All mysteries I will open
And the forms of the gods I will display,
The secrets of the holy Way
Called knowledge [Gnosis], I will hand down.
It is probable that this psalm really did once contain a summary of the essential parts of the Ophite teaching. In whatever way we may construe the first three lines, which were probably misunderstood by the scribe of the text before us, there can hardly be a doubt that they disclose a triad of three powers engaged in the work of salvation[[217]]. The fall of Sophia seems also to be alluded to in unmistakable terms, while the Mission of Jesus concludes the poem. Jesus, not here distinguished from the Christos or Heavenly Messenger of the Trinity, is described as sent to the earth for the purpose of bringing hither certain “mysteries” which will put man on the sacred path of Gnosis and thus bring about the redemption of his heavenly part from the bonds of matter. These “mysteries” were, as appears in Hippolytus and elsewhere, sacraments comprising baptism, unction, and a ceremony at least outwardly resembling the Christian Eucharist or Lord’s Supper[[218]]. These had the magical effect, already attributed by the Orphics to their own homophagous feast, of changing the recipient’s place in the scale of being and transforming him ipso facto into something higher than man. That the celebration of these mysteries was attended with the deepest secrecy accounts at once for their being nowhere described in detail by Hippolytus’ Ophite author, and also for the stories which were current among all the heresiological writers of filthy and obscene rites[[219]]. Fortified by these mysteries, and by the abstinences and the continence which they entailed—at all events theoretically, and as a counsel of perfection—the Ophite could attend, as we have seen, all the ceremonies of the still pagan Anatolians or of the Christian Church indifferently, conscious that he alone understood the inner meaning of either.
Another practice of the Ophites has accidentally come down to us which deserves some mention. The division of the universe into three parts, i.e. angelic, psychic, and earthly, which we have already seen in germ in the system of Simon Magus, was by the Ophites carried so much further than by him that it extended through the whole of nature, and seriously affected their scheme of redemption. Father Giraud, as we have seen, goes so far as to say that in the opinion of Naassenes, matter hardly existed, and that they thought that not only did Adamas, or the first man, enter into all things, but that in their opinion all things were contained within him[[220]]. This pantheistic doctrine may have been current in Phrygia and traces of it may perhaps be found in the Anatolian worship of nature; but the words of the Naassene psalm quoted above show that the Naassenes, like all the post-Christian Gnostics of whom we know anything, thought that matter not only had an independent existence, but was essentially malignant and opposed to God. They divided, as we have seen, the universe which came forth from Him into three parts of which the angelic, noëtic, or pneumatic included, apparently, nothing but the Pleroma or Fulness of the Godhead consisting of the Trinity of Father, Son and Mother with their messenger Christos. Then followed the second, psychic, or planetary world, containing the heaven of Sophia with beneath it the holy hebdomad or seven worlds of Ialdabaoth and his descendants[[221]]. Below this came, indeed, the choïc, earthly, or terrestrial world, containing some sparks of the light bestowed upon it consciously by Sophia and unconsciously by Ialdabaoth, and inhabited by mortal men. But this world was the worst example of the “discord” (ὰσυμφωνία), or as it was called later, the “confusion” (κέρασμος), caused by the mingling of light with matter, and as such was doomed to extinction and to eternal separation from the Divine.[[222]] In like manner, the soul of man consisted of three parts corresponding to the three worlds, that is to say, the pneumatic, psychic, and earthly; and of these three, the last was doomed to extinction. Only by laying aside his earthly part as Jesus had done and becoming entirely pneumatic, could man attain to the light and become united with the Godhead. But to do so, his soul must first pass from choïc to psychic and thence to pneumatic, or, as the Naassene author quoted by Hippolytus puts it, must be born again and must enter in at the gate of heaven[[223]].
This rebirth or passage of the soul from the choïc to the psychic, and thence to the pneumatic, was, as has been said, the work of the mysteries, especially of those new ones which the Ophite Jesus or Christos had brought to earth with Him from above. The process by which these “changes of the soul” were brought about was, according to the Naassenes, “set forth in the Gospel according to the Egyptians[[224]].” The only quotation pertinent to the matter which we have from this lost work is one preserved for us by Clement of Alexandria which refers to the coming of a heavenly age “when the two shall be made one, and the male with the female neither male nor female[[225]]”—a saying which seems to refer to the time when all the light now scattered among the lower worlds shall return to the androgyne Adamas from whom it once issued. But it is probable that this gospel only described the upward passage of the soul in figures and parables probably conveyed in texts of the Canonical Gospel divorced from their context and their natural meaning, as in the Naassene author quoted by Hippolytus. Such a gospel might be a sufficient means of instruction for the living, who could puzzle out its meaning with the help of their mystagogues or priests[[226]]; but it must always have been difficult for the best-instructed to remember the great complications of worlds, planets, and celestial powers that lay at the root of it. How difficult then must it have been thought for the disembodied soul to find its way through the celestial places, and to confront the “guardians of the gate” of each with proof of his exalted rank in the scale of being? What was wanted was some guide or clue that the dead could take with him like the Book of the Dead of the ancient Egyptians, some memory or survival of which had evidently come down to the Alexandrian worship[[227]], or like the gold plates which we have seen fulfilling the same office among the worshippers of the Orphic gods[[228]].
That the Ophites possessed such documents we have proof from the remarks of the Epicurean Celsus, who may have flourished in the reign of Hadrian (A.D. 117-138)[[229]]. In his attack on Christianity called The True Discourse, he charges the Christians generally with possessing a “diagram” in which the passage of the soul after death through the seven heavens is portrayed. Origen, in refuting this Epicurean’s arguments more than a century later, denies that the Church knew anything of such a diagram, and transfers the responsibility for it to what he calls “a very insignificant sect called Ophites[[230]].” He further says that he has himself seen this diagram and he gives a detailed description of it sufficient to enable certain modern writers to hazard a guess as to what it must have looked like[[231]]. It seems to have been chiefly composed of circles, those in the uppermost part—which Celsus says were those “above the heavens”—being two sets of pairs. Each pair consisted of two concentric circles, one pair being inscribed, according to Origen, Father-and-Son, and according to Celsus, “a greater and a less” which Origen declares means the same thing[[232]]. By the side of this was the other pair, the outer circle here being coloured yellow and the inner blue; while between the two pairs was a barrier drawn in the form of a double-bladed axe[[233]].
“Above this last” Origen says “was a smaller circle inscribed ‘Love,’ and below it another touching it with the word ‘Life.’ And on the second circle, which was intertwined with and included two other circles, another figure like a rhomboid ‘The Forethought of Sophia.’ And within their (?) point of common section was ‘the Nature of Sophia.’ And above their point of common section was a circle, on which was inscribed ‘Knowledge,’ and lower down another on which was the inscription ‘Comprehension[[234]].’”
There is also reference made by Origen to “The Gates of Paradise,” and a flaming sword depicted as the diameter of a flaming circle and guarding the tree of knowledge and of life; but nothing is said of their respective places in the diagram.