Valentinianism

I mean, I was kind of brought up Christian Gnostic.

So I was very, very familiar with all the ideas of Sethians and Valentinians and all that business.

Ever since I was five years old, my dad's a bit weird, right? He introduced me to all this stuff when I was a kid, you know, 1981, 1982.

He was heavily influenced by Elaine Pagels and Gilles Cuspell and all this sort of business and theosophy.

Let them learn from your piety that such misbelief as theirs comes from Valentinus and Marchion and Manichaeus, some of whom brought in the notion of semblance instead of reality, and others dividing what cannot be divided denied that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, John one fourteen.

Why then, since they think with those men, do they not also take up the inheritance of their names? For it is reasonable that they should bear the names of those whose error they hold, so as to be hereafter called Valentinians and Marchionites and Manichaeans.

And perhaps in that case they might be brought to shame by the ill-sounding appellations, and enabled to see into what depth of impiety they have fallen.

And it would be but just to give them no further answer, according to the apostle's exhortation, A heretic after a first and second admonition reject, knowing that such a one is subverted and sinneth, being self-condemned, Titus three ten.

Abul A'eliya said, "The Sabis are a sect of people of the scripture who recite the Book of Psalms." We know for a fact, we just spoke about the Sabis, the Sabis are a bunch of moon-worshiping pagans, and now they're supposed to be a people of the book, the Bible of all things, the scriptures, who recite the Book of Psalms.

Isn't that fascinating? Didn't we just have a bunch of, uh, Gnostics and heretical Jews and Christians who recited their own books, who wrote their own Gnostic Gospels and who recited the Book of Hebrews, which was not a canonical Christian book? So Gnostics who use Psalms, and just so by sheer coincidence, Gnostics who are known to have used the Psalms include the Manichaeans, the Sethians, the Valentinians, the Nazarenes, and the Hermetics.

Very interesting.

Any comments before I go on?

We're gonna learn more about them.

It's going to be relevant.

Now, the Valentinians believe that the Psalms contain hidden meanings and symbolic teachings that aligned with their Gnostic worldview.

Yeah.

You know, no birth from the Virgin Mary, no story of the boy in the temple, just the adult human being, the heavenly Jesus coming down into Capernaum, and there he begins.

The Valentinian Gospels of Truth and of Philip similarly have Jesus disclose that the creation of this material world is a cosmic mistake, perpetrated by an incompetent, inferior creator, which obscures the true inner identity of the elect who suffer psychic distress because they do not know who they really are as lost sparks of the divine light until Jesus comes and reveals it to them.

The Gnostic Gospels of the Egyptians and of Judas, reflect outright hostility to the Eucharistic worship of apostolic Christianity, which they regard as grotesque cannibalism.

The narrative gospel of Peter is outspoken in its anti-Judaism, and anti-Judaism characterizes all of these counterfeit gospels.

And the Paulines and the Matheans and the Johannines said, yeah, you guys are the real deal.

So that did happen.

But I would just ask, anyone who feels unhappy that the Valentinians or Gnostics didn't count, just to consider something that you care about deeply and then think about someone who claims that same identity or tribe or passion and does it in a way that makes you crazy because you think it's so wrong and so misguided and garbles up what you love best about it.

That is an experience accessible to all of us.

So to what degree can we consider this text Gnostic? Well, one way of asking that question is if we were to find Thunder Perfect Mind in a non-Nag Hammadi context, would we have any reason to believe this text was connected to Gnosticism? And the answer, frankly, is not really.

For instance, in Thunder Perfect Mind, we don't see the elaborate kind of origin myth, specifically the myth of evil, as it's worked out in either Valentinian or other kinds of Sethian texts like the Apocryphon of John.

If you're interested in texts like that, I've actually already done a video on the Apocryphon of John, which goes into a great deal of this so-called Gnostic mythology.

If you're interested in that, you can click the card above to check out that episode.

This is the hierogamos.

This is reenacting the love that Barbelo and the Invisible Spirit have as they co-create existence or depth and silence of the Valentinians, the great mother and father who are always in a loving embrace of creation and mutual expression.

As Lily writes, Adam and Eve can love each other not according to the power dynamics that the rulers attempt to establish, but as equal partners.

The Birth of Seth and Nerea The Archons intended their assault to produce a lineage of permanent slaves.

Origen, moreover, cites from the same Gospel, Christ hath said, Presently my mother and the Holy Spirit received me, and carried me by one of my hairs to Mount Tabor.

This sentence, unless it be construed favorably, seems to contain the Gnostic heresy of the Valentinians, who assert that the Holy Ghost was the mother of Christ.

Origen, however, defends it thus, that the Holy Ghost is not called the mother of Christ by generation, but by imitation, for inasmuch as he imitated his father and conformed himself to his will.

This is but a poor defense, however.

It wasn't one thing.

There were all sorts of variations.

Basilidites, Cainites, Carinthiites, Encratites, Marcionites, Nicolaitans, Sethians, Severians, Valentinians.

Two main groups were the Valentinians from this man, Valentinus, who I mentioned, and then the Sethians.

The Valentinians were more Christian.

The Sethians were weird.

Well, it was all weird to us, but perhaps non-Christian in origin and even more bizarre.

They did not seek to be anchored in the teachers and the texts of the past.

No gift of the gods he holds is so precious as the knowledge of the truth, and that of the nature of the gods so far as our limited capacities allow us to rise toward them.

The Valentinians termed initiation light.

The initiate, says Sellus, becomes the epop when admitted to see the divine lights." So what he's saying is, in a nutshell here, is that you have to free yourself from your passions, your hindrances, your senses.

This is all about freeing yourself of the cage that you've been locked in.