Phillip Medhurst

 

The Gnosis issued forth, and stood at once

In rank with Forethought, born to mother true,

Who by her wish had helped to bring him forth.

The One whose sight blinds mortal eye was glad

To see effulgent fruit swell on His bough,

And He anointed him with chrism pressed

From His own goodness, and from His own store

Of overflowing virtue’s essence, pure.

And thus endowed, he waited on his source,

And added to the glory that no eye

Can see of his progenitor, and His

Prevenient grace, the matrix of the All.

And Gnosis asked for Truth. The One agreed,

And swift on His consent that Truth came forth,

And joined the heavenly rank of all who dwell

As mind ineffable. But Truth would speak,

And so the Word then issued forth and joined

The sphere in which Truth lives and moves and has

Its being. And from that Word, imbued with Light

And Life, came what could turn a Word to Deed.

By active Word, Sophia came to be.

But she desired a thing exclusive to

Herself. This thought was not inert, and so

It reified: short of perfection, shorn

Of that ideal beauty typical

Of her who gave him birth, a thwarted clone

Of one true-born of heavenly gene and stock,

All self-engendered, selfishly conceived.

The One had not engaged or wed with her

In union divine; no spouse or sire

Had courted her consent, no nuptial bliss

Had blessed the product of chaste amity;

For what she willed was without conference

Of family, or consummation of

Conjugal love; concupiscence instead,

Without relationship, a fantasy impure,

And alien to the hymns its Mother sang

When in accord with her pure ancestry.

In this her wish came true: a monster formed,

A snake with lion-jaws and eyes that blazed

With horrid fire of self-will. She cast

It out, beyond the zone of purity

Where he might not be seen by all her peers:

From Wisdom born, in ignorance to dwell.

She gave her child a name, as it befits

A ruler who inherits a great power:

It is Ialdabaoth, matter’s prince.

Ialdabaoth strutted forth, and marched

From place to place, far from the place where he

Was born. And annexing still more he formed

Self-glorifying spheres of fire that still

Flare on unto this day in heaven’s dome.

The tyrant raised his hand – his arrogance –

And masturbated, got Authorities,

Egged on by fantasies of unknown realms.

And as Sophia’s light within him shone

And gave him unique power: because of this

He blasphemously called himself a god.

So he created seven Angels, each with Powers

Sufficient for a year of days, and all

In mimicry of that intuited

From what was long before. But those whom he

Begot, those children of the ignorance

And dark, lacked intimation of the source

And principle from which all things had come.

A week of angels this way rules the world,

For Ialdabaoth, who is Saklas, has

A multitude of faces, more than all,

So he can show himself in any face,

Just as he wills. He shares his nature with

Them – ev’rything except the pristine power

That he drew from his mother, Wisdom: that

He would not share. This made him cosmic lord,

Conferring – as he thought – divinity

Upon his minion powers. And their “god”

Gave each a place to dwell, a so-called “heaven”.

Their urge to rule instilled makes them believe

That they are gods; but Truth is not deceived:

Their bestial natures are revealed to those

Who know. Their god-like attributes are part

And parcel of a fantasy dreamed up

By Saklas; but illusion will not have

Its way – except with those who dwell within

The dream. The light of Truth will chase away

The fog, dissolve its shifting, swirling shapes

Which scare all the deceived like flimsy masks

Pinned onto wind-puffed cloaks. Such images

Invoke some dread reality, from which

They draw their fearful influence and power.

And so it was with these, for Saklas shaped

His schemes upon a kind of memory

Of what he had experienced in the womb

Of what is truly real. And when he saw

The world he had created all laid out,

And gazed upon the panoply which he

Had spun, enveloping his nakedness,

His tongue clapped in his bell, and said:

“I am a jealous god. There is no god

But me.” And so in his stupidity

He gave the game away, and told his friends

There was a God who spurned “Divinity” –

The title of this insane jealousy.

The Mother then became aware of her

Deficiency, and how her light had dimmed.

For when she saw her blemishes within

The light of the Pleroma, she then drew

Across her face a veil of darkness: she

No longer could return her consort’s smile

Without deception, and be unabashed.

Her holy fear caused her to hover at

The gate of Truth, unable to go in.

For when her offspring in his arrogance

Had taken power from his Mother, he

Was ignorant of any provenance

And thought her womb was all that there had been.

Infatuated with his handiwork,

He placed himself upon a pedestal,

An idol to himself. And so she turned;

And so was heard in her humility.

For now she knew what kind of thing he was,

And how he lacked perfection’s symmetry.

Up to her source she raised her tear-filled eyes.

He gave the consent, and so a healing flood

Of cleansing holiness washed over her

To make her whole; for Providence agreed

To supervise her in austerity

Within a place of penance set aside

Beyond carnality and snares of sin,

Where she could re-acquire her modesty.

And then a voice came forth: “Behold the Man!’

And when the chieftain of the Powers heard

He had no inkling of from whence it came.

At once, however – ignorant or not –

They were aware – to their damnation – that

There was a holy, perfect Source above:

The Mother-Father, Parents who brought forth

All that there is, and whose beneficence

Was now displayed in dazzling Anthropos.

A shiver went through Ialdabaoth’s world,

And rippled through its fundamental sands.

And in the sky the purest element,

Transfigured by the bright epiphany,

Revealed that Truth is Beauty, Beauty Truth.

And so the carnal gang beheld a light

Infuse the cavern of the world below.

Their eyes were opened, and they saw revealed

The shimmering glory of the Son of Man.

The upstart god addressed his fawning clan:

“Come let us make a thing like what we saw

To give some aim and purpose to our plans.”

So each and every one of them then gave

A little something from his psychic pouch,

And made an entity from out themselves,

Each adding layer on layer of plastic stuff,

Along the lines of what they had just seen.

Thus a reflection creaturely became,

And looked just like the sole original –

The perfect Anthropos. And then they said,

“Now let us call him Adam, that his name

May light our high road to imperium.”

And so this wondrous work, this body came

About – not yet of flesh, but harbouring

A vital force that tapped the secrets of

Their universe, their sevenfold harmony,

Encapsulated microcosmically

In sense and a potential agency.

And yet there was something in short supply:

The thing had no vocation to fulfil,

And thus no will to try, and lay inert.

No aspiration graced that dawning day.

Sophia wanted to retrieve the power

Which she had given to her bastard son.

In innocence she came and humbly asked

The Mother-Father of transcendent All

Who is most merciful. And He decreed

That Gnosis should go down to that cold place

Where ignorance prevails. Elsewhere, within

The stony hearts of all the Powers the weed

Of envy sprang. Their flaws exposed by this

Wise luminosity, they cast the Man

Into a pit, heaped on him all their dung,

Detestable excrescence of their days.

So Adam came within the mortal sphere,

Coiled there and then of base material,

Engendered from desire within the dark,

Enlivened by a soul-less breath, mere air.

Thus was our fetter forged, our dungeon made,

By which these bandits now enslaved the Man,

Who, in the darkness, soon forgot the light

And grew accustomed to the stench of death.

And then Heimarmene was made, so that in time

The cruellest jailer shackled all his being,

With an array of manacles and chains

Called times and seasons, moments, ages, dates,

Those fetters from which none could be exempt

Outside the All, nor gods nor mortal men,

Now doomed to live within a space of time

That was the past, or will be days to come –

But never now, the present never seized,

With minds obsessed with what will be and what

There might have been, with schemes and plans stretched to

Infinity, but that eternal now

Beyond their ken. And hence the consciousness

Of the Beyond eluded Man again.

And furthermore he was engenderised,

By which the husband, stronger than the wife

In limb, for males might claim a spiritual

Domain irrelevant to Truth derived

From high authority – for Saklas knew

He must divide and rule. And thus it was

Ialdabaoth’s die was cast and stamped

On all; and in his image, in due course

Two sons were born, and Cain and Abel named;

And thanks to Saklas, human creatures were

Endowed with seed to replicate themselves,

The carnal and the psychic; one inspired

By wind, the other by Sophia’s ghost.

Meanwhile, within a bower of Life the Man

Called Adam met the Woman Eve, and each

Encount’ring each within their very core

Begot the Son of Man called Seth, the True.

This son and all his offspring, blessed by those

On high, are called to dwell in heaven’s courts,

And taught to trace their names inscribed upon

The scroll of Life, while monuments to flesh

Collapse, their epitaphs erased. For those

Who truly live cannot abide the dark:

They must illumine all the catacombs

Where the enlightened have been forced to dwell,

And lead them to the sunlight up above.

Thus shall the righteous gather, and assist

Each other on the way, that true mankind

Might find its rightful place within the All,

And holiness, made whole, might be complete.