DeConick A.D

220
HELL WALKS AND STAR TREKS
becomes an ephêbos (youth), fourteen years old. The initiation is conducted
when the moon is in its crescent phase.
To start things off, a drinking ritual is performed, when water that
has been turned into wine is drunk from the cup of Anacreon, a famous
Greek poet known for his drinking songs. Yet this phase of initiation is
characterized by hymns of silence and no speech, suggesting once again
the use of incubatory practices to still the body and prompt ecstatic states
of consciousness. Hippolytus records the words said over the cup, which
suggest that the induction of an altered state of consciousness had something
to do with chemicals, too (Hippolytus, Refutation 5.8.6–7):
Bring water, boy, bring wine,
Make me drunken, make me sleepy;
For my drinking-cup informs me
Of the kind of man I must be,
Speaking without speech in silence.
This phase included a sky trek along the cosmic pole, the Milky Way
river of stars that flows through the heavens. This river streams downward
from Primal Man into Chaos, the generative ocean from which the
human originates. Its upward flow reverses the process, turning humans
into gods. Joining its upward current means that the initiates have left
behind Egypt, which symbolized for them heterosexual intercourse. As
newly born hermaphrodites, the initiates cross the Red Sea and enter the
Jordan River in order to return home to heavenly Jerusalem as the kingless
generation (Hippolytus, Refutation 5.7.37–41).
Where are they headed? Up to a star gate they call the Gate of Heaven,
a portal that will lead them out of the cosmos. This is identified by the
Naas senes as “the third gate,” a star gate that they believed Jacob saw
when he dreamed of a ladder set up on earth, the top of which reached
heaven (Hippolytus, Refutation 5.7.20; cf. Genesis 28:17). It is also the
true gate spoken of by Jesus in John 10:9: “I am the true gate” (Hippolytus,
Refutation 5.7.20). Unless the initiates go through this gate, their
spirits will remain confined to the realm of temporality and suffering.
Which star gate are they talking about? The ancient people had a shorthand
way of referring to the planets based on their proximity to the earth,
and Venus is the third in that arrangement. The Naassenes identify Venus