#anthropos

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SPOILERS AHEAD !

In most versions of the Sophia mythos the fall of the Goddess is intimately linked to the activity of another Aeon, Christos, also named for its flow-signature, "anointing power." In cosmic terms anointing is the capacity of an Aeon to morph from a porous, foamlike state into a fluidic, dewlike state. Foam is not dew, but imagine foam turning to dew. That is anointing in the Pleromic domain. The product of anointing, chrism, is the love sweat of the gods. In the ecstasy of their dancing the Aeons break into a fragrant sweat, a bright, dewy eruption. This is anointing at the cosmic level.

Astrophysicists now accept the presence of "molecular dew" in the galactic arms though not yet at the galactic core, and they are reticent to assume it can have biological properties. Theorists of steady-state plasma cosmology may be approaching a recognition of the foamlike, high-density, low-mass porosity of Aeonic currents. Plasma cosmology is currently the best alternative to the big bang fantasia. In Tantric and Gnostic cosmology alike there is far more foreplay than hard-core, orgasmic sex. This certainly applies to the orgiastic cavorting of the Aeons in the Pleroma.

The hieros gamos (sacred mating) of Sophia and Christos in the core region of our galaxy signals the opening event of the Sophia mythos. Between them they shape or configure the singularity offered by the Originator. The Greek word anthropos means "humanity," or more precisely, "the human template."  Anthropos is gender-neutral, distinct from the gender-specific words andros, "male" and gyne, "female." Anthropos is the Gnostic name for the cosmic matrix of the human species, the preterrestrial human genome. The Sophia mythos assumes a version of "directed panspermia," the theory introduced by Nobel Prize-winning Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius around 1900 and accepted, in various forms, by astronomer Fred Hoyle, Nobel biologist Francis Crick (codiscoverer with James Watson of the structure of DNA), Lynn Margulis, and many other leading minds of our time.

Coming together to encode or configure the Anthropos, Sophia and Christos act in a manner consistent with cosmic law, "for it is the will of the Originator not to allow anything to happen in the Pleroma apart from a syzygy" (A Valentinian Exposition 36.25-30). Syzygy is an odd Greek word used by astronomers to denote the conjunction of celestial bodies. The Originator wills that all activity in the Pleroma be accomplished by paired Aeons, coupled gods, but this is not a rigid rule, and it is not enforced. In the case of the Sophia-Christos syzygy that encodes the Anthropos, the will of the Originator is observed. Once it has been configured by the ritual dance of the coupled Aeons, the singulariry is ready to be projected into manifestation in the cosmos at large.

What next occurs in the Pleroma is a collective act, the collaboration of all the Aeons, not just Sophia and Christos acting as a distinct pair. In episode 3, the entire company of Pleromic gods unites in a choral dance to project the encoded singularity into manifesration. They seed it in the outer cosmos, the galactic limbs turning like a vast carousel around the Pleromic hub. The singularity nests in a nebular cloud. Although the language here is mythic, or mythopoetic, the description can be read as applying to the inner dynamics of the Galaxy. The myth clearly suggests astrophysical processes yet unknown ro science, but perhaps beginning to be glimpsed in plasma physics, complexity theory, and the new vision of emergence.

Pleroma means "fullness," "plenum," "plenitude." The galactic vortices are all variations of a chalice form, a flattened torus with a central core (the galactic bulge) and a surrounding disc (the spiral arms). The hub of a galaxy, its Pleroma, is counterbalanced by the flat carousel structure, the spinning armature, called the Kenoma, "deficiency," "formless realm." The Pleroma is a fullness, infinite potential that outpours itself into the realm of "deficiency," finite potential. In the Pleroma all possibility is complete, all is fulfilled, evolved ro its fullest potential. Pleromic gods like Sophia can only give of themselves, selflessly, without affecting what they emanate or imposing themselves upon the conditions they set up in the Kenoma. The selfless outpouring of the Pleromic gods is a key theme of Sophianic cosmology. It is also the model of human generosity.

The Kenoma, the carousel armature of a galaxy, is the realm of chaos where finite, bounded potential develops. It is composed of dark elementary matter arrays (dema), atomic and subatomic fields, including organic elements, grains or spores of life. Suns are born in the galactic arms and planetary systems emerge there. On some of the planets organic life unfolds, but the origin of life cannot, it seems, be located on the planet where it arises. Nobel laureare Francis Crick, one of the discoverers of the structure of DNA, argues that, owing to its overwhelming complexity, life on Earth must have been seeded from elsewhere in the cosmos. Lynn Margulis, coauthor of the Gaia hypothesis, also accepts the possibility that microscopic life-forms (propagules) can migrate freely through interstellar space. The universe is a dusty place, and some of the dust is organic residue. That emergent life on planets in the carousel arms of a galaxy originates in the center of the galaxy, as described in episode 3, is not yet recognized by science. This theory will be unacceptable as long as scientists cannot imagine that the core of a galaxy is a vortex of superorganic forces, alive and aware, but this is the Gnostic vision of the Pleromas.

In Tantric cosmology, the composition of the Kenoma is called adrista, "residue." It is, as science tells us, stardust that remains from previous cycles of evolution, cycles without a beginning or end.

"Now the Eternity (which is absolute Truth) has no shadow outside it, for it is a limitless light where all is within and nothing is without. But at its exterior is shadow, which has been called darkness. From the darkness arises a force without form. This is the shadow realm of limitless chaos. From this realm, every kind of divine emanation emerges, including the world we inhabit, for whatever happens in chaos is previously implanted there by what produces it" (On the Origin of the World 98.20-30).

Here the language of the Mystery experience plays into the cosmological scenario. The galactic core is a spinning vortex of Organic Light, a radiant substance that might be compared to soft, luminous nougat. It casts no shadow. Darkness belongs to the exterior regions of the galactic mill wheel, the Kenoma. The residue of previous worlds is continually recycled and reprocessed in the massive armature of the spinning carousel. Whatever develops in the Kenoma was implanted there by Pleromic emanation-including humanity itself, or various strains of humanity, and other species.

A striking parallel to the stalk of light in the Gnostic narrative occurs in the Japanese myth of creation where paired sky gods, or Kami, project a "Jewel-Sky-Spear" from the cosmic center into the waters of primordial chaos.' The image of cosmic fertilization in the galactic limbs occurs in Egyptian mythology where the sky goddess Nut, curved into an oval, carries the constellations of the zodiac encoded on her body. Cosmic embryonic imagery occurs in almost all high-culture cosmologies and universally in indigenous or "primitive" lore.

The text called On the Origin of the World (NHC II, 5) describes the boundary of the Pleromic core, called menix, hymen, stauros, or horos. Remaining in the core, Aeons can emanate into the arms, the realm of formless chaos, but they do not pass over into those regions. The opalescent stalk of light projected by the collectivity of Aeons may be compared to a klieg light shining through the wall of a white canvas tent. The beam of light passes through the walls, but the source of the beam remains inside the tent. Gnostics texts explain that these two primary conditions, Aeonic pairing and bounded emanation, are set by the Originator. They are cosmic laws but they are not enforced, so exceptions are possible.

Footing for the unsteady, a guide for the blind, a cane mediates between a fragile mortal self and the world that spans beyond. In doing so it represents something of that world, in some way or another, to that self. Insofar as they serve to represent something of the world to someone, many entities exist that can function as canes for many kinds of selves. Not all these entities are artifacts. Nor are all these kinds of selves human. In fact, along with finitude, what we share with jaguars and other living selves—whether bacterial, floral, fungal, or animal—is the fact that how we represent the world around us is in some way or another constitutive of our being.

A cane also prompts us to ask with Gregory Bateson, “where” exactly, along its sturdy length, “do I start?” (Bateson 2000a: 465). And in thus highlighting representation’s contradictory nature—Self or world? Thing or thought? Human or not?—it indicates how pondering the Sphinx’s question might help us arrive at a more capacious understanding of Oedipus’s answer.