DeConick A.D

324
PLEASANTVILLE RELIGIONS
“willful” and “stubborn.” He is the tyrannical ruler who spawns Ialdabaoth
and sets him up as lord of Chaos. In most Jeuian texts, the Sethian
Mother God, Barbelo, and her son live there, too.
This demotion of the Sethian transcendent gods to an inferior realm
and their association with undesirable characteristics and the abuse of
power suggest that the Jeuians’ main competitors in the religious marketplace
were Sethian Gnostics. The Jeuians were marketing their gods Jeu
and the unapproachable Father as the truly transcendent deities, exceeding
even the popular Sethian trinity in their ineffability.
The thirteenth realm in the Jeuian scheme appears to be an in-between
world, neither a treasury of light nor a place of cosmic chaos. It is populated
with twenty-four denizens, one of whom is Pistis Sophia, the universal
soul. In the Jeuian version of her story, she is a traumatized victim,
tricked by Authades to leave his realm. When she enters the universe
proper, she is assaulted and raped by Ialdabaoth and bound in cosmic
darkness.
She calls upon the light beings for help. After she undergoes a lengthy
process of ritual repentance, Jesus looses her bonds and raises her up out
of cosmic horror. Her thirteen penances serve as the basis for the ritual
penances and dedicated moral life of the Jeuian faithful, recorded in liturgical
prose in chapters 32 to 57 of Pistis Sophia.
Jesus Is Not Jeu
Where is Jeu in all of this? Jeu, no longer the cosmic solar deity, is transposed
with his Father into the realms of the ineffable. He is still the author
of the treasuries of light, but these are transcendent realms now, rather
than cosmic.
Even so, Jeu does not give up his job as creator of the universe. He
still is responsible for organizing the cosmos and setting the planets into
their realms of orbit. He brings control to Chaos by establishing realms of
judgment and purgatory. He puts controls on evil by imprisoning wicked
dark lords such as Sabaoth and his cronies in the sphere of the zodiac, and
he rewards repentant ex-dark lords like Jabraoth by relocating them into
the highest celestial spheres. All of Jeu’s creative and structural activities
are done with the express purpose of establishing at the cosmic level a
regulated system that assists in the purification, release, and transportation
of souls to the light treasuries.