DeConick A.D

203
HELL WALKS AND STAR TREKS
and cosmic realms, so that the initiates were liberated from their tyranny.
They had come to know the awesome power of their own integrated
selves, when their potential divinity was actualized and integrated into
their humanity. Quite literally, they had become mortal gods freed from
the perpetual turning of the wheel of reincarnation.
Gnostic spirituality, with its focus on psychotherapeutic initiations,
emerges in a number of different guises in antiquity, depending on the
constituency of the religious buffer in which the Gnostic movement
formed. The possibilities of innovative and unique Gnostic movements
are infinite, when we consider how the Gnostic metaphysical orientation
might mix with structural elements from various religious and philosophical
systems, new interpretations of scriptures, and the personal revelation
of charismatic leaders. Such unique blends provided Gnostic leaders with
an opportunity to market their group as the group that held the exclusive
on knowledge. Each group claimed to own the secret knowledge that
would heal our psychological traumas by returning the spirit home (Tertullian,
Against the Valentinians 1.2; Hippolytus, Refutation 1.pref.3–4).
The remainder of this chapter will highlight the therapeutic mysteries
of five independent Gnostic groups to show the wide range of catechisms
and rituals that emerged within the distinct religious buffer that
each group engaged. With this, we turn to the mysteries of the Peratics,
Ophians, Justinians, Naassenes, and Sethians.
Draco’s Travelers
Among the oldest Gnostic Christians was a group of people who called
themselves Peratics. Their Greek name is illustrative. It means “Travelers.”
What does this signal? They tell us that they alone know the road a
person travels to get into the world and the path a person journeys to get
out of it. They assert that they have an exclusive on the route through
the underworld and cosmic realms. Alone, as the Travelers, they claim
to have been instructed on the way to traverse mortality (Hippolytus,
Refutation 5.16.1).
In their view, traversing mortality requires that the human spirit, what
they call “the seed of divine potential,” be roused from its dormancy and
grown into its full divine form so that it can journey back to its transcendent
home. But this is not an easy thing to do, because to get to the