Apocryphal books (New Testament); Christian heresies -- History -- Early church, ca. 30-600; Gnosticism
While Jesus is sitting with His disciples on the Mount of Olives, the
Document goes on to say, there descends upon Him a “Great Power of
Light,” which is in fact the “vesture” or Heavenly Nature which He had
left in the Limit or Lower Boundary of the upper worlds on His descent
to earth in “the shape of Gabriel.” This vesture enables Him to rise to
the Boundary and there assume two other vestures which are necessary for
the continuation of the journey to the two transcendental “Spaces” which
are higher than this. In this first vesture, also, He finds five
mysterious words written which are here interpreted as an address from
the higher powers hailing Him as the First Mystery, and the catalogue of
names which follows enables us to form a fairly correct idea of the
arrangement of this Chorema as well as of the higher ones which are
known as the “Spaces” of the First Mystery and of the “Ineffable” or
Supreme Unmanifested God respectively.[19]
On assuming this vesture, Jesus flies into the Height, but returns the
next day clad in three vestures of dazzling light, and tells His
disciples how He provided for the births of Himself and them by casting
into their respective mothers Powers from the higher parts of the
Kerasmos instead of the material souls which they would otherwise have
received from the Rulers of the stars. In like manner also, He tells how
He caused the soul of Elijah to become incarnate in the body of John the
Baptist. He then goes on to describe His journey upward through the
First Sphere directly above the firmament, the Second Sphere called
Destiny, and the Twelve Æons,[20] which appear to be the signs of the
Zodiac. The Kings or Tyrants of these last rebel against Him, and He
punishes them by taking away part of their power and altering their
course, so that mankind will no longer be able to foretell the future by
means of the astrology and magic taught them by the sinning angels.
Leaving their Place, He ascends to the thirteenth Æon, and finds below
it Pistis Sophia, the heroine of the book. She is, it appears, one of
the twenty-four Unseen or Invisible Ones put forth in pairs by the head
of the Left Hand or most material part of the Kerasmos, and had left her
spouse and her work to pursue a light which she saw below her and which
she thought would enable her to mount to the Treasure-house. This light,
however, was a snare sent into Chaos by one of the material Powers
immediately above her; and on her advancing to seize it, she was set
upon by several material Powers that her persecutor had put forth and
deprived of her own light, so that she could not return to her own Place
in the thirteenth Æon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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