DeConick A.D

177
GNOSTIC ALTERED STATES
So the Gnostics were not Buddhists. The spirit does not experience
emptiness, nor is it reabsorbed into its root so that it no longer exists
individually. The Gnostic rites ensure that the personal spirit has grown
its own identity, which then unites with its source.
Quickening
The ultimate concern of the Gnostic is to awaken the divine potential in
each of us, to bring our permanent, deep self to consciousness. This is
ritually performed as an incubatory underworld journey, when the sleeping
initiate is awakened in Hades, usually by a divine being who has come
from the otherworld as an emissary. The initiates are awakened with the
smack of Hermes’s or Christ’s staff. Or they are startled awake by the call
of the goddess Forethought.
As we will see in the next chapter, there are many examples of the underworld
awakening, but one of the most beautiful in terms of liturgy is
found in the Sethian Apocryphon of John (NHC II.1 30.33–31.25). Here
the goddess Forethought descends into the darkness of Hades. The liturgical
exchange between goddess and initiate follows. I imagine that
Forethought’s words were spoken by the community leader when the
ritual was performed.
In the ritual, Forethought calls out to the initiate, “Whoever hears, get
up from the deep sleep!” The initiate cries and responds, “Who calls my
name? From where does this hope come to me, while I am in the chains
of prison?” Then the goddess declares, “I am Forethought of pure light. I
am the thought of the virgin Spirit, who has raised you up to the honored
place. Arise! Remember, you are the one who has heard! Follow me, the
merciful one, your root! Guard yourself from faulty angels, demons of
chaos, and everyone who ensnares you! Beware of the deep sleep and the
enclosure of the inside of Hades!” The goddess then raises up the initiate.
She seals him five times in holy water, so that death may no longer have
power over him.
This ceremony must be one of the earliest performed by any Gnostic
group, because it turns up also in the very old Sethian treatise Trimorphic
Protennoia (Three Forms of First Thought). In this text we learn
that the first mystery involves a descent into the underworld, where the