The Perfect Man and the Gate

Taking up these opinions and others like them, these most remarkable Gnostics — the inventors of a new grammar — make Homer out to be their prophet: a man who, as they have it, announces these same truths in the manner of the mysteries. And they make fools of people who have never been taught the holy Scriptures, by trapping them in notions like these. [a]

What they assert is this. Anyone who says that all things hold together out of one is in error; but whoever says they come from three has the truth, and will supply the solution of the universe. For there is, he says, one blessed nature of the Blessed Man above — that is, Adamas; and there is one mortal nature, the one below; and there is one race with no king over it, born above, where, he says, Miriam is, the one who was sought for, and Jethro the great sage, and Zipporah the one who sees, and Moses, whose birth was not in Egypt — for his children were born to him in Midian. And even this, he says, did not escape the poets:

For it is necessary, he says, that the magnitudes be declared, and that they be declared this way by everyone everywhere, “so that hearing they may not hear, and seeing they may not see.” For if the magnitudes had not been declared, he says, the world could not have held together. These are their three swollen words: Caulacau, Saulasau, Zeesar. Caulacau is Adamas, who is highest above; Saulasau is the mortal one below; Zeesar is the Jordan that flows upward. This, he says, is the man who is male and female at once, present in everyone.

People who do not know him call him Geryon of the three bodies — Geryon, that is, as though it meant “flowing out of earth” — but the Greeks all agree in calling him “the heavenly horn of the moon,” because he mixed and blended all things with all. “For all things,” he says, “were made through him, and not one thing was made without him, and what was made in him is life.” This, he says, is the life, the unspeakable birth of perfect men, which earlier generations did not know. But the words “nothing was made without him” refer to the world of particular forms, for that was made without any help from him, by the third and the fourth.

For this, he says, is the cup — the kondy — “from which the king drinks and reads his omens.” This, he says, was found hidden among the fair seed of Benjamin. And the Greeks too, he says, speak of it like this, with raving mouth:

This alone, he says, was enough for people to understand: Anacreon’s cup, declaring an unspeakable mystery without a word. For Anacreon’s cup is dumb, he says, and yet Anacreon says it speaks to him, in speech without sound, about what sort of man he must become — spiritual, that is, and not of the flesh — if he will listen in silence to the hidden mystery.

And this is the water at that fine wedding which Jesus changed and made into wine. This, he says, is the great and true first of the signs Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and by it he showed the kingdom of heaven. This, he says, is the kingdom of heaven that rests inside us like a treasure, like leaven hidden in six gallons of flour.

This, he says, is the great and unspeakable mystery of the Samothracians, which only we who are initiated are allowed to know. For the Samothracians hand it down expressly, in the mysteries they celebrate, that this same Adam is the first man. And in the Samothracians’ temple there stand two statues of naked men, both hands stretched up toward heaven and their genitals erect, like the statue of Hermes on Mount Cyllene. These statues are images of the first man and of the spiritual man who is born again, in every way of the same substance as that man.

This, he says, is what the Savior means: “If you do not drink my blood and eat my flesh, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven; but even if you drink the cup that I drink,” he says, “you cannot enter where I am going.” For he knew, he says, what sort of nature each of his disciples had, and that each of them had to arrive at his own particular nature. He chose twelve disciples, he says, from the twelve tribes, and spoke through them to each tribe. That is why, he says, not everyone heard the preaching of the twelve disciples, and those who heard it could not take it in. For what is not according to a man’s nature is, for him, against nature.

This, he says, is the one whom the Thracians who live around Haemus, and the Phrygians along with the Thracians, call Corybas — because he takes the beginning of his descent from the head above and from the brain that bears no stamp, and passes through all the first principles of things as they are, and still we do not perceive how or in what way he comes down. This, he says, is what was meant by the words, “We have indeed heard his voice, but we have not seen his shape.” For the voice of the one who has been set apart and stamped is heard; but his shape, which comes down from above from the Unstamped One — what sort it is, nobody knows. It is there in an earthly mould, and no one recognizes it.

This, he says, is “the God who dwells in the flood,” as the Psalms have it, “who speaks and cries out from many waters.” The many waters, he says, are the many-colored race of mortal men, and out of it he cries and calls to the Unstamped Man, saying, “Rescue my only one from the lions.” And the answer given him, he says, is this: “Israel, you are my child. Do not be afraid. Even if you pass through rivers, they will not drown you; even if you pass through fire, it will not scorch you.” By rivers, he says, he means the wet stuff of birth, and by fire the drive and the craving for birth. “You are mine; do not be afraid.” And again, he says, “If a mother forgets her children, so as not to pity them and feed them, I too will forget you.” Adamas, he says, says this to his own people: “But even if a woman forgets these things, I will not forget you. I have painted you on my hands.”

As for his going up — that is, his being born again, so that he may become spiritual and not of the flesh — the Scripture, he says, says this: “Lift up the gates, you who are your rulers; be lifted up, you everlasting doors, and the King of glory will come in.” That is a wonder of wonders. “For who,” he says, “is this King of glory? A worm, and not a man; the reproach of men and the outcast of the people. He himself is the King of glory, and mighty in war.”

And by war he means the war that goes on in the body, because its frame has been made out of elements at odds with one another — as it is written, he says: “Remember the war that is in the body.” Jacob, he says, saw this entrance and this gate on his journey to Mesopotamia, that is, when he was passing out of childhood into a young man and a man; that is, they were made known to him as he traveled to Mesopotamia. But Mesopotamia, he says, is the stream of the great ocean flowing out of the middle of the Perfect Man. And he was amazed at the gate of heaven and said, “How fearful this place is! It is nothing but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” That is why, he says, Jesus says, “I am the true gate.”

Now the one who says these things is, he says, the Perfect Man, formed after the likeness of the Unstamped One above. And so the Perfect Man cannot be saved, he says, unless he goes in through this gate and is born again. This same one the Phrygians call Papa, he says, because he stilled everything that before his appearing was moving in confusion and out of tune. For the name Papa, he says, belongs at once to all creatures — in heaven, on earth and under the earth — who cry out: Stop, stop the discord of the world, and make “peace for those who are far off,” that is, for material and earthly beings, and “peace for those who are near,” that is, for perfect men, spiritual and possessed of reason.

But these same Phrygians call him “corpse” as well, buried in the body as in a vault and a tomb. This, he says, is what was said: “You are whitewashed tombs, full,” he says, “of dead men’s bones inside” — because the living man is not in you. And again he cries out, “The dead will come leaping out of the graves,” that is, out of their earthly bodies, born again spiritual and not of the flesh. For this, he says, is the resurrection that happens through the gate of heaven; and all who do not go in through it, he says, stay dead.

But these same Phrygians say further, he says, that this very man, as a result of the change, becomes a god. For he becomes a god, he says, when he has risen from the dead and enters heaven through a gate of this kind. Paul the apostle knew about this gate, he says, and opened it a little way in a mystery when he said “that he was caught up by an angel and went up as far as the second and the third heaven, into paradise itself, and that he saw sights and heard words that cannot be spoken, which no man could put into words.”

These, he says, are what everybody calls the secret mysteries — “which we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the unspiritual man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him.” And these, he says, are the unspeakable mysteries of the Spirit, which we alone know. About these, he says, the Savior declared, “No one can come to me unless my heavenly Father draws him to me.” For it is very hard, he says, to accept and receive this great and unspeakable mystery. And again, he says, the Savior declared, “Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” And it is the people who do that will, and not the ones who merely hear it, who must enter the kingdom of heaven. And again, he says, the Savior declared, “The tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of heaven ahead of you.”

For the tax collectors, he says, are the ones who take in the dues of all things; and we, he says, are the tax collectors, “on whom the ends of the ages have come.” For the ends, he says, are the seeds scattered from the Unstamped One over the world, and through them the whole ordered universe is brought to completion — for through them it also began to exist. And this, he says, is what was said: “The sower went out to sow. Some fell along the path and was trampled; and some on the rocky places, and it sprang up,” he says, “and because it had no depth of soil it withered and died; and some,” he says, “fell on fine, good ground and bore fruit, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Whoever has ears,” he says, “to hear, let him hear.” The meaning of this, he says, is that no one becomes a hearer of these mysteries except the perfect Gnostics alone.

This, he says, is the fine, good land Moses speaks of: “I will bring you into a fine and good land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” This, he says, is the honey and the milk; those who are perfect taste it, come to have no king over them, and share in the Fullness. This, he says, is the Fullness, through which all the things that come to be have been both brought into being and completed, out of the one who was himself never brought into being.

And this same one the Phrygians call “unfruitful” as well, he says. For he is unfruitful when he is of the flesh and causes the craving of the flesh. This, he says, is what is meant by, “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” For these fruits, he says, are only the rational living men who go in through the third gate. They actually say: “You devour the dead and make them living; if you eat the living, what will you do?” And they claim that the living “are reasoning powers and minds and men — pearls of that Unstamped One, thrown down to the thing formed below.” This, he says, is what Jesus means: “Do not throw what is holy to the dogs, or pearls to the pigs.” Now they hold that the work of pigs and dogs is a woman’s intercourse with a man.

And the Phrygians, he says, call this same one “goatherd” — Aipolos — not because he pastures she-goats and he-goats, the way the soulish use the word, but because he is aei-polos, always turning: the one who both revolves and carries the whole ordered universe around with him by his turning motion. For the word polein means to turn and to change things; and that, he says, is why everyone calls the two centers of the sky the poles. And the poet says:

He is not sold off, he says, but turns, as it were, and goes round himself. Moreover the cities we live in are called poleis because we turn and go about in them. In this way, he says, the Phrygians call this one Aipolos, since he ceaselessly turns everything everywhere and changes it into its own proper working.

And the Phrygians call him “very fruitful” too, he says, “because,” he says, “the children of the desolate woman are more than the children of her who has a husband” — that is, things that are born again become immortal and stay forever, in great numbers, even if few of them are produced; whereas the things of the flesh, he says, all perish, even if a great many of them are produced. This, he says, is why “Rachel wept for her children and would not,” says the prophet, “be comforted, grieving over them, because she knew,” he says, “that they are not.”

But Jeremiah too laments over the Jerusalem below — not the city in Phoenicia, but the perishable race below. For Jeremiah also, he says, knew about the Perfect Man, the man born again of water and the Spirit, not of the flesh. At any rate Jeremiah himself remarked, “He is a man, and who will know him?” In this way, the Naassene says, the knowledge of the Perfect Man is exceedingly deep and hard to grasp. For the beginning of perfection, he says, is the knowledge of man, but the knowledge of God is perfection complete.

The Phrygians, however, say, he says, that he is also “a green ear of grain, reaped.” And after the Phrygians, the Athenians too, when they initiate people in the rites at Eleusis, display to those being admitted to the highest grade of those mysteries the great and marvelous and most perfect secret fit for a man initiated at the highest level: an ear of grain reaped in silence. And this ear of grain is held among the Athenians as well to be the perfect, immense light that has come down from the Unstamped One — just as the Hierophant himself says. He is not castrated, as Attis was, but made a eunuch by hemlock, and he has put away all birth in the flesh. By night at Eleusis, under a huge fire, while he performs the great and secret rites, he shouts and cries aloud, saying,

“Holy Brimo has borne a holy son, Brimos” —

that is, a mighty mother has been delivered of a mighty child. But holy, he says, is the birth that is spiritual, heavenly, from above; and mighty is the one who is born that way. For the mystery is called Eleusin and Anactorion. Eleusin, because, he says, we who are spiritual come flowing down from Adamas above — for the word eleusesthai, he says, means the same as “to come”; and Anactorion means the same as “to go up above.” This, he says, is what those who have been initiated in the mysteries of the Eleusinians affirm.

It is a rule of law, however, that those who have been admitted to the lesser mysteries must be initiated again into the Great Mysteries. For greater destinies win greater portions. But the lesser mysteries, he says, are those of Persephone below; and about those mysteries, and the road that leads there — wide and roomy, and carrying those who are perishing down to Persephone — the poet also says:

These, he says, are the lesser mysteries, the ones that belong to birth in the flesh. Men who have been initiated into these lesser ones ought to pause, and then be admitted to the great, heavenly ones. For those who obtain their shares in this mystery, he says, receive greater portions. For this, he says, is the gate of heaven, and this is a house of God, where the good God dwells alone. And into that gate, he says, no unclean person will come, and no one who is merely soul or merely flesh; it is kept for the spiritual only. And those who come here must strip off their clothes and all become bridegrooms, made eunuchs by the virgin spirit. For this is the virgin who carries in her womb and conceives and gives birth to a son who is not of the soul and not of the body, but blessed forever. About these things, it is said, the Savior declared plainly that “narrow and cramped is the road that leads to life, and few there are who go in by it; but broad and roomy is the road that leads to destruction, and many there are who pass along it.”