotations in gnostic sources. Besides being the “first universal creator,”
³²
who brings forth all creatures, she also enlightens human beings and makes them wise. Followers of Valentinus and Marcus therefore prayed to the Mother as the “mystical, eternal Silence” and to “Grace, She who is before all things,” and as “incorruptible Wisdom”
³³
for insight (
gnosis
). Other gnostics attributed to her the benefits that Adam and Eve received in Paradise. First, she taught them self-awareness; second, she guided them to find food; third, she assisted in the conception of their third and fourth children, who were, according to this account, their third son, Seth, and their
first daughter, Norea.
³⁴
Even more: when the creator became angry with the human race

because they did not worship or honor him as Father and God, he sent forth a flood upon them, that he might destroy them all. But Wisdom opposed him … and Noah and his family were saved in the ark by means of the sprinkling of the light that proceeded from her, and through it the world was again filled with humankind.
³⁵

Another newly discovered text from Nag Hammadi,
Trimorphic Protennoia
(literally, the “Triple-formed Primal Thought”), celebrates the feminine powers of Thought, Intelligence, and Foresight. The text opens as a divine figure speaks:

[I] am [Protennoia the] Thought that [dwells] in [the Light].… [she who exists] before the All … I move in every creature.… I am the Invisible One within the All.
³⁶

She continues: “I am perception and knowledge, uttering a Voice by means of Thought. [I] am the real Voice. I cry out in everyone, and they know that a seed dwells within.”
³⁷
The second section, spoken by a second divine figure, opens with the words

I am the Voice … [It is] I [who] speak within every creature … Now I have come a second time in the likeness of a female, and have spoken with them.… I have revealed myself in the Thought of the likeness of my masculinity.
³⁸

Later the voice explains:

I am androgynous. [I am both Mother and] Father, since [I copulate] with myself … [and with those who love] me … I am the Womb [that gives shape] to the All … I am Me[iroth]ea, the glory of the Mother.
³⁹

Even more remarkable is the gnostic poem called the
Thunder, Perfect Mind.
This text contains a revelation spoken by a feminine power:

I am the first and the last. I am the honored one and the scorned one. I am the whore, and the holy one. I am the wife and the virgin. I am (the mother) and the daughter.… I am she whose wedding is great, and I have not taken a husband.… I am knowledge, and ignorance.… I am shameless; I am ashamed. I am strength, and I am fear.… I am foolish, and I am wise.… I am godless, and I am one whose God is great.
⁴⁰

What does the use of such symbolism imply for the understanding of human nature? One text, having previously described the divine Source as a “bisexual Power,” goes on to say that “what came into being from that Power—that is, humanity, being one—is discovered to be two: a male-female being that bears the female within it.”
⁴¹
This refers to the story of Eve’s “birth” out of Adam’s side (so that Adam, being one, is “discovered to be two,” an androgyne who “bears the female within him”). Yet this reference to the creation story of Genesis 2 (an account which inverts the biological birth process, and so attributes to the male the creative function of the female) is unusual in gnostic sources. More often, gnostic writers refer to the first creation account in Genesis 1:26–27 (“Then God said, Let us make man [
adam
] in our image, after our likeness … in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them”). Rabbis in Talmudic times knew a Greek version of the passage that suggested to Rabbi Samuel bar Nachman, influenced by Plato’s myth of androgyny, that