DeConick A.D

339
PLEASANTVILLE RELIGIONS
Adam’s son Seth, which is regarded as the purest and lightest soul ever
to have ascended. If the soul’s weight does not tip the scale, this demonstrates
that the spirit has become pure like the soul. At this moment, the
spirit and soul embrace as sisters and are united. The united pair mounts
a ship of light that ferries across the river surrounding the world and is
transported to the light world. If they are heavy with sin, they are taken
to a place of purgatory to undergo purification until a time when they can
be released and weighed again.
There is no reincarnation, no transmigration into other bodies. There
is only an eternity to be spent either bathing in rivers of light with ‘uthras
and the raised ancestors or locked in purgatories, tortured by demons.
The former is the fate of the Mandaeans, the Gnostics. The latter is the
fate of everyone else.
“True” Religion
The third century saw the emergence of several new Gnostic religious
movements. These religions were plugged into other religions, such as
Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Buddhism, but they identified
themselves as different, as superior to the traditional religions, as offering
true religion to their converts. They viewed the traditional religions as
corrupt or fake.
In contrast, these “true” religions emerged from revelation, and revelation
in turn authorized their claims to truth. These religions did not
depend on an ancestral past, inherited scriptures, or the sponsorship of a
bishop or rabbi to be legitimate. Often, the founders of these movements,
like Mani and Miriam, were seers, and they relied on their own visions and
knowledge to build their religious systems.
The Jeuians, for instance, believed that their solar mysteries were secretly
revealed to them by Jesus. Whereas Christianity got Jesus and his
message wrong, the Jeuians got it right. Jesus was a Gnostic sent from
Jeu’s Father to reveal the truth about the transcendent world and our innate
connection to it. The Jeuians were the ones who received his revelation
and understood it.
When we compare these Gnostic religions, we see that they all eventually
built institutional structures, enabling the religions to be fostered
intergenerationally. The Jeuians consolidated their teachings into church