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Eugnostos, and The Second Treatise of the Great Seth
The following puts together the parallels from the Nag Hammadi Library, which I claim is a duplicate system of the ancient Chinese Philosophy of the Tai Chi. The following should leave no doubt in anyone's mind that these are very similar systems. The Sethian texts will speak for themselves. This is meant to be an easy read....
One of the reasons scholars have not identified the Pythagorean and Sethian Christian Monadologies as similar systems to the acient Tai Chi, is the comparison does not become obvious, until you know the higher functions of Ba Gua science. This is the study of the eight trigrams or ''Ba Gua which surrounds the Yin and Yang icon, of the Tai Chi.
Three texts from the Nag Hammadi collection explain Jesus as the Monad, from Silence. In the Sethian Monadology Jesus is the Moand, but he comes from Silence, and this is the Wu Chi or great void from the beginning of the universe. What is thought to exist there are Autogenes or Monogenes which become dualities in the universe, and in the Mind. This is one basis of understanding the Gonstic transcendence, especially how the Monad works in the process.
It is probably no accident that the three sources fit together so well to explain the Monadic process. In the next sentence the Assembly refers to Autogenes of the Pleroma, and the Ogdoad, is like an expanded Sacred Tetrad, which now is twice as powerful. This is refers to the Pleromic level from which Jesus rules as the Monad.
"Then before the foundation of the world, when the whole multitude of the Assembly came together upon the places of the Ogdoad, when they had taken counsel about a spiritual wedding which is in union, and thus he was perfected in the ineffable places by a living word, the undefiled wedding was consummated through the Mesotes of Jesus, who inhabits them all and possesses them, who abides in an undivided love of power. And surrounding him, he appears to him as a Monad of all these, a thought and a father, since he is one. And he stands by them all, since he as a whole came forth alone. And he is life, since he came from the Father of ineffable and perfect Truth, (the father) of those who are there, the union of Peace and a friend of good things, and life eternal and undefiled joy, in a great harmony of life and faith, through eternal life of fatherhood and motherhood and sisterhood and rational wisdom. They had agreed with Nous, who stretches out (and) will stretch out in joyful union and is trustworthy and faithfully listens to someone. And he is in fatherhood and motherhood and rational brotherhood and wisdom. And this is a wedding of truth, and a repose of incorruption, in a spirit of truth, in every mind, and a perfect light in an unnameable mystery. But this is not, nor will it happen among us in any region or place in division and breach of peace, but (in) union and a mixture of love, all of which are perfected in the one who is. " ("Second Treatise of the Great Seth")
"[...] enter [...] the abundance [...] those who [...] I will speak my mystery to those who are mine and to those who will be mine. Moreover it is these who have known him who is, the Father, that is, the Root of the All, the Ineffable One who dwells in the Monad. He dwells alone in silence, and silence is tranquility since, after all, he was a Monad and no one was before him. He dwells in the Dyad and in the Pair, and his Pair is Silence. And he possessed the All dwelling within him. And as for Intention and Persistence, Love and Permanence, they are indeed unbegotten." (A Valentinian Exposition.")
"For those who were in the world had been prepared by the will of our sister Sophia - she who is a whore - because of the innocence which has not been uttered. And she did not ask anything from the All, nor from the greatness of the Assembly, nor from the Pleroma. Since she was first, she came forth to prepare monads and places for the Son of Light and the fellow workers which she took from the elements below to build bodily dwellings from them. But, having come into being in an empty glory, they ended in destruction in the dwellings in which they were, since they were prepared by Sophia. They stand ready to receive the life-giving word of the ineffable Monad and of the greatness of the assembly of all those who persevere and those who are in me." ("The Second Treatise of the Great Seth.")
"All the immortals, whom I have just described, have authority - all of them - from the power of Immortal Man and Sophia, his consort, who was called 'Silence', who was named 'Silence' because by reflecting without speech she perfected her own majesty...("Eugnostos")
"As I said earlier, among the things that were created the monad is first, the dyad follows it, and the triad, up to the tenths. Now the tenths rule the hundredths; the hundredths rule the thousandths; the thousands rule the ten thousands. This is the pattern <among the> immortals. First Man is like this: His monad [...].
Again it is this pattern that exists among the immortals: the monad and the thought are those things that belong to Immortal Man. The thinkings are for <the> decads, and the hundreds are the teachings, and the thousands are the counsels, and the ten thousands are the powers. Now those who come from the [...] exist with their [...] in every aeon [...]. " (Ibid,)
Compare to the following descriptions of the Monad....
The Chaldean Oracles of Zoroaster.......(Thought to exist in the 12th, 14th, and 18th c.) This is what Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, knew of the Monad outside the theories of Gottfried Leibnitz.
25. The Monad first existed, and the Paternal Monad still subsists.
26. When the Monad is extended, the Dyad is generated.
27. And beside Him is seated the Dyad which glitters with intellectual sections,
to govern all things and to order everything not ordered.
28. The Mind of the Father said that all things should be cut into Three, whose
Will assented, and immediately all things were so divided.
29. The Mind of the Eternal Father said into Three, governing all things by Mind.
30. The Father mingled every Spirit from this Triad.
31. All things are supplied from the bosom of this Triad.
32. All things are governed and subsist in this Triad
33. For thou must know that all things bow before the Three Supernals.
34. From thence floweth forth the Form of the Triad, being preexistent; not the
first Essence, but that whereby all things are measured.
35. And there appeared in it Virtue and Wisdom, and multiscient Truth.
36. For in each World shineth the Triad, over which the Monad ruleth.''
The above sequences of the Monadic flow can be allegorized by the ancient Chinese axiom, ''Wu Chi creates Tai Chi, Tai Chi is the one Chi. One Chi generates Yin and Yang, and Yin and Yang can change in infinite ways." This is also stated allegorically in the "Lau Tzu," ("Tao Te Ching"). " Tao produced oneness. Oneness produced duality, Duality evolved into the ten thousand things. The ten thousand things support the yin, and embrace the yang. It is the blending of the breaths (of yin and yang) that their harmony depends." (See Fung Yu-Lan)
What this comparison to the Tai Chi shows is that the Monadology of the Sethians is based upon the same principles. This means that the flow of energy from the Word can be mapped, like the flow of Chi, in the Tai Chi model. This means there is a legitimate case for the following as the Sacred Ogdoad....It might also be put in a different order, except for the first and last units, Word, and Knowledge.
The ideal Contemplative set (Ogdoad) I derive from the above lists are:
1 Word. This is the power of Jesus Wisdom, as you relate it to the events in your Life.
2. Form. This includes the Soul, Body, Mind and Spirit, as your own self image.
3. Man/Mind, Includes the concepts of understanding, perception, conception, thought, memory. It includes the concept of Man in the spiritual state.
4. Faith. In the Gnostic view Man, in the form of being bonded with the Holy Spirit, through Gnosis, achieves the living resurrection. But in Gnosis, faith is proven from the demonstration of faith, in the actual being and Acitions of the Gnostic.
5. Life. This refers to the power you have in Gnosis to bond with the Pleromic form, and avoid spiritual death.
6. Grace. The Gnostic learns grace as a process of receiving (Ennoia) the Peace, and Love from the psychic energy of the Holy Spirit. This means the Wisdom gleaned from Monadic Gnosis and the secret sayings of the living Jesus in the Syzygy of the epistemological, and metaphysical. ("The Gospel of Thomas."), as the Word, and the Monadic contemplation as the underlying force.
7. Truth/Church. Means being part of the Pleromic process bonded to the Mind of Jesus Wisdom or Word. Truth is designated as synonymous with Church, the living Kingdom.
8. Knowledge/Gnosis. Includes applying the concepts of Will, and Prudence. This is the gender unit of the set which means that it is from the standpoint of the set which the Gnostic himself controls. It is from the concept of gender that new things come into the world.
These elements are the essential ones to Monadic Gnosis, which is the underlying philosophy of the earliest Christian Gnostics.
Tom Saunders
