DeConick A.D

245
SPIRITUAL AVATARS
Samaritan woman’s conversion means that she leaves behind the water in
the old well, which is the old world of temporality and lack. She abandons
the fountain that sustains Jacob’s animals. Her old life of depravity and
passion falls away as she accepts the water of life and glory, the gift of
grace, measured out into her bucket by Jesus the Savior (Origen, Commentary
on John 13.57–60, 149, 187–191).
According to Heracleon, once the woman accepts this truth, she is told
to go and call her husband—referring not to a human husband, which
she did not have, but to her angel bridegroom dwelling in the world of
transcendent wholeness. With this, Jesus leads her into union with her
divine avatar and she is redeemed (13.67–72). Her job now is to become
a spokesperson for the pneumatics and to reach out to convert as many as
possible to the advanced Gnostic faith.
Catholics in the Middle
The conversion to Apostolic Catholic Christianity is illustrated, according
to Heracleon, in the story of the royal official whose dying son is healed
from a distance by Jesus, as related in John 4:46–54 (Origen, Commentary
on John 13.416–426). Heracleon understands the story’s royal official,
the basilikos (petty king), to be YHWH, the creator and king of the world
and Father of human souls. YHWH’s “diseased son” represents the soul
of an unconverted person.
The soul is gravely ill because it has been ensnared deeply in “Capernaum,”
which Heracleon understands to be matter, ignorance, and sin.
Jesus came into the world to heal the official’s son and to give him life. In
Heracleon’s mind, this means that the boy converts to Apostolic Catholic
Christianity.
Heracleon does not think that the convert’s soul will become immortal
because of its Christian conversion. In fact, according to Heracleon, the
soul is mortal, and at the end of time it will remain in the darkness outside
the divine wholeness. In this type of conversion, Jesus heals the soul of its
sins and forgives it. This means that the soul is cleansed when it converts
to Apostolic Catholic Christianity. The soul will not become immortal, but
in its cleansed state it has the chance of awakening the immortal spirit so
that one day the person might be baptized a second time in the Valentinian
ceremony of redemption. This is when death swallows up the mortal