gnostic-texts

"The little child spoke up, saying, “I know who you are, Paul: you are the one who was blessed from his mother’s womb. I saw that you were on your way up to Jerusalem, to your fellow apostles, and it is because of this that I was sent to you. I am the Spirit, who is with you. ... It is to the twelve apostles that you are going, for they are elect spirits, and they will greet you.” ... and he saw the twelve apostles at his right and at his left in the creation, and the Spirit was going before them."

"And then the seventh heaven opened and we went up to the Ogdoad. I saw the twelve apostles. They greeted me, and we went up to the ninth heaven. I greeted everyone in the ninth heaven. And we went up to the tenth heaven. And I greeted my fellow spirits."

"I saw an old man ... the light ... white ... in the seventh heaven, shining seven times more than the sun. The old man spoke, saying to me, “Where are you going, Paul, the blessed one who was set apart from his mother’s womb?” But as for me, I looked to the Spirit, and it was nodding its head, telling me to speak with him. And I spoke up, saying to the old man, “I am going to the place from which I came.”"

"Then as I went, the gate opened and I went up to the fifth heaven. And I saw my fellow apostles going with me while the Spirit was going about with us. And I saw a great angel in the fifth heaven, holding an iron rod in his hand, three other angels with him. And I gazed at their faces. They were quarrelling with one another, with whips in their hands, goading the souls on to the judgement. But as for me, I was going with the Spirit, and the door opened for me."

"Her Sunday, her kušṭa and her alms"

"Šilmai hath baptised us with his baptism,"

"Good is the Good for the good,"

"I went to the jordan, but not I alone,"

"I rose up from the jordan"

"A treasure am I—Life’s Treasure! (simat ana, simat hiia)"

"I saw my father, I saw him,"

"It is the voice of Manda d’Heyyi (qala ḏ-manda ḏ-hiia)"

"But let us worship, pouring forth our thanks. For this is the best incense in God's sight when thanks are given to Him by men. (ii, 388 )."

"For naught is there of which He stands in need, in that He is all things and all are in Him."

"The pious will be deemed insane, and the impious wise; the madman will be thought a brave man, and the wicked will be esteemed as good."

"But Tat persists; his soul is filled with longing to hear some echo of the Great Song. "Father, I wish to hear; I long to know these things!""

"The man who is reborn becomes a psalmist and a poet, for now is he tuned in harmony with the Great Harmony, and cannot do otherwise than sing God's praises. He becomes a maker of hymns and is no longer a repeater of the hymns of others."

"Wherefore the Powers within me, e'en as they are in all, break into song. The Song can be sung in many modes and many tongues, according to the inspiration of the illumined singer."

"The Shepherd, Mind of all masterhood, hath not passed on to me more than hath been writ down, for full well did He know that I should of myself be able to learn all, and see all things. He left to me the making of fair things."

"There is no one Song of the Powers written in human speech and kept secret; no manuscript, no oral tradition, of some physically uttered hymn."

"A Hymn to All-Father God WHO, then, may sing Thee praise of Thee, or praise to Thee? WHITHER, again, am I to turn my eyes to sing Thy praise; above, below, within, without? There is no way, no place is there about Thee, nor any other thing of things that are. All are in Thee; all are from Thee; O Thou Who givest all and takest naught, for Thou hast all and naught is there Thou hast not. And WHEN, O Father, shall l hymn Thee? For none can seize Thy hour or time. For WHAT, again, shall I sing hymn? For things that Thou hast made, or things Thou hast not? For things Thou hast made manifest, or things Thou hast concealed? How, further, shall I hymn Thee? As being of myself? As having something of mine own? As being other? For that Thou art whatever I may be; Thou art whatever I may do; Thou art whatever I may speak. For Thou art all, and there is nothing else which Thou art not. Thou art all that which doth exist, and Thou art what doth not exist,-Mind when Thou thinkest, and Father when Thou makest, and God when Thou dost energize, and Good and Maker of all things (i, 105)."

"He is Himself, both things that are and things that are not. The things that are He hath made manifest, he keepeth things that are not in Himself. He is the God beyond all name - He the unmanifest, he the most manifest; He whom the mind alone can contemplate, He visible unto the eyes as well. He is the one of no body, the one of many bodies, nay, rather, He of every body. Naught is there which He is not, for all are He, and He is all (ii, 104)."

"But on the pious soul the Mind doth mount and guide it to the Gnosis' Light. And such a soul doth never tire in songs of praise to God and pouring blessing on all men, and doing good in word and deed to all, in imitation of its Sire (ii, 155)."

"I, Mind, Myself am present with holy men and good, the pure and merciful, men who live piously. To such My Presence doth become an aid, and straightway they gain Gnosis of all things, and win the Father's love by their pure lives, and give Him thanks, invoking on Him blessings, and chanting hymns, intent on Him with ardent love (ii, 14)."

"And thus He will bring back His world to its former aspect, so that the Cosmos will once more be deemed worthy of worship and wondering reverence, and God, the maker and restorer of the mighty fabric, will be adored by the men of that day with unceasing hymns of praise and blessing."

"He will call back to the right path those who have gone astray; He will cleanse the world from evil, now washing it away with water-floods, now burning it out with fiercest fire, or again expelling it by war and pestilence."

"But when all this has befallen, Asclepius, then the Master and Father, God, the first before all, the maker of that God who first came into being, will look on that which has come to pass, and will stay the disorder by the counterworking of His will, which is the good."

"No word of reverence or piety, no utterance worthy of heaven and of the Gods of heaven, will be heard or believed."

"Darkness will be preferred to light, and death will be thought more profitable than life; no one will raise his eyes to heaven."

"They will no longer love this world around us, this incomparable work of God, this glorious structure which He has built..."

"The Crown is composed of four mysteries, which are the Wellspring and Datepalm, Fecundation, Glory and Light. It is constructed of seven mysteries which are the ears, the five hasfia of the head, and the hair, for it (the Crown?) dominateth three hundred and sixty mysteries — which are the Body, of its Right and its Left. And all took shape within them and settled therein and developed into a thousand mysteries."

"Behold and learn that betwixt Darkness and Light"

"So, when the Soul came from worlds of light and fell into the body,"

"The worlds of darkness and the worlds of light are Body and Counterpart,"

"Now as to these two mysteries of ziwa and nhura (radiant light and diffused light):"

"The Word is an image of Nous, and Nous is an image of God; just as the body is an image of an idea, and the idea is an image of the soul. Thus the finest part of matter is air, of air, soul, of soul, Nous, and of Nous, God. And God encompasses all and is through all, and Nous encompasses souls, and soul, air, and air, matter. Necessity, providence and nature are instruments by which the cosmos is governed and by which matter is set in order. Now each of the spiritual beings is an essence and this essence is unchanging identity. Each body in the universe is manifold, and compound bodies, while holding this identity change in to each other. Yet they always preserve that indestructible identity."

"Furthermore, in each and every compound body there is number. For without number it is impossible for combination, composition or dissolution to occur. The One in each brings forth number and increases it, and again dissolving it, receives it into itself, while matter remains one. This entire cosmos, this great god, which is an image of the greater, with whom it is united, preserves the order and will of the Father and is the abundance of life. In this cosmos, throughout the eternal cycle of ages, which issues from the Father, there is nothing, neither of the whole nor of any part, that does not live. In the cosmos not one dead thing has come to be, is, or will be. For the Father willed that as long as it exists it should be a living being. Therefore the cosmos must needs be a god also."

"Hermes: All knowledge is incorporeal, using the mind as an instrument, just as the mind uses the body. Both then come into the body, mind and matter. All things must be composed of contrast and opposition; it cannot be otherwise."

"Manda ḏ-Hiia went to Yuhana the Baptist and spoke to him:"

"Again I feel the need and responsibility to defend our principal religious manuscript, the Ginza Rba, the Great Treasure of all Mandaeans. If you want the truth, the Ginza Rba is the backbone of our community. Without it the Mandaeans could never have survived the centuries-long atrocities, fanaticism and extremism of other nations; without it, I am sure, they would soon disappear in the near future. We should not forget that their successful resistance in the past was due to it. If you read the colophon of sheykh Salah Jabbar at the end of this book, you will see that there was a good tradition among the priesthood, namely: to look upon the Ganzibra amongst them, who has succeeded in copying a scroll of the Ginza Rba to the last word with his right hand (nasaka ḏ-kulhun ginzia b-iaminḥ), as a steadfast and reliable religious man. So they valued his knowledge and appreciated his work to a great extent and placed a crown of honour upon his head."

"Naked they brought me into the world (arṭil l-alma atalḥ),"

"Who brought me out of the house of the Life? (mn bit hiia man atian)"

"I am the Life Who was from aforetime; (ana hu hiia ḏ-hun mn l-aqadmia)"

"Thereupon Šilmai, the master of the house, arose, went before Yathrun, the perfect man. He said to him:"

"Praised be Thou, my Lord, with a pure heart, (mšabit marai b-liba dakia)"

"When the fruit (was still) in the fruit,"

"Truth brought forth names in the world for us, and no one can refer to truth without names. Truth is one and many, for our sakes, to teach us about the one, in love, through the many."

"Light and darkness, life and death, and right and left are siblings of one another, and inseparable. For this reason the good are not good, the bad are not bad, life is not life, death is not death. Each will dissolve into its original nature, but what is superior to the world cannot be dissolved, for it is eternal."

"The names of worldly things are utterly deceptive, for they turn the heart from what is real to what is unreal. Whoever hears the word god thinks not of what is real but rather of what is unreal. So also with the words father, son, holy spirit, life, light, resurrection, church, and all the rest, people do not think of what is real but of what is unreal, [though] the words refer to what is real. The words [that are] heard belong to this world. [Do not be] deceived. If words belonged to the eternal realm, they would never be pronounced in this world, nor would they designate worldly things. They would refer to what is in the eternal realm."

"The rulers wanted to fool people, since they saw that people have a kinship with what is truly good. They took the names of the good and assigned them to what is not good, to fool people with names and link the names to what is not good. So, as if they were doing people a favor, they took names from what is not good and transferred them to the good, in their own way of thinking. For they wished to take free people and enslave them forever."