The Gnostic Crucifixion

I alone am the Father, the Lord, and there is no other besides Me. I am a jealous God, bringing the sins of the fathers upon the children for three and four generations,' as though he had become stronger than I and My brethren," The Second Treatise of Great Seth. Notice that not only is the Creator here slandered by the Gnostic Jesus, but the Gnostic Jesus regards himself as one of multiple deities that are greater than the God who created the world. These Gnostic documents also root their knowledge of these "truths" in visions and secret mystical knowledge, claiming to be nothing less than divine revelation.

The Muslim, like the Christian, must reject these documents as the late and non-historical myths that they are. These stories, which come well before the time of Muhammad, persisted on in gnostic texts long after his death. One gnostic document, for example, called the "Acts of John," was clearly still in circulation during and after the time of Muhammad as it was condemned by a church council in AD. In this document, John is reported to have said while describing the time of the crucifixion:.

And when he had hung on the cross on Friday, at the sixth hour of the day, there came darkness over all the earth. And my Lord stood in the middle of the cave and lit it up, and said, 'John, to the multitude down below in Jerusalem I am being crucified, and pierced with lances and reeds, and gall and vinegar is given me to drink. Jesus goes on to use the symbol of a cross of light to teach John a variety of spiritual lessons. He then goes on to say:. But this is not the cross of wood which you will see when you go down here, neither am I he who is upon the cross," Acts of John, Chapter 99 Chapter of this same work continues with phrases like "Therefore I have suffered none of the things which they will say of me", "You hear that I have suffered, yet I have suffered not," and " they say that I was pierced, but I was not wounded; that I was hanged, but I was not hanged; that blood flowed from me, yet it did not flow; and, in a word, those things that they say of me I did not endure.

Plainly, there was a widespread, mythical notion that Jesus had not been crucified but was instead somehow made to appear so. In most versions, this was due to someone else being substituted in Jesus' place, though sometimes it was not so clear on this. Either way, he was preserved in heavenly glory. This story is rooted deeply in gnostic teachings that Jesus is a purely spiritual being that did not ever actually become human but merely inhabited the human realm for a time, and therefore could not actually die a human death.

While obviously not embracing anything like the Gnostic theology behind the story, the Qur'an has included this legend as a fact. There are two central doctrines of Islam at stake here. One, of course, is the teaching that Jesus was not crucified. This was obviously a story drawn from a non-historical Gnostic myth, and therefore is not true.

The second implication has to do with the Qur'an itself. If the author of the Qur'an mistook such a myth for a historical fact, then the Qur'an clearly cannot be the word of God. An all-knowing God would know the origins of this story. An all-knowing God would know that the story was not only false but also rooted in a theology utterly antithetical to Islam. A mere man, however, hearing oral stories about Jesus in 6th-century Arabia would not easily be able to tell the difference between these stories and true, biblical stories of Jesus.

The author of the Qur'an was not an all-knowing God but a mere man. This doctrine comes from one small passage of just two verses in the Quran, which state: The Limbs of the God are scattered abroad, and collected together again in the resurrection. The inner meaning of this graphic symbolism may be gleaned from the following striking passages.

This Body was the symbol of the ideal economy, dispensation or ordering of the universe, its planes, regions, hierarchies, and powers. This also is the true Body of man, the Source of all his bodies. And He spake unto me and said: And whencesoever thou willest, thou gatherest Me; and gathering Me, thou gatherest Thyself.

This is a vision of the Great Person and little person, of the Higher Self and lower self. It may also be interpreted in terms of the Logos and humanity; but it comes nearer home to think of it as the mystery of the individual man--the scattering of the Limbs of the Great Person in the personalities that have been his in many births. It is an apology or defence, as it was called, a formula to be used by the soul in its ascent above, as it passed through the space of the Midst; and for the mystic it is a declaration of the state of a man who is in his last compulsory earth-life.

I have sown no children for the Ruler, but have torn up his roots, and have gathered together my Limbs that were scattered abroad. I know Thee who Thou art; for I am of those from Above. But he has torn up the roots of Death, by shattering the form of egoity, and bursting the bonds of Fate. He has gathered together his Limbs, completed the articulation of his Perfect Body. The Limbs were according to certain orderings, one of which was the configuration of the five-fold Star, the five-limbed Man.

Commune with them of later birth! We are all one with thee. We are one and the same, and Thou art one and the same. To use a similitude and correspondence of speech that ye may understand, they are the Limbs of the Ineffable. And each is according to the dignity of its Glory--the Head according to the dignity of the Head, the Eye according to the dignity of the Eye, the Ear according to the dignity of the Ear, and the rest of the Limbs [in like fashion]; so that the matter is plain: There are many Limbs Members but only one Body.

But there are other Words and Mysteries and Regions [of other worlds]. He is a God who hath found the Words of the Mysteries of the second Space, in the midst. He is a Saviour and free of every space who hath found the Words of the Mysteries of the third Space towards the interior Therefore is he who hath found the Words of these Mysteries, like unto the First.

For it is the gnosis of the Gnosis of the Ineffable in which I have spoken with you this day. It, therefore, follows, as we have already seen, that this symbolism was one of the most, if not the most, fundamental in this Gnosis.

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The three stages of perfectioning are those of the Saint, God and Saviour. But these are still stages in evolution or process, no matter how sublime they be. The fourth or consummation is other; it transcends process, it is ever itself with itself, embracing all processes and all powers simultaneously. But we must not be tempted to comment on this instructive passage, for there is quite enough material in it to develop into a small treatise in itself. For an admirable intuition of the Mystery of the Limbs of the Ineffable, and the meaning of the words "the Head is according to the dignity of the Head," etc.

The Gnostic seers lost themselves in the contemplation of the simultaneous simplicity and multiplicity of these Mysteries. This graphic symbolism of the Limbs is derived from the tradition of the Osiric Mysteries. Those who are born from Him create Him. They rest when they have caused the Kingly Osiris to be born. It is He who engenders them.

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It is He who causes them to exist. His Birth is the Birth of Ra in Amenti. It requires no elaboration to show that this is precisely the same mystery as the secret set forth in our Vision of the Cross. This is the Kingly Osiris in his male-female nature, self-creative. Atman is both the producer and product of evolution. In a restricted sense the above may be interpreted from the standpoint of the individuality and its series of personalities in incarnation.

And now to return to the text. The Race is the Upper Nature, now scattered abroad in the hearts of men; it is the true Spirit of man, the hidden Divinity within him. It is this which re-turns, and so causes the man to turn or repent. It is obedient, that is audient, to the Voice of the Self, the compelling Utterance of the Logos. He who not only hears, but hearkens to or obeys the sweet counsels of this Great Persuasion, becomes this Upper Nature consciously; and therefore it no longer is what it was, for it is conscious in the man, and so the man is above men of the lower nature. These mysterious sentences all set forth the state of true Self-consciousness.

So long as man is not conscious that he is Divine, so long is the Divine in him not what it really is; the "lower" "limits" the "higher. This "attention" is the straining or striving towards the One; and therefore no attention must be paid to the many. The whole strife of warring opinions and doubts must be reconciled, or at-oned, within the Mystery. The thought must be allowed to dwell but little on "those without.

They who are "without the mystery" are not arbitrarily excluded, but are those who prefer to go forth without instead of returning within. They who have re-turned, or turned back on themselves, and entered into themselves for the realization of true Self-consciousness, alone can understand the meaning of the Great Passion, as has been so admirably set forth in the Mystery-Ritual of the Dance. Those who have consciousness of these spiritual verities, nay, even those who have but dimly felt their greatness, will easily understand that the story of the crucifixion as believed in by the masses was for the Gnostics but the shadow of an eternal happening that most intimately concerned every man in his inmost nature.

The outer story was centred round a dramatic crisis of death on a stationary cross--a dead symbol, and a symbol of death.

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But the inner rite was one of movement and "dancing," a living symbol and a symbol of life. This was shown to the disciple--indeed, as we have seen, he was made in the Dance to partake in it--that he might know the mystery of suffering in a moment of Great Experience.

He saw it and became it; it was shown him in action. He had seen sorrow and suffering, and the cause of it had been dimly felt; but its ceasing he did not yet know really, for the ceasing of sorrow could only come when he could realize sorrow and joy, suffering and bliss, simultaneously. And that mystery the Christ alone knows. Let the disciple then first see the suffering of the man through, not his own, but His Master's eyes. He will first only see the mystery, grasp it intellectually; he will not as yet realize it.

When he realizes it, there will then be bliss indeed, for he will begin to become the Master Himself. And the Master is the conqueror of woe--not, however, in the sense of the annihilator of it, but as the one who rejoices in it; for he knows that it is the necessary concomitant of bliss, and that the more pain he suffers in one portion of his nature, the more bliss he experiences in another; the deeper the one the deeper the other, and therewith the intenser becomes his whole nature.

His Great Body is learning to respond to greater and greater impulses or "vibrations. It may thus to some extent become clear that what is asserted of the Christ in the general Gospel-story is typically true and yet is not true. Those who look at one side only of the living picture see in a glass darkly. If we could only realize that all the ugliness and misery and confusion of life is but the underside, as it were, of a pattern woven on the Great Loom or embroidered by Divine Fingers! We can in our imperfect consciousness see only the underside, the medley of crossing of threads, the knots and finishings-off; we cannot see the pattern.

Nevertheless it exists simultaneously with the underside. The Christ sees both sides simultaneously, and understands. But the term that our Gnostic writer chooses with which to depict this grade of being is not Christ, but Word or Reason Logos. This Reason is not the ratiocinative faculty in man which conditions him as a duality; it is rather more as a Divine Monad, as Pure Reason, or that which can hold all opposites in one.

It is called Word because it is the immediate intelligible Utterance of God. This is the first mystery that man must learn to understand; then will he be able to understand God as unity; and only finally will he understand the greatest mystery of all--man, the personal man, the thing we each of us now are, God in multiplicity, and why there is suffering. With this the writer breaks off, knowing fully how difficult it is to express in human speech the living ideas that have come to birth in him, and knowing that there are still more marvellous truths of which he has caught some glimpse or heard some echo, but which he feels he can in no way set forth in proper decency.

And so he tells us the Lord is taken up, unseen by the multitudes. That is to say, presumably, no one in the state of the multiplicity of the lower nature can behold the vision of unity. When he descends from the height of contemplation, however, he remembers enough to enable him to laugh at the echoes of his former doubts and fancies and misconceptions, and to make him realize the marvellous power of the natural living symbolic language that underlies the words of the mystery-narrative that sets forth the story of the Christ. No man can comprehend Man; the little cannot contain the Great, except potentially.

When Philip was crucified he cursed his enemies. The apostles are his higher powers; the rest the opposing forces. The latter plunge into Hades and experience the punishments of those who crucify the Christ and his apostles. They are thus converted and sing their repentance. Whereupon a Voice was heard saying: And all the multitude that had gone down from the City into the Abyss came up on the Ladder of the Cross of Light; but there remained below the proconsul and the viper which these worshipped.

And when the multitude had come up, having looked upon Philip hanging head downwards, they lamented with great lamentation at the lawless action which they had done. Philip stands for the man learning the last lesson of divine mercy. The crucifixion of Philip is, however, not the same as the crucifixion of the Christ; he is hanged reversed, his head to the earth and not towards heaven. It is a lower grade of the mysteries. Concerning the mystery of the crucifixion of the Christ we learn somewhat of its inner nature from the doctrines of the Docetae.



His baptism was on this wise: He washed Himself in the Jordan, that is the Stream of the Logos, and after His purification in the Life-giving Water, He became possessed of a spiritual or perfect body, the type and signature of which were in accordance with the matter of his virginity, that is of virgin substance; so that when the World-ruler, or God of generation or death, condemned his own plasm, the physical body, to death, that is to the Cross, the soul nourished in that physical body might strip off the body of flesh, and nail it to the "tree," and yet triumph over the powers of the Ruler and not be found naked, but clothed in a robe of glory.

They both plainly belong to the same tradition, and might indeed have been written by the same hand.

The Gnostic Crucifixion by G.R.S. Mead

I know thy mystery; for thou hast been planted in the world to make-fast things unstable. The identification of the Master and the man with the Cross and in the Cross is hardly disguised. The Cross is the Tree of Life and the tree of death simultaneously.

The Master is hanged between two thieves, the one repentant and the other obdurate, the soul turned towards the Light and towards the Darkness, all united in the one Mystery of the Cross--the Mystery of Man. We have seen above that Philip is hanged head downwards, but he is not the most famous instance of this reversal.

Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter

The best known is associated with the name of Peter in the mystic romances. The Jonah-myth was used as a type of the Initiate, who after being "three days" in the Belly of the Fish, the Great Life or Animal that dwells in the Ocean or Great Water, is vomited forth re-generate, and so a fit vehicle for preaching with compelling words or acts for the benefit of those in Nineveh or the Jerusalem Below, or this world.

But for those who had ears to hear there was a still further instruction concerning the secret of the Mystic Cross. It figures forth the Way of the First Man. For that the Way in which ye travel there is Christ. He hath been made for us the One and Only Word; whence also doth the Spirit say: As for the Voice--since that voice is a thing of flesh, with features not to be ascribed unto God's nature, the cross-piece of the Cross is thought to figure forth that human nature which suffered the fault of change in the First Man, but by the help of God-and-man received again its real Mind.

The interpretation becomes somewhat strained towards the end. The reversed hanging typified the man of sex, or the man still under the sway of generation, separated into male and female. Such hang head-downwards in the Great Womb of Nature, and all is reversed for them. Hanged upright, the re-generate man contains in himself in active operation the twin powers in union, now used for spiritual creation, and self-perfection. He it is in whom the All became joyous; it rejoiced and was joyful, and brought forth in its joy myriads of myriads of AEons; they were called the 'Births of Joy,' because the All had joyed with the Father.

The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations that appear as [Greek: Part of a series on Gnosticism. Zostrianos Letter of Peter to Philip. Melchizedek Thought of Norea Testimony of Truth. Sentences of Sextus Gospel of Truth. Trimorphic Protennoia On the Origin of the World. Retrieved from " https: Christian apocalyptic writings Gnostic apocrypha Apocryphal revelations Petrine-related books Coptic literature Christian studies book stubs.