I've been reading more about the Gnostics, still trying to fathom why they are held in such high regard by many people today. And I'll admit that parts of the Gnostic philosophy are appealing. For instance, there's the idea that each of us (or at least those of us who have the potential for enlightenment) carries a spark of divinity, which can be accessed through disciplined inner seeking.
But mixed in with ideas like this, there's an awful lot of convoluted mythological symbolism, which strikes me as willfully obscurantist. Here's a sampling, from an online essay about the theology of the Christian Gnostic figure Valentinus:
Inspired by the Father, the androgynous Son then began a process of making manifest the energies immanent within his personality. To this end, he emanated four more Aeons (i.e. two more male-female pairs). The first pair consisted of Word (male) and Life (female)…. The second pair consisted of Humanity (male) and Church (female)….
The original Four and these four secondary Aeons are sometimes collectively referred to as the "original Eight". The Eight are the "root and substance of all things"…. The Eight are complete in themselves – a fullness within the Fullness….
Subsequently, eighteen [sic] less important Aeons were brought forth, ten from Word and Life and twelve from Humanity and Church. They represent a further unfolding and manifestation of characteristics immanent within the Son….
Altogether there are thirty Aeons or divine attributes divided into three groups: Eight, Ten and Twelve.
One Gnostic teacher, Marcus, wasn't content with only thirty Aeons, as we learn later in the same essay.
According to Marcus, each of the thirty Aeons contain further Aeons and each of these further Aeons contain further Aeons to form an infinite number of Aeons. To illustrate this he makes use of the metaphor of the Aeons as letters of the Name. The Name consists of "thirty letters, while each of these letters, again, contains other letters in itself, by means of which the name of the letter is expressed. And thus, again, others are named by other letters, and others still by others, so that the multitude of letters swells out into infinitude" (Against Heresies 1:14:2).
I don't know about you, but to me this seems like a needlessly elaborate scheme, somewhat on par with the complicated musings of medieval numerologists and alchemists.
There's a sort of mind that takes delight in arcane complexity for its own sake. I think Gnosticism was, in part, the product of such minds.
Similarly elaborate, but with a more readily interpreted symbolic subtext, is the Christian Gnostic myth (per the Valentinians) of how the material world came into existence:
All of the Aeons longed to know the one from whom they came forth….
[T]he longing to know the Father passed to Wisdom, the youngest of the Twelve. On behalf of the whole Fullness, she took up the quest to know the supreme Parent. However, she attempted to know God without the mediation of the Son, something that is impossible. As a result of this defective way of thinking, she became separated from her consort and fell into a state of error and suffering…
In her distress, she repented and began to plead for help. The other Aeons were also distressed and joined her petition… By means of a second boundary or Limit, she was divided into a higher and lower self. Her lower self … along with the suffering were excluded from the Fullness. The higher Wisdom was strengthened and returned to her consort convinced that God is unknowable….
The net result of this process is that the lower Wisdom … was trapped outside the Fullness in a lower realm of ignorance and suffering.
Here we have a myth that helps to dramatize the duality of the world – the split between spiritual wisdom and the "ignorance" of the material world. It seems to me that the point could have been made more succinctly, but at least this material does have something to say to us. I'm not sure that the account of the eight, ten, twelve, or infinite number of Aeons conveys much besides mystification.
Basically, the Gnostics seem to have been obsessed with the idea that while we live out our physical lives, we are typically cut off from higher spiritual insights. They seem to have been baffled and irritated by this fact, and to have felt the need to work out extremely complex mythological and symbolic narratives to explain it.
For me personally, I don't quite see what the big deal is. I wouldn't expect corporeal creatures on the physical plane to have a clear grasp of higher metaphysical mysteries. It seems to me that a certain blindness in this regard is exactly what one would expect. If an explanation is needed, the simplest one is that the physical brain can only handle a relatively small amount of information at a time, so most of the information (or wisdom) available in the spirit realms has to be filtered out, and is accessible only in flashes of insight when the brain's ordinary defenses are down. This strikes me as both easier to understand and more intellectually satisfying than mythopoeic narratives about the trials and tribulations of the Aeons.
If any modern-day Gnostics are reading this, can you explain to me what this worldview offers you? I'm still not getting it.