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Video Description
This is a close reading of one ancient book, chapter by chapter. The video from the Conscious Radical channel opens Pistis Sophia Book I, a text in which a saviour turns the sky, a fallen aeon sings thirteen times before anyone comes, and a room full of people argues over who gets to interpret what happened.
It works from the Schmidt and MacDermot translation with occasional lines from Mead, and it reads like a documentary for people who have heard of the text but never opened it. Along the way it notices what is strange: fate spoken of as a machine, Peter complaining about Mary Magdalene, and an uncomfortable line about whose souls count. The point is not to settle the argument but to read the book itself and see.
Full Video Transcript
Welcome to book one of the Pistis Sophia. This is sourced from Schmidt and McDermott translation
and there is an occasional line from Mead. There are 62 chapters in book one and we’re going to go
through it in the order it was written and then I’m going to read you some of the bits that matter
the most I think and every now and then I will stop just to give you some light commentary.
Now of course with a text like this most people will have an opinion about it and unfortunately
sometimes without even having read it. So the Pistis Sophia translates as faith wisdom. It’s a
Coptic manuscript that was bought in 1785 and it was copied somewhere in Egypt in the late third
or fourth century and it was copied from a Greek original that’s even older than that and now the
copy that we have sits in the British library. The Pistis Sophia is four books and I’m going to go
through each book in turn so that you can have a really good full understanding of their contents
but today’s focus is on book one and this is where the story is set up and the story sets up as the
teacher Jesus having returned and the sky is tumultuous. So in the story a being called Sophia
follows a counterfeit light and falls and when she realises what has happened she sings 13 times.
so chapter one chapter one opens with jesus who has risen from the dead and has spent the last
11 years speaking with and teaching his disciples but today he’s only taught them as far as the
places of the first ordinance and as far as the places of the first mystery now this is a bit
confusing because it assumes that you know what all of these are so here is the whole thing that
you can sort of look at in three different stories. At the very top layer is the world of light and at
the top is the ineffable, the source, the being that can’t be described and the first mystery
comes out of the ineffable and in this book the first mystery is Jesus. So when Jesus says I came
forth from the first mystery he means it in two ways, he came out of it and he is it. Now in the
Pistis Sophia, the word mystery means three things at once.
It’s a place, it’s a rank, and it’s a password.
So a password being something that you receive
before the gatekeepers will allow you through.
So when the book says someone received a mystery,
it means they’ve been given the key to a level.
And there are 24 of these inside the first mystery.
The first is the innermost, near the ineffable,
and the 24th is the outermost, the one closest to the veil.
So the disciples at this time had only been given
information around the 24th,
which is effectively the ground level.
But they thought that they had the whole knowledge.
They thought they had the ultimate,
that there was nothing else to know.
At the top level is the treasury of light.
And that’s a storehouse where everything that happens below,
once it’s purified, it ends up in the storehouse.
the storehouse has several doors with a saviour standing at each one and in total there are 12
saviours and it’s also populated by the twin saviour whom the text calls the child of the
child it also includes the three amens the five trees the seven voices which are also called the
seven amens and we’ll go into those in more detail but for now just be aware that they live in the
light world. Now the first ordinance is the first act of organization. It forms
part of the machinery that connects the top level to everything beneath it.
Inside the first ordinance sits the veil, the dividing line between the realms of
pure light above and our material mixed world below. And it’s called mixture
because light and matter have been stirred together and that’s us by the
way so the middle level is the world of the eons and at the top of that level is the great
invisible one the great invisible forefather and beneath him are three triple powers three beings
with three powers each the third of them is called orthodes he’s also known as the self-willed one
or the disobedient one and if you’ve watched any of my other videos you’ll remember his name
why he might be considered to be the villain of the story. Beneath them are
the 24 invisible ones, the emanations of the forefather. This is the 13th aeon and
one of the 24 invisible ones is Pistis Sophia and then below the 13th aeon are
12 more aeons which are ruled by archons, the rulers. Beneath them sits the spheres,
is the spheres of fate which the text calls Haimamini. The deacons, the ministers, the houses
of the spheres form part of the astrological machinery, the part of the map that maps onto the
sky, the sky that we can actually see from the material world. And the level at the very bottom
is chaos. This is where all the leftover matter goes. This is where Yaldabaoth, half fire and
half dark lives and it’s also where Sophia ends up and Jesus says himself I
have come forth from that first mystery which is the last mystery namely the
24th first and last depending on where you’re counting from if you were on the
outside looking in as the disciples were it’s the 24th if you were on the inside
looking out, it’s the first. And Jesus said, I came forth from that mystery. He said that the mystery
surrounds the first ordinance and the five incisions and the great light and the five
helpers and the whole treasury of light. So they believe that what surrounds everything
must be the head of the all, the completion of all completions. And then the text does something
i love jesus starts to list everything he hasn’t told them and they’re two lists really the first
is the ranks of the great invisible one and i’ll read that because the rhythm matters so he says
the whole extent of all the places of the great invisible one and the three triple powers and the
24 invisible ones and all their places and their eons and all their ranks how they extend and
their unbegotten ones and their self-begotten ones and their begotten ones and their luminaries
and their unpaired ones and their archons and their powers and their lords and their archangels
and their angels and their deacons and their ministers and all the houses of their spheres
that is describing the middle of the map and the disciples had never been shown any of it
now the second list is the top of the map the treasury of light and what’s in it the 12 saviors
and the doors of the treasury the twin savior who is the child of the child the three amens
the five trees the seven voices which the text also calls the seven amens the five helpers
the great light and the five incisions now i’ll flag two of these because they’ll help you
understand the rest. So firstly, the five helpers are called Parastatai, which in Greek means
standers beside. In chapter 8, Jesus tells you what they’re going to be for. So a power comes
out of him and is cast into the first ordinance. The first ordinance passes a part of it to the
great light. And then the great light passes a part to the five helpers. And the last helper
takes a part of what it received and breathes it into the mixture, into our world. So the five
haupas are like a relay. Each one takes something and passes some on. So the light is stepped down
stage by stage so that a portion can reach the bottom without it being swallowed whole. The seven
voices are the seven greek vowels alpha epsilon eta iota omicron upsilon and amiga singing the
seven planetary spheres the voices are ranks as well as sounds now in chapter 10 jesus’s garment
arrives and there’s a line written on it in the script of the height the text gives you the sounds
zama zama oza rakama ozai and the interpretation is the mystery which is outside in the world
for which the all came in to being so that’s the 24th mystery again the outermost one written on
all his clothes as the password for descent and then the line that closes the chapter but he had
only spoken to them in general, teaching them that they had existed, but he had not told them
their extent and their rank of their places according to how they exist. He’d told them
the names, but he hadn’t explained the order of the ranks. Now, you can read all of that as
cosmology, a map of heaven, but I also read it as a list of everything that a community realised
they didn’t quite know yet. Because the people who wrote this were in Egypt and they had inherited
a version of Christianity and decided that what they’d inherited wasn’t the whole story. They
believed that the public teaching was the only the outer edge of the teaching and there was more to
it. In chapters two the disciples are sitting on the Mount of Olives and the text says they were
rejoicing because they had received the pleroma and the whole completion. Basically they were
congratulating themselves but believing that they had received all of the
teachings and Jesus was such just a short way away it was the 15th of the
moon in the month of taupe the day the moon becomes full now taupe is the fifth
month of the Coptic year and it can also mean the offering it falls between the
9th of January and the 7th of February on our calendar and the text describes
that when the sun had risen a great light appeared unlike anything else and it came from the light
of lights and from the last mystery the light came down through the veil and surrounded Jesus
completely so bright that even the disciples couldn’t see him. They could only see rays of
light each different from up from the other some brighter than others and it lit up from the bottom
of the earth upwards towards the heavens. And when the disciples saw this, they became scared
and agitated. In chapter three, the light surrounds Jesus and he rises to the height
and the disciples watch him ascend in silence. So Jesus went up to heaven and from the third
hour of that day, the heavens started to shake. Then the earth started to quake. The angels sing
so loudly that the text says that the whole world heard their voices in chapter 4 the disciples are
sat on the hill weeping believing everything was about to be destroyed even though they felt sure
that they knew everything they still panicked anything that can rock your certainty can
absolutely feel like the end of the world but then the heavens opened and jesus returned at the
ninth hour the next day brighter than before again an indescribable light made up of varying rays
different kinds different types and together in three forms one more superior than the next
in chapters five and six the disciples see the light and again are agitated and jesus seeing this
says be courageous it is i do not fear and upon hearing this the disciples realize it’s jesus and
ask him to draw his light in so that they can stand they rejoice at his return they ask him
where he’d gone and why there were so many disturbances and jesus explains that now he’s
returned he can speak openly without stories in unveiled revelation from this hour i will speak
with you openly from the beginning of the truth until its completion and i will speak with you
face to face without parable he explains how he’d been sat a short distance away and he’d been
thinking about rank and service and that his garment had not been sent he’d completed his
service that is he told the disciples everything he’d been authorized to tell them in chapters
seven and eight jesus explains where the disciples came from when he first came into the world he
brought 12 powers from the 12 saviors of the treasury and cast them into their mother’s wombs
and then the line all men who are in the world have received souls from the archons of the eons
but you your souls belong to the height so the text is not saying everyone is a spark of the
divine it’s saying most people have archon made souls and a small number carry something from
above. And I’m going to come back to this at the end because I think it’s worth talking about the
shadow because it is the shadow of the book and I don’t want to skip it. He then tells them he came
down disguised as Gabriel so that the archons wouldn’t recognise him. How he put a power into
Elizabeth so John could be born. How he took the soul of Elijah and bound it into John’s body
in place of the soul. And it’s in place of the soul that the archons would have given him.
He explains how he found Mary, his mother, according to the material body,
and cast into her the first power he’d received from Barbello for a body,
and in place of a soul, the power of Salbaoth, the good.
Effectively, Jesus is infiltrating the material Archon world.
He’s smuggling powers in, using disguises and borrowed names and a body from assembled parts.
but then they received parts from the power the last helper had breathed into the mixture the
power that mixed with all the invisible ones the disciples were mixed with the world of destruction
as well and then jesus says the disciples should rejoice for they are blessed beyond all men
and it’s them who will save the world then in chapters 9 and 10 jesus’s garment arrives and
he tells the disciples he’ll hide nothing from them that he’ll tell them the mysteries from the
outermost to the innermost and as the garment comes down there’s a message addressed to him
as the first mystery a mystery which art outside the world it carries the names of every rank from
the ineffable down to the sphere and he puts it on and the ascent begins part two the ascent
In chapters 11 to 28 Jesus goes up, firmament, first sphere, then the second sphere which the
text calls fate, then the 12 eons and at every level his light multiplies by 49 until in the 12
eons it is 8,700 myriad times greater than what he’d carried on earth. At every gate the same
thing happens the gates open by themselves the archons look at the garment and see the mystery
of their own names written on it the password and then their bonds fall off and they drop and they
cry how has the lord of the all passed through us without our knowing but there’s no fight because
the archons see their own names on the garment and fall down the passage through the levels works by
recognition and if you’ve watched my video about the counterfeit light you’ll know that recognition
is the thread that i do keep pulling on because it’s right here on the page in chapters 15 and 16
adamus the great tyrant and the tyrants of the eons go to war against the light without even
knowing what they’re fighting and then they collapse the text says like the earth dwellers
who are dead jesus takes a third of their power so that humans who try to invoke them using magic
summoning them for wicked actions wouldn’t be able to and then he talks about reversing the spheres
ruled over by haim amini fate jew an earlier figure in this cosmology had fixed the spheres
and haim amini so that they always turned to the left jesus turns them so they go six months to
the left and six months to the right this is the whole sphere of fate reversing on a schedule half
the year it runs the old way and half the year it runs backwards turning chapters 20 and 21 say that
magic which draws on the archons will fail except magic borrowed from the third eon which he
deliberately left alone and the astrologist will be right when the sphere turns left and wrong when
the sphere turns right. Their quadrangles, triangles and figures of eight, which are the
aspects in astrologer casts, the squares, the trines and the octagons, will produce, and I’m
quoting, confusion in great confusion. Unless they learn the new pattern they will not know what he’s
going to do. Now I think this is particularly interesting. I think they were looking at
astrology and how your birth chart is your legal fate and emperors at the time in Roman Egypt had
court astrologers and they sometimes executed private ones. So a man who could predict the
emperor’s death is also the man who can plan for it too. So fate in this world is a technology of
the state and it says that your place is fixed because the sky says so. Jesus turns the spheres
to make the sky and astrology unreliable. So the people who read the sky for a living can no longer
sell you certainty and that is a political act dressed as a cosmological one in chapter 22 philip
who’s been writing all of this down he stops and he says you know that by messing with fate
souls will be knocked off course and jesus gives him a really plain answer he says i have turned
their paths for the salvation of all souls unless i turn their paths a multitude of souls would have
been destroyed so by doing this the souls with power are purified more quickly and ascend and
those that won’t be saved are quickly dissolved chapters 24 to 27 explain the economy behind it
mary asks how souls get delayed outside and in what form they’re quickly purified and jesus
describes melchizedek the great receiver of light who periodically goes to the archons extracts
their purified light from them and carries it up to the treasury the archons ministers gather up
what’s left which is the dregs and makes them into souls men and cattle and reptiles and beasts
and birds and send them into the world but the archons learned a trick they started to eat their
own dregs so they would prolong their rule and starve their world of new souls they were rationing
creation to stay in charge. But Jesus doesn’t destroy the archons, instead he speeds up their
cycles. He lessens the times so the number of perfect souls can be completed faster. Otherwise
he says none of the material souls could have been saved. Part three, the fall. In chapter 29 Jesus
travels to the 13th eon and he finds Pistis Sophia sitting below the 13th eon alone and she’s
grieving because she hasn’t been returned to the 13th aeon mary magdalene asks how one of the 24
emanations of the great invisible forefather ended up out of place and the answer is in chapters 30
and 31. it happened through the ordinance of the first mystery that pista sophia looked up she saw
the light of the veil of the treasury of the light she desired to go to that place and she ceased to
perform the mystery of the 13th eon and she sang praises to the light of the height so she looks up
and sees the light and stops doing her job so that she can sing to the light and then the text says
the archons which persisted in performing the mystery hated her and all the watches at the
gates of the eons also hated her they hate her because she wanted to be above them then orthodes
enters the disobedient one the last of the three triple powers he’d held back his own purified
light because he wanted to rule the 13th eon and everything beneath it he emanates a great
lion face power and a swarm of material emanations and sends them down into the chaos and then in
chapter 31 he goes after her so that she should look at the parts below so that she should see
in that place his light power, which has a lion face, and she should desire it, and come to that
place, and her light would be taken from her. And then she looked down. She saw his power of light
in the parts below, and she did not know that it was that of the triple-powered orthodes,
but she thought that it was from the light which she had seen from the beginning in the height.
I will go to that place without my partner, and take the light and create of it for myself,
eons of light. She descends to chaos and is surrounded by the emanations. The
lion-faced power swallows her light and the rest of her matter is thrown out
into chaos where Yaldabaoth lives half fire and half darkness. Now I’ll give you
my understanding of it and then I’m gonna move out the way. If you’re a
cynical person you wouldn’t fall like this. You can only be caught by a
counterfeit if you’ve seen the real thing. The lion face is bait for people with longing. And I
think that the writers knew that because there were people with longing. They were in a religious
landscape in Egypt that was full of lights. Some of them were real and some were counterfeit.
Part four, the repentances. In chapters 32 to 57, Sophia sings and cries out to the light.
she appeals 13 times she has metanoia a change in mindset a turning the structure is fixed and it
repeats so Sophia cries out to the light Jesus says he who has ears to hear let him hear and
the disciple stands up and shows that what she sang was prophesied in a psalm and Jesus says
excellent 12 songs for the 12 eons she passed through on the way down and a 13th for the one
she left. She explains the count herself in chapter 57. But let me read you the first one
because it’s the fullest account of the fall in her own voice.
the chaos below and then this now at this time o true light thou knowest that i have done these
things in my simplicity thinking that the lion face light belonged to thee because of the delusion
of thy light i’ve become a stranger to my brothers the invisible ones the songs she sings answering
she asks that the archons be shamed that their light be taken that they be left in the dark the
same darkness that they left her in she’s furious and she clearly names the
trap in chapter 36 Peter comes forward and says my lord we’re not able to
suffer this woman who takes the opportunity from us and does not allow
anyone of us to speak but she speaks many times so Jesus diplomatically says
Peter I see your power understands this one and he lets Peter interpret the
second repentance which he does well and is praised for. The reason I like this is I think
it gives us an idea of a real room, a real community and in this community the women are
speaking first and most often and Peter resents it but what’s important to note is that nobody in
the room is silenced and if you’ve ever sat in a meeting where one person does all the talking
and someone else finally snaps then you get an idea of what’s going on in chapter 36.
in chapter 38 Martha comes forward and she’s weeping and she falls to the ground and asks
for mercy before she’s even spoken and in chapters 42 and 43 Philip puts his book down because he’s
been scribing every word and says it’s kept him from being able to speak so the person that’s
doing all the unglamorous admin work feels invisible and he says so in chapter 44 after
the fifth song Jesus says her sin is forgiven but nothing changes Sophia is still in chaos
and in chapter 47 and this is the one I think about the most just after the seventh song Jesus
says of myself out of compassion he moves her to a slightly wider place in chaos and he does that
without permission because he can’t bear it but Sophia doesn’t realize it was him she assumes it
was the light that she saw at the beginning and she keeps praising that
light but the emanations ease back for a moment thinking that she’s been rescued
and then they realize she hasn’t so they come back at her harder hence the eighth
song now anyone who’s been in a long recovery of any kind will understand
this chapter when you’ve had a good month and then you’ve had a bad one you
feel as though you’re slipping again and whatever has hold of you is tightening
its grip and we call that the false dawn as if to say look this is part of the shape of it this is
part of recovery so expect it in chapter 52 after the ninth song in that hour her repentance was
accepted the first mystery heard her and jesus is sent secretly without any power knowing and sophia
sees him and i’ll read this bit to you because it’s the moment that the whole book really does
turn on she saw that i was understanding and that i was shining exceedingly and with compassion
towards her but i was not insolent like the lion face power and she knew that i was from out of
the height of heights in the light of which she had believed from the beginning the pistis sophia
took courage so she could tell the difference between the lion face light and jesus because
of his compassion and her 10th repentance is the first one with real hope in it in chapters 54 and
55 the lion face power sees jesus coming and spawns more emanations and orthodes looks down
from the 13th eon in anger and sophia for the first time prays directly against him she asks
that another take his place among the three triple powers then in chapter 57 we hear the 13th song
sophia asked for forgiveness from for the 12 eons and she names her transgression exactly
this my transgression is the lion face power and then this is the strangest most gnostic line in
the book she says that she alone of the invisible ones transgressed and that she did so so that
thy ordinance should be fulfilled so basically she’s suggesting that the fall was inside the plan
she was the only one that was able to do it and she did it and it was always going to happen part
five the crown so book one actually ends before the rescue is finished and jesus says by myself
alone without the first mystery he sends a light power from himself down into the chaos and it
carries her from the depths to the upper places of chaos the emanations follow sophia sings a
song of thanks he turns the light power into a crown and sets it upon her head
and all the evil master in her shakes loose and falls away into chaos the
emanations gloat over it what’s left of her light strengthens her crown and the
crown protects her light from being stolen again and she sings the light has
become a crown on my head and I will not be without it so that the emanations of
the authorities do not steal it from me and even if all the materials move i however will not move
and even if all my materials are destroyed and remain in the chaos i however will not be
destroyed for the light is with me and i myself am with the light she’s still in chaos those that
ate her and took from her are still around her and she says she will not move the rescue
at this point in the book is a change in what can be taken from you so mary the mother of jesus
interprets interprets this and jesus says she received her form from barbello and her likeness
from the virgin of the light and that for thy sake the darkness exists in chapter 60 the first
mystery having received the 13th song sends a great light power down to jesus a second light
power comes out of jesus and the two meet and the text says and become a great outpouring of light
this point mary magdalene stands up and she reads through psalm 85 mercy and truth have met one
another righteousness and peace have kissed and then four different people interpret the same
verse mary the mother tells the story of a spirit that came to the house when jesus was a child
asking for jesus my brother how she thought it was a phantom and tied it to the leg of the bed
and ran to get jesus and joseph from the vineyard and then jesus came in and embraced it and kissed
it and you became one the other mary places mercy and truth at the baptism mary the mother reads it
again as herself and elizabeth and jesus approves of all of those the book closes with a run of
names and letter strings from what it calls the endless one to be written with a sign so that the
sons of god will be manifest and i’m going to put them on the screen for you to look at just know
that no one has fully decoded these and that is where book one stops sophia at the upper edge of
chaos wearing her crown two light powers on their way to help her so here is what i would like to
leave you with one the light that catches you will look like the light that you love
we choose something because it shines like the thing that we’re reaching for but sofia’s
protection in the end was knowing the difference between what was real and what was counterfeit and
she knew it because of the compassion that came with the authentic two getting out is a matter
returning away from the counterfeit repeatedly even under pressure there will be false dawns
and they are built into it but you just need to keep facing in the right direction even when the
tightness makes you feel like you’re slipping again and three a system that’s built on extraction
was not overthrown in this book but what has changed is that their forecasts have stopped
working and their timelines have got shorter. If you’ve ever tried to change
something from the inside, whether it’s an institution, a family, a country, you
know that revolution is only one strategy but unpredictability is another.
And finally, The Shadow. This book is not egalitarian about souls. It says plainly
that ordinary humans have souls made from the Archon’s dregs and only a few
carry something from the height. The saved are the perfect number. Everyone
else is material. I think it’s important to put that out in the open. Every
awakened community will claim it has the real souls and that it’s the neighbors
that are the dregs. Book one holds that belief without any embarrassment and if
you’re going to take the crown from it you have to take the mirror too. So Jesus turned the sky
and Sophia turned her face. Next in the library is book two the extraction the binding of the
emanations and the songs Sophia sings on the way back up. As always I would suggest you read the
text. Mead’s 1921 translation is free online and I will try and put the link in the description for
you but don’t take my word for any of it turn your own face towards it and see what you see
I’m Claire this is The Conscious Radical and thank you so much for being here
