10 Stories from Gnostic Mythology – Listverse
The Gnostics were an early, heretical sect of Christianity who held views very different from orthodox – or official – Christian beliefs.
The fundamental principle of Gnosticism is that the world was created by an inferior and corrupt God. Therefore, the world as it is known today is inferior and corrupt. However, there is a piece of the true superior god within every human being, and by attaining gnosis – or 'wisdom' – one can find deliverance from this lesser evil. In short, the Gnostics believe that you are your own savior.
Like any other belief system, the Gnostics had their own original mythology. Many of the stories and characters are unclear and the details vary greatly.
One reason is that there were many sects and divisions of the Gnostics. Another is that the practices and source material were largely eradicated because they were condemned as heretical. These ten Gnostic myths come primarily from sources that sifted through the discoveries in the Nag Hammadi Library. The Nag Hammadi Texts are a collection of hidden and partially destroyed documents containing Gnostic teachings from the early Christian era that contradicted mainstream Christian wisdom of the time.
Other thinkers and leaders of the time also recorded information about the Gnostics. By combining research, historians and practitioners have succeeded in bringing together this general mythology of the Gnostics.
Related: 10 religious beliefs that have changed throughout history
10 God the Creator
The Gnostics believed that the God Christians believe created the universe is not the “true” god. The true Creator, for the Gnostics, is an unknowable, inhuman entity or energy that humans cannot understand.
Although the Creator is not credited with creating the world, this Creator is said to have manifested beings called Aeons through a process called emanation. These eons continued to multiply, losing more and more of their divinity as they moved further from the source. It is through this process that the creation of the world ultimately came about. This is explained in more detail in the Demiurge creation story, which is a story all its own.[1]
9 Barbelo and the first emanation
According to some Gnostic sects the first emanation was Barbelo. There are many interpretations of who or what Barbelo is, but they all agree that she is a feminine energy or entity.
Some label her as the true mother of Christ. Others equate her with the Creator, as the feminine counterpart of his masculine, and that together they radiated the aeons, or deities, of wisdom, perfect thoughts, and more. In the myth, as told by Irenaeus, she is simply the first in a series of many divine emanations.
Regardless of the details of her role, she is for most Gnostics the first real introduction of the feminine into existence.[2]
8 The Pleroma and the Syzygies of Aeons
The Norse gods have Valhalla. The Greek gods have Mount Olympus. The Gnostic deities have the Pleroma.
The Pleroma is like heaven. It is the abode of the Creator and the divine emanations, including Barbelo. It's a perfect, impeccable place.
The Aeons, like their home, are also regarded as perfect, flawless beings, each harboring a perfect ideal: eternal life, wisdom, incorruption, and so on. These creatures are even linked to male-female pairs, called Syzygies. Each emanation has its counterpart, and together they are abstract representations of divinity and duality.[3]
7 Sophia and the Creation of the World
One of the most famous aeons in Gnostic mythology is Sophia. Sophia is responsible for setting in motion the events that created the universe.
According to legend, she was one of the last ages to emerge from the Creator, making her more prone to imperfections and mistakes. Sophia is “Wisdom” and represents divine wisdom, something to which all people have access.
The world was created when Sophia fell from the Pleroma. She tried to discover the source of her creation and of divinity. In her futile, difficult quest, she gave birth to an illegitimate, ignorant being called the Demiurge, without the Creator's knowledge. The Demiurge eventually went on to create the world – again, a story all its own.
Because of her actions, Sophia is revered in Gnostic mythology as the mother of all creation, and her story serves as a guiding principle for all Gnostics: the search for divine gnosis or knowledge.[4]
6 The Demiurge
“The Demiurge” is the name given to the defective child of Sophia and is the God of the Abrahamic religion. He is the God who created the universe, the God of the Bible, and the God to whom all modern Christians pray, according to the Gnostic creation myth.
Once Sophia realized what kind of creature she had given birth to, she threw the child out of Pleroma. Alone and separated from all divinity, the Demiurge created the universe in his own corrupt image. Not only did he create the universe, but he also created his own version of Aeons, called Archons.
A crucial aspect of the creation myth, in Gnostic beliefs, is that the Demiurge sealed divine sparks from the Pleroma into human beings through his mother Sophia. It is this divine spark that motivates the Gnostics in their practices of seeking gnosis, which ultimately results in the salvation of the soul.[5]
5 The Archons
An Archon is a desecrated Aeon. In other words, where Aeons are perfect aspects of divinity residing in the Pleroma, the Archons are evil, flawed forces. They were created by the Demiurge as part of his construction of the material universe and assisted him in his creation of humans. If the Demiurge is the God of modern Christianity, the Archons could be said to correspond to the angels of the religion.
The Archons influence and rule over all imperfections, desecrated thoughts and drives and shortcomings in the material world. These are external forces to which people are very sensitive. The only salvation is to become aware of the divine spark within and attain gnosis.
The details about the Archons vary. It appears that there are between seven and twelve Archons. Most sources seem to agree that there are seven archons corresponding to the seven archaic planets (the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn). But some texts attribute them to the twelve signs of the zodiac. There is even one version of the story in which the original series of seven or twelve archons populated until there were 365.[6]
4 The Garden of Eden
According to the interpretation of The Apocrypha of Johna famous Gnostic text, the myth of Adam and Eve is a little different than the story most people know today.
The original Adam was called Adamas, and he was a divine creation intended to be the “perfect man.” He lived alongside the other deities in the Pleroma. Eventually the “perfect family” followed when he and his consort, Gnosis or “knowledge,” came together and had a son named Seth.
Since the Demiurge mimicked other aspects of the Pleroma, Adamas was no exception. He created the desecrated version of Adamas, the Adam written about in the book of Genesis. One teaching reveals that the original Adam, created by the Demiurge, was lifeless. The beings of the Pleroma witnessed this and saw an opportunity to retrieve the part of Sophia's divinity that was left in her son.
They instructed the Demiurge to breathe life into Adam's body. He did so, and it transferred Sophia's divinity from the Demiurge into the human body. This immediately made him a wiser, more divine being than the Demiurge and the Archons. As punishment, they made him mortal and devised a plan to take back the spark by creating Eve. However, the plan didn't work because instead there were two people more enlightened than themselves.[7]
3 Seth
An important character in the original creation myth is Seth. As in Christianity, he is a son of the first parents.
Christians view Seth as the son through whom Adam and Eve's legacy was continued. Since Cain killed Abel, it must be that humanity continued through the son born to them as Abel's replacement: Seth.
For the Gnostics, Seth plays a similar role; But since much of the Gnostic creation myth contains duality, there are two Seths. The first is the Seth of the Pleroma, the son of Adamas and his consort, Gnosis. The second 'Seth' in Gnostic mythology is the third son of Adam and Eve. Although material on Seth's mythology is scarce, the general consensus is that the Demiurge raped Eve. By him she gave birth to the sons Cain and Abel. The two sons were just as corrupt as their father.
Seth, however, was born of Adam and Eve. It is through him and the divine spark he inherited from his parents that the human race was created. However, at birth the knowledge of the inner divine spark is erased from memory because the family drank from the water of oblivion.
It then becomes man's lifelong quest to 'awaken'. By attaining gnosis, or knowledge of one's own divinity, one can attain salvation.[8]
2 The serpent in Eden
The Gnostic narrative of the Garden of Eden does include the serpent, but its interpretation of its role in the fall of humanity is completely opposite to that of Christianity.
Some Gnostic sects believe that the serpent was actually Jesus Christ, sent to free Adam and Eve from the Demiurge and awaken them to the divine sparks within them. Other interpretations refrain from identifying the serpent specifically as Jesus Christ, but rather as wisdom itself, a channel for Sophia to help Eve in the garden.
For Gnostics, the snake is the hero – not the villain.[9]
1 Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ is the central figure of Christianity. He is the Son of God, sent to save humanity from its sins. In Gnosticism its role is very similar, but heretical, to the Orthodox Christian position.
Based on Gnostic texts such as The Gospel of Philip And The Gospel of ThomasJesus' message was not that faith in Him and God would save one's soul. Instead, like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, he was sent to humanity to remind them of their own divinity and that their salvation lies within them through the revelation of gnosis.
The nature of Jesus in Gnostic beliefs also differs from the orthodox Christian perspective. Like other aspects of Gnosticism, its nature is twofold. He was at the same time both a material, bodily being subject to man's suffering and a purely divine being immune to the human condition. He was two beings and one at the same time.
Some systems or sects of the Gnostics label the spiritual aspect of Christ as that of an aeon. In this interpretation, Christ the Aeon was sent to Earth to correct the error and corruption originally set in motion by the Demiurge and the Archons in the original conception of the universe. His body was simply a vehicle or conduit through which he could actually communicate and convey the message of gnosis and self-salvation to humanity.[10]