The Thought of Norea

Who was She?

Who was the ancient author whose ecstatic poetry is preserved for us in the ancient Gnostic hymn entitled "The Thought of Norea"?

I say She, for scholars believe this may very well be a rare Gnostic tractate composed by a Female hand.

Who was She?

The text (this translation being found in the James Robinson edition of the Nag Hammadi Library) seems to follow the Gnostic pattern of redeeming a Biblical villain -- or, in this case, a villainess, Na'amah of Cain's line from Genesis -- Norea being a Greek version of Her name, and given here a salvatory role.

You may not grasp much of the meaning -- I certainly didn't -- but still, the poetry sings:

"Father of All, Ennoia of the light,
dwelling in the heights above the regions below,
Light dwelling in the heights, Voice of truth,
upright Nous, untouchable Logos, and ineffable Voice,
incomprehensible Father!

It is Norea who cries out to them.
They heard and they received her
into their place forever.

They gave it to her in the Father of Nous
Adamas, as well as the voice of the Holy Ones,
in order that she might rest
in the ineffable Epinoia,
in order that she might inherit
the first mind which she had received,
and that she might rest
in the divine Autogenes,
and that she too might generate herself,
just as she also has inherited
the living Logos
and that she might be joined
to all of the Imperishable Ones,
and speak with the mind of the Father.

And she began to speak with words of Life,
and she remained in the presence of the Exalted One,
possessing that which she had received
before the world came into being.

She has the great mind of the Invisible One,
and she gives glory to her Father
and she dwells within those who
[lacuna] within the Pleroma
and she beholds the Pleroma.

There will be days when she beholds the Pleroma,
and she will not be in deficiency,
for she has the four holy helpers
who intercede on her behalf
with the father of the all, Adamas.

He it is who is within all the Adams,
possessing the thought of Norea
who speaks concerning the two names
which create a single name.

Gnostic Bizzaro World

As my long-suffering blog readers know, I am engaged in a project to read every book in the world, in chronological order, expecting to maybe reach the literature of the nineteenth century or so before the Grim Reaper taps my shoulder.

And as my long-suffering blog readers know, I am currently struggling through the chaotic writings of the Gnostics, who flourished in the first centuries of the Christian era.

The most comprehensive collection of their sacred writings is entitled the Nag Hammadi Library. It's not easy reading, by any stretch of the imagination. Much of it is virtually impossible to understand, although the nature of the translation or my unfamiliarity with the sect may be to blame.

But towards the end of the collection, I have encountered perhaps the strangest document that I have read in my entire life. I literally couldn't help laughing, which I generally try not to do when reading literature that someone else holds sacred.

The Paraphrase of Shem takes some of the Gnostic doctrines at which other texts have hinted, and goes nuts.

It is as if its writer was trying to create a Christian Bizzaro World, or an anti-matter universe, based on the opposite of the Bible. Literally, everything considered good in the Christian Bible is explicitly bad in this text, and everything bad is good. The Creation and the Creator God are evil, for starters. That's well known as a Gnostic tenet, but to continue ... The Flood was an evil idea intended to destroy good people. Sodom was a city of righteous and holy people, destroyed by a vengeful and evil god. And even the Christian hero, John the Baptist, is herein called a demon who used the impure material medium of water to bind souls in his evil baptismal rite.

Interspersed through this strangeness are lurid accounts of demons masturbating and cosmic sexual activity that makes the Biblical Song of Solomon seem tamer than a child's picture book.

It is really, really hard to comprehend that any sane mind, uninfluenced by powerful drugs, could have written this material.

Hot Bird

Today is Thanksgiving for U.S. Americans, a day in which our merchants either to try to sell us stuff at ungodly hours or a day which they conspicuously ignore in order to promote the big holiday beyond.

We also roast turkeys on this day, unless we are members of certain anti-meat groups.

But my thoughts this morning are upon a different sort of hot bird.

I speak of the phoenix.



Like the dragon, the lore of this mythical monster seems to permeate almost every human culture.

For the longest time, I have had a brassy coin that I thought was from China, and upon whose obverse I assumed was a depiction of Tiananmen Square. I searched and searched and only this month have I discovered, ignorant American that I am, that it is no more Chinese in origin than a Looney is legal tender in Mazatlan.



This is actually a ten yen coin, depicting the Phoenix Hall of the Byodoin Temple in Kyoto, Japan, a building that dates to 998 A.D.

I don't know what Japanese word is translated as phoenix, or even how closely that approximates to the western concept of the beast, a bird reborn in fire and ash.

Not just the pagans but the Early Christian Church father Clement speaks of the phoenix, as a symbol of resurrection, in his letter to the Corinthians. (Don't confuse this with the canonical letter by Paul!)

"...from the neighborhood, that is, of Arabia. There is a bird which is called a phoenix. It is the only one of its kind and lives five hundred years. When the time for its departure and death draws near, it makes a burial nest for itself from frankincense, myrrh and other spices, and when the time is up, it gets into it and dies. From its decaying flesh a worm is produced, which is nourished by the secretions of the dead creature and grows wings ... [flying to the Egyptian city of] of Heliopolis, it lights at the altar of the sun."

The Christian "heretics," the Gnostics, also mention this flammable fowl. I found a reference today in the Nag Hammadi text, "On the Origin of the World."

"And the worm that has been born out of the phoenix is a human being as well. It is written concerning it concerning it, 'The just man will blossom like the phoenix.'"

The Gnostic writer cites the Septuagint (Greek) version of Psalms 91: 13 for this reference, but he seems to have taken some liberties. Our King James version reads:

"Thou shalt tread upon the lion and the adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet."

The Septuagint has "basiliskou" from the Hebrew pethen, for adder. No flying phoenix, just a bad-tempered snake. Perhaps some later monk scrubbed out the mythological term -- although the dragon escaped his scrutiny.

Contemplation of an obsession

I bought a couple more books today, on a range of subjects, provoking the usual protestations from my Sweetie.

When I came home and logged them into my collection, I discovered that since April of 2007, a little over a year ago, I have added exactly 100 books to my home treasure trove. That makes a total of 1,446.

Added is a pitiful word. How about crammed? Wedged? Sweetie won't allow them in the living room or the bedroom -- nowhere but in the approximately nine foot by ten foot room that I claim as my library.

Perhaps Sweetie's concerns are valid. Perhaps I am becoming one of those crazy people who get discovered by the health department unable to get out of their own front doors due to their obsessive collections.

I've long known that even if I quit work and never left my house again, and did nothing but read until my eyeballs dried up (and the bank foreclosed on us and tossed us into the street), still I would never be able to get through all of them.

Especially as my current selection, the Nag Hammadi (Gnostic) Library, keeps putting me to sleep.

Why read it if it is so boring, my Sweetie asks. She just doesn't understand. I can't comprehend the world today if I don't understand the Christianity that has so profoundly impacted it. I can't understand Christianity if I do not explore all of its currents, of which Gnosticism is one.

So I will push on through, hoping to eventually gain some comprehension.

Gnostic studies

Among at least one Gnostic sect, all who had achieved gnosis (enlightenment), were considered to be equals, not only of each other but even of Christ, whose salvation work was not by blood but by His teaching.

There was no hierarchy in this sect; indeed, the positions of bishop, deacon, etc., were divided up by lot, which was interpreted as the will of God, and changed often. The sect even had the audacity to consider women as equals and to allow them to serve in these temporary positions.

This was, of course, all very offensive to the non-Gnostic Christian church, which was in that same era solidifying its hierarchal structure and for which the blood of Christ was the very heart of the faith.

Catching up -- a hodgepodge

Night after night, I have talked myself out of typing on this screen. It's not that I've had nothing to write about -- quite the contrary. So much has gone on in my life -- sometimes I am so busy living it that I find myself too tired to write about it.

Sarah Palin came to our state recently and I took a day off from work to go to the event. It was labeled as a rally, so that should have prepared me, but still, I felt slightly uncomfortable at the attempt to rouse my emotions that way. I never went to pep rallies in high school for that same reason -- even hated singing campfire songs as a kid because I don't like being told how I should feel, or having others work on my emotions.

Contrary to popular rumors, nobody screamed,"Kill Obama" or anything like that, at least at this rally.

This month, Sweetie and I also took our Niece to Her ballet practice. I killed time by scribbling down thoughts as they came to me there as well as details of what I saw and heard around me. I used to do that a lot. More on that later.

We took our neighbor out for dinner and made some new friends, a sweet, older couple. More, later.

I've also been reading intensively from about four different books. One is Thirteen Moons, a historical fiction novel set at the time of the Cherokee Trail of Tears. Since I have so recently defended Columbus, perhaps I am hypocritical to feel utter contempt for Andrew Jackson and his role in that disgusting travesty of the American ideal. Still, contempt I feel.

The second book is Boorstin's The Discoverers, the most recently read chapter being about the invention of clocks. More on that later.

The third book is Encyclopedia of the Prehistoric World, all about the bumper-car antics of our planet's continents, and the weird creatures that have lived upon it. More later.

Lastly, I have read through the writings of the Early Christian Church Fathers, so now, before moving on into the age of Constantine, I've taken a little detour into the extinct (?) world of the Gnostics, supposedly heretical Christians at whom some of those ECFS took great offense.

For a movement that only lasted about a century before being obliterated by orthodoxy, and whose works also were consigned to oblivion until a jar of them was found in the Egyptian desert in the 1940s, it is astounding to read that no less than 4,000 books have been written on the subject.

There is so much that I could write, so many questions that pop up! What compelled an early Christian monk from a nearby monastery to collect and hide away these proscribed texts? What was he thinking about when he made that lonely trip into the desert with his jar of heresy?

What was in the minds and hearts of the people who wrote these texts -- certainly they were not all the slavering charlatans that Iranaeus and others made them out to be.

And Elaine Pagels, who in 1979 wrote the award-winning account of Gnosticism for the understanding of laymen -- what a fascinating life this Woman has had, as well! She started out a dancer with Martha Graham and then became a scholar in the field of ancient religion. More, much more, later.