The Aeons & Their Roles In The Universe

Up until this point, the discussion of the place where Father God, Mother Barbelo, and Lord Jesus reside has been fairly simple. This is where it goes crazy, all at once. Forgive me if my explanation of the whole thing sucks because, well, I’m not altogether sure that I understand it myself. >.>

I’m going to stop here for a moment and point out something that will likely help people understand where I’m coming from.

Some people believe that the aeons and other characters in the Gnostic creation myth are allegories or archetypes, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that belief. I, on the other hand, am one of those people who believes that the characters in the Gnostic mythos are real beings. I don’t think they necessarily look like us or anything, but I do feel that they are real.

Now, with that out of the way, let’s discuss the aeons, shall we?

The photo above depicts the cosmos as imagined by the Sethians. I think it’s mostly based off the Secret Book of John. Now, while I have, in fact, read the Secret Book of John, I can’t even pretend to claim that I understand it all. So this may be a case of the blind leading the proverbial blind here, and if so, I apologize.

All right, let’s start at the beginning. God the Father’s first thought is Mother Barbelo. Together, the two of them “conceive” the Christ. I’m going to skip the proto-Adam business because, honestly, it doesn’t interest me that much, and I don’t think it has a whole lot of bearing on this particular post, anyway.

Ok, once we’ve got the Holy Family of the Father, the Mother, and the Son, it all kind of takes a turn for the weird. From this Holy Family, we have a series of emanations, which, in turn, also have a series emanations, none of which makes the slightest bit of sense when written out like that. I have no idea why they emanated or what the implications of such emanations are, so to keep my head from exploding, I like to tell myself that we’re all thoughts in the mind of God, even though that doesn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense, either.

You know what? Just try not to think about that part too much.

It appears that the four light-bearers (or luminaries) were the first to emanate, which makes them the second aeons after Lord Jesus. Since they’re the ones closest to the source, they become sort of intermediaries. Why they were actually created, I have no idea, but I think that since the (accidental) creation of the world, they serve as agents of the Mother and the Father and help us in every way that they can. Incidentally, their names are Armozel, Eleleth, Oriel, and Daviethai.

From the four luminaries emanated more aeons ’cause if a few aeons are good, then a whole lot’s better, right? If the light-bearers emanated from the Mother and Father and are agents of the Mother and Father, then that can mean only one thing: The aeons emanating from the luminaries are, in turn, agents of the luminaries. Thus, we have ourselves an entire ladder of delegation going on here.

Armozel’s aeons are Truth, Grace, and Form. Eleleth’s are Peace, Perfection, and Wisdom. Oriel’s are Memory, Afterthought, and Perception. Daviethai’s are Love, Understanding, and Idea.

Aaaaaand that pretty much wraps up all we know for sure about the aeons. This is one part of the Gnostic teachings that I find severely lacking. Essentially, we’re presented with flat characters who represent some ideal or other, like a in medieval morality play, and that’s it. This is why I love Hindu mythology. It’s so much richer than just “And so-and-so came from so-and-so. The end,” and I feel it has much more to teach us.

Of course, this is not necessarily a failing of our Gnostic forefathers. The Hindu religion is the oldest extant religion that’s still being practiced today. And it’s not like there’s some attempt at a Hindu revival, like there is with the Greek pantheon or the Egyptian pantheon or what-have-you. Hinduism is a living faith that has been practiced without pause for thousands of years. Thus, they’ve had plenty of freaking time to expand their cosmology and cosmogony to include innumerable stories about their various Gods and Goddesses.

The Gnostics, on the other hand, had, what, maybe 400 years before they started being brutally stamped out by the orthodox church–and that includes the time that all Christians, proto-orthodox, Gnostic, or whatever were being persecuted by the Romans. So, yeah, I, too, would’ve probably been more worried about not dying a slow and painful death than about coming up with delightful stories about deities that are supposed to impart great lessons to those who hear them. But I digress….

The different emanations work somewhat differently in other Gnostic schools. The Valentinian school, for instance, has more aeons, and their names aren’t identical to the ones listed above, and so forth. I just chose to talk about the Sethian school because it seemed less complicated than some of the others. The aeons all represent the same things–emanations from the Holy Family–and their names aren’t super-important, anyhow. But none of the schools have any real mythology surrounding the various aeons, unfortunately. For that reason, you may notice me equating certain aeons with certain figures from the Hindu pantheon from time to time because I think there’s a lot we can learn from these stories. (NB: Very few Hindus that I know of take these myths literally. They tend to be looked at as metaphors used to teach certain lessons, which is why I will occasionally be appropriating them, so that we can learn from them. No disrespect is intended.)

I think that the luminaries and the aeons are Gods and Goddesses, just like Lord Jesus, Mother Barbelo, and God the Father. It is the Holy Family that is supreme, but that doesn’t mean that the aeons and the luminaries are not very powerful in their own right. I also believe that the aeons most likely have angels (or demi-Gods/Goddesses) as their helpers as well, so we’ve really got a lot of help on our side if we know how to seek it out.

If God the Father and Mother Barbelo can be viewed as similar to Shiva and Shakti, as I theorized in this post, then we can view the aeons as powerful “helper” Gods and Goddesses, like Ganesha, for instance.

You may have noticed that one of Eleleth’s aeons was Wisdom, AKA Sophia. She is the only one of the aeons and the light-bearers to have any sort of mythology surrounding her, which is why she will be getting her own post next time and the rest of the poor aeons and luminaries were all smushed together into this one.

So stay tuned for a closer look at Mother Sophia soon!

Lord Jesus, The Gnostic Christ

I love this picture of Jesus. I admit that I “borrowed” it from DeviantArt, but if you click the image, it will take you to the artist’s page. Credit where credit is due and all that.

I’m not sure how much I can say about Lord Jesus that hasn’t already been said. He is the Christ, the “son” of the Father and Mother Barbelo, making him the first–and perfect–aeon. (More on the aeon business later.)

While I believe that Lord Jesus did come to earth to save us, that’s pretty much where my agreement with orthodoxy about the role of Jesus ends. As I’ve stated before, I think the whole Jesus died on the cross for your sins thing misses the point. Oh! The heresy!

Nor do I think that the birth of Jesus was the ONE and ONLY time that Christ the aeon descended to earth. If the aeons, in their compassion for humanity, sent us a “savior” to help us loosen the bonds that tie us to this earth, why would they have only sent him to one place at one time, thereby condemning the poor fools who never heard him to living their lives without the knowledge of the light that he brings?

Nah. I think Christ has come many times, some of them we’ve probably never even heard of. The Jesus incarnation is arguably the best-known one, but I have a hard time believing it’s the only one. Again, I refer you to the quote from Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita:

Whenever and wherever there is a decline in religious practice, O descendant of Bharata, and a predominant rise of irreligion–at that time I descend Myself. To deliver the pious and to annihilate the miscreants, as well as to reestablish the principles of religion, I Myself appear millennium after millennium.

I think Lord Krishna was another one of the human incarnations of Christ, the aeon. When Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father except through me,” I don’t think he was talking about Jesus, the man. He was talking about Christ, the aeon. No one can come to the Father except through the Christ, whose incarnations–or avatars, if you prefer–include Jesus, Krishna, et. al. And why can’t they? Because without the Christ, no one knows of the Father’s existence.

Lord Jesus Christ has a great amount of compassion for us, which is why he comes back again and again and again. All of us have that tiny spark of Divine Light inside us; Lord Jesus returns again and again to help us realize it. I think that he will continue to return, be it in bodily form or in other ways–e.g., the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library–until we all come back to the domain of the Father, Mother Barbelo, Lord Jesus himself, Mother Sophia, all the other aeons, the luminaries/light-bearers, and the angels. (This domain is also known as the Pleroma, but there’s something about the sound of that word that irritates my ear, which is why I don’t use it.)

Coming up next: A study of the aeons!

I Heard Jesus, He Drank Wine, & I Bet We’d Get Along Just Fine….

This post is going to be short and sweet and not a bunch of Bunny ramblings. (You’re welcome.)

I’m sure most everyone has heard this song by now (considering that it’s 4 years old), but I thought I would share it, anyway.

I know everyone has days that are hard to get through. Some are worse than others, and some people feel those days more deeply than others, but it’s a fact of life. On the worst of those days, this song is sometimes the only thing that gets me through them. Maybe it’ll help someone else, too. (You can skip to 0:40 to bypass the little introductory speech she gives.) ❤

What The Shakta School Can Teach Gnostics

Disclaimer: While I have studied Hinduism, I am not in any way, shape, form, or fashion an expert on Hindu philosophy in general or the Shakta school in particular. Therefore, please take any interpretations that I give here with a very large grain of salt. I don’t mean to offend or spread misinformation, although I may inadvertently do one or the other (or both), for which I apologize profusely.

Ok, now, without further ado: What The Shakta School Of Hinduism Can Teach Gnostics.

You may have noticed that I often use Hindu imagery in my posts. It’s partly for superficial reasons, i.e., I think they’re pretty, and it’s hard to find “Gnostic” art. But I also think that Hinduism has a lot to teach Gnostics about Gnostic philosophy, and the symbolism in Hindu icons is an example of that.

Above is a small picture of Lord Shiva and (I think) his consort, Parvati. There are many other Goddesses in Shakta thought that are considered to be aspects of Parvati, e.g., Durga, Kali, Lalita, Tara, etc., etc., etc., which is why I’m not 100% sure that the depiction is actually Parvati herself. But regardless of which Goddess in particular is depicted, the point I’m about to (try to) make will should still stand.

Among Shaktas, the Goddess-worshipping sect of Hinduism, it is a common belief that Shiva and Parvati/Durga/Kali/etc. are one. Shiva is the entirely transcendent aspect of God, and Parvati/Durga/Kali/etc. is/are the immanent aspect, which is called “shakti.” In addition to being the transcendent one, Shiva is also the non-changing (for lack of a better word) aspect of God, while Shakti is the dynamic, energetic aspect. How literally this idea is taken depends entirely on the individual, but it is, I believe, a common belief or understanding of Shaktas.

Now, for the longest time, I had a hard time understanding the point of all the Aeons and the Light-Bearers and all the other people just dancing around the realm of God. It took my studying Hinduism, in particular Shaktism, to really get it.

Another belief that many (but not all) Hindus have is that each God or Goddess in the Hindu pantheon is simply an aspect or a facet of the one true God, or Brahman, the Ultimate Reality. Shaivas tend to think the Ultimate Reality is Shiva; Shaktas tend to think it’s Shakti, the Goddess in whichever form the devotee prefers; Vaishnavas tend to think it’s Vishnu. I bring this up because I think it’s relevant to my own understanding of all the Aeons and the Light-Bearers and the Almighty Juggler In The Heavens and what-have-you. All these beings are aspects of the one God who both pervades and transcends all things (see also: panentheism).

But there’s more to it than that, I think. To my way of thinking, God the Father is the Shiva in this analogy, and Mother Barbelo is the Shakti. (Whether or not the being that Gnostics call God the Father is more or less the same as the being that Shaktas call Shiva, and whether Shakti is Barbelo, is another story altogether.) Mother Barbelo is the immanent and active force in the Universe. God the Father is the transcendent and…well, I hate to say “passive” force because that’s not exactly the right word, but it’s 3 am, and I’m struggling here, ok?

Now, I differ in beliefs from Shaktas in that I don’t believe that God is all-powerful. Certainly, he is a very powerful being who is all-knowing and all-beneficent, but I don’t believe he’s all-powerful (more on that later).

So, anyway, God the Father: He’s very much like the Shakta conception of Shiva or the Deist’s conception of God. He is entirely transcendent and does not (or rarely) interfere(s) with the goings-on of the Universe. That is Mother Barbelo’s job. He is the watcher, and she is the one who is being watched.

Mother Barbelo is not all-powerful, either, but she is the vehicle through which there is Divine intervention in the Universe, insofar as she is able to help us. Like the Father, she, too, is all-knowing and all-beneficent. She helps us out when she can, but even more importantly, she helps to empower us to help ourselves. She is the energy that pervades everything, and she and the Father are the source of the small sliver of Light within us all.

So there you have it, the way the basic Shiva/Shakti understanding in the Shakta school of Hinduism can help us understand the roles that God the Father and Mother Barbelo play.

Coming up next time: The role of Lord Jesus, the Christ.

Why I Think Crucicentrism Misses The Point

Crucicentrism: Focus on Jesus’ death on the cross and the atonement for the sins of humanity that supposedly resulted from his death.

To this, Bunny says, “Uh-uh.”

There are multiple reasons why I, as a sort of Gnostic-ish person, think that this type of thinking totally misses the point. I’ll try to be short(ish) about it.

To begin with, the God I believe in, the Unknown God, the Ultimate Reality, the Father who is beyond space and time itself–i.e., not the demiurge–doesn’t require blood sacrifice for sin. I don’t believe the highest aeon of the cosmos descended to humanity simply to be nailed to a cross and die. Jesus gave some radical teachings during this particular incarnation of the Christ–radical teachings that upset the status quo and put a lot of rather important people up in arms. So in my opinion, his crucifixion was just a natural outcome of his ministry, since the powers-that-be at the time needed to silence him. I think he allowed himself to submit to the consequences of this organic world in order to show that he is beyond the constraints of it (and ultimately transcends it) through his resurrection.

I think that viewing him as the sacrificial lamb is a mistake. Thousands of years before, Krishna, whom I believe was an earlier manifestation of the Christ (more on that later), told his friend Arjuna:

Whenever and wherever there is a decline in religious practice, O descendant of Bharata, and a predominant rise of irreligion–at that time I descend Myself. To deliver the pious and to annihilate the miscreants, as well as to reestablish the principles of religion, I Myself appear millennium after millennium.

And that, I believe, is why Jesus came to the people in the first century, in Judea. He came not to die, but to teach us how to live so that we might someday escape the constraints of the demiurge and the archons. That way, we can go to be with God the Father, Mother Barbelo, Lord Jesus, Mother Sophia, and all the other aeons in that place of light beyond space and time.

We all have the spark of the Divine within us. It’s up to us to realize it and live in such a way that we serve the Unknown God and the aeons, rather than the demiurge and the archons. Then, as Jesus said:

If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

The Reason For My Gnostic & Hindu Syncretism

Because I’m sure the question will come up eventually, I’m going to go ahead and answer it: “Bunny, why all the Gnostic/Hindu syncretism?”

The answer is quite simple, really. Most schools of Gnostic thought have really confusing cosmologies. All the aeons and the four lights and all that and not much in the way of explanations for any of it. And God help you if you try to find explanations on the Interwebz because most of what you find is more ridiculous and more outrageous than the original stories are. And I’ma be real with you–all the weird woo-woo New Age Theosophy-based bullshit makes my head hurt.

I find that a liberal dash of Hinduism helps it all go down easier.

Mind you, I’m not saying that Hindu philosophy is necessarily better than Gnostic philosophy. The truth is, I think they complement one another well. In my opinion, Hindu philosophy helps fill in a lot of the holes left by the fact that Gnostic philosophy didn’t have a whole hell of a lot of time to develop before it was more or less squashed in its tracks.

(I should probably stop here and say that I am a Perennialist. I believe that each religion has some grains of truth in it, something we can learn from it, but I don’t really subscribe to any of them in their entirety because they’ve all been created by humans, and we know how fallible humans are.)

Anyway, that’s why I see no problem combining the two. They agree on many of the major points, anyhow, minus the whole demiurge thing (more on that later).

Most Hindus believe that the Gods and Goddesses of their religion are all aspects of Brahman, the Ultimate Reality. Some say the Ultimate Reality is Vishnu, some say it’s Shiva, some say it’s Devi, the Divine Mother, and some say that the Ultimate Reality is completely formless. That’s one of those “it depends” things. But regardless, many of them see the Gods and Goddesses as aspects or facets or parts (choose your preferred term here) of the Ultimate Reality, and that’s the way that I, personally, see the aeons and the light bearers and blah, blah, blah.

God the Father, Mother Barbelo, Lord Jesus, Mother Sophia, and all the others are not the Ultimate Reality all by themselves, but they are a part of it. They all seamlessly blend together to form that Ultimate Reality, so they’re all Divine in and of themselves, since we can’t tell where their separate “personalities,” so to speak, end and where the Ultimate Reality Itself begins. Therefore, to worship any of them is to worship all of them, and to worship any or all of them is to worship the Ultimate Reality. A single facet of a diamond is certainly a diamond all by itself, but it’s also part of a larger diamond, which doesn’t at all take away from its inherent diamondness….And you know what? I’m stopping there because I’m REALLY bad at metaphors.

I think the aeons and the angels are all the same Gods and Goddesses that the Hindus have stories about and have been worshipping as aspects of the Ultimate Reality for centuries before Jesus was ever even born. The Gnostics just named them differently. And also the Hindus have a much richer mythology–and, let’s face it, way more awesome pictures and statues.

Of course, the lack of the demiurge in Hindu mythology (among other things) means that the religions are not the same. The ones we worship are essentially the same, but there are differences in philosophy and cosmology and so forth, so we’re not exactly talking one big universal world religion here. Again, more on that later.

You may have noticed a picture of Mother Saraswati, the Hindu Goddess of learning, wisdom, the arts, science, etc., in the sidebar of this blog. Mother Saraswati is there as an inspiration to me. She watches over my blog and blesses it. She helps me think of things to write about and helps give me the kick in the ass I sometimes need to actually put my ideas down on paper.

I happen to believe that Mother Sophia of the Gnostic myths is essentially an amalgam of Mother Saraswati and Mother Lakshmi (the Hindu Goddess of material and spiritual prosperity, light, good fortune, wisdom, etc.). And, like I said, the Hindus have WAY nicer art than the Gnostics do, so Mother Saraswati (AKA, Sophia) it is!

Edit (August 13th): I have recently added Mother Lakshmi to the sidebar as well. When I first started this blog, I was just sorta meh when it came to Mother Lakshmi, but the more I learn about her, the more I like her. And since I need the wisdom that she bestows, just as I need the wisdom that Mother Saraswati bestows, I’m giving her a place in my sidebar, too. I believe that both of them are one and the same as Mother Sophia, anyway, so let’s add Mother Lakshmi as well.

Conceptualizing Jesus

For years, I’ve thought it odd that most Christians seemed to view Jesus in only one of two ways: Either as the baby Jesus in the manger at Christmastime or the dying Jesus on the cross the rest of the time. (In fact, the entire doctrine of crucicentrism just seems…off…to me. I feel that the crucifixion is unimportant in comparison with the rest of Jesus’s life, teachings, and resurrection. But that’s a story for another day.)

Me? When I think of Jesus, I always think of him as he’s shown in the picture up there. (Admittedly, I chose that particular depiction because I liked the pretty colors.) But my favorite story in the canonical Bible is the story of Jesus with the woman caught in adultery, so that’s my default mental image of him–a gentle man in a perhaps uncharacteristically fierce mode, protecting a weak person from the encroaching mob by sheer force of personality and a biting remark at the mob’s expense. Then, as the mob disperses, the fierce Jesus melts back into the gentle Jesus as he looks at the probably terrified woman and tells her that he doesn’t condemn her.

To me, that image Jesus is far more beautiful and powerful than any of the others. That’s why it’s always the one I see in my mind’s eye when I think of him.