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Video Description
In Pistis Sophia Book Two, Jesus tells his disciples they are the dregs of the universe, and that the dregs will rule over the gods. This close reading from the Conscious Radical channel follows the text where it actually goes.
Sophia is carried out of chaos by Gabriel and Michael, crowned with light, and attacked again before she is finally brought home. Then the story stops, and Mary Magdalene leads a long dialogue about the ranks of the saved and why humans will outrank the angels, telling Jesus plainly that she is afraid of Peter. It is a strange and patient book, and the video lets its oddness do the work.
Full Video Transcript
Sometime in the fourth century a scribe was sat in Egypt copying a book in which Jesus tells his
disciples that they’re the dregs of the universe and then a few pages later he tells them that the
dregs will rule over the gods. That book is book two of the Epistis Sophia and people were copying
it while there was an empire passing laws to keep people in exactly the station that they were born
into. So when you finish book one you think you know where book two is going
to go. Sophia is being rescued and she’s on her way home but then in chapter 83
the story stops and Mary Magdalene starts asking questions that no one else
in the room dares to ask. In this video I’m going to take you through what book
two actually says chapter by chapter and I will try to have as little of me in
the way as I can manage and then we’re going to look at what a reader in Roman
Egypt might have heard in it and what we might hear in it now. If you watched my
book one video you’ll know the outline and I’ll link it here if you haven’t but
Sophia is one of 24 emanations living in the 13th aeon and she looks up and she
sees the light of the Treasury and she sings to it. The archons of the twelve
eons below treat that as a rebellion. Orthodes which is the self-willed one sends a lion-faced
power into chaos that shines like the real light and Sophia mistakes the counterfeit for the real
thing and she follows it down and when she follows it down she’s stripped of her light
and part of her matter becomes yelled above. She’s trapped and she’s powerless and she sings
13 repentances from the dark. Now Jesus is narrating all of this to his disciples on the
Mount of Olives and he says he lifts her a little but when he does the archons press her down again
and again over and over and book one ends with two light powers coming down to meet her, mercy from
the height and truth from below. After each of her songs one of the disciples steps forward and
finds the psalm or ode of Solomon that the song is secretly decoding and Mary Magdalene does that
more than anyone else and Jesus keeps praising her for it. So book two starts with the same rhythm
but then it changes completely. Before we go into the text it really does help to know what was
happening in Roman Egypt at the time because a lot of book two will make much more sense once you do.
the manuscript itself is cop tip it was copied in the late third or fourth century and then the
book itself was probably composed a little earlier in the third either way it comes out of one of the
worst centuries the roman world had ever had if we were to think about the environment between
about 249 and 262 a plague swept the empire at its height it was reported to be killing around
5,000 people a day in Rome alone and we call it the plague of Cyprian after the
Bishop of Carthage who described it. In Alexandria Bishop Dionysius wrote that
the city had lost so many people that everyone aged 14 to 80 now numbered
fewer than the 40 to 70s had before. Politically for 50 years emperors had
come and gone most of them had been murdered and Diocletian took power in
284 and with the view of ending the chaos and he split the Empire between
four rulers and added a layer upon layer of governments in 303 he launched the
Great Persecution churches were destroyed scriptures were burned
Christians were stripped of their legal rights and they were ordered to sacrifice
to the Roman gods. Egypt was so scarred by it that the Coptic Church still
counts its years from his accession and they call it the era of the martyrs. Then
in society Roman law divided people into the honourable and the humble. If you were
humble you could be tortured during questioning, you could be flogged, you
could be sent to the mines or thrown to the beasts for crimes that would get an
honourable man exiled over the late third and early fourth centuries the law increasingly tied
people to their stations so sons followed fathers into their trades and in 332 constantine bound
tenant farmers to the land that they worked egyptians had a word for the way out anachoresis
withdrawal in the official documents of the time it would describe a peasant who had walked away
from the crushing taxes and duties and they just disappeared off into the desert or into the
marshes. Then the word starts to mean something else. Anthony walks into the desert to seek God.
The monks follow and we get the word anchorite. So the same word that means a tax runaway also
means a holy man. Now it’s important to remember that because book two says the highest mystery
in the universe belongs to whoever is willing to walk away. And one last piece in around 150
in Alexandria Ptolemy wrote the Almagest which is the astronomy that the ancient world pretty much
ran on at the time. In it he says that against the sphere of the stars the whole earth is no bigger
than a point and book two the Pistis Sophia really takes that idea and runs with it. So this is what
happens to Sophia in the first 20 chapters. Okay so John gives the last reading of a line from Psalm
85 that the disciples have been working on ever since book one. Mercy and truth have met. Jesus
is the mercy sent from the height and the light power from Sabaoth is the truth that sprouted
from the earth. And then the narrator changes from chapter 64. So Jesus then starts speaking
as the first mystery and we’re never really told why but for now I’m going to keep saying Jesus
because that’s who’s sitting on the Mount of Olives but it’s definitely worth noticing.
So the two light powers merge into a single outpouring. Jesus sends Gabriel and Michael
into chaos with this light and they pour it over Sophia and they take back every part of light that
the emanations of authorities had stolen from her and they put it back into her. Now Peter reads
this is Ode of Solomon 6. A stream that became a great broad river. Nothing could hold back.
Okay, so far so good. She’s lit up. Her light has been restored. But then there is a second assault.
Then the emanations see her shining just as she was at the beginning. And they’re so angry. They’re
enraged. Orthodes then fires a fresh power down into chaos like a flying arrow. And then the
eliminations change shape one becomes a great serpent one a basilisk with seven heads one a
dragon and then of course the lion face is still there then adamus the tyrant who hasn’t been part
of the story at all until this point looks down from the 12 eons and sends a power of his own
he’s really angry with her the text says because she wanted to go to the light of lights so that’s
the same crime that she committed in book one. The fact is that she looked up. Coming restored
in her light made her a target and they surround her and they drag her down and she sings. So Jesus
sends Gabriel and Michael back in but this time with a very specific instruction. They’re to raise
her upon their hands lest her feet touch the darkness below and those of the darkness below
sees her. So they carry her the whole way. The light forms a crown on her head and the emanations
fall away in heaps on either side and then Jesus comes down into chaos himself. He strips the
lion face power of its light and he locks the emanations out of the 13th eon for good. Sophia
walks out between the two angels trampling the serpent, the basilisk, the lion face and the
dragon as she goes and then jesus stands on the basilisk because it’s the strongest of them
and destroys its matter so that from this hour no seed from it should rise james reads psalm 91
thou wilt tread upon the serpent and basilisk and thou wilt trample upon the lion and dragon
an egyptian reader would have known this scene because for thousands of years egyptian temples
told the story of Apophis which was the great serpent of chaos who was never worshipped but
only feared because every night he attacks the sun god’s boat as it passes through the underworld
and every night he’s beaten back so that the sun can rise the next morning. So a light dragged into
the dark by a serpent that is rescued is a story that they would have known for a very long time.
Then Sophia sings and keeps singing seven songs of Thanksgiving, each one decoded by a disciple.
There was Thomas, Matthew, Mary Magdalene twice, Martha, Andrew. But Mary’s verse is one that
really sticks because she says, the light has become my saviour. And then another moment where
Mary says she could interpret every one of these songs, but she says, but I’m afraid of Peter
because he threatens me and he hates our race and by race she means women and the first mystery
jesus overrules him on the spot no one will be able to stop anyone who is filled with the spirit
of light from coming forward then there’s a twist sophia is out of chaos but she still isn’t home
jesus places her in a region below the 13th eon and he gives her a new mystery of the light which
is not that of her eon and a song of praise so that the archons can’t touch her and she begs him
not to go you are going to the light and leaving me adames the tyrant will find out and she asks
him to strip her enemies of their power now and then he tells her he can’t his father hasn’t
commanded it yet so he seals their places instead until the appointed time so even jesus as the
first mystery has to await his orders then he gives her the terms when the three times are
complete the left gate of the treasury will open where every eon can see it but until then she can
move freely through the 12 eons but she can’t pass the gate into her own and the text never
explains why or explains what the three times are but it instead it gives her a sign to watch for
instead. And when they’re complete, two things happen at once. Her enemies come for her one last
time, and then she gets to go home. When they come for her, he tells her, sing, and I will not delay.
Then I set her in a place which is below the 13th eon. I went to the light. I abandoned her.
And he leaves. I abandoned her. Then the last attack comes, and the text describes it to a
moment where Jesus is sitting in his body on the Mount of Olives in front of his disciples
and it’s described that Adamus looks down and he finds that his demonic power is lying in chaos
and he blames Sophia for it. So he builds a dark place of his own and sends his archons after her
and they take her light. She does exactly what she was told to do, she sings. Then she turns to face
her pursuers and tells them the light is only waiting for its appointed hour and jesus intervenes
and she’s brought up to the 12th eon and finally the 13th the 24 invisible ones recognize her
immediately and they rejoice but they don’t recognize jesus jesus says they thought of me
as being like an emanation of the land of the light so the rescuer jesus walks into her home
and nobody has a clue about who he is. She sings her last hymn. It’s the whole ordeal in her own
voice. She says, I’ve been in the darkness and the shadow of the chaos, bound with the strong bonds
of the chaos, and there was no light in me. And then he broke all my bonds, he brought me out of
the darkness. Philip reads Psalm 107, the wanderers in the desert gathered home. And with that,
Sophia’s story is over from here book two becomes something completely
different there’s a long question and answer session about who ends up where
in the kingdom of light most of the questions come from Mary Magdalene and
she opens nearly every one of them in the same way she says my lord be not
angry with me that I question thee for we question all things with assurance
and certainty and Jesus answers fine I will answer without parable no more stories just straight
answers and he tells her be full of joy and very glad for asking because he will reveal it with joy
so basically her questions don’t irritate him they actually delight him Mary asks what the 24
invisible ones are like and Jesus says nothing in this world can compare and then he builds the
universe as a series of levels. When I take you up to the Archons of Fate, he says, you will reckon
this world before you as darkness of darknesses, and the whole world of humanity will become the
size of a speck of dust. From the twelve eons, fate becomes the speck. From the thirteenth, the twelfth
shrink. Then the midst, the right, the treasury of the light, and from the inheritances of the saved,
even the treasury looks like dust. That’s Ptolemy’s point-sized earth turned into a structured ladder
and the ladder keeps going past where what the astronomers had seen in the sky by the time that
the astronomers sky had ended basically. Now Mary asks what everyone in the room is probably
thinking. The emanations of the treasury have been pure light since before the world began
and she wants to know will ordinary human beings ever really rank above them and jesus says yes
when this age ends the human souls who’ve received the mysteries will go first ahead of the archons
who repented ahead of the midst and the whole treasury of the light and mary jumps up oh my lord
my my man of light has ears the light inside her has heard him the first will be last and the last
will be first, she says. Humanity is the last. In the kingdom of light, the order flips. And Jesus
marvelled greatly at her answer because she had completely become pure spirit. Then he takes them
higher. Above the treasury stand five great powers that the text calls helpers. It’s a word that
means one who stands beside. Now from the lowest of them, the whole kingdom of the saved will look
the size of a single city above the helpers he stops there’s nothing in this world to compare
those places to so he says he’s not even going to try and then mary apologizes again for asking so
much and explains why she says her brothers are taking these teachings out to ordinary people
we’re not only compassionate among ourselves but we are compassionate to the whole race of mankind
mind so she’s asking for clarification for everyone who’s going to hear this second hand
Mary is delighted and asks how much greater each helper is than the one below and Jesus says
there’s no measurement that can reach it even the angels and the gods couldn’t measure the gap
so she asks something practical instead how will the saved actually live in the kingdom and Jesus
says, each soul stays at the level of the mystery it received. The place where your heart is, there
will your treasure be. Then John steps forward with a question saying, are you stuck at your
level? Can you move up? Can you move down? And Jesus says, yes, you can move downwards, but you
can never move upwards. And he walks John through every level of the system and the answer is the
same at each one. So downward, yes. Upward, never. Now think about the world that has been described
at that time. Sons were tied to their father’s trades. Farmers were tied to the land. The
honourable and the humble was written into law. Now the heavens of book two look very similar to
the empire that its readers lived in, with one exception. The person who receives the true
mystery of the ineffable can go anywhere, from outside within and from within outside and from
above down and from below up. They can live wherever they please and at the end of the world
they’ll rule over every single rank. Then Jesus says something extraordinary about the highest
mystery. That mystery knows why the darkness came into existence and why there’s light, why there’s
sin and why there are baptisms why there is anger and why there is peace why there is weeping and
why there is laughter why there is poverty and why there is wealth why slavery and why freedom
why death and why life and it said that the disciples are thrilled they rejoiced with great
joy so he keeps going he talks about why the mountains and the precious stones inside them
silver, copper, iron, lead, why the earth dried out and why the water came over it,
why famine and why plenty, why hatred and why love, why greed and why letting go of everything.
A reader in Egypt would hear why the earth dried and why the water came over it, as the Nile’s
the parched land than the flood that covers it. Famine and plenty depended on that flood.
Even the metals were important because the mines were where the humble were sent. The litany names
the things that its readers’ lives depended on. And what you’ll also notice is that every line
holds two opposites and the mystery knows the reason for both. Darkness has a reason, weeping
has a reason neither half of the pair gets thrown away so although the disciples are quite joyous
there that joy doesn’t last the disciples give up jesus announces that he will now describe the
whole place of truth of the ineffable and the disciples can’t take any more in the text’s own
words they retired and they despaired completely now mary throws herself at his feet weeping
have mercy on me my lord for my brothers have heard and they have despaired you said you were
beginning to tell us everything she says and you’ve barely started if all of this is inside
one mystery what man in the world has the power to understand it so she’s pleading on behalf of
the men who’ve stopped listening and she’s telling the teacher that his method of teaching this isn’t
working and jesus hears her be not now sorrowful my disciples truly i say to you that mystery
belongs to you and to everyone who will hear you there’s one condition though it belongs to anyone
who will renounce the world every wicked thought within themselves and all the cares of this eon
for them that mystery is easier for them than all the mysteries of the kingdom of the light
and it is more successfully understood than them all and it is lighter than them all come to me
all you who are weary for my burden is light lighter than them all so every rank in this
vast system has to be earned and takes you exactly as far as you earned and the highest thing the one
nobody can climb to is the lightest of all given to whoever is willing to put down the most
anachoresis walk away from the fields the taxes the cares of this eon now in the third century
that was what the desperate did and book two is basically saying it’s the way to the top of the
universe then he starts again step by step because mary’s protest has worked he lists the being so
high above the helpers that the text runs out of names for them starts describing them as the
unshakable ones, the unthinkable ones, the unutterable ones, the endless ones. And then
the last line turns the question back on the mystery itself. It knows why it troubled itself
in order to come forth from the ineffable. Even the highest mystery in the universe began with
the stirring, just as Sophia’s story did. Then Jesus tells them what happens when someone who’s
received that mystery dies. When a soul leaves the body the receivers come to collect it. When they
come for his soul it becomes a great outpouring of light in the middle of them. The receivers are
terrified and they fall back. The soul rises as a great beam of light straight through every place
of the archons and every place of the light and it does not give answer in any place nor does it
give a defense nor does it give a secret sign there’s no passwords there’s no checkpoints
every place it passes sings its praises and it crosses the whole universe in the length of time
in which a man shoots an arrow now remember that arrow orthodes fired his power into chaos like a
flying arrow and the freed soul travels at the same speed but in the opposite direction so for
an egyptian reader this would have really landed for them because in the book of the dead the soul
has to pass through gate after gate each with the guardian and you would have to know the guardian’s
names and you would have to give them the right answers but chapter 96 throws that out the soul
shines and every gatekeeper falls back then the refrain which jesus repeats until it hammers home
He is a man in the world but he is superior to all angels, to the archangels, the tyrants, the lords,
the gods, the great invisible fourth father, the whole treasury of the light. He is a man in the
world but he is not of the world and truly I say to you that man is I and I am that man. Everyone
who receives this mystery will rule beside him. Those men are I and I am they and yet he still
keeps an order because his throne is still the highest and the 12 disciples thrones are joined
to his and then in front of them all says Maria Magdalene and John the Virgin will be superior
to all my disciples. Mary asks whether you need to know everything to get into the kingdom and
Jesus says no. Everyone inherits as far as their mystery reaches. He who receives a small mystery
will inherit what is small and even the lowest ranks live in great joy, in great gladness.
Nobody gets a bad seat. Then he describes what some of the mysteries can do. One could be spoken
over a dying person, over their head and into both ears. Even if that person never received a single
mystery, they’re not going to be judged and they won’t be punished and the fire won’t touch them.
They’re carried up to the Virgin of the Light who sends them back into a new life so they can find
the light for themselves. Another way can be spoken for someone who has already died and is
already being punished so they’re pulled out too. That’s Mary’s compassion for the whole race of
mankind in practice. The more this system ranks people the more doors it builds for the ones who
fell outside it and yes that’s reincarnation in a Christian text. And what about the passwords for
the lower levels? Well they’re written in the two great books of Yehu which Enoch wrote down in the
Paradise of Adam. So the books of Yeo are real. Two Coptic texts by that name are in the Bruce
Codex at the Bodleian Library in Oxford and they’re full of diagrams, seals and secret names.
So Pistis Sophia is pointing at a book that the readers at the time could actually look at and
hold. And then Andrew comes forward and he’s honest. This has become really hard for him.
How can people living in bodies here in this world rise above the archons, the gods and every being
of light? He says this fact now my lord is difficult for me and the text says the spirit
of the saviour was moved within him. He cries out for how long shall I bear with you? For how long
shall I suffer? Then he answers you the angels, the archangels, the gods, the archons, the invisible
ones and every being of light you are all within one another out of one dough and one matter and
one substance the beings of light were purified he says but not by their own efforts they were
purified from necessity they never suffered never lived in bodies never knew hardship then he turns
to the disciples, you are the dregs of all of these. Dregs. So dregs are what’s left at the
bottom of the barrel and you’ve suffered life after life, body after body and then of yourselves
you have striven and fought, let go of the world and never stopped looking until you found what
purified you. That’s why you come first. They were made pure but you made yourself pure. He calls
and dregs plainly. There’s no comforting story about secret royalty or bloodlines. And then he
says that having been the dregs and fought your way out, that’s actually worth more than having
been born pure. Remember that law dividing the honourable from the humble. This is the humble
being told that they outrank everyone. The healthy have no need of the physician. The things of light
didn’t need rescuing it’s it’s us that did so he then says so go and tell people keep seeking day
and night and let go of the world because whoever buys and sells in the world and who eats and
drinks of its matter and who lives amongst all it cares just piles more matter onto what’s already
there you don’t have to take that as an instruction to give everything up i read it as a question what
am i piling on that i’ll only have to carry and andrew finally understands this too and so do the
rest of them they throw themselves at jesus’s feet and beg him to forgive their brother’s sin of
ignorance and jesus says i forgive and i will forgive for this reason has the first mystery
sent me andrew’s doubt goes unpunished and his hard question is what drew the best answer i think
in the book out into the open. Then there is a gap in the manuscript where pages are missing
and we come back in part way through. Jesus is describing the people who reach the inevitable
itself and he gives them an image. They’re like the parts of one body. The head according to the
worth of the head and the eye according to the worth of the eyes. Then a multitude of members
but one body. If that sounds familiar it’s because Paul uses this same picture in his first letter to
the Corinthians. So Paul was talking about a community here on earth but Pistis Sophia uses
it for God. The body is the ineffable itself and the saved are its limbs. He admits it’s only an
image, it’s not in a true form and then there’s one last climb that whoever finds the words of
that body is truly first and he is equal to him, equal to the ineffable. So the ladder and the
levels that Jesus has been building ends in equality which is the same sort of interpretation
as one dough but it’s being made from the other end. So book two begins with Sophia being trapped
in the dark and ends with one body made of everyone who found the light. What could it
mean now? I’ll try and keep this short because the text is already quite long and it has done
a lot of the talking. Most modern stories are about getting better and they are about having
a turning point but book two doesn’t do that. Sophia does get her light back and the very next
thing is another attack, a worse attack by enemies who’ve changed shape. But then she’s carried out
but she still isn’t home. She’s put somewhere safe but temporary and she’s given something that she
didn’t have before but she’s told look the next attack is coming and this is what you need to do
when it does. If you’ve ever left a bad relationship or a coercive group or a job that was making you
feel hollow you will know what that feels like and the last attack happens while Jesus is sitting
on a hillside with his friends with his disciples he doesn’t have to come from somewhere exotic and
I think that’s the same with life sometimes it’s the people around you who support you who can lift
you through and Mary so in book one Peter complained that she was talking too much and he wanted a
chance to be able to speak and in book two she actually says out loud that she’s afraid of him
but she still pretty much asks every question and she even pleaded for the other disciples when
they’d given up. The group changed because one person kept asking on behalf of everyone else.
The text does actually work against itself on occasion. It’s still a system of fixed ranks
where your mystery decides where you’re going to sit forever. It also says I am they and they are
I and in the same breath it says my throne will be superior. It tells people to renounce the world
which in its time could mean walking away from everyone who depended on you and it disagrees
with book one which said that the disciple souls came from the height and were special from the
starts. Book two also says that everyone and everything is one dough so it’s up to you which
one you’d like to keep but it’s important to remember that Gnosticism has never been and was
never one voice and these books were still clearly arguing with each other. When Jesus tells Sophia
the terms of her waiting the text says she rejoiced with great joy but she’s not even home yet and
she’s been told that another attack is coming but she rejoices anyway because
she has a song and she knows the gate will open. That’s the note I want to
leave book two on. You’re out of the dark but you’re not quite home and you’re a
little bit lighter than you were before. In book three the questions become quite
practical, so what happens to a soul after the death, what sin does to it and
what can be done and you won’t be surprised to hear that Mary is still
asking loads of questions as always please read it yourself rather than taking my word for it
i’ve used wylett mcdermott’s translation and there is meads which is available it’s the 1896 version
which is absolutely beautiful if you’d like some of that older phrasing so book two is about 40
chapters but it’s a good idea to start with chapter 100 and if you want to go further i
will be looking at making a full modern reading of book two with every verse
with notes and once I’ve done that I will let you know
Source: The Conscious Radical