The Gnostic Crucifixion Part 4

"The Outspreading of His Hands is the manifestation of the Cross."

And then follows the key of the mystery:

"The Source of the Cross is the Man [Logos] whom no man can comprehend."

(See _Hymn of Jesus_, p. 53.)

No man can comprehend Man; the little cannot contain the Great, except potentially.

It was some echo of this sublime teaching that found its way into the nave though allegorical narrative of _The Acts of Philip_. When Philip was crucified he cursed his enemies.

"And behold suddenly the abyss was opened, and the whole of the place in which the proconsul was sitting was swallowed up, and the whole of the temple, and the viper which they worshipped, and great crowds, and the priests of the viper, about seven thousand men, besides women and children, except where the apostles were; they remained unshaken."

This is a cataclysm in which the lower nature of the man is engulfed. The apostles are his higher powers; the rest the opposing forces. The latter plunge into Hades and experience the punishments of those who crucify the Christ and his apostles. They are thus converted and sing their repentance. Whereupon a Voice was heard saying: "I shall be merciful to you in the Cross of Light."

Philip is reproved by the Saviour for his unmerciful spirit.

"But I, O Philip, will not endure thee, because thou hast swallowed up the men in the abyss; but behold My Spirit is in them, and I will bring them up from the dead; and thus they, seeing thee, shall believe in the Glory of Him that sent thee.

"And the Saviour having turned, stretched up His hand, and marked a Cross in the Air coming down from Above even unto the Abyss, and it was full of Light, and had its form after the likeness of a ladder. And all the mult.i.tude that had gone down from the City into the Abyss came up on the Ladder of the Cross of Light; but there remained below the proconsul and the viper which these worshipped. And when the mult.i.tude had come up, having looked upon Philip hanging head downwards, they lamented with great lamentation at the lawless action which they had done."

The doers of the "lawless" deed are the same as the "lawless Jews" in the _Acts of John_--"those who are under the law of the lawless Serpent"; that is to say, those who are under the sway of Generation, as contrasted with those under the law of Re-generation (see _Hymn of Jesus_, pp. 28, 47).

Philip stands for the man learning the last lesson of divine mercy. The Proconsul and the Viper are the ant.i.types of the Saviour and the Serpent of Wisdom. The crucifixion of Philip is, however, not the same as the crucifixion of the Christ; he is hanged reversed, his head to the earth and not towards heaven. It is a lower grade of the mysteries.

Concerning the mystery of the crucifixion of the Christ we learn somewhat of its inner nature from the doctrines of the Docetae.

His baptism was on this wise: He washed Himself in the Jordan, that is the Stream of the Logos, and after His purification in the Life-giving Water, He became possessed of a spiritual or perfect body, the type and signature of which were in accordance with the matter of his virginity, that is of virgin substance; so that when the World-ruler, or G.o.d of generation or death, condemned his own plasm, the physical body, to death, that is to the Cross, the soul nourished in that physical body might strip off the body of flesh, and nail it to the "tree," and yet triumph over the powers of the Ruler and not be found naked, but clothed in a robe of glory. Hence the saying: "Except a man be born of Water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingship of the Heavens; that which is born of the flesh is flesh." (_F._, p. 221).

It was because of these and such like ideas, and in the conviction that the mystery of the crucifixion was to be worked out in every man, that a Gnostic writer, following the Valentinian tradition, explains a famous pa.s.sage in the Pauline _Letter to the Ephesians_ as follows:

"'For this cause I bow my knees to the G.o.d and Father and Lord of our Lord Jesus Christ, that G.o.d may vouchsafe to you that Christ may dwell in your inner man'--that is to say, the psychic and not the bodily man--'that ye may be strong to know what is the Depth'--that is, the Father of the universals--'and what is the Breadth'--that is the Cross, the Boundary of the Pleroma [or Fullness]--'and what is the Greatness'--that is, the Pleroma of the aeons [the eternities or universals, the Limbs of the Body of the Ineffable]." (_F._, 532).

To be closely compared with the Vision in _The Acts of John_ is the Address of Andrew to the Cross in _The Acts of Andrew_. They both plainly belong to the same tradition, and might indeed have been written by the same hand.

"Rejoicing I come to thee, Thou Cross, the Life-giver, Cross whom I now know to be mine. I know thy mystery; for thou hast been planted in the world to make-fast things unstable.

"Thy head stretcheth up into heaven, that thou mayest symbol-forth the Heavenly Logos, the Head of all things.

"Thy middle parts are stretched forth, as it were hands to right and left, to put to flight the envious and hostile power of the Evil One, that thou mayest gather together into one them [_sci._, the Limbs] that are scattered abroad.

"Thy foot is set in the earth, sunk in the deep [_i.e._, abyss], that thou mayest draw up those that lie beneath the earth and are held fast in the regions beneath it, and mayest join them to those in heaven.

"O Cross, engine, most skilfully devised, of Salvation, given unto men by the Highest; O Cross, invincible trophy of the Conquest of Christ o'er His foes; O Cross, thou life-giving tree, roots planted on earth, fruit treasured in heaven; O Cross most venerable, sweet thing and sweet name; O Cross most worshipful, who bearest as grapes the Master, the true vine, who dost bear, too, the Thief as thy fruit, fruitage of faith through confession; thou who bringest the worthy to G.o.d through the Gnosis and summonest sinners home through repentance!"

A magnificent address indeed. The identification of the Master and the man with the Cross and in the Cross is hardly disguised. The Cross is the Tree of Life and the tree of death simultaneously. "Give up thy life that thou mayest live," says that inspired mystic treatise, _The Voice of the Silence_, and this is no other than the secret of the Mystery of the Cross. The Master is hanged between two thieves, the one repentant and the other obdurate, the soul turned towards the Light and towards the Darkness, all united in the one Mystery of the Cross--the Mystery of Man.

We have seen above that Philip is hanged head downwards, but he is not the most famous instance of this reversal. The best known is a.s.sociated with the name of Peter in the mystic romances.

Thus in a fragment of the Linus-collection called _The Martyrdom of Peter_, we learn the doctrine as set forth in a speech put into the mouth of Peter thus crucified:

"Fitly wast Thou alone stretched on the Cross with head on high, O Lord, who hast redeemed all of the world from sin.

"I have desired to imitate Thee in Thy Pa.s.sion too; yet would I not take on myself to be hanged upright.

"For we, pure men and sinners, are born from Adam, but Thou art G.o.d of G.o.d, Light of true Light, before all aeons and after them; thought worthy to become for men Man without strain of man, Thou has stood forth man's glorious Saviour--Thou ever upright, ever raised on high, eternally Above!

"We, men according to the flesh, are sons of the First Man (Adam), who sank his being in the earth, whose fall in human generation is shown forth.

"For we are brought to birth in such a way, that we do seem to be poured into earth, so that the right is left, the left doth right become; in that our state is changed in those who are the authors of this life.

"For this world down below doth think the right what is the left--this world in which Thou, Lord, hast found us like the Ninevites, and by Thy holy preaching hast thou rescued these about to die."

The "authors of this life" of reversal, are the "parents" of the "lower nature"; not our natural parents whom we are to love, but the powers of illusion we are to abandon. The Jonah-myth was used as a type of the Initiate, who after being "three days" in the Belly of the Fish, the Great Life or Animal that dwells in the Ocean or Great Water, is vomited forth re-generate, and so a fit vehicle for preaching with compelling words or acts for the benefit of those in Nineveh or the Jerusalem Below, or this world.

But for those who had ears to hear there was a still further instruction concerning the secret of the Mystic Cross.

"But ye, my brothers, who have the right to hear, lend me the ears of your heart, and understand what now must be revealed to you--the hidden mystery of every nature and secret source of every thing composed.

"For the First Man, whose race I represent by my position, with head reversed, doth symbolize the birth into destruction; for that his birth was death and lacked the Life-stream.

"But of His own compa.s.sion the Power Above came down into the world, by means of corporal substance, to him who by a just decree had been cast down into the earth, and hanged upon the Cross, and by the means of this most holy calling [the Cross] He did restore us, and did make for us these present things (which had till then remained unchanged by men's unrighteous error) into the Left, and those that men had taken for the Left into eternal things.

"In exaltation of the Right He hath changed all the signs into their proper nature, considering as good those thought not good, and those men thought malefic most benign.

"Whence in a mystery the Lord hath said: 'If ye make not the Right like to the Left, the Left like to the Right, Above as the Below, Before as the Behind, ye shall not know G.o.d's Kingdom.'"

(This saying is from _The Gospel according to the Egyptians_.)

"This saying have I made manifest in myself, my brothers; this is the way in which your eyes of flesh behold me hanging. It figures forth the Way of the First Man.

"But ye, beloved, hearing these words, and, by conversion of your nature and changing of your life, perfecting them, even as ye have turned you from that Way of Error where ye trod, unto the most sure state of Faith, so keep ye running, and strive towards the Peace that calls you from Above, living the holy life. For that the Way in which ye travel there is Christ.

"Therefore with Jesus, Christ, true G.o.d, ascend the Cross. He hath been made for us the One and Only Word; whence also doth the Spirit say: 'Christ is the Word and Voice of G.o.d.'

"The Word in truth is symbolled forth by that straight stem on which I hang. As for the Voice--since that voice is a thing of flesh, with features not to be ascribed unto G.o.d's nature, the cross-piece of the Cross is thought to figure forth that human nature which suffered the fault of change in the First Man, but by the help of G.o.d-and-man received again its real Mind.

"Right in the centre, joining twain in one, is set the nail of discipline--conversion and repentance." (_F._, 446-449.)

The interpretation becomes somewhat strained towards the end. The reversed hanging typified the man of s.e.x, or the man still under the sway of generation, separated into male and female. Such hang head-downwards in the Great Womb of Nature, and all is reversed for them. Hanged upright, the re-generate man contains in himself in active operation the twin powers in union, now used for spiritual creation, and self-perfection.

And if it be thought that there is abandonment of any thing in this consummation, then let it be known that it is only a giving up of the part for the whole, the pa.s.sing from the state of separation to the realization of inexpressible bliss; for as the inspired writer of _The Unt.i.tled Apocalypse_ phrases it in an ecstasy of enthusiasm:

"This is the eternal Father; this the ineffable, unthinkable, incomprehensible, untranscendible Father. He it is in whom the All became joyous; it rejoiced and was joyful, and brought forth in its joy myriads of myriads of aeons; they were called the 'Births of Joy,' because the All had joyed with the Father.

"These are the worlds from which the Cross upsprang; out of these incorporeal Members did the Man arise." (_F._, 550).