DeConick A.D

308
PLEASANTVILLE RELIGIONS
Mani and the Bleeding Dates
In these visitations with his avatar angel, “the mystery in magnificence and
complete clarity” is revealed to Mani piecemeal. One piece of this mystery
had to do with the sentience of the universe. In an initial vision, Mani sees
a date tree and picks its fruits to eat. The branches bleed. He cuts grain in
a field. Blood spurts up from the cut stalks.
This vision led Mani to begin practicing silence, withdrawal, and quietude,
what he calls “rest” and “doing no harm.” He refused to work as a
laborer in the baptists’ gardens, and instead begged for his food, because
he did not want to be the cause of suffering when the plants were cut from
their roots. All living things, he came to believe, are sentient, containing
light or soul stuff. Unlike the other Gnostics we have met in this book,
Mani made no obvious distinction between the human soul and spirit,
although he does seem to think that the divine light fills the soul and
makes it a living self.
The second bit of revelation has to do with our separation from the
Father, who lives in the kingdom of light. Mani says that his angel showed
him “who I am and what my body is, in what way I came and how my
coming into this world happened.” Mani came to understand that his true
self had been separated from the Father on high and sent into his material
body, “this loathsome flesh,” where it became intoxicated with desire. The
third part of the mystery is about reunion with God, when his avatar angel
and his soul reunite. It is Mani’s “unsleeping syzygos ,” his “inseparable
syzygos ,” who descends to him so that he and his angel can be reunited,
when Mani would come to the “measureless heights” and “unsearchable
depths” of God. Mani composed an exquisite poem to celebrate this
wonderful mystery (Cologne Mani Codex 24; translation by Gardner and
Lieu 2004, 51, with minor modification):
I received him piously,
And I took him as my own.
I believed him,
That he belongs to me
And that he is a good and valuable guide.