Insight Editions · No. 455
The Wisdom of the Knowing Ones
Gnosticism, the Key to Esoteric Christianity
Manly P. Hall
Hall's essays on Gnosticism as the esoteric key to Christianity: emanations, Sophia and the Demiurge, Marcion, East-West parallels, Alexandria, meditation symbols and the Abraxas gems.
A study guide to The Wisdom of the Knowing Ones by Manly P. Hall (The Wisdom of the Knowing Ones, Philosophical Research Society, Los Angeles, 2000 (2010 edition); introduction by Stephan A. Hoeller and five chapters by Manly P. Hall). Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the author or publishers. Please read and buy the original.
CORE CLAIM
Hall reads Gnosticism as the lost esoteric core of Christianity: a philosophy of emanations that bridged spirit and matter, a ladder of aeons the soul must climb, and a science of salvation by inner knowledge rather than by creed. He follows it from Alexandria and the caravan routes to its meditation symbols and its surviving engraved gems.
SCOPE
An introduction by Stephan Hoeller on the Nag Hammadi find and the Gnostic world view, then five essays by Hall: Gnosticism as emanationism and its myth of Sophia and Ialdabaoth, with Marcion and the Pistis Sophia; parallels between Western Gnosis and Nagarjuna's Mahayana and Tantric Buddhism; Alexandria as the cradle of Western mysticism; the meditation symbols shared by Gnostic and Christian mystics; and the Abraxas gems and their seven classes.
KEY FIGURES
Stephan A. Hoeller; Elaine Pagels; Gilles Quispel; Plato; Aristotle; Simon Magus; Basilides; Valentinus; Marcion; Bardesanes; Irenaeus; C. W. King; Nagarjuna; Kobo Daishi; J. S. M. Ward; Ptolemy Soter; Philo Judaeus; Clement of Alexandria; Origen; Hypatia; Cyril of Alexandria; Plotinus; Ammonius Saccas; Bernard de Montfaucon; J. Bellermann.
BEST FOR
Readers new to Gnosticism who want a sympathetic map of its ideas and symbols, students of esoteric Christianity and comparative religion, and anyone curious how the Nag Hammadi find changed the story of early Christianity.
The Book on One Page
A short book of linked essays: what the Gnostics believed, where their ideas came from, how they were suppressed, and what their symbols still teach.
This is Hall the sympathetic historian of a lost heresy. The book opens with an introduction by Stephan Hoeller, a Gnostic bishop and scholar, who frames the subject through the Nag Hammadi discovery of 1945. Hall's five essays follow. They were written at different times and overlap, but together they make one argument: that Gnosticism was the inner philosophy of early Christianity, that it was destroyed for political rather than intellectual reasons, and that its ideas still offer a science of salvation by self-knowledge.
Three ideas carry the book. First, emanationism: spirit and matter cannot meet directly, so reality is a graded series of emanations in which spirit descends and matter ascends until they meet in man. Second, the ladder of the aeons: the soul has fallen through seven planetary spheres ruled by the archons and must climb back by knowledge. Third, the esoteric and the exoteric: every faith has an outer form for the many and an inner teaching for the few, and the Gnostics claimed to hold the inner teaching of Christianity.
"Everything visible is simply the long shadow of an invisible principle." This line from the fourth essay is the key to Hall's reading of every Gnostic myth and symbol.
Why it matters to Hall. He sees in the Gnostic defeat a lesson about institutions. The Gnostics were liberal, individualist and unorganised; the Church was united and willing to use force. The heresy that sought reconciliation between pagan and Christian was crushed by both sides. Hall reads its survival in gems, symbols and later mystical orders as proof that inner knowledge can outlive the institutions that suppress it.
What this edition adds. Each chapter keeps Hall's order and main examples in compressed form, with tables and diagrams for the myths, lists and classifications. A critical lens at the end of each chapter sets Hall's claims against what later scholarship found, since much has changed in Gnostic studies since he wrote.
| Ch | Title | One-line payload |
|---|---|---|
| Intro | What Do the Knowers Know? (Hoeller) | Nag Hammadi, the Gnostic world view and the three kinds of people. |
| 1 | Gnosticism, the Key to Esoteric Christianity | Emanations, the Sophia and Ialdabaoth myth, Abraxas, the suppression and Marcion's two Gods. |
| 2 | Parallels Between Eastern and Western Philosophy | A shared crisis, Nagarjuna, three ways of knowing, Sophia and Prajnaparamita, mudras and mandalas. |
| 3 | Alexandria, the Cradle of Western Mysticism | The city, its libraries, Hermes, Philo, Clement, Origen, Hypatia and the Neoplatonists. |
| 4 | Meditation Symbols in Christian and Gnostic Mysticism | Caravan routes, the inward turn, and the ladder, cross, ship, Isis and Harpocrates as aids to meditation. |
| 5 | The Symbolism of Gnostic Gems | Abraxas stones, their making, Montfaucon's seven classes, the Leaden Book and Basilides' system. |
Read it as a sympathetic introduction by a writer who believed the Gnostics held a real secret, not as current scholarship. Hall's strongest material is the myth of Sophia and the Demiurge, his account of Alexandria, and his reading of symbols as meditation tools. His weakest is his habit of treating parallels as proof of contact.
"What makes us free is the Gnosis of who we were, of what we have become, of where we were, of wherein we have been cast, of whereto we are hastening."
THE GNOSTIC QUESTIONWhat Do the Knowers Know?
Stephan Hoeller, not Hall, opens the book: the Nag Hammadi find, the meaning of Gnosis, and the four pillars of the Gnostic world view.
The jar at Nag Hammadi. In December 1945 an Egyptian countryman, Mohammed Ali, broke open a red earthenware jar near Nag Hammadi and found thirteen leather-bound papyrus books. Legend says a cloud of golden dust rose from the jar. The find lay near Chenoboskion, the first great Christian monastic community founded by Pachomius. Less than a year later the Dead Sea Scrolls were found at Qumran, and Hoeller sees the two discoveries as related: heterodox Jewish mystics and their Gnostic Christian descendants.
Before the find. For over fifteen centuries the Gnostics were known almost only through the heresy hunters, Church fathers who "assailed, ridiculed and greatly distorted" them. A few original texts reached Europe from the eighteenth century, and scholars such as Harnack, Reitzenstein and Bauer began to move beyond the polemics. Esotericists were active too: Blavatsky and G. R. S. Mead stirred interest, and in France Papus and Jules Doinel went so far as to reconstitute a Gnostic Church.
- 2nd to 4th centuries. Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Epiphanius and others write against the Gnostics.
- 18th to 19th centuries. Coptic codices such as the Askew (Pistis Sophia) reach Europe.
- Late 19th century. Scholars begin to question the heresiologists; Blavatsky and Mead popularise the Gnostics.
- 1945. The Nag Hammadi library is found.
- 1946 to 1947. The Dead Sea Scrolls are found at Qumran.
- Late 20th century. Translations spread; Hoeller speaks of "a modest Gnostic renaissance."
Insight, not information. "Gnosis" is Greek for knowledge, and a Gnostic is the opposite of an agnostic. But Gnosis is "not primarily rational knowledge." Elaine Pagels translates it as "insight," a knowing that is both psychological and metaphysical and arrives intuitively. Hoeller insists that despite many schools there was one Gnosticism, united by devotion to Jesus. Non-Christian Gnostics are better called Hermeticists, and the Jewish form is better called Merkabah mysticism and later Kabbalah.
Where it came from. Older scholars looked for external sources. The modern view, from E. R. Dodds, C. G. Jung and Gilles Quispel, is that Gnosticism arose from mystical experience, the "experience of the ontological self," projected outward as myth. Karl Kerenyi said the same of Gnostic myths. Hoeller concludes that Valentinus, Basilides and Bardaisan were inspired mystics, not the idle "speculators" of the polemics.
| Pillar | Gnostic view | Contrast |
|---|---|---|
| The cosmos | Flawed because made in a flawed manner | Orthodox: a fallen world to leave behind |
| God | A true, good God above a lesser creator, the Demiurge | Orthodox: the creator is the ultimate God |
| The human being | Part made by the creator, part divine spark of the true God | Orthodox: the soul is a creature, never divine |
| Salvation | Release from ignorance by Gnosis, aided by messengers | Orthodox: release from sin by Christ's death |
The cosmos and its maker. Like Buddhists, Gnostics saw that earthly life is full of suffering, much of it built into the natural order: creatures eat each other, catastrophes destroy, and humans add depression, alienation and boredom. Their answer was that the world is flawed because its maker was flawed. Faced with the capricious, wrathful lawgiver of the Hebrew scriptures, they asked whether this creator was really the ultimate God, and answered that he was a demiurgos, a craftsman, below a true and good reality the spirit can experience.
Three kinds of people. Human nature mirrors this duality. Most of us are ignorant of the divine spark within, and the obstacles to awakening may be tied to the powers that manage the universe. Gnostics sorted people into three types: pneumatics (spiritual and ready), psychics (living in mind and emotion, expecting rules to save them) and hyletics (bound to matter). People can move up the scale. Quispel put it this way: the exiled spirit must pass through "the inferno of matter and the purgatory of morals" to reach paradise.
Salvation as remembering. An early formula lists what Gnosis knows: who we were, what we have become, where we were cast, where we are hastening, what birth and rebirth really are. Ignorance enslaves, so the knowledge that removes it liberates, "as if we were enmeshed in a great, malefic cocoon" that unravels. But Gnosis is not self-help. It needs Messengers of the Light, such as Seth, Jesus and later Mani, who help by their lives, not their deaths. They bring teachings and confer liberating mysteries.
Myth and sacrament. Older scholars treated Gnostic myth and ritual as immature or decadent. Hoeller says recent research proves them wrong: myth and sacrament were the heart of Gnosticism, and the Gospel of Philip is a whole book of sacramental theology. Anyone expecting a purely individual, unmediated spirituality "will be disappointed." Gnosticism had its own priesthood and lineage.
Hoeller praises Hall's subtitle, "the Key to Esoteric Christianity." Take away the Gnostics, he writes, "and all the non-mainstream spiritual structures of alternative mystical Christianity fall like a house of cards." He notes living survivals too: the Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran, and the memory of the Cathars.
Hoeller compares the rediscovery of Gnostic texts with the recovery of Hermetic writings that fed the Renaissance of the fifteenth century. "The stone that the builders rejected may become the cornerstone once more."
The Gnostic renaissance. Hoeller ends with the present. Novels, popular scholarship, science fiction and websites now carry Gnostic themes, and he sees this as "a modest Gnostic renaissance." His closing hope is that what "the blindness of churchly politics" rejected two thousand years ago may enter the spirituality of the new millennium. He presents Hall's essays as a welcome contribution from "one of the wise men of this age."
Hoeller writes as an advocate: he was a bishop of a modern Gnostic church. His claim of "one Gnosticism" runs against much later scholarship, such as Michael Williams and Karen King, which argues that "Gnosticism" is a modern umbrella for diverse groups that did not share one name or creed. The link between Nag Hammadi and Qumran is also weaker than he implies: the Scrolls contain no Gnostic texts. His introduction is a clear map of one school's reading, not a neutral summary.
Gnosticism, the Key to Esoteric Christianity
Hall's main essay: Gnosticism as a philosophy of emanations, its myth of Sophia and the Demiurge, its suppression by the Church, and Marcion's two Gods.
The unfinished business of Plato and Aristotle. Hall begins with philosophy, not religion. Plato taught universals, archetypes and a divine geometry of causes. Aristotle, who "resented the domination of intangibles," built his system on facts and categories. The two never fully met, and later generations inherited "a legacy of unfinished business": universals were defined and particulars classified, but the interval between them was unexplained. In the first century, Hall argues, the effort to bridge that interval produced Gnosticism.
Emanationism defined. "Gnosticism is defined as emanationism, or a philosophy of emanations." If two qualities cannot meet in substance, they can meet by extension. Matter exists in an ascending scale, from earth to the rarer elements, and the least material is most like spirit. Spirit exists in a descending scale: in itself it is unknowable, but intellect and energy proceed from it with growing limitation, since "definition is limitation." The two scales can therefore meet on common ground.
Light, darkness and hunger. Hall then plays with the old puzzles. Is spirit the highest matter, or matter the lowest spirit? Plato called darkness the absence of light; the Aristotelians replied that light might be the absence of darkness, since all light fails and darkness remains. Hall's homely analogy is food and hunger: food is real and definable, hunger has no shape, yet "no matter how much food there may be, hunger remains." He admits cheerfully: "All this is very confusing."
Pagan, Christian and Gnostic God. The pagans saw the supreme power as space itself, not emptiness but "no thing," life unconditioned. The early Church placed God outside creation, a person ruling from "some extra-universal throne." The Gnostics sided with the pagans in seeing the universe as the body of God, yet used that view to explain Christian mysticism. "In this way, the Gnostic cult succeeded in offending both the pagans and the Christians."
| View | Where God is | How God acts |
|---|---|---|
| Pagan | Identical with space and life | Emerges through spiritual and material generations |
| Early Christian | Outside creation, a separate person | Rules matter by "absolute tyranny of the divine will" |
| Gnostic | The universe is the body of God | A constant impulse toward unfoldment and growth |
The heresy hunters. Gnosticism was "the great heresy of the Ante-Nicene period." Hall is scathing about Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Epiphanius, Tertullian and Theodoret, who preached brotherly love while writing "vicious and slanderous attacks." No father had proved his zeal "until he had prepared an elaborate treatise against heresies, and pitched a sanctified pebble at some heresiarch." The Gnostics were peacemakers between extremes, and "the way of the peacemaker is usually quite as hard as that of the transgressor." They were attacked by Christians for paganism and by Neoplatonists for accepting Christian tenets.
"Strange to relate, Gnosticism is indebted to its enemies for the survival of certain of its teachings." Until the modern finds, almost everything known came from the fathers who described the heresies in detail in order to condemn them.
Three great names. Hall singles out Simon Magus, Basilides and Valentinus. Simon was torn to shreds as a sorcerer. Basilides and Valentinus were of such integrity that the clergy could find nothing against them, so they were declared the most dangerous: "If a pagan had the appearance of virtue it was because the Devil conjured up an illusion." Hall's verdict: "If any group, which shared in the Christian mystery, possessed the esoteric secrets of the early Church, it was the Gnostics."
The ascent of the soul. The central Gnostic idea was "the ascent of the soul through successive stages of being." Hall traces it to Babylonian star worship, where each heaven has a planetary ruler and the soul passes the gates with passwords. He finds the same ladder in the Egyptian ritual of the dead, the myth of Tammuz and Ishtar, the seven governors of the Poimandres, Jacob's ladder, the nine arches of Enoch, the seven heavens of Revelation and Muhammad's Night Journey. Bardesanes, the last great Gnostic, may have drawn on Buddhist ideas: Christ descends through seven worlds, taking a body on each, and the final state is "perfectly analogous to nirvana."
The godhead and the Demiurge. At the top stands the universal Logos, "He who stood, stands, and will stand," who emits three hypostases that Simon called Incorruptible Form, the Great Thought and the Universal Mind. Hall notes that thought comes before mind: "The thought conceives the thinker." Later Gnostics name three potencies: Anthropos, the Son of Anthropos and Ialdabaoth, the son of chaos. Ialdabaoth is the Demiurge, the Lord of the World, the "prince of the world" who Jesus said had nothing in common with him. He and his six sons are the seven archons.
| Archon | Planet |
|---|---|
| Ialdabaoth | Saturn |
| Iao | Jupiter |
| Sabaoth | Mars |
| Adonaios | Sun |
| Astaphaios | Venus |
| Ailoaios | Mercury |
| Oraios | Moon |
Saturn and his children. Ialdabaoth as Saturn marks the outer boundary of the solar system, within which the planets exist "as embryos." Hall reads the fable of Saturn devouring his children as a memory of planetary substance drawn back into Saturn's rings. In the Hermetic version the seven governors are neither good nor bad, mere agents of divine purpose. In the Gnostic version they are proud, rebel spirits, and Ialdabaoth cries, "There are no other gods before me!" though he is "the least part of the triune godhead."
The myth of Sophia. Hall follows C. W. King's summary in The Gnostics and their Remains. Sophia Achamoth, the generative wisdom of the world, sees her reflection in the deep, is lured into the abyss, and from union with darkness bears Ialdabaoth. She escapes the mud, reaches the middle distance, and builds a barrier between the world of spirits above and the world of matter below. Ialdabaoth, left alone, creates the physical world and six sons, each darker than the last. Hall calls this "the Platonic theory of proximities": what is nearest the source shares most of it.
The monster and the ray. Ialdabaoth and his sons try to make man in their image, but produce "a vast soulless creature which crawled about through the ooze." The Demiurge can make forms but cannot create life, so he breathes into it the ray of light he had from his mother. Now man "beheld himself as a god" and refused to serve his maker. Mankind gathers light into itself and slowly takes on the likeness of Anthropos, the primal man of light. Ialdabaoth's jealous glance, reflected in the abyss, becomes Satan in serpent form.
The tree and the dungeon. Ialdabaoth forbids man the tree of knowledge in each sphere. Sophia sends her genius Ophis, also in serpent form, to persuade man to eat. Man understands the mysteries; Ialdabaoth punishes Adam and Eve by building physical bodies around them, "a dungeon of matter." Sophia keeps a current of divine light flowing through the heart, "an internal light" that protects even when the outer nature wanders in darkness.
The descent of the Saviour. At last Sophia asks the heavenly Sophia to move the Unknown Depth to send down the Christos. Since the higher gods cannot build bodies, Ialdabaoth is flattered into making a good and just man named Jesus. The Christos descends through the seven spheres in disguise, taking a body suitable to each, calling the sparks of light to join him, and enters Jesus at the baptism. Ialdabaoth stirs up the people and destroys the body, but the Saviour has already "opened forever the gate between the lower and higher universes." When all light is gathered from matter, Theodoret reports, "the redemption will be accomplished and the world will be destroyed."
"Gnostic Christianity conceived of salvation without benefit of exoteric clergy." The rituals that once appeased Ialdabaoth became worthless; religion became "a matter of internal adjustment." Hall's dry comment: the Church regarded this "as economically unsound."
Abraxas. Basilides, who claimed descent from an apostle, formed the concept of Abraxas, whose letters add up to 365: the aeons that make up the Father, and the days of the solar year. Abraxas is a sun god with a rooster's head, a human body and serpent legs. The head is Phronesis, foresight; the arms with whip and shield are Dynamis and Sophia, power and wisdom; the serpent legs are Nous and Logos. The human body hints that these powers will be perfected in man. The figures survive on signets, often set plain face outward to hide the wearer's allegiance, because the fathers "had no mind to destroy valuable property."
Pagan achievements. Hall then widens his defence. The Gnostics were one of several groups who held that there was "nothing essentially new" in Christianity. Pagan Rome was tolerant: worship at any shrine, "but regardless of the definitions of his faith, he must pay his taxes." Pagan morals were no worse than Christian. From 500 B.C. to 500 A.D. civilisation received its laws, sciences and arts, mostly from pagans: Hippocrates, Ptolemy, Plato, Euclid, Cicero, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius. Hall even claims "the first Christian hymn was pagan music with new words."
Jesus outside his church. Hall agrees with Muhammad that the Ante-Nicene fathers built a system so narrow "that Jesus himself could not have been a member of his own church." Had he been born again in 350 A.D., he would have been "pronounced a heretic." Enlightened pagans honoured Jesus; they opposed only the organisation of his teaching into a sect bent on "complete and solitary domination."
Religion without competition. "It is impossible to conceive of a Christian or a pagan oak tree." Rain falls on just and unjust, and "the Christian stomach-ache is just as painful as pagan dyspepsia." Belief matters to the believer, but competitive theologies are "neither necessary nor desirable." Hall goes further: religious prejudice and fanaticism "are psychoses."
| Philosopher | Theologian |
|---|---|
| Thinks abstractly, seeks the universal plan | Approaches creation emotionally |
| Derives virtue from observing law | Tells the world what it should be |
| Works toward conclusions | Works from conclusions |
| Keeps a sense of humour | "Happiness itself is a mild form of heresy" |
The god we make. Emotional religion projects our own experience onto heaven: "If we have suffered, suffering is the universal plan." The result is a pantheon of "nervous, excitable, erratic ... neurotic and inhibited divinities." Against this Hall sets Pythagoras: God's soul is made of truth and his body of light. "It is the mystery and not the interpretation that is real." We are not heretics because we change our minds.
Christ as the eternal hero. The Gnostics sought the esoteric tradition in the Christian story and accepted Christ as a form of the eternal hero: Dionysus, Osiris, Adonis, even Buddha. Christianity mattered to them only insofar as it held what was eternal. Their theology was a trinity of will, wisdom and activity, the third being the Holy Ghost, from geist, a breath or gust. Wisdom was the universal saviour and mediator.
Wisdom as knowing. "Wisdom is not of the order of thinking; it is of the order of knowing." Knowledge requires "an intense sympathy between the thing knowing and the thing known." Wisdom has two sides: philosophy, the power to see divine purpose in nature, and Sophia, the love aspect, felt as an emotional impact. Like the alchemists' stone, wisdom is "a synthetic essential substance perfected by art."
Why the Gnostics lost. They were individualists, "many schools enclosed within a loose program." The Gnosis "was a purpose rather than a cult." It grew "like a plant," liberal and non-militant. The Church built "a solid, internal mechanism" and could impose its will. Hall's paradox: the Gnostics are partly responsible for the Church's temporal power, because fighting them taught the bishops "that a religion must be organized in order to survive."
The Gnostics "suffered from the uncertainties natural to extreme liberalism." A movement without structure has no machinery to defend itself, however fine its ideas.
The Church's case. Hall tries to be fair. The fathers felt that pagan philosophers had stolen the Christ concept and turned it against the Church. The Gnostics also rejected most of the Hebrew scriptures, questioned the apostles, denied clerical infallibility and trusted only St. Paul. To the faithful this was intolerable.
Marcion's two Gods. Marcion, a wealthy shipowner of Sinope, reached Rome about 140 A.D., gave generously, was rejected, and founded his own church. He saw a basic inconsistency between the old and new scriptures: if both were equally holy, there must be two Gods. The God of the Hebrew Bible was the just God, a judge demanding an eye for an eye. The God of the gospels was the good God, love and forgiveness, the Father of Jesus. Only Paul had grasped the secret.
The flaw and the fairness. The scheme breaks down under philosophy: man must reach an end contrary to his creation, and there would need to be two heavens. Yet Hall defends Marcion: "the fault lay not with him, but with the early Church Fathers." He simply took their twofold scripture to its logical end, and "the God who hardened Pharaoh's heart is still hard to reconcile" with the God of love. Marcion was "a good and kindly man," and his followers later made the just God a servant of the good. The earliest known inscription on a Christian meeting place, dated 320 A.D., was Marcionite. Traces lasted to the tenth century, and the questions returned in the Reformation.
The Pistis Sophia. Before Nag Hammadi the main surviving Gnostic text was the Pistis Sophia, in the Askew Codex in the British Museum, assigned to the fourth century and best attributed to Valentinian Gnosticism. Much of it records esoteric teaching given by Jesus to Mary Magdalene. Hall's conclusion: Gnosticism is "a powerful link" between Asian philosophy and the mysticism of Syria and Egypt, and it implies "a well-formulated esoteric tradition under the surface of early Christian theology."
What the chapter claims. Taken whole, the essay makes four claims. Gnosticism was a serious philosophy, an answer to the gap Plato and Aristotle left. Its myth of Sophia and the archons is a psychological drama of light trapped in matter and gathered back. Its suppression was political, the price of being unorganised. And its spirit survives wherever people hold that the mystery matters more than the creed. Hall writes with sympathy, humour and anger, and the anger is aimed at intolerance rather than at faith.
Hall's account of Gnostic doctrine leans on nineteenth-century sources, especially C. W. King, and on the very heresiologists he condemns. His myth of Sophia and Ialdabaoth blends Ophite, Sethian and Valentinian versions into one story, which no single Gnostic group taught. Calling Gnosticism "emanationism" born of the Plato-Aristotle gap is his own philosophical framing, not a historical origin. Some claims are loose: the Pistis Sophia is not by Valentinus, Marcion is usually classed apart from the Gnostics because he had no myth of aeons, and claims such as the pagan origin of "the first Christian hymn" are unsupported. His contrast between kindly pagans and cruel Christians also passes over pagan persecutions of Christians.
Parallels Between Eastern and Western Philosophy
East and West faced the same crisis at the start of the Christian era and answered it the same way: by finding a mystical teaching inside the old faiths.
How beliefs live and die. Religions "come into existence, unfold their teachings, attain their maximum sphere of influence, and then either diminish and fade away, or are subject to broad renovations." Hall suggests a graph of ideas, like the curves of organic evolution. A new system usually rises in moral confusion, from a revolt against an older school that has lost its force. It begins as a local answer to an emergency: the old gods stop answering prayers.
Four tests of survival. To last, a teaching must leave its birthplace. A desert faith must suit cities, reach farmers, merchants and aristocrats, cross languages and political borders, and then face time, since no founder can foresee the needs of remote descendants. "Progress does not disturb facts, but it does require a new interpretation of the moral and ethical implications."
The Western emergency. At the start of the Christian era, Greek philosophy had declined under Rome; Roman philosophy offered "very little to satisfy the inner life"; Egyptian learning was "an abject formalism"; Judaism had seen its God fail to save the Temple; Christianity was still a local belief "too closely tied to the shores of Galilee." The response was renovation: Neoplatonists and Neo-Pythagoreans, Julian's revival, Hermeticism in Egypt (the root of alchemy), Jewish mysticism behind the Sepher Yetzirah and the Zohar, and Paul's mystical Christ.
Christianity's weakness. It had grown "upon a level of simple needs" and had little for the philosopher. The fathers responded by condemning higher learning and teaching salvation by faith alone. On the fringe, where Christianity met Neoplatonism and the Egyptian priesthoods, rose the Syrian and Egyptian Gnosis, with Manichaeans, Nestorians, Arians and pre-Islamic mystics around it. Western man "had to either reject his faith or reform it," and he chose to find esoteric truths beneath it.
The Eastern emergency. Asia was in the same trouble. Hinduism was "still staggering under the impact of Buddhism." Buddhism had become an exclusive order of monks, its code too severe for most. Hindu scholarship was "riddled with skepticism," and the answer was Yoga and Vedanta. In China, Taoism had sunk into ceremonial magic and Confucianism into a prop for the aristocracy. Buddhism moved to its edges, to Ceylon and to Turkestan, where it met many peoples who wanted something more encouraging than "a doctrine of philosophic nihilism."
| Region | Old faith in crisis | The mystical renewal |
|---|---|---|
| Greece and Rome | Decayed schools, thin Roman philosophy | Neoplatonism, Neo-Pythagoreanism |
| Egypt | Formalism under the Ptolemies | Hermeticism, then alchemy |
| Judaea | The Temple destroyed | Kabbalah, Sepher Yetzirah, Zohar |
| Christian fringe | Simple faith, no philosophy | Gnosis, Pauline mysticism |
| India | Hinduism shaken, Buddhism monastic | Yoga, Vedanta, Mahayana |
| China | Taoist magic, Confucian elitism | Mahayana Buddhism arrives |
Nagarjuna. The most honoured teacher of the time was Nagarjuna, born in south India of a Brahmin family. A Tibetan legend says he was fated to live seven days; his parents' merit stretched this to seven weeks, months and years; the Buddha Amitayus then promised him three hundred years, and when the burden grew too great he is said to have cut off his own head. Hall strips the legend to a likely core: a delicate child whose health improved in the quiet of the sanctuary.
When Kobo Daishi studied esoteric Buddhism in China, he received paintings of eight patriarchs, of whom Nagarjuna is the third. Two were so worn they had to be copied, and Kobo Daishi copied Nagarjuna's himself. The painting shows a swarthy, non-Chinese face, a robe of red and yellow stripes, and a thunderbolt in one hand. Hall calls it the best likeness we have.
Contact or coincidence. The teachings of Nagarjuna and the Western mystics are "so similar that it is now believed that some inter-dependency did exist." Some think the Bodhisattva doctrine was inspired by early Christianity; others think Neoplatonism, Gnosticism and Hermeticism are "Europeanized adaptations of esoteric Buddhism" carried along the caravan routes. Hall leaves both open.
Three ways of knowing. East and West agree on three levels of knowledge and three ways to reach them. The first is study and research, open to anyone sincere with a cultivated mind. The second is spiritual intuition, an inner sensing of values and a confidence that inner guidance is valid. The third is "standing face to face with reality," an illumination in which spirituality becomes "a complete experience."
Paul's glass. Hall finds the same steps in the Kabbalists, who divided the Temple of Solomon into courtyard, holy place and holy of holies, and in Paul: "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face." The phrase "seeing face to face" is, Hall says, almost the wording of Mahayana Buddhism for illumination. Behind both stand the Essenes, whose mystical rites are known to have existed though no details survive.
Glad tidings and a science of salvation. In both East and West, the new reading was "the glad tidings": a religion of joy and hope, open to every class and race. In India it drew on Hindu metaphysics; in the West on the Mystery Schools. Believers learned "there was much more to their faith than they had come to understand." In Asia this mysticism survived openly; in Europe it went underground into Kabbalah and alchemy, was pushed out by the clergy, almost vanished in Protestantism, and returned only in the nineteenth century, by then facing science.
Renunciation and its limits. Both traditions passed through great cycles of renunciation, and both found that a religion of total renunciation could not attract the average believer. European monks who lived only to say Mass and illuminate books "seemed to be of slight value to themselves or anyone else." Today most successful Christian movements teach followers to put Christ's ideals to work in daily life.
The dramatised universe. "Gnosticism simply refused to accept a cosmos with God above, man below, and nothing between." Behind the veil of the senses lies "a luminous universe, magnificent in all its parts." "Every blade of grass, every tree, is the visible extremity of a vast invisible process." When the West let this vision fade and "the visible became the fact," it lost the ground for its ethics: morality became "a personal decision to live a little better than our neighbor."
Hall's argument is practical: when we ceased to sense "superphysical machinery behind physical creation," we "deprived ourselves of all evidence or proof that could sustain our moral and ethical codes." Northern Buddhism survived, he thinks, because it kept the unseen alive through religious art.
Knowledge as explanation. Gnostic and Buddhist alike would ask a materialist: how do we know who has the facts? "What we call knowledge is explanation." If even ten percent of our conclusions are wrong, we might have to rebuild our picture of the universe. Gnosticism held there could be only one form of knowledge, universal, and resisted the separation of arts and sciences. Specialisation is fine, but "it should be based on knowledge of basic generalities." Divide knowledge from ethics and skill from wisdom, and we "dismember that vast being."
Sophia and Prajnaparamita. The Gnostics seem to have met the Tantric ideas rising in northern Asia. Hall points to the shakti, female consorts of the divine powers, who stand for the feminine polarity of existence, and to the Chinese view of man as child of heaven and earth. Above all, he compares Prajnaparamita, the bodhisattva of wisdom and the living substance of the sutra she holds, with Athena, Minerva, Isis and the Gnostic Sophia. All suggest a shared idea that eternal wisdom is feminine, an idea that returns in the Kabbalah as the Mother of the Alphabet.
One survived, one did not. Gnosticism vanished before the eighth century. Esoteric Buddhism still lives: its "ancient Gnostic rites are performed to this day," and in Japan its members number nearly ten million. So the Eastern form can be studied as a living religion, while its Mediterranean twin is known only from mutilated records.
| Practice | Eastern form | Western form (Hall's parallel) |
|---|---|---|
| Hand postures | Mudras of the Yogachara school | Gestures in Christian art (J. S. M. Ward) |
| Sacred sound | Mantras | Gnostic invocations and incantations |
| Sacred circle | Mandala | The magic circle of Kabbalistic magic |
| Charms | Block-printed protective images | Carved gems and books of magical figures |
Mudras and mantras. The esoteric school turned the old hand postures into "a complete symbolic language of mudras," able to carry almost the whole doctrine without a word. J. S. M. Ward, in The Sign Language of the Mysteries, argued that Christian painters used a similar secret language of gestures. Hall shows a brass tablet of an English abbot and a woodcut of Kuan Yin with the same crossed hands, which Ward read as the equinox and the hope of resurrection. Gnostic invocations parallel mantras, and the magic circle parallels the mandala.
World Gnosticism. Hall ends with a pattern of "world Gnosticism," a metaphysical factor added to most religions that led their leaders "to seek for hidden meaning in their sacred writings, and not to accept without question literal stories or texts." East and West still distrust each other, the West wary of "Oriental idealism," the East of "Occidental materialism," and Hall hopes the old bridge can be rebuilt.
The chapter rests on parallels, and Hall moves too easily from likeness to contact. There is no firm evidence that Gnosticism borrowed from Buddhism or the reverse, though Mani later drew on both. The Nagarjuna of Madhyamaka philosophy and the Tantric patriarch of the Shingon lineage are probably different figures merged by tradition. Prajnaparamita and Sophia are a striking typological match, not a proven link. Ward's reading of crossed hands as an equinox code is speculative. Hall's broad sketches of Taoism and Confucianism in decline are also simplified; both remained creative in the Han period.
Alexandria, the Cradle of Western Mysticism
The city where Greek, Egyptian, Jewish, Christian and Gnostic learning met, flourished, quarrelled and finally destroyed one another.
A city of mysteries. Hall does not attempt a formal history. Alexandria, with half a million people in its golden age, was ruled by the Ptolemies, who tried to stay out of their neighbours' wars but not their own quarrels. Most of its religions kept an outer teaching for the public and an inner teaching under oath: Egyptian, Greek, Jewish and, most of all, Gnostic. "Every government stands in fear of secret societies," and because memberships overlapped, no ruler could tell where loyalties lay.
Serapis and Isis. The Ptolemies made Serapis the official god of the city, a compound deity meant to please everyone. Hall calls him "the weeping god of Alexandria," whose tears were "more than justified." Isis of the Myriad Names was easier: Lady of All, Star of the Sea, Lawgiver and Saviour, with an equivalent in every faith. Later the sad-faced Serapis was compared with the crucified Messiah, and Isis with the Virgin Mary. Vast state festivals, costing £300,000 to £400,000 each, cut across the divisions.
Founders and rulers. Alexander founded the city in 331 or 332 B.C. and may lie in its Soma, his body carried there in a golden coffin that a later Ptolemy swapped for glass. Ptolemy Soter, a general under Alexander, lived modestly and worked with the Egyptian priests. Disorder came only as Greek influence waned; the later rulers appealed to Rome, and Rome took the city. Alexandria "had hoped to remain a sheltered abode of learning," but the Romans "were far more concerned in conquering the world than in conquering their own ambition."
- 3rd century B.C. The Bruchion (Museum) built under Soter and Philadelphus; over 100,000 rolls.
- By Caesar's time. Classified by Callimachus; over 750,000 items.
- 48 B.C. Caesar's fire; Hall reports, after Blavatsky, that the best rolls were saved.
- After. Mark Antony gives the Pergamene library of some 200,000 manuscripts.
- 389 A.D. The Serapeum razed by Christian edict.
- 641 A.D. The restored Serapeum library burned on Caliph Omar's order.
The scholars. Eratosthenes, Strabo, Hipparchus, Archimedes and Euclid used the libraries. Hall quotes Botsford's history: a geographer computed the earth's circumference at about 28,000 miles; an astronomer held that the earth turns on its axis and circles the sun; a physiologist found the brain is the seat of mind and the nerves of two kinds. These were Eratosthenes, Aristarchus and Herophilus. Claudius Ptolemy kept the earth at the centre and tied the planets to mythology, "psychological astronomy."
The world's first polyglot culture. Alexander moved local Egyptians into the city; Greeks, Romans, Jews and Asians followed. "It was probably the first important polyglot system of culture." Hall quotes Vacherot: at the time of Ammonius Saccas, Alexandria "had become the sanctuary of universal wisdom," home of Philo's Hellenised Judaism and of a Gnosis that synthesised Syria, Chaldea and Persia with Judaism, Christianity and Greek philosophy.
| Stream | Leading figures | Contribution |
|---|---|---|
| Greek science | Eratosthenes, Aristarchus, Herophilus, Ptolemy | Geography, astronomy, medicine |
| Hermetic | "Thoth-Hermes Trismegistus" | Pymander; later alchemy and magic |
| Jewish | Philo, the Seventy | Septuagint; allegorical Scripture |
| Christian | St. Mark, Clement, Origen | First Christian school; allegory |
| Gnostic | Basilides, Valentinus | Emanations, aeons, the Soter |
| Neoplatonic | Ammonius, Plotinus, Hypatia | Inner experience over learning |
Pseudepigrapha and Hermes. Alexandria also produced books that "defy the common rules of scholarly writing": Enoch, Jubilees, the Assumption of Moses, the Psalms of Solomon, the Sibylline Oracles, most of them under the Ptolemies. The most important was the Hermetic literature, which fused Thoth with Hermes into Hermes Trismegistus. Casaubon saw in it Platonism, Stoicism and Eastern ideas; later it grew to include alchemy, Kabbalah and magic. Hall thinks it may preserve parts of the Egyptian Mysteries and notes it shows "little or no trace of Christian influence."
St. Mark and the Septuagint. St. Mark is said to have preached in Alexandria about 40 A.D.; Venetian traders later stole his body for Venice. His preaching founded the earliest Christian school. Earlier, about 280 B.C., Demetrius of Phaleron persuaded Ptolemy Philadelphus to add the books of Moses to his library. Seventy-two scholars, six from each tribe, came from Jerusalem, and the Septuagint grew to the whole Hebrew Bible. The great Greek codices, Vaticanus, Alexandrinus and Sinaiticus, may be Alexandrian work. Hall saw the Sinaiticus when Britain bought it and gave a small donation.
Philo and the Therapeutae. Philo Judaeus, born between 20 and 16 B.C., followed the Septuagint and Hellenised Jewish thought. His wife, asked why she wore no gold, replied: "The virtue of a husband is a sufficient ornament for a wife." Philo wrote on the Essenes and is our only source for the Therapeutae, a contemplative and healing order whose name gives us "therapy." He also protected classical philosophy from Church criticism, so that Plato and Aristotle were never repudiated.
Clement. Clement of Alexandria, born about 150 A.D. in Athens to pagan parents, was "the greatest Christian apologist" of his century. In the Stromateis he separated a good gnosis from a bad one and created "a more or less Christian Gnosticism." His Exhortation to the Greeks attacked the Mysteries, yet his translator Butterworth thought he had probably been initiated into some of them. Hall's diagnosis: Clement knew only degenerate forms of pagan teaching and missed their allegorical sense.
Origen. Born about 185 A.D., Origen attended the lectures of Ammonius Saccas. Though few fathers were more orthodox, "there was a wide difference of opinion as to what was orthodox." Tortured under Decius, he died about 254 A.D., and he remains "the greatest of the early Christian teachers."
Persecution, Nicaea and its cost. All groups resented emperor worship. The Christians resisted most openly, and under Decius, Valerian and Diocletian suffered a reign of terror. Rome feared what it could not count: "Mystery can be a terrible weapon." Constantine called the Council of Nicaea in 325 to bring Christianity into the open and bind it to his power. Persecution of Christians ended, but divisions within the Church soon led to violence, and religious innovation was harshly repressed.
Cyril and Hypatia. Cyril of Alexandria, patriarch from 412, tried to dominate the civil government, drove out the Jews and hounded Nestorius until he was exiled; Nestorian Christianity then moved east, as far as China. The leading Neoplatonist was Hypatia, daughter of Theon, "the world's first great woman mathematician." In 415 a mob of Cyril's followers dragged her from her chariot and scraped her flesh from her bones with oyster shells. After her death the golden age of Alexandrian Neoplatonism ended.
Hall tells the story through Charles Kingsley's novel Hypatia and its imagined portrait. "Cyril found it expedient to dispose of her." For Hall her murder marks the moment Alexandria lost its leadership as a centre of learning; her heirs fled to safer regions.
Neoplatonism. Plotinus, born in Egypt about 204 A.D., studied eleven years with Ammonius Saccas, the luggage porter whose name means "sack-carrier." Guthrie proposed Numenius of Apamea as the hidden source. Plotinus's last words: "Now I seek to lead back the self within me to the All-self." Proclus in Athens wrote the Theology of Plato. Neoplatonism held "the superiority of internal experience over external education" and used cathartic disciplines and theurgy to free the soul from "the tyranny of the intellect."
Hall traces the Neoplatonic line through Dionysius the Areopagite to St. John of the Cross: "I knew not where I entered ... I was there as one who knew not, All science transcending." Knowledge here ends in a deliberate unknowing.
The end of the city. Quarrels grew in number and violence. Chosroes took Alexandria in 619 and Amr ibn al-As in 641, when Caliph Omar reportedly ordered: "If the books contain only what is in the book of God, it is enough for us ... In any case, burn them." Thus ended "one of the noblest eras in human history destroyed from within itself by wrangling and discord."
Gnosticism in Alexandria. The most extraordinary school was the Gnostic. It may have begun with Simon Magus in Syria, but reached fruition in Alexandria under Basilides and then Valentinus, who said he had a vision of the Supreme Power as an infant. Pagans thought it conquered Plato's universe with Christian mysticism; Christians thought it made Christianity a part of paganism. Hall sees the same dilemma today: esoteric studies are "rejected by both science and theology."
The soul's twofold nature. In Gnostic aeonology, the divine descends, matching forms rise, and they meet in a middle distance. The soul's inner part is divine but, imprisoned in bodies, becomes the victim of mind, emotion and passion. Christ rescues it by "a mystical marriage." Soter is Eternal Wisdom; Sophia is that wisdom "obscured by immersion in the sphere of generation," which redeems itself by renouncing error. Evolution is "the gradual release of spiritual powers through evolving vehicles." Mary Magdalene appears as learned in the cosmic mysteries.
What Alexandria gave. Hall's closing judgement is that here mysticism first appeared as a separate branch of learning. The clash of beliefs forced the Church to codify its teaching and opened the way for Augustine and Aquinas. "Division belongs to the outside world. The only hope for release from the clash of creeds lies within the individual himself."
Hall's library history mixes fact and legend. The scale of Caesar's fire is debated, the rescue of the rolls comes from Blavatsky without evidence, and the story of Omar's order is widely regarded as a later invention. The Serapeum was destroyed in 391 under Bishop Theophilus with the emperor Theodosius's approval, not by a "Bishop Theodosius." The Septuagint legend comes from the Letter of Aristeas, not history. Herophilus did not discover the circulation of the blood, and Eratosthenes' figure is usually put near 25,000 miles. Cyril's direct role in Hypatia's murder is contested, and the "oyster shells" may have been roof tiles. The broad picture of a cosmopolitan city destroyed by its own strife is sound.
Meditation Symbols in Christian and Gnostic Mysticism
A lecture on how the caravan routes mixed the faiths, why the mystic turns inward, and which symbols serve as doors: ladder, cross, ship, mother and silent child.
The caravan routes. By about the start of the Christian era, routes linked China and Rome, carrying merchants, scholars and "escaping heretics." Greek culture was decadent, Egypt under the Ptolemies near extinction, Israel under Rome's yoke. In the East, Mahayana Buddhism was moving from northern India in both directions. Roman soldiers had carried Persian religion as far as Britain. The result was "a great mingling, mixing, blending, and confusing of faiths" until Constantine's alliance with the Church sent the small sects back into retirement.
What the finds did and did not do. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi library, found about fifty years before this lecture, have been "rather disappointing. We have not learned as much as we hoped." One gain stands out: the Pistis Sophia, once dated to the seventh or eighth century, is now held to have circulated by the third century, a genuine sacred book rather than a late invention.
A comparative religion. Along the routes, travellers discovered a common body of symbols: astrology, similar calendars, the great university of Nalanda with twenty-five thousand students. Schools at Ephesus, Antioch and Alexandria arose "for the purpose of uniting beliefs rather than dividing them." Above all this "attacked the literal translation of sacred writings," because what is hidden in one tradition is revealed more fully in another. Hall quotes Max Müller: there was never a false religion "unless a child is a false man."
Two sections in every faith. The minority movements found that the same ethics ran under different names, and that each religion had two sections: obedience to forms for the many, and an inner tradition for those willing "to consecrate their lives through a process of internal enlightenment." Most religions by then had become "formal, ceremonial, ritualistic" structures "for which the keys were no longer available."
Where the flame came from. "Then about the beginning of the Christian era the flame rose again." Hall asks whether this was a coincidence of history and leaders, or something that rose from within people. He answers: from "a humanity in a crisis," political, cultural and social as well as religious. Disillusioned people, "hurt, lonely, tired and abused," cried out, and some came back with the old answer: "the individual is in trouble because he is wrong," having broken the simple, eternal rules of life.
Salvation as a science. "The Gnostics believed that salvation must be earned." The individual "must make a science out of his own redemption," the final end of all scientific searching. Lacking laboratories, they had traditions and revelations, and they realised that the real source of scripture was mystical experience. Yoga, Hall claims, was known in Europe as early as Pythagoras and was part of Neoplatonism, "though not named."
"The temple, the mosque, the shrine, the synagogue, and the pagoda are all gates toward a mystical experience, and the true religion has never been captured within the structure of any material organization." The outer form is preparatory; it earns the right to the inner.
Why mysticism troubles churches. If the search for truth leads inward to a spiritual core, then large religious organisations become "comparatively inconsequential." In the Greek Mysteries the candidate watched a sacred pageant that meant exactly what he could find in it; the state would not give him the answer. The Mass works the same way. A high Mass at St. Peter's, with Palestrina, stained glass and Gothic vaults, silences anyone; but it does not follow that he "is led on to greater mystical depths. It has to be his own decision."
The Egyptian clue. The Gnostics, Hall thinks, "possibly give us the only clue to the inner meaning of Egyptian faith." We have temples, papyri and relics, but no idea what moved the Egyptian within, except perhaps Akhenaton. A nation could not endure for thousands of years "without a tremendous spiritual potential," and the Gnosis lets us read all religious art as a key.
The letter and the spirit. "Everything visible is simply the long shadow of an invisible principle." The letter of the law kills; the spirit gives life. "Forms in a sense, kill consciousness," because a man sees the form, touches it, and stops; or he studies the artist, date and place, and never penetrates. From the effort to revive religion came astrology (brought back largely by the Gnostics), Hermetic philosophy and alchemy, and the Kabbalah of Rabbi Akiba and Simeon ben Yochai. All aimed "to break through the symbolic surface of religion."
Union. The Essenes were "probably the pre-Christian Christians," and Jesus may have been an Essene or a Nazarite. Later the Dervishes and Sufis sought the same goal. Hall links the word "union" to the Sanskrit yoga: "to remove the interval between man and Deity." Over time the Gnostics, Kabbalists and Neoplatonists transformed the historical Jesus into the mystical Christ, "the bridge across which man must pass."
Paul and the keys. Paul of Tarsus, whose city lay on the route to Asia, was perhaps initiated at Ephesus, and grasped the shift from a historical teacher to "a source of the redeeming power of God." The Pistis Sophia transforms almost the whole gospel into "a mystical testimony of the secret of human regeneration." Hall points to the papal arms, two crossed keys, silver for the old scriptures and gold for the new. "St. Peter is said to have carried the golden key, but what did he ever unlock?"
Why the first-century movement failed. The effort to show that all faiths worship one principle produced the opposite of unity: "a great cycle of religious dissension." Believers refused to see their faith explained in terms of others and "clung tighter and tighter to orthodoxy." The Gnostics were persecuted out of existence by the end of the third century; the Nestorians, excluded without a hearing, carried an Eastern mystical Christianity to India, Persia, China and perhaps Japan, where it mingled with Buddhism and Hinduism.
Nestorius "was not allowed to even speak in his own defense." The emperor declared the council invalid, to no effect. His followers moved east along the caravan routes, forming "a tremendous line of Eastern mystical Christianity" that Western histories largely ignore because its bearers were heretics.
The Gnostic mandala. Gnostic diagrams made the universe a mandala: "two interpenetrating cycles of orbits," the outer ring of one at the centre of the other. The Gnostics built on the Mithraic ladder, Homer's cave of the nymphs, and the ladder often shown leaning on the cross in pictures of the Deposition. In Egypt the ladder pointed at the seven stars of the Great Bear, symbol of initiation; it is also Jacob's ladder.
Two tides meeting in man. "Spirit is the highest state of matter; matter is the lowest state of spirit." Divine light comes down "in waves, one after another like the tides along the shore," into what Boehme called the abyss. At the same time matter, refined and purified, rises in waves. The meeting point is man. He is "the living bridge between nature and God," placed there so that "through him all forms lesser than himself could cross."
Symbols for meditation. Hall then gives a short catalogue of symbols to contemplate. The cathedral is the West's great archetypal meditation form, built on Pythagorean proportions, its rose window breaking one light into many colours. Isis is the emblem of the esoteric tradition, the mother from whom the adept is born; Hall links her with Sophia, Maha Maya and Mary. The cross is equilibrium, matter, the body in which the soul is crucified, and the four directions. In Egypt it was water, life and forgiveness, shown issuing from Pharaoh's mouth when he pardoned his enemies.
| Symbol | Surface meaning | Hall's inner meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Ladder | Jacob's dream; the Deposition | Levels of emanation; ascent through the aeons |
| Cathedral | A place of worship | The universe; the meeting of divine and human |
| Rose window | Coloured glass | One light broken into the beauty of many forms |
| Isis | Egyptian goddess | The esoteric tradition; mother of the initiate |
| Cross | Christ's death | Equilibrium, matter, the four directions, the plus sign |
| Ship and nave | A boat; the church's hall | The ship of salvation across life and death |
| Harpocrates | Child with finger to lips | Discretion; the right to an inner life |
| Prayer rug | A mat for prayer | The magic carpet into the sanctuary |
The ship of salvation. The papal fisherman's ring shows Peter in a boat; the nave of a church is a ship. In Asia the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas crew the ship; in the West, priests and acolytes. "Always the land of the blessed is beyond water": the Jordan, the Styx and the Milky Way share one meaning.
The quest inward. The Gnostic answer to "What are we? Why are we?" was the aeonology, a ladder climbed by meditation, level by level. The inner road "is not competitive": the seeker is in conflict with no religion, and can search "in the name of any religion in the world." He becomes "a priest before the altar of his own soul." Dreams, too, can be read, and the "great dream" of heaven rests on an archetype within: "The kingdom of heaven is within you."
Hall's practical advice for a Christian reader: take the cross not as death but as cosmogony. Its vertical is descending life, its horizontal "deceptive matter." "Gradually, transform the cross into a psychological study of your own inner resources," and let the crucifixion unfold into the cosmic mystery it stands for.
Why clergy leave. Many priests now leave their churches to seek deeper meaning outside. If they knew the substance of their symbols, "they would not have to leave." The resurgence of modern mysticism comes from mystical orders passing on an oral tradition. And "until religion solves the problem of spiritual ignorance," it cannot lead society toward the divine purpose.
Harpocrates and discretion. Among the gem symbols is Harpocrates, a child on a lotus with finger to lips, the god of discretion. Things sacred must not be profaned, both to escape persecution and "to prevent the rise of confusion around him and within him." The temple saying "do not talk in church" really meant: "Be discreet about what you learn here." The old alchemists knew that if one person found the truth, he would become "a monument of strength" and "leaven the loaf."
Man as the symbol. "The universe is the great mandala." Within it stand cathedrals and temples, and within them stands man, "the symbol of both the cathedral and the universe." Because he can read and build archetypes, he is the magician, sage, saint and scholar, Gurnemanz to Parsifal, the Gnostic and the Platonist. At the end he is "the archetypal wisdom within," which teaches "not in the form of words, but in the form of inner experiences which are irrefutable."
This is a lecture, and it shows: the history is loose. The Pistis Sophia is not among the Nag Hammadi texts, so the find cannot "prove" its date. Several etymologies are wrong: Maya and Mary do not share a root meaning water, "navel" is unrelated to Latin navis, Oxford is named for a ford for oxen, not a Persian monument, and Sufi "union" does not derive from Sanskrit yoga. Claims that Yoga was practised in Pythagoras's Europe, or that Jesus was an Essene, are conjecture. The meditation advice itself, using symbols as doors to self-examination, stands on its own without the history.
The Symbolism of Gnostic Gems
A collector's essay on the Abraxas stones: what they are made of, how to tell old from copy, Montfaucon's seven classes, and the system of Basilides they encode.
Following King. The Nag Hammadi find, Hall says, makes it timely to extend the work of C. W. King, whose The Gnostics and Their Remains surveyed the talismanic jewels of the first to fourth centuries. Many lie in European cabinets "not properly studied." Gnostic symbols were so widely copied that they appear on most engraved gems of the period. Roman legionaries wore them as protective charms and scattered them across the continent and England, since Romans liked ornament with magical use.
Materials and size. Genuine Abraxas gems show little fine craftsmanship. Common materials are dark green jasper from Egypt, mottled yellow or red; plasma, a green quartz; chalcedony; and magnetic hematite, which polishes like steel. Most are oval, three-quarters of an inch to an inch and a half long, and one-sixteenth to a quarter of an inch thick. Most are cut on one face only.
| Feature | Typical genuine stone |
|---|---|
| Materials | Green jasper, plasma, chalcedony, hematite |
| Shape | Mostly oval |
| Size | 3/4 to 1 1/2 inches long |
| Thickness | 1/16 to 1/4 inch |
| Cutting | Coarse wheel, the "Sassanian stamp" |
| Inscriptions | Greek letters, often undecipherable, "barbaric" spelling |
| Origin | Alexandria and its region |
Hall's own stone. One abraxoid in Hall's collection is roughly square, apparently basalt, larger and thicker, "a small tablet." Abraxas is cut deep on one side and Harpocrates, finger to lips, on the other. It was too big for a ring and may have been a pectoral or a seal. Some gems are scaraboid; some are older jewels re-engraved with Gnostic signs.
Crudeness as a sign of age. The Chaldeans, as all star readers were called, favoured Gnostic rings in crystal, a material the original sect did not use. Many fine "Gnostic" gems were made by the Cinquecento school of the Italian Renaissance, between 1500 and 1600, when talismans were in vogue and the meaning had been lost. So "in estimating abraxoids crudeness may be accepted as a good sign of both authenticity and antiquity."
- Crude cutting with a coarse wheel suggests antiquity.
- Crystal suggests later astrologers or magicians.
- Fine workmanship often means a Renaissance copy.
- Long prayers for a named wearer suggest a charm, not a badge of membership.
Uses of the stones. Bellermann lists four: the Abraxas was "a Teacher in doctrine," "a Token and a Password amongst the initiated," "an Amulet and a Talisman," and "a Seal to their documents." Some were set on swivels to show either face, some with the inscribed side inward for secrecy, some pierced to hang on a cord. The Gnostics were small and secret and practised magical healing, so they may have made charms for outsiders too.
Many streams. The designs mingle Gnostic, pre-Gnostic and post-Gnostic symbols. King saw Hindu elements; Hall adds Syrian, Kabbalistic, Mithraic and Egyptian ones. "There is probably no other group of religious jewels" with such variety. A letter of the emperor Hadrian captures the confusion: "The worshippers of Serapis are Christians, and some of the votaries of that deity call themselves Bishops of Jesus Christ."
Saved by value. Montfaucon's abbey held over sixty such stones dug up nearby. One surfaced in Arabia set in brass as a cloak button, inscribed face turned in. "Books were destroyed, images broken," but gems were valuable, and "no one seems to have thought of casting these aside." Synthetic stones and Roman paste were known but not used; natural stones were cheap and took the engraving better.
The first class is truest. Montfaucon's order is arbitrary, Hall admits, but the first class is most closely bound to the sect, since the rooster-headed, serpent-legged figure "was too definite for mere decorative or even talismanic uses." The second, the lion, refers to the Gnostic "lion-faced light aeon." The others "drift gradually away from the central focus" and are Gnostic "by association."
Reading Abraxas. Critics said the rooster was used because it hails the rising sun; the Gnostics may have seen themselves as heralds of a dawn. The shield and whip are Sophia and Dynamis, wisdom and power. The cock's head is Phronesis, foresight. The human body suggests that God's natural form resembles man's. The serpent legs are Nous and Logos, "the mind and the word, which sustain creation." "Thus interpreted, the symbol is no longer entirely unreasonable or fantastic."
Number and chariot. The name Abraxas totals 365, the days of the year, and one spelling of Mithras gives the same number, tying the figure to astrologers and geographers. It is "a Gnostic pantheos," inclusive of many deities. Often only the letters I A O, the sacred name, surround it. Sometimes Abraxas drives a chariot of four horses: the Indian Yugas, the Greek gold, silver, bronze and iron ages, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. In the nineteenth century French followers of Eliphas Levi carved brightly painted wooden Abraxas figures; Hall had seen several.
| Plate | Main content | Notable pieces |
|---|---|---|
| First | True Abraxas figures | No. 12: Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, Raphael; No. 14: "Give me grace and victory"; No. 15: Mithras; No. 16: IAO, Abraxas, Sabaoth |
| Second | The lion | Lion with bee (Samson); lion-headed serpent as the sun in Leo |
| Third | Serapis and Egyptian | Harpocrates on a lotus and in a boat; Anubis with scorpion; ouroboros; No. 19 names Moses |
| Fourth | Human and animal figures | Jupiter with Sagittarius; Mercury as Michael; Diana as Gabriel; No. 36 protects Vibia Paulina |
| Fifth | Inscriptions | Vowel ciphers; Horus on a crocodile; a five-inch composite seal |
The plates. Hall reproduces Montfaucon's plates and guides the reader through them. On the first, Abraxas faces either way; one stone adds Cancer, another the sun-god and horses; number 14 reads: "Give me grace and victory because I have pronounced thy secret and ineffable name." On the second, the lion-headed serpent may be the sun's path through the zodiac with its head exalted in Leo, which the Gnostics linked to the Lion of Judah. On the third, the Ophites, who revered the serpent, read Moses' brazen serpent as a type of Christ lifted up. On the fourth, one charm asks the "Holy Name, Propitious Powers" to "preserve Vibia Paulina from every evil Demon."
King and Montfaucon record a small book on leaves of lead. Montfaucon's had six leaves, three by four inches, engraved on both sides; another, owned by the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, had seven. King thought it held prayers for the souls of the dead to address the planetary powers; Montfaucon thought its twelve pages were the twelve hours of the day. It may descend from shortened Egyptian books of the dead.
The system of Basilides. The fathers claimed Basilides drew on Aristotle; he and his son Isidorus said they were taught by Glaucias, a disciple of St. Peter. Unlike other Gnostics, Basilides played down the evil principle, as an Egyptian would. Creation unfolds from spiritual seeds in dimensionless being. Three creative agencies, like a Trinity, fashion a threefold world: divine principles above, the material universe below, and between them a mysterious power that engenders mankind.
The middle distance. Man lives "in a middle distance," surrounded by the aeons of the higher and lower creations and containing their powers. He cannot yet rise to the abode of principles because he "lacks the internal faculties necessary to experience the infinite," so he must grow in the world provided. In time a redeemer will lead him through the Mysteries and reveal the secret of his own origin. Basilides' followers saw that redeemer in Christ, accepted "mystically and philosophically," not literally. Hall's last sentence: Gnosticism "will continue to be of interest as a profoundly psychological approach to the riddle of man's place in the divine plan."
The study of "Gnostic gems" changed after Hall's sources. Campbell Bonner, in Studies in Magical Amulets (1950), showed that most such stones are Greco-Egyptian magical amulets used by people of many faiths, not badges of a Gnostic sect. The rooster-headed, serpent-legged anguipede is often labelled IAO and probably comes from Jewish and Egyptian magic; its link to Basilides' Abraxas rests mainly on Irenaeus. The value 365 for Abraxas in Greek numerals is correct. Montfaucon and King are valuable for their plates, but their readings, and Hall's, are interpretive, not documented beliefs of the wearers.
What the Book Adds Up To
One picture under five essays: a graded universe, a fallen spark, a ladder of return, and an inner knowledge that outlived the institutions that tried to bury it.
Read together, the essays repeat one structure in different keys. In philosophy it is emanationism: spirit descends by degrees, matter rises by degrees, and they meet in a middle distance. In myth it is Sophia and Ialdabaoth: wisdom falls, a proud craftsman builds a prison of matter, and a saviour descends through the spheres to gather the scattered light. In practice it is the ladder of the aeons, climbed by meditation. In symbols it is the ladder, the cross, the ship and the gem. And in history it is the story of a liberal, unorganised movement crushed by an organised one and preserved by accident in its enemies' books and in stones too valuable to throw away.
Hall's deepest claim is about where religion lives. Every faith has an outer form for the many and an inner teaching for the few, and the outer form is a gateway, not the goal. The Gnostics, in his reading, held the inner teaching of Christianity: Christ as a messenger who awakens, salvation as knowledge of one's origin, and the soul as a divine spark that must make "a science out of its own redemption." He sees the same pattern in Mahayana Buddhism, the Kabbalah, Hermeticism and Neoplatonism, and he reads their likeness as evidence of a world Gnosticism under all religions.
The book also carries a social lesson. Hall admires the Gnostics' tolerance and individualism, but he does not hide the cost: "the uncertainties natural to extreme liberalism." A movement that is "a purpose rather than a cult" cannot defend itself. Fighting it taught the bishops to organise, and that organisation shaped Western Christianity for good and ill. Alexandria, in turn, shows what happens when a cosmopolitan culture lets its factions fight: it is "destroyed from within itself by wrangling and discord."
There is finally a personal invitation. Hall's advice is to treat symbols as doors. Take the cross and study it as a map of your own inner resources. Treat the church as a ship and the prayer rug as a magic carpet. Keep Harpocrates' discretion about what you find. The inner road "is not competitive": it can be walked within any religion or none, and the seeker becomes "a priest before the altar of his own soul." This is the part of the book that does not depend on any disputed date or etymology.
Master Takeaways
- Gnosis is insight, not information. It is knowledge of one's origin and destiny, reached by experience.
- The universe is graded. Spirit descends and matter rises by degrees until they meet in man.
- Man is the bridge. All lesser forms cross to God through human consciousness.
- The creator is not the highest God. The Demiurge builds forms; life and light come from above him.
- Every faith has two sections. Outer forms prepare; the inner teaching transforms.
- Unorganised movements lose. The Gnostics' freedom left them no machinery of defence.
- The soul climbs a ladder. Seven spheres, seven archons, passwords at each gate.
- Salvation must be earned. Redemption is a science the individual practises.
- Messengers help by living. Seth, Jesus and Mani awaken rather than pay a debt.
- Three kinds of people. Hyletic, psychic and pneumatic, with movement upward possible.
- The mystery matters, not the interpretation. Changing one's mind is no heresy.
- Marcion drew the logical conclusion. Two scriptures, two images of God.
- Wisdom is knowing, not thinking. It needs sympathy between knower and known.
- East and West faced one crisis. Each found a mystical teaching inside its old faiths.
- Three ways of knowing. Study, intuition, and standing face to face with reality.
- Alexandria was the first polyglot culture. Its strife destroyed it from within.
- Forms can kill curiosity. Seeing the shape is not reading the meaning.
- Symbols are meditation tools. Ladder, cross, ship, Isis and the silent child.
- Discretion protects the inner life. Harpocrates guards the temple door.
- Enemies and value preserved the Gnosis. Polemics and gems outlasted the books.
- Crudeness marks old gems. Fine Gnostic-style stones are often Renaissance copies.
Frameworks & mental models
| Framework | What it says | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Four pillars of the Gnostic world view | Flawed cosmos, true God, divine spark, salvation by knowledge | Intro |
| Hyletic, psychic, pneumatic | Three human types on a path upward | Intro |
| Emanationism | Degrees of spirit and matter meet in the middle | 1 |
| The seven archons | Planetary rulers of the soul's ladder | 1 |
| Abraxas as five powers | Foresight, power, wisdom, mind and word in a human body | 1, 5 |
| Just God and good God | Marcion's split between law and love | 1 |
| Four tests of survival | Classes, borders, language and time | 2 |
| Three ways of knowing | Study, intuition, face to face | 2 |
| The gateway principle | Outer religion prepares for inner experience | 4 |
| Two tides | Descending light and rising matter meet in man | 4 |
| Montfaucon's seven classes | A way to sort Gnostic gems by closeness to the sect | 5 |
| The middle distance | Basilides' place of man between principles and matter | 5 |
Hall writes as an admirer, and the book is better as an introduction to Gnostic ideas and symbols than as history. Its sources are mostly nineteenth-century (King, Mead, Montfaucon, Blavatsky), and it predates most of the work done on the Nag Hammadi texts. Modern scholars debate whether "Gnosticism" names one movement at all, and they place the Demiurge myth mainly in Sethian and Valentinian circles rather than in all early Christianity. Hall's recurring method, reading parallels as contact and etymologies as proof, produces several errors, from Maya and Mary to Oxford. The library legends, the Hypatia story and the "Gnostic gems" need the corrections given in each chapter. What holds up is his account of why the movement lost, his clear retelling of the Sophia myth, and his practical case for using symbols as doors to self-examination.
Who's who
| Figure | Role in the book |
|---|---|
| Stephan A. Hoeller | Gnostic bishop and author of the introduction |
| Mohammed Ali | Found the Nag Hammadi jar in 1945 |
| Elaine Pagels | Translates Gnosis as "insight" |
| Gilles Quispel | Saw Gnosticism as experience of the self |
| Plato and Aristotle | Left the gap between universals and particulars |
| Simon Magus | Syrian Gnostic, reviled by the fathers |
| Basilides | Alexandrian Gnostic, teacher of Abraxas |
| Valentinus | Most famous Gnostic teacher |
| Bardesanes | Last great Gnostic, possibly Buddhist-influenced |
| Marcion | Founded a church on two Gods |
| Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Epiphanius | Heresy hunters and chief sources |
| C. W. King | Author of The Gnostics and their Remains |
| Nagarjuna | Buddhist patriarch and Hall's Eastern parallel |
| Kobo Daishi | Copied Nagarjuna's portrait |
| J. S. M. Ward | Proposed a secret language of gestures in art |
| Ptolemy Soter | Founder of the dynasty and the Museum |
| Philo Judaeus | Hellenised Jewish thought; wrote on the Essenes |
| Clement of Alexandria | Christian apologist who wrote on gnosis |
| Origen | Greatest early Christian teacher |
| Hypatia | Neoplatonist mathematician, murdered in 415 |
| Cyril of Alexandria | Patriarch blamed for her death |
| Plotinus and Ammonius Saccas | Founders of Neoplatonism |
| Bernard de Montfaucon | Classified Gnostic gems into seven groups |
| J. Bellermann | Listed four uses of the Abraxas stone |
Connect it
- Layered abstractions in AI. The emanation ladder, where each level is a less defined copy of the one above, is a useful picture of model distillation and abstraction layers. Each layer loses detail; the question is what survives, as with Ialdabaoth's sons, "progressively darker" as they recede.
- The middle distance in enterprise architecture. Spirit and matter meet "in a middle distance." In enterprise architecture that is the integration layer, where business intent and technical systems must meet on common ground instead of being forced together directly.
- Exoteric and esoteric documentation. Every faith has outer forms and inner keys. Every large system has public APIs and tribal knowledge; when "the keys are no longer available," the rituals continue but nobody knows why.
- Organise or vanish. The Gnostics lost to a better-organised rival. Communities of practice in banks and enterprises need governance and owners, or good ideas lose to worse ones that have machinery.
- Justice and mercy in banking. Marcion's split between the just God and the good God survives in credit and collections policy, where rules and discretion must be reconciled rather than run as two systems in conflict.