DeConick A.D

224
HELL WALKS AND STAR TREKS
This same type of liturgy is preserved in another old Sethian document,
the Trimorphic Protennoia. In this rendition of the Five Seals ritual,
Forethought descends into the underworld to awaken the initiates. She
claims that her life spirit dwells even in the souls incarcerated in Tartarus,
the deepest pit of hell. Her job is to awaken these souls and grant them
gnosis. She is the voice crying out to everyone in Hades, awakening them
to the knowledge of the spiritual seed that indwells within them.
The inner spirit is then baptized in the water of life (Trimorphic Protennoia
NHC XIII.1 35.1–37.3; cf. 40.30–41.25). This baptism at the hand
of the baptizing angels Micheu, Michar, and Mnesinous strips the spirit of
its physical and psychic accouterments. Naked, the spirit is presented with
a new robe of light, given by the angels of investiture, Yammon, Elasso,
and Amenai (48.6–20).
According to the Trimorphic Protennoia (40.30–41.30, 49.20–38), the
Five Seals is associated with Forethought’s gift of gnosis. It is the ritual
that strips the body and soul from the spirit and re-dresses the spirit with
a garment of light. The spirit becomes so empowered by its awakening
and transformation that the dark lords of the underworld, the demons of
Chaos, can no longer stop its ascent into the transcendent overworld. The
five seals have defeated their tyranny and provide the spirit with access to
the realms beyond the cosmos.
In the Trimorphic Protennoia (45.12–34), the divinity Forethought,
whose spirit indwells in the human soul, now invites the faithful into her
transcendent realm of light. In this realm, the initiate’s spirit is progressively
transformed from one type of divinity to the next, each level marked
by more baptisms and more investitures of robes, each robe more glorious
and luminous than the last. There also is mention of enthronements and
glorifications in the transcendent realms, when the spirit has achieved a
divine status so elevated that it itself becomes the object of angelic praise
(48.21–35).
Platonic Transcendence
The more Platonic Sethian texts—Marsanes, Allogenes the Stranger, and
Zostrianos—describe ecstatic ascents of initiates into the transcendent
world (Turner 2001; Burns 2014). The narrative of Zostrianos shows that
baptismal rites were being performed to mark the initiate’s ascent, and