| “And our sister, Sophia (is) she who came down in innocence, in order to rectify her deficiency. Therefore, she was called Life, which is the mother of the living, by the foreknowledge of the sovereignty of heaven. And through her they have tasted the perfect Knowledge. I appeared in the form of an eagle on the tree of knowledge, which is the Epinoia from the foreknowledge of the pure light, that I might teach them and awaken them out of the depth of sleep. For they were both in a fallen state and they recognized their nakedness. The Epinoia appeared to them as a light (and) she awakened their thinking.” The “Archons” may have been “Archangels.” There are claimed to be 365 of them which represents the number of days in a year, lending evidence that we are talking about movements of the heavens in relation to time. There is a lot of discussion these days about “Archons” from the “Ancient Alien” crowd and how they are supposedly tied into the dark forces that rule the earth. Religious people always find a way to invert reality and use it to promote their fear-based agendas. From the Teachings of Silvanus, we get the early Christian principles from which later Christianity drew its inspiration: “Live with Christ, and he will save you. For he is the true light and the sun of life. For just as the sun which is visible and makes light for the eyes of the flesh, so Christ illuminates every mind and the heart.” … “… For everything that is visible is a copy of that which is hidden. For as a fire which burns in a place without being confined to it, so it is with the sun which is in the sky, all of whose rays extend to places on the earth. Similarly, Christ is a single being, and he gives light to every place. … “Now what is it to know God? God is all which is in the truth. But it is as impossible to look at Christ as at the sun. God sees everyone; no one looks at him: …”O Lord Almighty, how much glory shall I give thee? No one has been able to glorify God accurately. It is Thou who hast given glory to thy Word in order to save everyone, O Merciful God (It is) he who has come from Thy mouth and has risen from Thy heart, the First-born, the Wisdom, the Prototype, the First Light. …”So there is no other hidden except God alone. But he is revealed to everyone, and yet, he is very hidden. He is revealed because God knows all. And if they do not wish to affirm it, they will be corrected by their heart. Now he is hidden because no one perceives the things of God. For it is incomprehensible and unfathomable to know the counsel of God. Furthermore, it is difficult to comprehend him, and it is difficult to find Christ. For he is the one who dwells in every place, and also he is in no place. For no one who wants to will be able to know God as he actually is, nor Christ, nor the Spirit, nor the chorus of angels, nor even the archangels as well as the throne of the spirits, and the exalted lordships, and the Great Mind. If you do not know [yourself], you will not be able to know all of these.” (30) |
In the Thanksgiving Hymn, we read about pretty much everything we have been learning about in this book so far: “For thou didst set a plantation of cypress, pine and cedar for Thy glory, trees of life beside a mysterious fountain hidden among the trees by the water, and they put out a shoot of the everlasting Plant. But before they did so, they took root and sent out their shoots to the watercourse that its stem might be open to the living waters and be one with the everlasting spring ... And the bud of the shoot of holiness for the Plant of Truth was hidden and was not esteemed; and being unperceived, its mystery was sealed. Thou didst hedge its fruit, O God, with the mystery of mighty Heroes and of spirits and holiness and of the whirling flame of fire. No man shall approach the well-spring of life or drink the waters of holiness with the everlasting trees, or bear fruit with the Plant of heaven, who seeing has not discerned, and considering has not believed in the fountain of life, who has turned his hand against the everlasting bud.” (31) Early Christian teachings were very spiritual and psychedelic inspired. They were truly beautiful spiritual lessons and proverbs for use in fine tuning the soul. This was the purest state of Christianity, before Rome overtook it and converted it into a completely solar based and spiritually baseless religion. The spiritual principles embedded in the teachings were pure and positive for the most part and the ideas of Jesus were spiritual principles, like the image of Sophia or Yaldabaoth and not the teachings of a man who incarnated with lessons to teach humanity. This was a more direct descent from Persian Zoroastrianism combined with Egyptian spiritualism which both joined to form the teachings of the Gnostics and those outlined in the Gnostic Gospels and Nag Hammadi Library. Later on, we see Rome taking the teachings and forcing it down everyone’s throat through a Roman imperialistic interpretation with important sections of the Gnostic writings left out completely and certain “approved” texts allowed in to be rewritten and edited heavily such as the Gospels of the Apostles. (30) Nag Hammadi, p. 387-395, The Teachings of Silvanus (31) ibid, Vermes, Dead Sea Scrolls in English, 187 – Thanksgiving Hymn 18 (Formerly 14) (Dead Sea Scrolls) |