Part 9 (1/2)

At the close of the past (or Padma) Kalpa, the divine Brahma, endowed with the quality of goodness, awoke from his night of sleep, and beheld the universe void. He, the supreme Narayana, the incomprehensible, the sovereign of all creatures, invested with the form of Brahma, the G.o.d without beginning, the creator of all things; of whom, with respect to his name Narayana, the G.o.d who has the form of Brahma, the imperishable origin[125] of the world, this verse is repeated: ”The waters are called Nara, because they were the offspring of Nara (the supreme spirit); and, as, in them, his first (Ayana)[126] progress (in the character of Brahma) took place, he is thence named Narayana (he whose place of moving was the waters).”

Sir Wm. Jones translates this well-known verse of Manu[127] as follows:

The waters are called Narah, because they were the production of Nara, or the spirit of G.o.d; and, since they were his first Ayana, or place of motion, he thence is named Narayana or moving on the waters.

Substantially the same statement is made in the _Linga, Vayu_, and _Markandeya Puranas_, and the _Bhagavata_ explains it more fully as follows:

Purusha (the Spirit) having divided the egg (the ideal universe in germ), on his issuing forth in the beginning, desiring a place of motion (Ayanam) for himself, pure he created the waters pure.

In the _Vishnu Purana_, again, Brahma, speaking to the Celestials, says:

I, Mahadeva (s.h.i.+va), and you all are but Narayana.[128]

The beautiful symbol of the Divine Spirit moving and brooding over the Primordial Waters of s.p.a.ce--Waters which as differentiation proceeds become more and more turbid--is too graphic to require further explanation. It is too hallowed by age and sanctified by the consent of humanity to meet with less than our highest admiration.

Dissertation on our Diagram could be pursued to almost any length, but sufficient has already been said to show the points of correspondence between the ideas ascribed to Simon and universal Theosophy.

Let us now enquire into the part played by Epinoia, the Divine Thought, in the cosmic process, reserving the part played by her in the human drama to when we come to treat of the soteriology of Simon. We have evidently here a version of the great Sophia-mythus, which plays so important a part in all Gnostic systems. On the one hand the energizings of the mother-side of Divine Nature, on the other the history of the evolution of the Divine Monad, shut into all forms throughout the elemental spheres, throughout the lower kingdoms, up to the man stage.

The mystery of Sophia-Epinoia is great indeed, insoluble in its origins; for how does that which is Divine descend below and create Powers which imprison their parent? It is the mystery of the universe and of man, insoluble for all but the Logos itself, by whose self-sacrifice Sophia, the Soul, is finally freed from her bonds.

Epinoia is a Power of many names. She is called the Mother, or All-Mother, Mother of the Living or s.h.i.+ning Mother, the Celestial Eve; the Power Above; the Holy Spirit, for the Spiritus in some systems is a feminine power (in a symbolical sense, of course), pre-eminently in the _Codex Nazaraeus_, the scripture of the Mandates. Again she is called She of the Left-hand, as opposed to the Christos, He of the Right-hand; the Man-woman; Prouneikos; Matrix; Paradise; Eden; Achamoth; the Virgin; Barbelo; Daughter of Light; Merciful Mother; Consort of the Masculine One; Revelant of the Perfect Mysteries; Perfect Mercy; Revelant of the Mysteries of the Whole Magnitude; Hidden Mother; She who knows the Mysteries of the Elect; the Holy Dove, who has given birth to the two Twins; Ennoia; and by many another name varying according to the terminology of the different systems, but ever preserving the root idea of the World-Soul in the Macrocosm and the Soul in Man.

Within every form, aye, even apparently the meanest, is Epinoia confined; for everything within is innate with Life; every form contains a spark of the Divine Fire, essentially of the same nature as the All; for in the Roots, and also in all things--since all is built on their type--is ”the whole of the Boundless Power together _in potentiality_, but not _in actuality_.”

The reason given for this imprisonment of Sophia in most of the systems is that she endeavoured to create without her Syzygy, the Father or Nous, wis.h.i.+ng to imitate alone the self-generating power of the Supreme.

Thus through ignorance she involved herself in suffering, from which she was freed by repentance and experience. What explanation of this supreme mystery was publicly ventured on by Simon we cannot know, for the patristic accounts are confused and contradictory.

Irenaeus tells us that:

She was the first Conception (Epinoia) of his Mind, the Mother of All, by whom in the beginning he conceived in his Mind, the making of the Angels and Archangels.

This Epinoia, leaping forth from _him_ (the Boundless Power), and knowing what was the will of her Father, descended to the Lower Regions and generated the Angels and Powers, by whom also he said the world was made. And after she had generated them, she was detained by them through envy, for they did not wish to be thought the progeny of another. As for himself he was entirely unknown by them; and it was his Thought (Epinoia) that was made prisoner by the Powers and Angels that had been emanated by her. And she suffered every kind of indignity at their hands to prevent her reascending to her Father, even to being imprisoned in the human body and transmigrating into other female bodies, as from one vessel into another.

Tertullian's account differs by the important addition that the ”design of the Father was prevented”; how or why he does not say.

She was his first Suggestion whereby he suggested the making of the Angels and Archangels; that she sharing in this design had sprung forth from the Father, and leaped down into the Lower Regions; and that there, the design of the Father being prevented, she had brought forth Angelic Powers ignorant of the Father, the artificer of this world (?); by these she was detained, not according to his intention, lest when she had gone they should be thought to be the progeny of another, etc.

The _Philosophumena_ say nothing on this point, except that Epinoia ”throws all the Powers in the World into confusion through her unsurpa.s.sable Beauty.”

Philaster renders confusion worse confounded, by writing:

And he also dared to say that the World had been made by Angels, and the Angels again had been made by certain endowed with perception from Heaven, and that they (the Angels) had deceived the human race.

He a.s.serted, moreover, that there was a certain other Thought (Intellectus) who descended into the world for the salvation of men.

Epiphanius further complicates the problem as follows:

This Power (Prunicus and Holy Spirit) descending from Above changed its form.... And through the Power from Above ... displaying her beauty, she drove them to frenzy, and on this account was she sent for the despoiling of the Rulers who brought the World into being; and the Angels themselves went to war on her account; and while she experienced nothing, they set to work to mutually slaughter each other on account of the desire which she infused into them for herself.

Theodoret briefly follows Irenaeus.