The Peratae and Their Serpent

Let us begin, then, by learning how these men took this teaching from the astrologers and used it to insult Christ, working ruin for everyone who follows them into an error of this kind. The astrologers hold that there is one world, and they divide it into the twelve fixed portions of the signs of the zodiac. The world of the fixed signs they call one unmoving world; the other they call a world of wandering stars — wandering in power, in position, and in number — and they say it reaches as far as the moon. The one world, they say, draws a certain power from the other and shares in it, and what lies below gets its share from what lies above. So that all this may be clear, I will use the astrologers’ own expressions one at a time; and in doing so I will only be reminding my readers of what was said earlier, in the part of this work where I set out the whole art of the astrologers. Here, then, is what those men hold. [a]

They hold that the coming to be of everything below is brought about by an outflow from the stars. Gazing up at the sky, the Chaldeans claimed that the seven stars contain the reason for the causes at work in everything that happens to us, and that the parts of the fixed signs of the zodiac work along with them. They divide the circle of the zodiac into twelve, each sign into thirty portions, and each portion into sixty little parts — that is their name for the very smallest parts, the ones that cannot be divided further. Some of the signs they call male and others female; some have two bodies and others do not; some are turning signs and others are firm. The male signs and the female have a nature that works together for the begetting of males or of females. Aries is a male sign, Taurus a female one, and the rest run on by the same pattern, some male, some female. I suppose it was reasoning of this sort that moved the Pythagoreans to call the Monad male and the Dyad female, and again the Triad male, and so on by the same analogy through the even and odd numbers. Some, however, divide each sign into twelve parts and use nearly the same method: in Aries they call the first of the twelve parts both Aries and male, the second both Taurus and female, the third both Gemini and male, and the same plan is followed with all the rest. They say that some signs have two bodies — Gemini and the sign diametrically opposite it, Sagittarius, and Virgo and Pisces as well — and that the others do not. Some, they say, are also turning signs, and when the sun stands in these he causes great turnings in the surrounding air. Aries is a sign of that kind, and the sign diametrically opposite it, Libra, and Capricorn and Cancer; for in Aries is the turn of spring, in Capricorn the turn of winter, in Cancer the turn of summer, and in Libra the turn of autumn.

I have gone through the details of this system minutely in the book before this one, and anyone who wants instruction on the point can learn from it how the men who started this Peratic heresy — Euphrates the Peratic and Celbes the Carystian — changed nothing but the names when they carried it over into their own system, while in fact they put forward the same doctrines. Indeed, they have thrown themselves into the astrologers’ art with more enthusiasm than was decent. For the astrologers also speak of the limits of the stars, in which, they say, the dominant stars have the greater influence, acting harmfully on some and well on others; and of these stars they call some malicious and some kindly. Stars are also said to look at one another and to harmonize with one another, so that they appear in the shape of a triangle or of a square. Stars that look at one another across a distance of three signs are figured as a triangle; those with an interval of two signs are figured as a square. And their doctrine is that, just as in a man the parts below feel with the head and the head feels with the parts below, so all earthly things feel with the things above the moon. But the astrologers go further than that, for between these there is also a certain difference and failure to feel together, so that they do not come into one and the same union. This joining and parting of the stars is a Chaldean doctrine, and the men I spoke of earlier have claimed it for themselves.

Now these men, falsifying the name of truth, announce as the teaching of Christ an uprising of aeons and desertions of good powers into the ranks of the evil ones, and they talk of alliances between good powers and wicked ones. So they call them district rulers and suburbans, and though they frame a great many other names for themselves that answer to nothing real, all they have really done is to organize, and clumsily, the astrologers’ whole imaginary doctrine about the stars. And since they have brought in an assumption swollen with enormous error, they will be refuted by the fine arrangement of this work of ours. For I will set down, alongside the Chaldean art of the astrologers already described, some of the Peratic treatises, so that a comparison will give anyone the chance to see that the Peratic doctrines are admittedly the astrologers’ and not Christ’s.

It seems useful, then, to set out one of the books that they hold in honor, in which this passage occurs: “I am a voice that wakes from sleep in the age of night. From here on I begin to strip bare the power that comes from chaos. That power belongs to the lowest depth of mud, and it heaves up the slime of the imperishable, watery expanse of space. It is the whole power of the shaking, always in motion, showing the color of water, which whirls along what stands still, holds back what trembles, lets go what moves forward, lightens what stays put, takes away what is increasing — a faithful steward of the track of the winds, taking its pleasure in what is disgorged from the twelve eyes of the law, and showing a seal to the power that shares with it the handing out of the invisible waters carried down; and it has been called Thalassa. Ignorance is used to calling this power Kronos, kept under guard in chains, because he bound tight the fold of thick, misty, dark, murky Tartarus. After his image were made Cepheus, Prometheus, and Iapetus. [i]

“The power that has been entrusted with Thalassa is both male and female. It fastens the hissing that rises from the twelve mouths into twelve pipes and pours it out. The power itself is fine and thin; it takes away the sea’s ruling, boisterous, upward surge, and seals the tracks of its paths, so that no power may make war on it or bring in any change. His stormy daughter is the faithful guardian of waters of every kind. Her name is Chorzar. Ignorance usually calls this power Poseidon, and after his image were made Glaucus, Melicertes, Ino, and Nebroe.

“The one who has encircled the twelve-angled pyramid, who darkens the gateway into the pyramid with many colors and finishes the whole of it in the black shades of Night — this one ignorance called Kore. His attendants were five: first U, second Aoai, third Uo, fourth Uoab, fifth … There are other trustworthy managers of his province of night and day, who rest in their own power. Ignorance called these the wandering stars, and from them hangs a perishable coming to be. The manager of the air’s rising is Carphacasemeocheir, who is also Eccabbacara. Ignorance is used to calling these the Curetes. Chief of the winds is third in order, Ariel, after whose image were made Aeolus and Briareus. Chief of the twelve-hour night power is Soclan, whom ignorance usually calls Osiris, and after his image were born Admetus, Medea, Hellen, and Aethusa. Chief of the twelve-hour day power is Euno. He is the manager of the rising of the star Protocamarus and of the upper air, but ignorance has called him Isis. A sign of this one is the Dog-star, after whose image were born Ptolemy son of Arsinoe, Didyma, Cleopatra, and Olympias.

“God’s right-hand power is the one ignorance has called Rhea, after whose image were made Attis, Mygdon, and Oenone. The left-hand power has lordship over food, and ignorance is used to calling it Demeter, though her name is Bena; after her image were born Celeus, Triptolemus, Misyr, and Apraxia. The right-hand power has lordship over fruits. This one ignorance has called Mena, after whose image were born Bumegas, Ostanes, Hermes Trismegistus, Curites, Petosiris, Zodarium, Berosus, Astrampsuchus, and Zoroaster. The left-hand power is lord of fire, and ignorance has called this one Hephaestus, after whose image were born Erichthonius, Achilles, Capaneus, Phlegon, Meleager, Tydeus, Enceladus, Raphael, Suriel, and Omphale.

“There are three powers in between, hanging from the air, that bring things to birth. These ignorance has been used to calling the Fates, and after their image were produced the house of Priam, the house of Laius, Ino, Autonoe, Agave, Athamas, Procne, the daughters of Danaus, and the daughters of Pelias. There is a power both male and female, always staying a child, never growing old, the cause of beauty, pleasure, ripeness, longing, and craving; ignorance has been used to calling this one Eros, and after his image were born Paris, Narcissus, Ganymede, Endymion, Tithonus, Icarius, Leda, Amymone, Thetis, the Hesperides, Iasion, Leander, and Hero.”

These are the suburbans, up to the Aether — for that is also the title he gives the book.

It has been easy to make plain to everyone that the heresy of the Peratae differs from the art of the astrologers in name only. The rest of these men’s books hold the same method, if anyone cared to wade through them all. For, as I said, they suppose that the causes of the coming to be of every begotten thing are unbegotten and lie above, and that the world we live in was produced by way of an outflow — a world they call particular. All the stars together that are seen in the firmament, they maintain, have been the causes of this world’s coming to be. They have only changed the names of these, as anyone can see from the suburbans by comparing the two systems. And second, they say that just as the world was made from an outflow from above, so in the same way the things here get their coming to be, their decay, and their arrangement from the outflow of the stars. Now the astrologers know the horoscope, the midheaven, the setting, and the point opposite the midheaven; and since these stars occupy different positions at different times, because the universe is forever turning, there are necessarily at different periods different declinations toward a center and different ascensions to centers. The Peratic heretics fasten an allegory onto this arrangement of the astrologers, and sketch the center as a kind of god, a monad and lord over all coming to be, while the declination they treat as a power on the left and the ascension as a power on the right. So whenever anyone comes across the treatises of these men and finds a right-hand or left-hand power mentioned in them, let him go back to the center, the declination and the ascension of the Chaldean sages, and he will see clearly that the whole system of these Peratae is the astrologers’ teaching. [p]

They call themselves Peratae, believing that nothing which exists by coming to be can escape the lot fixed for whatever derives its existence from coming to be. For if anything is begotten at all, he says, it also perishes, which is the Sibyl’s opinion too. But we alone, he says — we who know the necessity of coming to be, and the paths by which man has entered the world, and who have been exactly taught in these matters — we alone are able to go through destruction and pass beyond it. But water, he says, is destruction, and the world perished by nothing more quickly than by water. Water is what rolls around among the suburbans, and they say it is Kronos. For a power of that sort, he says, is the color of water, and none of the things that exist by coming to be can escape this power, that is, Kronos. For Kronos is a cause to every coming to be, in that it falls under destruction, and there could be no coming to be in which Kronos does not interfere. This, he says, is what the poets say as well, and it appalls even the gods: [q]

And it is not only the poets who say this, he says, but the wisest men among the Greeks already. Heraclitus is one of them, in these words: “For souls it is death to become water.” This death, the Peratic says, takes hold of the Egyptians in the Red Sea, together with their chariots. And everyone who is ignorant of this, he says, is an Egyptian. This, they claim, is the going out from Egypt — that is, out of the body; for they take the body to be Egypt in miniature. It crosses the Red Sea, that is, the water of decay, which is Kronos; it reaches the place beyond the Red Sea, that is, beyond coming to be; and it comes into the wilderness, that is, into a condition outside coming to be, where all the gods of destruction and the God of salvation exist mixed in together.

Now the stars, he says, are the gods of destruction, and they lay on existing things the necessity of a coming to be that changes. These, he says, are what Moses called the serpents of the wilderness, which bite and utterly ruin those who thought they had crossed the Red Sea. To those of the children of Israel who were bitten in the wilderness, then, Moses showed the real and perfect serpent, and those who trusted in this serpent were not bitten in the wilderness — that is, they were not attacked by the powers. There is no one, therefore, he says, who is able to save and deliver those who come out of Egypt, that is, out of the body and out of this world, except the serpent alone, the perfect one, filled full. Whoever fixes his hope on this serpent, he says, is not destroyed by the snakes of the wilderness, that is, by the gods of coming to be. This is written, he says, in a book of Moses.

This serpent, he says, is the power that went along with Moses, the rod that was turned into a serpent. The serpents of the magicians, though — the gods of destruction — stood against the power of Moses in Egypt, and the rod of Moses brought them all under and killed them. This universal serpent, he says, is the wise word of Eve. This is the mystery of Edem, this is the river of Edem, this is the mark that was set on Cain so that anyone who found him would not kill him. This, he says, is Cain, whose sacrifice the god of this world did not accept, while he approved the bloody sacrifice of Abel; for the master of this world takes delight in blood.

This, he says, is the one who appeared in the last days in the form of a man, in the time of Herod, born after the likeness of Joseph — who was sold by his brothers’ hand, and who alone had the coat of many colors. This, he says, is the one who is after the likeness of Esau, whose garment was blessed while he himself was not there; who did not receive, he says, the blessing spoken by the man whose sight had failed. He got his wealth from a source that had nothing to do with that man, taking nothing from him whose eyes were dim; and Jacob saw his face as a man sees the face of God. It is about this, he says, that it has been written, “Nimrod was a giant hunter before the Lord.” And there are many, he says, who imitate this man closely — as many as the gnawing serpents that the children of Israel saw in the wilderness, from which the perfect serpent that Moses set up delivered those who had been bitten. This, he says, is what was said: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up.” It was after the likeness of this one that the bronze serpent Moses set up was made in the desert; and of this one alone, he says, the image is in heaven, always plain to see in the light.

This, he says, is the great beginning that Scripture has spoken about. It is about this, he says, that it has been declared: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him not one thing was made. And what has been made in him is life.” And in him, he says, Eve was formed; and Eve is life. This, he says, is Eve, the mother of all living — a nature shared, that is, by gods, angels, immortals, mortals, creatures without reason and creatures with it. For when he said “all,” he said it of everything that exists.

And if anyone’s eyes are blessed, he says, that man will look up at the firmament and see at the mighty summit of heaven the beautiful image of the serpent, turning itself and becoming the starting point of every kind of motion for all the things that are being produced. He will know that nothing holds together without him, whether things in heaven or things on earth or things under the earth. Not night, not moon, not fruits, not coming to be, not wealth, not travel, nothing at all that exists is without his steering. It is because of this, he says, that there is the great wonder seen in the firmament by those who are able to observe it. For at the very top of his head — a thing more incredible than anything else to people who do not know — “setting and rising are mingled with each other.” This is what ignorance is in the habit of saying about the sky:

On either side of him are set the Crown and the Lyre; and above, near the very top of the head, the pitiable man called the Kneeler can be seen,

And behind the Kneeler is an imperfect serpent, gripped tight in both hands by the Serpent-holder and kept from touching the Crown that lies beside the perfect serpent.