Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis - ImagoMundi

sea, both of them behold on the shore a being who beckons to them. But
their visions differ: one has seen a little child, the other a pleasant and
comely man of noble bearing. 2
Perhaps we shall find the key to these visions, the basis of their reality
and their variations, in a few striking pages of these same Acts of John. On
the evening of Good Friday the Angel Christos, while the multitude below,
in Jerusalem, imagines that it is crucifying him, causes the apostle John to
go up the Mount of Olives and into the grotto illumined by his presence;
and there the angel reveals to John the mystery of the "Cross of Light."
This cross is called sometimes Word, sometimes Mind, sometimes Jesus and
sometimes Christ, sometimes Door, sometimes Way, sometimes Son, Father,
Spirit, sometimes Life, and sometimes Truth. It separates the things on high
that are from the things below that become (the things of birth and of death),
and at the same time, being one, streams forth into all things. "This is not
the cross of wood which thou wilt see when thou goest down hence: neither
am I he that is on the cross, whom now thou seest not, but only hearest his
voice. I was reckoned to be that which I am not, not being what I was unto
many others. . . . Thou hearest that I suffered, yet I did not suffer; that I
suffered not, yet did I suffer; . . . and in a word, what they say of me, that
befell me not. But what they say not, that did I suffer." 3
This brief quotation from the sublime discourse will suffice for our purposes.
This mystery of the Cross of Light, which was one of the favorite
themes of Manichaean piety, recurs explicitly in Shiite Ismailian Gnosis.
The texts we have just cited from the so-called "apocryphal" Scriptures (like
many others from the same source) give us the right tonality and may serve
here as a prelude. If we reflect on the scene recorded in the Acts of Peter,
we shall come to conclusions that will serve us as premises. We are dealing
with visions, theophanic visions. There is actual perception of an object,
of a concrete person: the figure and the features are sharply defined; this
person presents all the "appearances" of a sensuous object, and yet it is
not given to the perception of the sense organs. This perception is essentially
an event of the soul, taking place in the soul and for the soul. As such
its reality is essentially individuated for and with each soul; what the soul
really sees, it is in each case alone in seeing. The field of its vision, its horizon,
is in every case defined by the capacity, the dimension of its own being:
2 Cf. Acts of John 88-89; James, p. 251.
3 Acts of John 97-102; James, pp. 254-56.
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Talem eum vidi qualem capere potui. The community of vision will be established
not by reference to an external object, an evidence uniformly and
fully given to all, but by reason of a dimension of being that is common to
this or that group or family of souls. This adequation of vision to the dimension
and capacity of the soul in which it takes place is the foundation of
what we may call the metamorphoses of theophanic visions. We find a distinct
formulation of these metamorphoses in Origen, where, speaking precisely
of the Transfiguration, he declares that the Saviour existed not only in two
forms—the one in which he was commonly seen, the other in which he was
transfigured—but that in addition "he appeared to each one according as
each man was worthy" (sed etiam unicuique apparebat secundum quod fuerat
dignus). 4 This statement is in keeping with the conception of the metamorphoses
of the Logos, no doubt derived from Philo and frequent in the
works of Origen, according to which the Saviour appears to men as a man
and to the angels as an angel. 5 It fits in with the vision of the steps of the
Temple, in which the Saviour is, by reason of his humanity, the first and
lowest step and, by reason of his angelic nature, the uppermost step dominating
all the others, so that all the steps are the Saviour. 6 In Ismailian
Gnosis we find a similar image: the Temple of Light of the Imam, who is
constituted by all the degrees of the esoteric hierarchy, to each of which the
divine Epiphany is manifested in the measure of its capacity.
We can dwell only on a few essential elements which have already been
noted in the various schools of Gnosis and which reappear in this as yet
little-known and scarcely studied form, Shiite Ismailian Gnosis. Among
4 "... non solum duae formae in eo fuerunt (una quidem secundum quam omnes eum
videbant, altera qulem secundum quam transfiguratus est corani discipulis in monte . . .)
sed etiam unicuique apparebat secundum quod fuerat dignus." In Commentaria in Matthaeum,
quoted with reference to parallel texts in Joseph Barbel, Christos Angelas
(Theophaneia, 3; Bonn, 1941), p. 292, n. 459.
5 Cf. ibid., pp. 290-91 (on the creation of the Gods, Thrones, and Dominations, and on
the theophanies as proofs of the Saviour's angelomorphosis):
In Ioan. I, 31. Compare the parallel
texts of Melito of Sardis and Irenaeus (ibid., p. 294) as well as the verses of the poet
Commodian, for whom there is only one sole God originated by himself, who is at the
same time Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God of the eternal light, who "in primitiva
sua qualis sit, a nullo videtur, Detransfiguratur, sicut vull ostendere sese, Praebet se visibilem
angelis juxta formam eorum" (ibid., n. 465); and lastly, the text of Philo commenting
on Gen. 31 : 13: "I am the God who hath shown himself to thee in the place of (instead
of) God"—Philo, De somniis I, 229-32 (ibid., p. 293); cf. our Avicenna and the Visionary
Recital (New York and London, 1960), p. 153.
6 Commentaria in Ioannem XIX: 6, quoted in Barbel, p. 292, n. 457.
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