[3] ‘Heroes and Hero-worship,’ iv.
[4] ‘Sartor Resartus.’ London: Chapman & Hall, 1869, p. 160.
[5] ‘The American Scholar.’ An Oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge (Massachusetts), August 31, 1837. By Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Chapter XIX.
The Man of Sin.
Hindu myth—Gnostic theories—Ophite scheme of redemption—Rabbinical traditions of primitive man—Pauline Pessimism—Law of death—Satan’s ownership of man—Redemption of the elect—Contemporary statements—Baptism—Exorcism—The ‘new man’s’ food—Eucharist—Herbert Spencer’s explanation—Primitive ideas—Legends of Adam and Seth—Adamites—A Mormon ‘Mystery’ of initiation.
In a Hindu myth, Dhrubo, an infant devotee, passed much time in a jungle, surrounded by ferocious beasts, in devotional exercises of such extraordinary merit that Vishnu erected a new heaven for him as the reward of his piety. Vishnu even left his own happy abode to superintend the construction of this special heaven. In Hebrew mythology the favourite son, the chosen people, is called out of Egypt to dwell in a new home, a promised land, not in heaven but on earth. The idea common to the two is that of a contrast between a natural and a celestial environment,—a jungle and beasts, bondage and distress; a new heaven, a land flowing with milk and honey,—and the correspondence with these of the elect child, Dhrubo or Israel.
The tendency of Christ’s mind appears to have been rather in the Aryan direction; he pointed his friends to a kingdom not of this world, and to his Father’s many mansions in heaven. But the Hebrew faith in a messianic reign in this world was too strong for his dream; a new earth was appended to the new heaven, and became gradually paramount, but this new earth was represented only by the small society of believers who made the body of Christ, the members in which his blood flowed.
That great cauldron of confused superstitions and mysticisms which the Roman Empire became after the overthrow of Jerusalem, formed a thick scum which has passed under the vague name of Gnosticism. The primitive notions of all races were contained in it, however, and they gathered in the second and third centuries a certain consistency in the system of the Ophites. In the beginning existed Bythos (the Depth); his first emanation and consort is Ennoia (Thought); their first daughter is Pneuma (Spirit), their second Sophia (Wisdom). Sophia’s emanations are two—one perfect, Christos; the other imperfect, Sophia-Achamoth,—who respectively guide all that proceed from God and all that proceed from Matter. Sophia, unable to act directly upon anything so gross as Matter or unordered as Chaos, employs her imperfect daughter Sophia-Achamoth for that purpose. But she, finding delight in imparting life to inert Matter, became ambitious of creating in the abyss a world for herself. To this end she produced the Demiurgus Ildabaoth (otherwise Jehovah) to be creator of the material world. After this Sophia-Achamoth shook off Matter, in which she had become entangled; but Ildabaoth (‘son of Darkness’) proceeded to produce emanations corresponding to those of Bythos in the upper universe. Among his creations was Man, but his man was a soulless monster crawling on the ground. Sophia-Achamoth managed to transfer to Man the small ray of divine light which Ildabaoth had inherited from her. The ‘primitive Man’ became thus a divine being. Ildabaoth, now entirely evil, was enraged at having produced a being who had become superior to himself, and his envy took shape in a serpent-formed Satan, Ophiomorphos. He is the concentration of all that is most base in Matter, conjoined with a spiritual intelligence. Their anti-Judaism led the Ophites to identify Ildabaoth as Jehovah, and this serpent-son of his as Michael; they also called him Samaël. Ildabaoth then also created the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, with all their evils. Resolving to confine man within his own lower domain, he forbade him to eat of the Tree of Knowledge. To defeat his scheme, which had all been evolved out of her own temporary fall, Sophia-Achamoth sent her own genius, also in form of a serpent, Ophis, to induce Man to transgress the tyrant’s command. Eve supposing Ophis the same as Ophiomorphos, regarded the prohibition against the fruit as withdrawn and readily ate of it. Man thus became capable of understanding heavenly mysteries, and Ildabaoth made haste to imprison him in the dungeon of Matter. He also punished Ophis by making him eat dust, and this heavenly serpent, contaminated by Matter, changed from Man’s friend to his foe. Sophia-Achamoth has always striven against these two Serpents, who bind man to the body by corrupt desires; she supplied mankind with divine light, through which they became sensible of their nakedness—the misery of their condition. Ildabaoth’s seductive agents gained control over all the offspring of Adam except Seth, type of the Spiritual Man. Sophia-Achamoth moved Bythos to send down her perfect brother Christos to aid the Spiritual Race of Seth. Christos descended through the seven planetary regions, assuming successively forms related to each, and entered into the man Jesus at the moment of his baptism. Ildabaoth, discovering him, stirred up the Jews to put him to death; but Christos and Sophia, abandoning the material body of Jesus on the cross, gave him one made of ether. Hence his mother and disciples could not recognise him. He ascended to the Middle Space, where he sits by the right hand of Ildabaoth, though unperceived by the latter, and, putting forth efforts for purification of mankind corresponding to those put forth by Ildabaoth for evil, he is collecting all the Spiritual elements of the world into the kingdom which is to overthrow that of the Enemy.[1]