Barbelo,Pleroma and other questions

[Ageha]

Hi all,
I was hoping that someone could tell me the root of the name "Barbelo", we know that bythos means depth... What about Barbelo?

The other thing is the pleroma, what does it means? is it a "place" where all the aeons can be found - not a physical place -? or is it the sum of all the aeons? if that's the case then the true God is the sum of all aeons?
also, what is the way for salvation for the gnostics? the knowledge alone, or the knowledge to purify ourselves like most of the mystics? the last question is, did the gnostics believed in astral projection or any other way to pray and get the knowledge for the source without mediums ?

Please tell me if you recommend any books about Gnosticism and Christian Gnosticism.


Thank you.

 

[frangipani]

Hi, Gnosticism and Gnostic are terms that were given to a group of people who followed the teaching of Jesus by what is recognised as the early Christian church, the Roman Catholics, as a means of identifying who did not follow the Catholic dogma. The Christians labelled Gnostic did not call themselves 'Gnostics', nor did they follow a dogma of 'Gnosticism'. For the sake of identification today the term has again been applied, so we will use it for that purpose only.
Despite the early orthodox church's attempts to eradicate Gnostics from the face of the Earth Gnostics have always been around, not in great numbers I don't think. We believe that the Spirit of God is within us and without us and in everything. The Spirit of God or as we call it the Divine Spark needs to be awakened in us. Christ came to show us through His teaching how to awaken and rekindle this Spark that is within. It is a matter of applied knowledge, not academic knowledge, but intellectual knowledge, the knowledge within that Christ came to teach us about. Through His teaching our heart is stirred, that is our Spark is awakened and rekindled. We can find then what sort of being we really are, and who we really are. So it is the teaching of Christ that awakens us, it is the applied knowledge of Christ that purges out the ungodly things within us and transforms us, it is this spiritual transformation that becomes evident in our earthly lives through our behaviour. So in essence, the inside is cleansed (the spirit) and the outside has become like the inside (cleansed) and the inside like the outside, all is cleansed. Therefore the spiritual and eternal part of us is cleansed and has cleansed the matter part of us which is temporary making the whole person cleansed. That is the way of it, naturally with the influences of the world it is not that easy, we believe therefore Christianity is a living and growing thing in each of us and we must grow with it and examine ourselves continually leaning and applying the teaching of Christ. We believe being made in the image of God is not what we look like in human form, but the image of God is what we look like spiritually, the question is are we like minded to Christ. The Pleroma is the spiritual dimension, it occupies the same space at a different level and is the Heaven of the Ineffable One, His Christ and His Children including those redeemed from this matter creation through Christ. Prayer is an individual relationship between one and the Holy Ghost, our spiritual connection to Christ. Our two main lessons from Jesus are, (1) Love God most of all. (2) Love your neighbour as yourself. Many people get caught up in dogma, history and debate, but Truth is what it is.
Finally, I suggest you read the Nag-Hammadi Scriptures and in particular the Gospel of Thomas as a starting point.

 

[Gjallarhorn]

Hi all,
I was hoping that someone could tell me the root of the name "Barbelo", we know that bythos means depth... What about Barbelo?

Not a Gnostic, but here ya go:

William Wigan Harvey (on Irenaeus), and Richard Adelbert Lipsius (Gnosticismus, p. 115; Ophit. Syst. in Hilgenfeld's Zeitschrift for 1863, p. 445) have proposed Barba-Elo, 'The Deity-in Four', with reference to the tetrad, which by the report of Irenaeus proceeds from her. Her relation to this tetrad bears however no true analogy to the Col-Arba of Marcus; it forms only the earliest group of her progeny; and it is mentioned but once.

'The supreme Limit,' paravela, from the Indian vela, 'limit'—a suggestion made by Julius Grill (Untersuchungen über die Entstehung des vierten Evangeliums, Tübingen, 1902, pp. 396–397), who connects it with the Valentinian Horos, the Barbēlō being called 'the supreme limit' in relation to the Patēr akatonomastos on the one side and to the lower syzygies on the other.
Wilhelm Bousset (Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, Göttingen, 1907, p. 14 f.) suggests that the word is a mutilation of parthenos—the intermediate form, Barthenōs, actually occurring in Epiphanius (Haer. xxvi. 1) as the name of Noah's wife.

Fenton John Anthony Hort (DCB i. 235, 249) states that the "root balbel much used in the Targums (Buxtorf, Lex, Rabb. 309), in biblical Hebrew balal, signifying mixture or confusion, suggests a better derivation for Barbelo, as denoting the chaotic germ of various and discrete existence: the change from ל to ר is common enough, and may be seen in the alternative form Βαρβηρώ. If the Babel[disambiguation needed] of Justinus (Hipp. Haer. v. 26; x. 15) is identical with Barbelo, as is at least possible, this derivation becomes still more probable."

It may be an ad hoc Coptic construction signifying both 'Great Emission' (according to Bentley Layton's The Gnostic Scriptures) and 'Seed' according to F.C. Burkitt (in Church and Gnosis).

 

[CynthiaCypher]

It might mean what it says it means...Child of the Lord. Of course I am referring to the Aramaic, in Aramaic Bar Ba'al or Barbelo means Child of the Lord