Apocryphon of John

[edd]

Recently, I've been running a gnostic book discussion group in my livingroom that's associated with the AJC called St. Gerasimos (St. Gery's in the hizzy, woop woop!), and last night we finished up a section on the Apocryphon of John. Of course, we got all caught up in the odd names, apparently incosistent use of pronouns and the unwieldy number of pseudonyms all the characters have. Somebody even noticed a possible connection between this book and the book of Abramelin the Mage. That last 1 might be a bit of a stretch, but it was fun.

Of course, after everybody left, I noticed the most interesting thing (for me, anyway) and that is that the Apocryphon of John is a story about a god and its mirror. The story is symmetrical, like a diamond shape on Harlequinns outfit. On the spirit side of the mirror, we have the divine breaking itself down into its constituent parts, and on the material side, we have the many 'angels of poverty' and 'demons of chaos' binding themselves togethor into a human being, the idea for which came from a reflection. On 1 side, the parts stay still while the whole seems to move, and on the other side, the whole stays still while the parts seem to move. Also, there's all kinds of talk about light and 'gazing out'. I could go on for quite awhile.

So, I'm sure others have noticed this. I'm trying to get my thoughts organized on this, and I'm a little dizzy from the information download, as it were. What do you guys think of this interpretation? Do you think it was worth staying up all night thinking about this?

[jordanstratford+]

Quote:Do you think it was worth staying up all night thinking about this?

Yes.

[Kushana]

(08-09-2010 07:30 AM)edd Wrote:  we got all caught up in the odd names, apparently incosistent use of pronouns and the unwieldy number of pseudonyms all the characters have.

That's most of the Nag Hammadi Library, I'm afraid.

-Kushana