When thinking of the ancient Gnostics, one might hold an image of esoteric Christians steeped in prayer and meditation — spiritually laboring to unify with the Monad. The syncretic meme of Jesus sitting in a lotus position comes to mind, perhaps.
But what if that image isn’t entirely right? What if some Gnostics were deep into the magical arts in ways that shocked other magic users of antiquity?
That seems to be the case with certain Gnostics of the third and fourth centuries AD. Specifically, I’m referring to the group known as the Platonizing Sethians, those who possibly had been rejected or persecuted by the churches to the point they divorced much of their Christianity and embraced Paganism. And these Gnostics angered Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus while attending his university.
Have to believe we are magic, Olivia
Before delving into the wizardry of the Platonizing Sethians, we should clarify the term “magic.” In an interview with Robert Conner on magic in Christianity, he explained that “religion is magic for the masses, while magic is religion for the individual.” That’s a good point, but when referring to magic, I’m optimizing it to mean tapping into spiritual powers to force a specific material result for a person or small cabal of people. This is a striking difference from the standard “civic-duty-keep-the-universe-running” or “soul-enlightenment” religions of the mainstream Greco-Roman world.
We can mention Aleister Crowley defining magic as being the “Science and Art that provokes Change in conformity with the Will.” Of course, Crowley said that Will possessed the agency to merge with the primordial current of the universe. To affect nature, a practitioner needed to channel Will paired with intention. This ties into the definition Stephen Flowers provides in his seminal Lords of the Left-Hand Path:
Magic can be defined as a methodology by which the configuration of the subjective or objective universe is altered through an act of will originating within the psyche, or the core of the individual subjective universe.
Without overthinking this too much, and then memes being created as a result, let us to the radical magic of the Platonizing Sethians in the days when Christianity was beginning to seduce imperial Rome.
Something wicked this way comes
In Apocalypse of the Alien God, Dylan Burns deeply explores Sethian Gnosticism. In one section, he writes:
The authors of the Sethian treatises were not exactly sorcerers, for they did not hold that, as humans, they were superior to heavenly beings. Instead, several of their texts described how seers would, in the course of the ascent to heaven, be transformed into angels and even acquire supra-angelic authority.
This subtle type of meta-metamorphosis is found in such Nag Hammadi texts as Zostrianos, Allogenes, and Marsanes. Burns explains in our interview that Gnostic magic was likely based on ancient Egyptian sorcery. He also states that magic was widely used in some form or another across the Roman empire. What’s striking, though, is that the Sethians leveraged magic for apotheosis and by conquering the spirit realms and its denizens. Such a stunt was largely not kosher for Christians, Jews, and Pagans of those days.
In Zostrianos, the eponymous protagonist absorbs so much mystic power from his heavenly excursion that he outright becomes an archangel of sorts. He grants a quick speech on his adventure; and the angels themselves are absorbed by his highfaluting Gnosis —for he is now superior to them.
Burns summarizes the reaction of Porphyry, the student of Plotinus, to the Platonizing Sethian witchcraft:
Human beings could not have power over demons or angels or anything else superhuman by virtue of being material beings into which souls have descended. Human beings are less powerful than demons or angels or heroes, less material beings or immaterial beings whose souls had not descended into the world as far.
In other words, this wasn’t your grandmother’s theurgy.
CVS sorcery
Being higher than the gods didn’t end there. As Burns further explains in our interview, Plotinus claims that the Platonizing Sethians are knee-deep in exorcisms and healing spells that “free themselves from diseases.” The Gnostics are riffing during spell work, making animals sounds, spouting nonsensical barbarous words, and chanting exotic hymns. Burns refers to this as “alphabet mysticism” or “vowel spells” in Apocalypse of the Alien God.
Whatever you may call this sorcery, it’s pissing off Plotinus and more.
You see, these incantations are found in both ancient magical papyri and sections of the Nag Hammadi library. Burns says that the spells “appears to have been used as an amulet, probably a protective spell.”
He then explains the reasons:
We think it must have been used as an amulet because of the way it was folded. In the ancient world if you wanted to ward off a fever from someone, let’s say your mother gets sick and you want her to get better, you would go and find the “witch doctor,” for want of a better word, in your local village. You would then purchase an anti-fever spell from them; they would write it down and fold it up and then put it around something. Then you could go and you could take it home, put it on your mother and ideally the incantation will ward away the fever-inducing demons in your mother’s vicinity.
Again, this wasn’t uncommon in those days. The issue was that the Gnostics contended they had full control of the angel or demon, forcing it down into the magical object. For Plotinus and Porphyry (and probably all Neoplatonists across the empire), that was insane and dangerous thinking. For them too, the essence of these supernatural beings flowed either through a person or objects for the magical effect. There’s no way humans could use speech or objects to coerce the supernatural managers of the universe.
The Platonizing Sethians disagreed, and centuries later occultists would agree with these Gnostics.
Magically rage against the machine
Ancient Gnostic sects utilized various rituals for their prime objective of freedom from the Black Iron Prison – from being involved in Catholic sacraments to sexual rites.
But it seems they shifted in intensity at some point. In The Gnostic New Age, April DeConick explains that the Gnostic rituals in the second century were mainly for initiation and soul healing. Like the mystery schools of their era, they participated in holy dramas and transpersonal therapy rites that instilled wholeness. I write about these spiritual practices in my article The Four Categories of Gnostic Religious Rites.
By the mid-third century, however — coincidentally when the works of Christian heresy hunters are starting to go viral — some Gnostics pivot towards controlling immortals. From the kind sayings of Jesus in the first-century Gospel of Thomas to demons having sex with humans in the third-century Paraphrase of Shem, it’s like a metaphysical Spinal Tap evolution. I mean, it’s no secret from church father shade-throwing that two of the greatest Gnostic archvillains were Simon Magus and Marcus the Magician.
Adding to the evolving Gnostic vibe, there is evidence the Nag Hammadi texts weren’t buried by heroic, free-speech monks in the fourth century but were actually a trove of funerary and necromantic rituals.
Was this shift in tone and praxis fueled by desperation? Rage? Why would they reject Jesus Christ and decide to invade the astral planes?
Who knows? I’ve always felt there is a seething rage behind many later Classic Gnostic texts like The Gospel of Judas or The Apocalypse of Peter. I thought the resentment involved being divine beings cast down from the Pleroma and tied to the bodies of mammals. Maybe the Sethians were just pushed against a wall in a civilization that increasingly scorned them, from the Christian churches to the Pagan universities.
In the end, I’m speculating. Heck and Hekate, I’ve even wondered if it was perhaps a dark and reckless use of magic that ultimately doomed the Gnostics during the rise of Christian Rome — and not their theology.
Maybe I’m wrong. But it must be said that Gnostics across history, regardless of environment or praxis, always had a way of taking things to the extreme. As Burns states in our interview, the Platonizing Sethians were the ultimate spiritual anarchists while Neoplatonists embraced metaphysical Reaganomics with their trickle-down divinity and all.
Going back to DeConick’s book, she puts very well the attitude of the ancient Gnostics:
The real maelstrom of difference in the Gnostic-Catholic debate centers on the nature of humanity, because at the foundation of this debate is transgression itself, whether to be subordinate or insubordinate. The Gnostic Christians value the superiority and natural divinity of humans. They prioritize human need over the needs of the conventional gods and their otherworldly representatives. They understand the human predicament to be forced enslavement to the powers that control this world, both cosmic denizens and human authorities.
Angry or not, the Gnostics were victorious in heavenly places but lost in earthly realms…a stark contrast to most other religions.
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Nice article but I wouldn’t agree with the sentiment that “but when referring to magic, I’m optimizing it to mean tapping into spiritual powers to force a specific material result for a person or small cabal of people.” For me, the magical process is for gnosis and self development, not for any material gain.
I think it means both. Depending on your goals. Mental/spiritual manipulation of the physical realm may be practice, or a step toward “functional gnosos”.
Why is material gain looked upon as negative? Any action, thought, or gain is motivated by intention. My aim and intention is to use magick to gain gnosis, physical well being, material needs, and to bless others. I tend to believe that the pleroma would provide a way to manipulate our reality which is the physical realm. Magick is how we hack the matrix. Magick is the way we fight the archons. Magick is how we break free from this cyclical program of never ending slavery controlled by powers and principalities in high places. Our true nature is to be gods not hermits in monasteries seeking self improvement. Magick is the hack in the software that the powers that be have tried to hide and discredit. If using magick to seek peace, financial security, health, protection, career, and worldly needs is looked upon as negative call me a glutton.
I believe the answer is quite simple, you can’t serve two masters.
In comfort of material gain, lust and greed, there is no true spiritual growth.
Buddha was born into a rich family, and gave it all up out of compassion for poor, so he could acquire their experience and wisdom.
There’s no growth without challenges of pious life, it’s a thorny path that leads to glory, having all your needs met leads to an empty and shallow life,
a material life without substance, you are completely immersed in desires of corporeality, which is an illusion. Hermits and hidden masters sacrifice their whole life for something greater, it’s their intuition and faith that guides them to exit corporeality.
There’s no way to hack into heaven, rather try to hack your ego, you might get rich by using magic but by doing that you “sold your soul to the devil”, and you will pay the price in the end, much higher price than you expected. There’s no archons or angels to fight, we only fight our psyche and imposed societal values, we fight our own selfish nature. Archons rule this world, they are people in position of power and wealth if you will, people who are vain and greedy and yet inspire others to these same values, self proclaimed gods and celebrities who desire praise, they are the golden calf, people who cause wars for profit etc. We are on a mission to spiritually outgrow and evolve beyond animal instinct and our desires.
I second this. The Demiurge (working through the churches he has created) would love to see everyone bowing and praying all day to him. Monasteries must be a delight to him.
As I read the Article, the impression I got was that they were Astral Warriors. There are other civilizations with their predicament. The Toltec Indians were some of the greatest practitioners of Magic, but they became haughty and vain in their power. Over the generations they abused it and eventually stopped respecting it altogether. The cause-effect result of this was invasion by the Spanish Conquistadors. Carlos Castaneda is a great resource for this.
The Gnostics were so hellbent on winning their battles in the psychic/astral realm, they stopped paying attention to the self-righteous Christians. The Christians excuse for wiping out the Gnostics was that their holy scriptures didn’t line up with the Christian Cannon. I think because the Gnostics might have been a practice more about experiential interaction and less about memorizing books and debating the finder points – the Christians didn’t want to compete with the Gnostics, so they burned as much of their written material and killed as many as they could.
Plotinus was an emanationist but we must remember that Plato didn’t believe the Demiurge to be bad or corrupted so most likely he saw the emanations as being pure rather than tainted as the Gnostics did.the platonic forms become denser as they take form as matter but no less divine.on the surface neoplatonic thought seems very similar to Gnostic thought except it lacks the superficial garments of Christianity but it differs in that it doesn’t really reject matter but sees it as a way back to the ideal platonic forms behind matter(and the cause of matter).the neoplatonic creation seems to flow from a first cause,caused by a no thing,guess similar to Aristotle’s unmoved mover?thus the universe isn’t a botched creation by a malevolent God,like marcion and basilides seem to have believed but a natural flow from an unknown unmoved mover.I suppose in a way it is what Francis Yates called positive gnosis?
Yes the distinction between high and low magic is pointless.high is trying to change the internal condition,low is attempting to produce physical results.mind=good/matter=bad,yet both are reflections of the other.if you live in grinding poverty then you’re unable to reflect upon the higher things therefore low magic,if it can extract you from that,is the royal road to high magic.did plotinus forsee the concept of a singularity long before Stephen hawking?plotinus believed that the one was without thought,unlike Aristotle’s unmoved mover which made a conscious decision to make our universe,how he argued can that which is in negation have thought?bit like hawking when asked what came before the big bang,impossible to answer as there was nothing and therefore no frame of reference.
“If you’re living in grinding poverty you’re unable to think about higher things”
???
Really? Have you never lived in grinding poverty? I think for many living in grinding poverty its hard NOT to think about higher things. They become that more important, even. Also, theres the lesson to learn about humility and dependency upon the Highest Power from whom all blessings. Not to mention the blessing of poverty itself.
May the Most High God have mercy on you and bless you with wisdom and understanding and spiritual discernment so you can know to reject the chaff and gather the wheat.
In the name of Jesus Christ.
AMEN.
Really wish you included artist credits for the awesome artwork you chose to include….unless you made it yourself? Differing styles leads me to think not…
It’s a bit of both, and the ones I use I often pull off the internet. One way to find it save the image and then find out about them doing Google images: https://images.google.com/. You use hit the camera icon and upload, and Google will tell you all about them.