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Bridal Chamber
- Thread starter gnostic
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Union and Redemption as Sacraments
The methods advocated by Valentinus for the facilitating of a true spiritual Gnosis are not confined to philosophical doctrines and poetic mythologems. The Valentinian system was above all a system of sacrament. The Gospel of Philip mentions five of the seven historical sacraments (or rather their original Gnostic forms) explicitly and mentions the two remaining ones by implication.
In addition to baptism, anointing, eucharist, the initiation of priests and the rites of the dying, the Valentinian Gnosis mentions prominently two great and mysterious sacraments called "redemption" (apolytrosis) and "bridal chamber" respectively. While many of the formulae for these rites have been lost, their essential meanings can still be discovered by perusing the various accounts given by the church fathers and the references contained in the Gnostic scriptures.
The bridal chamber, or pneumatic union, is by far the most frequently alluded to of the greater sacraments. The Gospel of Philip makes constant references to it and statements concerning it are scattered in a large number of the Gnostic scriptures. Irenaeus associates this sacrament primarily with the followers of Valentinus, but the theoretical foundations serving as its psychological rationale are present in the corpus of Gnostic writings generally. Thus the Gospel According to Thomas, which is generally considered to be relatively free of Valentinian influences, presents us with what might be considered the clearest formulation of the theoretical foundation of the bridal chamber in its 22nd Logion:
"When you make the two one, and when you make the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner and the above as the below, and when you make the male and the female into a single one, so that the male will not be male and the female not be female . . . then shall you enter the kingdom."
The psychological basis upon which the bridal chamber ritual is founded is fairly easily understood. The Gnosis considers the human being as divided and fragmented within itself. The divisions have numerous aspects: We are involved in what modern psychology would call an Ego-Self dichotomy, in an Anima-Animus dichotomy, in a body-mind dichotomy, in a subjective-objective dichotomy, and many others. All of these divisions require mending, or healing. Even as the Pleroma, or divine plenum, is characterized by wholeness, so the human being must once again become whole and thereby acquire the qualifications to reenter the Pleroma. Contemporary, especially Jungian depth psychology envisions such a pneumatic union as the ultimate objective of what it calls the individuation process. Unlike Jungian psychologists who can offer only the practice of analysis as an instrumentality of the process of reunification, Valentinus was apparently inspired to document and ritually dramatize this union in the great sacrament of the bridal chamber. The Sophia myth serves in many ways as the mythological support of this sacrament. The myth implies that the creation of the imperfect world and the confinement of the soul within it originated through the disruption of the original spiritual unity of the Pleroma, so that the return of the soul into the loving embrace of her bridegroom, as indicated by the return of Sophia into the arms of Jesus, then represents the healing of this disruption and restoration of wholeness.
The sacrament of the bridal chamber more than any other feature of the Valentinian Gnosis gives us a clear indication of the psychological versus the theological character of Gnostic teaching and practice. The professed purpose of this rite is the individual and personal 'becoming one' of the soul of the initiate, and cosmic and eschatological considerations play no role in this. It is not abstract being or creation that is healed and unified in this sacrament but the interior being of a human individual. It might be fair to say that Valentinus practiced an individuation rite, the need for which in today's world is evidenced by the highest and best of psychological research. It is perhaps characteristic of the sad deterioration of the sacramental system in historic Christianity that this intrapsychic union has been allowed to devolve into the sacrament of matrimony, signifying a contractual relationship of two terrestrial personalities within the context of the flawed order of societal mores.
However, it is not sufficient to be unified in one's nature - so Valentinus implied - one must also be redeemed from the corrupting and confusing thralldom of the false existential world wherein one lives. This liberation from the clutches of the world of defect was accomplished by the sacrament of redemption (apolytrosis) sometimes also called restoration (apokatastasis). This might be called the final act of separation from the rule of illusory and deceptive states of mind. While it is by no means established whether the sacrament of the bridal chamber was administered first and the redemption later, it is the conviction of the present writer that this indeed was the case. The individual in whom the dualities have been united and the splits healed (the individuated person, as Jung might have called him or her) is now empowered to repudiate the forces bereft of illuminating meaning. This is well-expressed in one of the formulae of restoration preserved from Valentinian source:
I am established, I am redeemed and I redeem my soul from this aeon and from all that comes from it, in the name of IAO, who redeemed his soul unto the redemption in Christ, the living one. (Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. I. 21,5)
Even as Buddha is said to have triumphantly repudiated the works of Mara the deceiver subsequent to his enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree, so the Gnostic severs every connection with the unconsciousness and compulsion and lives and dies as a sovereign being of light and power henceforth. There is every indication that the double sacraments of the bridal chamber and redemption caused enormous transformations and brought a great empowerment to the lives of their recipients. (These rites survived in modified form among the followers of the prophet Mani and the Cathars of the Languedoc. The latter had a great sacrament resembling the apolytrosis, called the consolamentum, which gave its recipients not only a great serenity of live but a virtually unequaled courage to face death.)
The foregoing - and much other material relating to the Valentinian Gnosis that had to remain unexplored in this brief exposition - serve to illustrate the great and undeniable virtues of this heritage of wisdom. Philosophic integrity, psychological insight, poetic and artistic exaltation and beauty, mingled with true religious devotion and emotion characterize the contribution of Valentinus and elevate it over most Gnostic and semi-Gnostic systems and schools. Were one to combine the highest and best products of Existentialism, one might only hope to approximate the sublime message of the great technician of human transformation who beckons to us from the distance of nearly two millennia. Valentinus indeed lives. He was and is a knower, a Gnostic for all seasons, a source of inspiration and guidance for persons in every age and clime: a timeless messenger of the mysteries of the soul. One could not conclude this brief exposition and tribute with a more appropriate hope than the one embodied in the following fragment of a Valentinian blessing:
May the Grace beyond time and space that was before the beginnings of the Universe fill our inner man and increase within us the semblance of itself as the grain of mustard seed.
The methods advocated by Valentinus for the facilitating of a true spiritual Gnosis are not confined to philosophical doctrines and poetic mythologems. The Valentinian system was above all a system of sacrament. The Gospel of Philip mentions five of the seven historical sacraments (or rather their original Gnostic forms) explicitly and mentions the two remaining ones by implication.
In addition to baptism, anointing, eucharist, the initiation of priests and the rites of the dying, the Valentinian Gnosis mentions prominently two great and mysterious sacraments called "redemption" (apolytrosis) and "bridal chamber" respectively. While many of the formulae for these rites have been lost, their essential meanings can still be discovered by perusing the various accounts given by the church fathers and the references contained in the Gnostic scriptures.
The bridal chamber, or pneumatic union, is by far the most frequently alluded to of the greater sacraments. The Gospel of Philip makes constant references to it and statements concerning it are scattered in a large number of the Gnostic scriptures. Irenaeus associates this sacrament primarily with the followers of Valentinus, but the theoretical foundations serving as its psychological rationale are present in the corpus of Gnostic writings generally. Thus the Gospel According to Thomas, which is generally considered to be relatively free of Valentinian influences, presents us with what might be considered the clearest formulation of the theoretical foundation of the bridal chamber in its 22nd Logion:
"When you make the two one, and when you make the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner and the above as the below, and when you make the male and the female into a single one, so that the male will not be male and the female not be female . . . then shall you enter the kingdom."
The psychological basis upon which the bridal chamber ritual is founded is fairly easily understood. The Gnosis considers the human being as divided and fragmented within itself. The divisions have numerous aspects: We are involved in what modern psychology would call an Ego-Self dichotomy, in an Anima-Animus dichotomy, in a body-mind dichotomy, in a subjective-objective dichotomy, and many others. All of these divisions require mending, or healing. Even as the Pleroma, or divine plenum, is characterized by wholeness, so the human being must once again become whole and thereby acquire the qualifications to reenter the Pleroma. Contemporary, especially Jungian depth psychology envisions such a pneumatic union as the ultimate objective of what it calls the individuation process. Unlike Jungian psychologists who can offer only the practice of analysis as an instrumentality of the process of reunification, Valentinus was apparently inspired to document and ritually dramatize this union in the great sacrament of the bridal chamber. The Sophia myth serves in many ways as the mythological support of this sacrament. The myth implies that the creation of the imperfect world and the confinement of the soul within it originated through the disruption of the original spiritual unity of the Pleroma, so that the return of the soul into the loving embrace of her bridegroom, as indicated by the return of Sophia into the arms of Jesus, then represents the healing of this disruption and restoration of wholeness.
The sacrament of the bridal chamber more than any other feature of the Valentinian Gnosis gives us a clear indication of the psychological versus the theological character of Gnostic teaching and practice. The professed purpose of this rite is the individual and personal 'becoming one' of the soul of the initiate, and cosmic and eschatological considerations play no role in this. It is not abstract being or creation that is healed and unified in this sacrament but the interior being of a human individual. It might be fair to say that Valentinus practiced an individuation rite, the need for which in today's world is evidenced by the highest and best of psychological research. It is perhaps characteristic of the sad deterioration of the sacramental system in historic Christianity that this intrapsychic union has been allowed to devolve into the sacrament of matrimony, signifying a contractual relationship of two terrestrial personalities within the context of the flawed order of societal mores.
However, it is not sufficient to be unified in one's nature - so Valentinus implied - one must also be redeemed from the corrupting and confusing thralldom of the false existential world wherein one lives. This liberation from the clutches of the world of defect was accomplished by the sacrament of redemption (apolytrosis) sometimes also called restoration (apokatastasis). This might be called the final act of separation from the rule of illusory and deceptive states of mind. While it is by no means established whether the sacrament of the bridal chamber was administered first and the redemption later, it is the conviction of the present writer that this indeed was the case. The individual in whom the dualities have been united and the splits healed (the individuated person, as Jung might have called him or her) is now empowered to repudiate the forces bereft of illuminating meaning. This is well-expressed in one of the formulae of restoration preserved from Valentinian source:
I am established, I am redeemed and I redeem my soul from this aeon and from all that comes from it, in the name of IAO, who redeemed his soul unto the redemption in Christ, the living one. (Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. I. 21,5)
Even as Buddha is said to have triumphantly repudiated the works of Mara the deceiver subsequent to his enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree, so the Gnostic severs every connection with the unconsciousness and compulsion and lives and dies as a sovereign being of light and power henceforth. There is every indication that the double sacraments of the bridal chamber and redemption caused enormous transformations and brought a great empowerment to the lives of their recipients. (These rites survived in modified form among the followers of the prophet Mani and the Cathars of the Languedoc. The latter had a great sacrament resembling the apolytrosis, called the consolamentum, which gave its recipients not only a great serenity of live but a virtually unequaled courage to face death.)
The foregoing - and much other material relating to the Valentinian Gnosis that had to remain unexplored in this brief exposition - serve to illustrate the great and undeniable virtues of this heritage of wisdom. Philosophic integrity, psychological insight, poetic and artistic exaltation and beauty, mingled with true religious devotion and emotion characterize the contribution of Valentinus and elevate it over most Gnostic and semi-Gnostic systems and schools. Were one to combine the highest and best products of Existentialism, one might only hope to approximate the sublime message of the great technician of human transformation who beckons to us from the distance of nearly two millennia. Valentinus indeed lives. He was and is a knower, a Gnostic for all seasons, a source of inspiration and guidance for persons in every age and clime: a timeless messenger of the mysteries of the soul. One could not conclude this brief exposition and tribute with a more appropriate hope than the one embodied in the following fragment of a Valentinian blessing:
May the Grace beyond time and space that was before the beginnings of the Universe fill our inner man and increase within us the semblance of itself as the grain of mustard seed.
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gnostic said:That's easy for them to say.
Thank you, I'll read up more on this (more carefully) before I saying anything more on this subject.
yeah... I'll read more up on it and try to answer you again with more than quotes... sorry i couldnt be of much more help...
where's that useless badger when you need him?
Halcyon
Lord of the Badgers
Lol, church that's a good one.
Well, at 3am i am usually asleep, hence the lack of posting.
I know very little about the bridal chamber, its never really been something i've felt the need to look up in detail, yet. But as far as i know there are little or no accurate records of any Gnostic rituals that we have to work from, unfortunately.
Well, at 3am i am usually asleep, hence the lack of posting.
I know very little about the bridal chamber, its never really been something i've felt the need to look up in detail, yet. But as far as i know there are little or no accurate records of any Gnostic rituals that we have to work from, unfortunately.
gnostic
The Lost One
How are the weathers in Texas and England? I am suffering from the 2nd day of 40°+C. It's not good for the bush-fires that is raging in the rural areas, let alone at the tennis.
Too bad about the bridal chamber. From what I understand, it is suppose to reunite our masculine and feminine parts together (therefore we were androgynous), or spirit and soul. It seemed that originally they were combine to form us, but when we were place on earth, our masculine/feminine got divided.
I recall that Gnosticism have its pagan root, that of Greek and Egyptian religions. And in Egyptian religion they believe that are spiritual body is made of three parts - ka, ba (soul) and ankh (spirit). As early as Homer, in the Odyssey, I also record strangely that when the hero Odysseus visited the Underworld, he met Heracles (Hercules). His mortal half (soul/shade) resides in this Underworld, but his immortal part (spirit) resides as a god in Olympus (ie heaven).
Too bad about the bridal chamber. From what I understand, it is suppose to reunite our masculine and feminine parts together (therefore we were androgynous), or spirit and soul. It seemed that originally they were combine to form us, but when we were place on earth, our masculine/feminine got divided.
I recall that Gnosticism have its pagan root, that of Greek and Egyptian religions. And in Egyptian religion they believe that are spiritual body is made of three parts - ka, ba (soul) and ankh (spirit). As early as Homer, in the Odyssey, I also record strangely that when the hero Odysseus visited the Underworld, he met Heracles (Hercules). His mortal half (soul/shade) resides in this Underworld, but his immortal part (spirit) resides as a god in Olympus (ie heaven).