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Parallels within Gnosticism, Graeco-Roman Mythology and Hermeticism.

Talk given by Frater IAM, Magister Templi of the Ordo Rosae Crucis at the Vernal Equinox meeting of Lux Aeterna, 1994.

Fratres et Sorores, as we all know, the fundamental archetype of the universe as coming into being through the fragmentation and specialization of undifferentiated reality, also known as the One, is widely spread throughout mankind and in many different forms. The Big Bang, the Sundering of the Celestial Chorus, the Gnostic Fall, the Evolutionary Ontology of Hallbaum, the cosmogony of Heisod and the creation story in Genesis. It is also widely accepted among enlightened scholars that in this evolution a number of entities, fragments of the One, usually called the Pure Ones, developed and either fragmented further or were stabilized in the form of Celestines and Uthras, which then were gradually developed and defined by the beliefs of mankind. In this talk I will discuss what we know about how the Pure Ones descended into definition.

As we all know, the Gnostics claim that the origin of the Sundering was that the entity known as Ialdabaoth identified itself as separate from the One, as described in the Book of Eight Aeons. Through this action, the original purity and balance was disrupted, and under the influence of Ialdabaoth (also called the Demiurge) the One divided into the various Pure Ones, also known as the Aeons among the Gnostics. Ialdabaoth could also be identified with Uranus in Greek Mythology, who was born from Gaia (the other part of the One, who had emerged from Chaos, the original state of perfection) and then mated with her to produce the rest of creation.

Exactly what happened with Ialdabaoth is uncertain. According to the Gnostics he was the God of the Old Testament but other sources such as De Omnipotentia by Damien Rochaurd and Liber Lolligonis claim it choose to remain separate from all of creation, becoming its own reality. In Greek Myth, Uranus was defeated and banished by his children after he had imprisoned them, and his son Chronos castrated him, which could mean he lost his ability to force more creation, and then banished Uranus into the Outer Darkness.

According to Master Kwan Ho of the Tower of Perfect Solitude at Tanitaweng Shan, the Tao was set in motion by the work of Ialdabaoth (although he did not acknowledge any name for this entity) and Ialdabaoth became the Motion of All instead of the Perfection of Tao. At the opposite extreme is Bishop Gordon Webster-Hall of the Trinity Sanctuary in London, who on no uncertain terms identified Ialdabaoth with Satan. According to his view, the ultimate goal of Ialdabaoth/Satan is to corrupt and destroy all of creation, thus ensuring that it will never be able to rise back to God.

Regardless of the ultimate fate and goal of Ialdabaoth, it is beyond any doubt that this entity represents the most powerful, and in its own twisted way, perhaps the most original shard of the One. During the subsequent Sundering the other Pure Ones emerged affected by its influence and were gradually tainted with material existence.

According to the Book of the Eight Aeons, and also supported by Greek myth, Chronos was Ialdabaoth/Uranus' eldest son and eventual nemesis. Chronos, also known as Saturn and Father Time, seems to be the personification of the Dark Father archetype. His brothers and sisters were known as the Titans and could perhaps be seen as the first generation of Pure Ones or the primal forces, still struggling with each other and the subsequent generations of creation. It seems that they were much less defined than Chronos, except for Chronos' brother Okeanos, the infinite sea. Okeanos could be identified with the Deep Umbra and the concept of infinity/eternity, but very little is know about him except that he seems to be allied with Uranus.

The next aeon, usually called the Aeon of Jupiter or Zeus, was created from Chronos and rebelled against it. The Greek Myth tells us that Chronos feared that his children would one day rebel as he had rebelled against his father, so he ate them. This could correspond to a will to stop the descent into matter by closing himself into an Ouroboros, the snake biting its own tail and incidentally also a symbol for the death/rebirth so intimately linked with Time. But this was broken by the stone Abadir (also called Baetylus) given to him by Rhea (who could in fact have been Ialdabaoth!), which he devoured instead of his son, who eventually defeated him. It is interesting to speculate if this stone is not the original archetype of the Holy Grail (which has been alternately described as a cup, a stone and a light by different mystics) or the Philosopher's Stone, which has the ability to open up the Ouroboros or close it.

According to some myths, after his banishing Chronos sought to return to reality but was unable to deal with the new situation. Instead Time became the great destroyer, similar to the black holes of contemporary astrophysics, and developed into Oblivion. This could in some sense be seen as the final result of the snake eating its own tail and vanishing completely.

The subsequent development of the Aeons seems to have progressed much more smoothly, possibly because of the introduction of Abadir. The Aeon of Mars seems to be a natural development from the struggles between time and space (Chronos and Jupiter), it represents conflict and organization on all levels, especially the sphere of Entropy. It is very interesting to analyze this Aeon in conjunction with a study of the beliefs of the Moon Beasts (also known as lycanthropes or, more commonly, werewolves). According to the songs sung by the Tjetjersko shamans of the Anabar river (and separately supported by the story fragments recorded in Liber Noctuabundi by Andreas Arenamontanus), these beings believe all of creation is controlled by three forces, the Weaver, the Wild and the Worm. The Weaver is the force responsible for creation, definition and progress, the Wild represents change and randomness, and the Worm is responsible for decay and the closing of the cycle.

This could correspond to a subsequent division of the Aeon of Mars/Entropy into a force of ordering and evolution (the Weaver), a force of decay and entropy in the common sense (the Worm) and a force of randomness and turbulence (the Wild). This kind of trinary division seems to be very common among the Pure Ones. Obviously the lycanthropes regard the ordering of existence as the fundamental level and do not acknowledge the existence of higher planes. It is worth noting that this division also mirrors the Hindu pantheon: Brahma as the Creator, Vishnu as the Preserver and Shiva as the Destroyer and the Indo-European glyph of the Triune Goddess.

Often seen as opposed to the Aeon of Mars is the Aeon of Venus, which is alternately described as the Aeon of Life (the Book of the Eight Aeons) or emotion (its identification as Netzach in the Kabbalah). Due to the complex intertwining of the two concepts, one could in fact accept it as both (this is the view taken by Grace Blackwine of the Servants of the Oak, who identifies Venus with the primal force of Life and Love itself). It is interesting to note that in Greek myth Aphrodite was described as emerging from the sea after the genitals of Uranus had been cast therein, perhaps signifying her as the "child" of Ialdabaoth/the Deep Umbra. The meaning of this is very unclear.

Apparently this aeon soon fragmented into two major incarnations, on one hand the life-giving mother Magna Mater (also worshipped as Cybele) and the dynamic, highly emotional Inanna, goddess of love and war. The Great Mother seems to have fused with the various harvest goddesses (like Demeter) and earth goddesses, apparently partially returning to the more undifferentiated state she was forced out from. However, Inanna seems to have quickly developed into a highly individualized being, taking the names Ishtar, Ashtoreth, Aphrodite and Erzulie among others. Her nature seems to be a mixture of intense passion, love and hate, sensuality and asceticism. Note the similarity with Shiva/Durga.

The Aeon of Mercury is interesting, since it is the Aeon where consciousness and thought appears. Just as the planet and metal are mirroring and volatile, it seems fairly certain that it immediately divided into a number of lesser entities mirroring all other Pure Ones, which in turn divided, creating a cascade eventually ending in everyday concepts. The structure of language, the chimerae and the astral realms were all created by this process, "locking reality behind a wall of iron words" as Maurice Bronner wrote in his poem Poisons of the Brain. The concepts of mind seems to be particularly prevalent in the High Umbra we traverse, possibly because they are most strongly linked to communication and travel.

Mercury is also called the Morningstar and thus linked to Lucifer the Lightbringer. It is possible that Lucifer (who has many similarities with Prometheus and might be the same) is one of the remaining shards of Mercury, bent on bringing the knowledge of the Pure Ones down into the material world, in direct defiance of the Demiurge. This would also fit in with Hermes as the trickster, mirrored in Coyote, Loki and many other deities. The imprisonment of Lucifer, Prometheus and Loki could be a representation of how mind became trapped in matter by Ialdabaoth to prevent it from escaping.

The Aeon of the Moon seems to have been profoundly unstable, as evidenced in the waxing and waning of its face. According to widespread Indo-European legend, she is three goddesses in one: the maid, the mother and the crone. The similarities with the norns of Norse mythology and the fates of Greek Mythology need no further elaboration and the same goes for the three mysterious ladies who serve the Queen of Night in The Magic Flute by Mozart. The Crone is often identified with Hecate, the Mother with Isis and the Maiden with Diana. These beings are the first of the Pure Ones which have any effects on individuals. The Aeons down to Mars dealt with the large scale laws of reality, Venus and Mercury deal with the human mind but not the individual. But the Goddess exists on a personal level. They make, weave and cut the threads of Fate, they control the waxing and waning of nature, they rule spirits and the beings of the night (note the traditional connection to lycanthropes).

But the Moon has also spatial connotations. The Sphere of the Moon delimited the higher, perfect realms from the fallen world of matter in medieval and classic astronomy. It represents a limes in the ascent of spirit while astrologically ruling material travel. To the Cabalists this was Yesod, the Foundation of Reality, the subconscious of the world. Some scholars have identified it with the Near Umbra (or Yetziratic plane in the Kabbalah), although more properly the Moon should be identified with the Gauntlet, the Near Umbra and the Horizon as a unity in accordance to its tripartite properties. This neatly explains the variability of the strength and activity of the barriers holding us in. But on a higher plane, it also controls the inconstancy and indetermination of the material world.

The Sun is very different among the Pure Ones, and might be called the purest. According to the Book of Eight Aeons it was created by the fragmenting One to lead its fragments back together again, a visible manifestation of unity and power. However, Master Kwan Ho points out that it could also be seen as an intense force of Yang. As the Monad was divided, the Yin part naturally descended and formed the world, while the Yang part rose according to its nature and formed the sun as a kind of metaphysical counterweight. In this view, it is the remaining purity of the One which formed a secondary One (with tremendously reduced power). Bishop Webster-Hall has repeatedly condemned this view as heliolatry. A third view is that the Sun and Moon are equal and balanced, the Queen of Night and the King of Day (this is evidenced in Mozart).

Whatever the exact details, most scholars who have studied this agree that the Sun is the Golden King of the planets, the bringer of order and stability. It is a symbol for another kind of rulership than the fierce (but jovial) power of Jupiter, it is the divine king rather than the worldly king (Rex Dei versus Rex Mundi). It is also rather clear that it has not lost its unity in the same way as the other Aeons and Celestines. Due to its unitary nature it is still itself, regardless of what name it is worshipped under.

Finally we reach the sphere of Terra, Malkuth, the material world. As we have seen, it appears probable that the Fall proceeded in stages, as more and more of the infinite essence of the One was broken up into Aeons which in turn fragmented (or in some cases returned to the One). In Greek mythology this could correspond to the unbroken motherhood of Gaia, who was present from the beginning and continued to be the mother of both man, beast, plant and monster. It was not until the last stage the inner core divided (and some of my Gnostic correspondents claim it never truly fragmented, the Avatar of the One exists in the sun or hidden inside the material world). The formation of the material world appears by all accounts to have been a very dramatic event, as the unbalanced forces ripped apart pure existence and gave it form and structure.

It appears that Gaia, the Earth Mother, can in part be identified with the Gnostic Sophia, the hidden wisdom of God. By continual fragmentation a plenitude of matter, energy, plants and animals were brought forth. The origin of the Avatar Families may be traced to this late phase, as Bergerson does in his works, but I disagree with him. If one looks at the division into the Dianoia/Res classes, one immediately realizes that the latter class is tainted with materiality, while the Dianoia group must have originated on a higher level, most probably during the fragmentation of Mercury. This opens up an intriguing question: are there other Avatar families linked to the earlier or latter stages? We have so far never encountered such a family, but they might exist on some level of reality.

To conclude this talk, let me recapitulate the essentials. There are deep symbolic similarities between what is known about the creation of the world, the Gnostic vision and Greek mythology (with its links to Indo-European or lycanthropic mythology). In fact, if one is to believe the story about Caine described in Liber Noctuabundi, it even mirrors the myths of the Undead. This process seems to have proceeded in stages, wherein a part of the One was defined and individualized, usually followed by a descent into manifestation. This only ended when all of the One had been defined or manifested, into the complex hierarchy of Aeons, Celestines, Uthras, Deities, Avatars, Umbrood and realities we see. Thus we can see the outlines of a great taxonomy of all of existence, leading back to the purity of the One, with species and races of concepts. The implications of this are staggering.