Gnostic Gospel, Pt 7 -- Division Becomes the Imitation

Notice: There is now a separate blog dedicated to the New Gnostic Gospel. You can get there by clicking here.

Logos was the final aeon born from the will of the Son and the ALL. This singular being possessed the latent characteristics of the ALL, including the full variety of personalities, proclivities, powers, and positions arrayed in the Fullness. Each aeon of the Fullness was an individual who was also an integral part of the larger whole. So, too, Logos embodied all of these parts precisely situated within the whole that was himself.

The aeon named Logos sits atop the hierarchy of the Fullness

Over the course of illuminating the Gnostic Gospel, the Simple Explanation has designed a series of visual metaphors representing facets of Gnostic and Christian belief. For the fullest understanding of this article, you may wish to read the entire Gnostic Gospel Illuminated series from the beginning.  If you would prefer to first read the "Simple Gnostic Gospel, Part One: The Father, The Son, and the Birth of The ALL," click here.

When Logos overreached and fell into the darkness, he shattered into a confusing jumble of disconnected parts. These pieces of the shattered aeon were “sicknesses”: small, dark, ignorant, divided, and roiling with chaos. They reflected neither the glory of the originals in the Fullness, nor the ecology of the hierarchy. And, because they were no longer arranged in the pattern of the hierarchy, they forgot their functions and their names [The Tripartite Tractate, v. 77]

The shattered corpse of Logos gave rise to the imitations of the deficiency

"Those who had come into being did not know themselves, nor did they know the Fullness from which they had originated, nor did they know him who had become the cause of their existence. For since the Word was in such an unstable condition, he no longer attempted to bring forth offspring in the form of emissions... of glory. ...Instead, what he brought forth were feeble and small creatures, infected with the same sicknesses with which he himself had been infected." [The Tripartite Tractate, v. 80]

Because Logos had been reaching for the heights when he fell, the imitation born of the fall continued to be motivated by a desire “to reach the unreachable,” but now that upward drive was divorced from the goal of reaching for the glory of reunification with the Father. [The Tripartite Tractate, v. 77] With no recall of who or what came before, this upward drive was entirely self-interested, for those of the imitation had no cooperative arrangement amongst themselves.

What had been an upward pull to reunite the Fullnesses with the Father became an upward push arising out of each singleton, not for the glory of the Father, but for the vainglory of the individual. “For they desired to command one another and to lord it over them in their vain love of glory, and the glory that they acquired [from their striving] became the cause of the structure that was to be.” [The Tripartite Tractate, v. 79] In this manner, egoic striving for vainglory replaced glorious longing for the Father--ambition replaced God's Will.

The “offspring of the presumptuous thought”, as they came to be known, recognized neither Logos, the All, nor the Father as their progenitor. “They thought of themselves that only they existed and that they had no beginning, since they saw no one existing before them. For this reason they exhibited disobedience and rebellion, being unwilling to submit to the one who had brought them into existence.” [The Tripartite Tractate, v. 78]

"The Word, then, was the cause of these things coming into being, and he became increasingly desperate. He was dumbfounded. Instead of perfection he saw deficiency; instead of unity he saw division; instead of stability he saw disturbance; instead of rest, upheaval." Logos “was unable to bring their love of disturbance to an end, nor could he destroy it,” for Logos “had become powerless when his wholeness and his perfection had abandoned him” to become the deficiency. The deficiency took on an imitation of life on its own, becoming “the cause of the things that do not exist on their own account from the beginning.” [The Tripartite Tractate, v. 80]

These “irrational things” were condemned by Logos. “Because of that, what was perfect in him left him and went upward to his own [in the Fullness]. . . “The one who hastened on high [Logos] and the one who drew him to himself [The Son] did not remain idle, but they brought forth a fruit in the Fullness with a view to overthrowing what had come into being because of the deficiency.” [The Tripartite Tractate, v. 78]

*******************

You may read more about the deficiency in this article: Implications of Dark Matter and Gnostic Cosmology.

Click here for the next Simple Explanation blog article: "The Simple Gnostic Gospel, Part Eight -- The Father, The Son, and the Birth of The ALL"

The Simple Explanation is using its method of meta-analysis to strip out the confusing elements of the various Gnostic Gospels to form a simple, coherent, creation story. I have chosen the Tripartite Tractate as the book out of the Nag Hammadi scriptures to focus on, because I find it to be the least confusing and most complete Gnostic account of the origins of the universe, with the fewest non-essential elements. You will not find lists of names and numbers here. Only the cosmology and its rationale. The purpose of this exposition of the Simple Gnostic Gospels is to clarify and simplify so that any person who cares to may fully understand the essential Gnostic truths.

Cyd and Munchkin working on the Gnostic Gospel