A glossary of deities and concepts from Gnostic mythology.
Craig Chalquist
Chalquist.com
2026
Truth did not come into the world naked, but in symbols and images. – Gospel of Philip
Many centuries ago, seekers in the Eastern Mediterranean formed circles for study, ritual, and storytelling. They were called “Gnostics” in derision; the word refers to knowledge, but for Gnostics it came to mean direct experience of the sacred. Most had no interest in legalisms or creeds, least of all those of early Christendom. Variety prevailed; two well-known Gnostic groups were Sethians, whose Platonized tales followed an Unknown God, and Valentinians, who revered Sophia.
In their tales, the world was dominated by archons, tyrannical powers determined to keep humanity in the sleep of ignorance. Some Gnostics were pagans, some Christians. Most revered Sophia, Eve, and Mary Magdalene as Messengers of Light who bridged the gap between the seeker and the ultimate God in exile, like the world created by his demiurge, hidden behind the veils of illusion. Peaceful practitioners, the Gnostics have never been known to be involved in warfare, crusading, or massacre.
As an authoritarian form of Christianity captured Rome, outlawed Gnostic texts were hidden away to keep them safe. Some of these surfaced at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945, when a very different picture of the early churches (not church) finally came to light.
Gnostic stories are complex and often difficult to understand. Taking them literally is probably not what their tellers intended (see “Literalism vs Symbolism” below). The tales are not heresies, having preceded the term itself; rather, they are wisdom tales of how awakened human beings can find liberation from the bonds of ignorance.
To read Gnostic texts visit the Gnostic Society Library. Excerpts of little-known teachings of Jesus appear in my Wisdom Sayings of Jesus the Gnostic.
See also my articles “Eve Reconsidered,” “Gnostic Antecedents of Jung’s Key Concepts,” and “Hidden in What Is Visible: Deliteralizing the Gnostic Worldview.”
Aberamentho: the mystery name of Jesus. It may mean “power of waters” because Jesus was said to walk on them.
Abrasax (also Abraxas): a redeemed archon with the head of a rooster, the body of a man, and curled snakes for legs. In Basilidean Gnosticism, Abraxas is an ally of Sophia. His name might mean “Lord of Hosts.” For C. G. Jung and Hermann Hesse, Abraxas a symbol of the union of opposites.
Achamoth: anagram for Chokmah, "Wisdom": the lower Sophia of Valentinian Gnosticism who remains when the higher one rises back into heaven.
Adam: a lifeless lump of flesh (see Job 25:6) assembled by archons until Eve’s spirit enters his body: the reverse of the rib tale. In The Apocalypse of Adam, he and Eve were fused like the androgynous angels (aeons) in heaven before the demiurge tore them apart and made them mortal, hence the Gnostic saying, “The separation of the sexes was the beginning of death.” In the Secret Book of John, various archons create Adam’s body parts; this translates into healers asking aeonic powers to apply bodily healing, depending on where the infirmity is. Adamas (also called Pigeradamas and Geradamas, “Adam the stranger”) is Adam’s heavenly counterpart.
Adonaios: A friendly archon who works for cosmic restoration rather than against it.
Aeons: personified beings or realms emanated by God. They include Insight, Mind, Word, Life, Sagacity, Only-Begotten, Ageless, Commingling, Immovable, Mixing, Immovable, Faith, Hope, and many others. In Jungian, they are archetypes. From heaven (called Pleroma, or “Fullness”) to earth, emanations of the feminine energies of God include Protennoia (“First Thought”), Pronoia (“Forethought”), Epinoia (“Insight” or “Imagination”), Zoe (“Life”), Eve (“Living Being”), and her daughter Norea (“Fire” or “Light”).
Aeonic Copies: In Sethian lore, a kind of celestial vestibule between the moon and the fixed stars where souls training in enlightenment glimpse the glories of the higher aeonic realms. Exposure to the diluted light of the Copies helps liberated souls train for immortality.
Aerosiel and Selmechel: a pair of guardian angels who look out for Sethian Gnostics.
Agape: Selfless love. For Valentinians, an offspring of the aeonic couple Anthropos and Ecclesia and partner to the aeon Metricos (motherhood).
Agnosia: lacking gnosis.
Agromauna: the angel who created the heart.
Aiolaeus: Mercury.
Akramas: aeonic guardian of the soul.
Allogenes: "alien" or "another kind": how the truly spiritual are perceived by the uninitiated. Also, an occasional reference to Seth, the first Gnostic and a son of Adam and Eve, and to Pigeradamas, the heavenly Adam.
Amente: the realm of the dead. An Egyptian term.
Anastasis: inner resurrection. Gnostics often shook their heads at true believers for taking the resurrection of Jesus so literally (see Hylicism). Resurrection for them meant not so much salvation as liberation.
Angel: celestial messengers who can be dangerous as well as beneficent. When we die, we are reunited with the Angel of our innermost or highest self. See Soul.
Anthropos: a celestial and archetypal blueprint or aeon of humanity. The demiurge copied Adam from it. In some Gnostic tales, Nature falls in love with this blueprint, and we are the result.
Antitactes: supposedly licentious Gnostics. This was a common accusation by the early Church Fathers.
Antitypoi: copies made by an archon. The theme of copies, for good or for ill, permeates Gnosticism. We, for example, are copies of our Angel residing in the Pleroma.
Apocalypse: a written revelation or unveiling.
Apochryphon: a secret written teaching.
Apokatastasis: the restoration or resurrection of the entire creation to a state of perfect holiness. Like the alchemists who came after, the Gnostics were concerned with much more than merely personal salvation or self-realization.
Apolutrosis: initiatory Gnostic baptism given to adepts.
Apolytrosis: release from worship of the demiurge. In other words, the process by which a believer stops worshipping a bullying authoritarian father god and instead listens inwardly for the presence of a God beyond form or gender, shifting from an oppressive image to That which lives beyond image.
Aponoia: unreason even when the facts are in plain sight. Dogmatic stupidity. Also referred to as “the deep sleep.”
Apophasis Megale: a book attributed to Simon Magus. In it, a supreme Power emanates the cosmos and gives human beings a spark of the Divine. The book survives only in mentions by Hippolytus.
Archons: “rulers”: the "authorities of darkness" who rule our world, perhaps as shadows cast by the aeons. The power principle in personified form. Some Gnostic art depicts them as Roman military commanders. Archons are sometimes identified with what we now know as the seven visible planets.
Archontic: manifested by archons. Some Gnostics thought the early Church to be archontic.
Archangelic Book of Moses the Prophet: a lost Gnostic work of angelology mentioned in various ancient documents.
Astaphaeus: Venus, an archon of desire.
Astroeides ("Body of Stars"): Spiritualization of the body from the inside out. Similar in some ways to the subtle body in alchemy.
Athanasius: the “saint” who ordered all apocryphal and Gnostic texts destroyed throughout Egypt (Festal Letter, 367 CE). He also excluded many other writings favored by Christians of the time.
Authades: in Pistis Sophia, a power above other aeons; “Thought,” perhaps. (In antiquity, “thought” had a broader meaning than disembodied thinking or intellectualizing.)
Autogenes: self-generated. A quality of the spirit. Also, the lowest of three levels or realms of the Barbelo Aeon, in which Gnostics beyond reincarnation await joining with their celestial sources. In Sethian texts, this realm contains the Son (Triple-Male Child) born with Four Luminaries and part of the high trinity of Invisible Spirit, Barbelo, and Autogenes. The Autogenes also contains Sophia, Mirothea (mother of heavenly Adam), and the heavenly seeds of the Sethian Five Seals ritual.
Baptism: in Valentinian Gnosticism, known as the Silence; for Sethians, a Five Seals ceremony in which the aeon Forethought descends to awaken the initiate while placing their image in the watery light of the Pleroma. The Five Seals included the Bridal Chamber (Nymphion), a ritual of some kind of heavenly union. According to Irenaeus, the Valentinian Second Baptism included a period of silence ending with the leader speaking, “In the name of the unknown Father of the universe, in Truth the Mother of everything, in he who descended into Jesus, (may you go) into union, redemption, and companionship with the Powers.” Initiates were anointed with water and oil and then reunited with their aeonic counterparts, reversing the splitting of Adam and Eve.
Barbelo ("bar-BEE-low"): the self-reflective or feminine pole of God; Sophia-like mother of the aeons. The name Barbelo links the words “God” and “four” and refers to the feminine pole of the divine. The “four” might come from her inclusion of forethought, indestructibility, eternal life, and truth (Secret Book of John). The Barbelo Aeon enfolds three primal powers—Existence, Vitality, and Mentality (or Blessedness)—and, in the Zostrianos text, contains all archetypes. “We are a shadow of you,” states an invocation to Barbelo from The Three Steles of Seth, “even as you are already a shadow of the preexistent one.” Protennoia and Pronoia and other Gnostic goddesses seem to be versions of Barbelo.
Bardesanites: Syrian-Egyptian followers of Bardesanes, a late Gnostic who had followed Valentinus. Their tales spoke of six living elements organizing the cosmos in six directions; the Word lived in all created beings. After the death of Bardesanes, Bishop Rabbula ordered their worship places in Edessa destroyed and built his own churches there.
Basilideans: an early Alexandrian Gnostic sect that emphasized God creating through three unfolded sonships. Liberation from evil came through gnosis. Basilideans were the first to celebrate the Epiphany, the revelation of Jesus to the Wise Men, and the first to celebrate Good Friday, although on the 25th of March. Basilides was the first Christian to write commentaries (now lost) on the early Gospels. He taught reincarnation and disbelief in Hell and probably knew Valentinus. Fragments of Basilides point to reincarnation and a kind of karma of sin, and to sharing with God a kind of filial substance ("sonship") that precedes both spirit and the cosmos. He might have written a work called Secret Doctrines with his son Isidore. Abrasax is a benevolent archon who hatches from a cosmic egg, creates Christ, and is linked to the number of days, 365, in the Egyptian calendar, which is also the number of heavens he rules over. The demiurge ruling the 365th heaven creates the world out of nothing, the ex nihilo doctrine absorbed by Christianity.
Borborites: early Gnostics who supposedly practiced sex rituals.
Bythos: "Depth," a Valentinian term for the primal father god. The ultimate Ground of the cosmos and beyond.
Carpocratians: an Alexandrian Gnostic group who told stories about reincarnation and about Jesus being the son of Joseph. Reputed libertines, but they took seriously the equality of women, some of whom led. They saw archons as prison wardens who punish us until our souls are purified during repeated rebirths, as with Jesus.
Charaxio: the mountains where legendary Seth hid his Gnostic writings. (The theme of hidden writings resonated throughout Gnostic tales long before the tales themselves were hidden to prevent them from destruction.)
Choic: materialist. See Hylicism.
Chous: the demonic part of humans. One of three non-corporeal parts; the others are soul and pneuma (spirit).
Chaos: in some texts, Sophia’s partner in creating the demiurge.
Christian: a term not used until the second century, when a group of churches formed an alliance and declared themselves to have apostolic authority. The earliest "Christians" were diverse and included ethnic Jews, Gentiles who observed Jewish Law, non-observant Gentiles, pagans, and many other groups in Europe, Asia Minor, and Africa. Some Gnostics were Christian, and others (as indicated by texts like Marsannes and Zostrianos) were not. (As April DeConick argues in Comparing Christianities, "By making the Gnostic an alternative Christian, we shut down our ability to investigate pre-Christian and non-Christian Gnostic movements. Worse yet, this language of alternative Christians erases Gnostic identities from historical memory.") No single churchly authority shows up in Paul's letters; the commonalities included informal gatherings, women serving as deacons and leaders, preaching, baptism, healings, visions, care for the poor and needy, and a Eucharist meal. Ignatius of Antioch, who lived at the time of early Gnostics like Marcion, pushed a supposed line of authority from the first Apostles, the authority of "Christian" bishops over elders, standardization over plurality, Judaism as evil (which nevertheless anticipated Christ, as did various pagan philosophers), creedal loyalty oaths, and dissenters as offspring of Satan. He expected his martyrdom to put him directly at the right hand of Jesus, but his account of being taken to Rome for execution doesn't add up. Neither did his ally Polycarp's. Bishops influenced by them in Asia Minor and West Syria begin the authoritarian (A Gnostic would say archontic) takeover of early Christianity by denouncing those who protest as traitors. Justin Martyr makes Christians, not Jews, the Chosen Ones of God. Churches that claimed authority from the disciples of Jesus also called themselves "catholic," meaning universal, thanks to Irenaeus of Lyons, who also selects four from numerous gospels, names them, and falsely claims they were eyewitness accounts. He teaches that people outside his version of Christianity, including those that ordain women, are heretics who will burn forever. The Gospel of Luke is written in part to attack Gnostics, and the Acts of the Apostles are altered to minimize differences between Paul and Peter. In the early third century, Tertullian distinguishes Old Testament from New, says his version of Christians own scripture, and blames women for the downfall of everything and for an intergenerational evil that Augustine repackages as original sin. Gnostics too are blamed to shift Roman attention to them. Clement attempts to appropriate "gnosis." By 367, Athanasius bans Gnostic texts and they go underground, sometimes literally (as at Nag Hammadi).
Codex: early loose-leaf books such as those housing Gnostic texts.
Colophon: the title at the end of the text, if there is a title.
Coptic: the Egyptian language in which Gnostic texts were written.
Corpocratians: a Platonic Gnostic sect who saw Jesus as a Gnostic who remembered his divine roots in the One Beginning (God).
Cosmocrator: a devilish, world-ruling son of the demiurge.
Daveithai: one of the Four Luminaries, angelic beings of Sethian Gnosticism, and protector of the seed of Seth, the race of Gnostics.
Demiurge: called Ialdabaoth ("yahl-DAH-bay-ought"), possibly “YHWH Sabaoth (Lord of Hosts”), the trickster lower god who created the material world. Also called Saklas (Aramaic “fool”), Elsadaios, Nebrouel, and Samael (Hebrew “blind god” and a devilish angel of death) and described as a lion-faced serpent. (William Blake called him "Urthona"—Earth Owner—and "Ancient of Days.") Ophites saw him as a kind of Lucifer who fell and led an army of planetary archons: Adoneus, Astaphaeus, Sabaoth, Eloeus, Iao, Oreus, and others (mostly names from Jewish lore). For Sethians, the demiurge was evil, but for Valentinians, either beneficent (as in Plato) or clumsy but redeemable. Despite debate about how literally Gnostics took this idea of a lower god, they seem to have meant the authoritarian bully believed in by dogmatic faith holders. God is in exile, and an impostor is mentally in charge. (The history of mishaps, thefts, lost and buried Gnostic manuscripts, and long-delayed publications has the flavor of a demiurge trickster at work…)
Demons: personifications of lust, fear, anger, envy, callousness, pride, etc.
Derdekeas: a light-bearing savior figure in The Paraphrase of Shem.
Docetism: the belief that the physical body of Jesus was an illusion. Valentinian Gnostics were Docetists who saw Jesus as a wholly spiritual being and took the crucifixion less than seriously; in one Gnostic text, Jesus calls it a joke. According to the Second Treatise of the Great Death, many Christians worship a dead man.
Dositheos: a legendary leader and founder of Samaritan Gnosticism who gave way to Simon Magus and his partner Luna.
Doxomedon Aeon: the five entities Invisible Spirit, Barbelo, the Triple-Male Child (Savior), angelic Youel, and Esephech, a glorious child figure.
Dualism: the most frequent criticism of Gnostic thought for loving heaven but hating the world. But it’s hard to know what people believe from their myths. The powerful goddesses of Greek mythology certainly didn’t signal empowered women in ancient Greek society. In one text, when a disciple asks Jesus whether they should all kill themselves and return to God, he chides them for being too literal about the teachings.
Edokla: a deity who gave birth to Sethian Gnostics in The Gospel of the Egyptians.
Eleleth: one of the Four Luminaries, aeonic powers to accompany Gnostic liberators from the Pleroma. Eleleth helps Norea when she is assaulted by archons. Sophia dwells within her.
Eloai: second son of the demiurge; “jealousy” perhaps.
Elpis: Greek goddess of hope. In Valentinianism, an aeon born from Anthropos and Ecclesia.
Endymion: in Greek myth, the shepherd who fell permanently asleep in the moonlight. A symbol of collective “sleep.”
Ennoia: “Insight,” an aeon similar to Protennoia (First Thought). In Sethian stories, she watches over Adam in the Garden and personifies as Eve. Also called Zoe, or Life, she emanates Barbelo or is a version of her.
Enthymesis: the passion or suffering of Sophia that leads to the creation of the world.
Epinoia: “Afterthought.” To hide from Ialdabaoth and the other rulers, she inhabits the tree of knowledge of good and evil from which Adam and Eve eat. At other times, she is an eagle nesting in the tree.
Eve: first Gnostic and Messenger of Light, who awakened Adam and gave birth to humanity. She is a kind of avatar of the aeon Protennoia (Forethought). When Adam expresses his gratitude for being awakened by her, she affirms, "I am the Forethought of pure light, I am the thought of the Virgin Spirit, who raises you to a place of honor. Arise, remember that you have heard…and beware of deep sleep…" In On the Origin of the World, Sophia creates Even before Adam is created. In some Gnostic texts, Sophia encourages Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge to help protect her against the rapist Demiurge.
Exousiai: celestial powers; usually refers to archons who move the planets around.
Five Seals: a Sethian set of initiatory rituals (see Baptism). According to the Gospel of Philip, they include a five-fold baptism, chrism, eucharist, redemption, and Bridal Chamber. Some of these rituals might have been appropriated by the early church. As part of the Five Seals, Barbelo descends into the underworld to awaken Gnostics to the spiritual seed growing within them.
Five Trees: possibly five attributes of mind: sanity, reason, mindfulness, imagination, and intention (Theodore bar Konai). The Gospel of Thomas puts them in Paradise.
Flavia Sophe: the name on a tombstone found outside Rome. The tombstone represents the earliest archeological evidence of Christianity. Flavia was a Valentinian Gnostic. The inscription refers to aeons and the Bridal Chamber.
Flesh: Gnostic code for ignorance or unconsciousness. The Hellenistic trope of body as “tomb” has roots in Plato contrasting overindulgent slavery to the senses with the philosophical life. This was not intended as a call to split spirit from body but tended to show up that way. The First Book of Jeu refers to "the flesh of unrighteousness."
Gamaliel: an angel associated with the Five Seals ritual and who brings Gnostics to the Pleroma.
Geradama: the heavenly or archetypal Adam.
Garment: the flesh; the body, which Jesus interprets as a symbol for ignorance. Can also be a Robe of Light, however.
Gnostikoi / Pneumatiloi / Pneumatophoroi: in Gnostic typology, the highest level. Gnostics.
Gnosis: the awakened alternative to hylicism (materialism) and psychism (belief; being a follower). “Gnosis,” a Greek word for “knowledge,” denotes insight or awakening, a knowing more than intellectual (episteme) or technical (techne), act rather than content (Filoramo). Gnosis includes liberation from collective slumber, deep transformation of consciousness, insight into the daimonic processes of the cosmos, and trans-rational self-knowledge connected to the Divine. Gnosis is the recognition of one’s true spiritual self, of “who we were, what we have become, where we were, wherein we were cast, where we are going, what we are freed from, what birth is and what rebirth is” (Excerpts from Theodotus). In the Gospel of Philip, gnosis is not just to be, but to become.
Gnosticism: a word used by scholars to describe the stories and practices of Gnostics, who rose in cosmopolitan settings like Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch, Samaria, Palestine, Edessa, and Rome. Although Karen King, Michael Allen Williams, and others argue that no single Gnosticism exists, others point to a continuity of themes, including gnosis shining in a fallen world dominated by tyrants. "Gnostic" was a term of identification in antiquity by people who felt a spiritual Presence-within looking for its Source. They didn't make up new stories so much as dream deeper into traditional ones. King and others of this group also argue that Gnosticism is Christian, but as Birger Pearson, John Turner, Gershom Scholem, and Giovani Filoramo observe, several Gnostic texts do not mention Christianity, others are heavy with later Christian changes, and almost all contain pre-Christian terminology, e.g. Merkabah and Hekhaloth (Judaism), as well as Aramaic deity names and themes from Egyptian religion. In short, Gnosticism is a conscious mythologizing toward enlightenment. Gnostic groups included Dosithians, Simonians, Cleobians, Goratheni, Masbothei, Menandrians, Marcionites, Valentinians, Sethians, Basilidians, Saturnilians, Naassenes, Ophites, Peratics, Carpocratians, Jeuians, and Justinians.
Gnostic ritual: Judging from Gnostic tales and homilies, Gnostic rituals included baptisms, meals, study circles, prayers, chants, songs, costumes and masks, torches and theatrical props and effects, rituals of initiation, dream interpretation, altered states, ecstatic visions, and perhaps plant medicines.
God: for many Gnostics, absolutely transcendent; for others, androgynous per Genesis 1:26-27. The Valentinian designation Bythos (Depth) derives from the void described in Genesis 1:2. His First Thought (Protennoia) is the Holy Spirit in that passage, as Sophia is in some branches of Judaism.
Gospels: many circulated shortly after the death of Jesus, including a lost book of Aramaic sayings attributed to Matthew, but Irenaeus of Lyons was the first to single out the four approved gospels and give them author names. He did this in the late second century as a fourth-generation Christian. He is among the first to claim that his church had received apostolic authority going back to Jesus's original followers.
Guardian Angel: a Valentinian Gnostic idea that upon death, the soul leaves the body and meets its spiritual counterpart among the Theleti (guarding angels).
Harmedon: in Sethian tales, the first aeon associated with the highest mysteries.
Harmozel: one of the Four Luminaries of Sethian Gnosticism and protector of heavenly Adam.
Hebdomad: the sublunar world, especially of the demiurge and planetary archons.
Heimarmene: fate, including astrological fate. It applies mainly to Hylics rather than to Gnostics, who break free of it. In Pistis Sophia, Jesus fights back against fate and insists on a degree of human freedom. Enforcers of heimarmene include the pantheon of Greek gods who must be seen through and passed beyond.
Hekhaloth: “halls” through which the soul must pass in the Merkavah mysticism of Judaism. Each hall was guarded by an angel who asked for a password, a procedure similar to archons requiring ciphers from Gnostics making a heavenly ascent so they can “pass within” the archons and go by them. Pistis Sophia, the Books of Jeu, and the Gospel of Mary are among Gnostic texts giving instruction (sometimes missing) on how to do this.
Helen or Helena: Ennoia in human form and fallen, having forgotten her divine origins until Simon Magus reminds her.
Heresy: Greek for “choice.” Irenaeus of Lyons changed its meaning to denounce Gnostics and supposed nonbelievers. Heretics will burn forever. His goal was to eliminate all choices except membership in the "universal" church (his).
Holy Spirit: sometimes Epinois (Insight), sometimes Protennoia (First Thought), sometimes Sophia, sometimes the spiritual force of Jesus, who in the First Book of Jeu tells the disciples, "As the Spirit of the Comforter is whole, so will you also be whole, through the freedom of the Spirit of the Holy Comforter." Some Gnostics seem to have thought Christianity more Spirit-centered than Jesus-centered.
Horaeus: the Moon.
Hormos: an angel who prepares the seed of Seth to descend into the world.
Horos: a cosmic limit or veil that keeps Sophia and the archons and other lower beings from approaching the ultimate God directly. A barrier dividing the upper and lower realms, thereby preserving the integrity of both.
Hylicism: "materialism": an incapacity to see beyond or below surface reality. Hylic people are also called sarkikoi.
Hypostasis: a personification into being, as with an aeon showing up as Insight. Similar to ousia and substantia.
IAO: the Gnostic version of the chant "aum." Also, a reference to Jupiter.
Jabraoth: an archon who grows enlightened and, with help from Jesus, rises to a higher realm above the zodiac.
Jesus: the Messenger of Light who helped luminous Sophia rescue herself from being caught in the darkness of the lower worlds. In Gnostic stories he teaches, dances, laughs, jokes, works with plants, and treats Mary Magdalene as his brightest student and co-teacher. He came here not to save the world, but to liberate those who understood what he taught. (See my book Wisdom Teachings of Jesus the Gnostic.)
Jeuians: a Gnostic group of the third century for whom the demiurge Jeu (possibly from YHWH) and his offspring Sabaoth are positive figures. Their remaining writings give instructions for accessing sixty heavenly Treasuries of Light, which is complicated: once the soul leaves the body, it passes through aeons, is cleansed, enters into the interior of a Treasury, passes the watchers, the three amens, the twins, the triple-powered ones, the five trees, the seven voices, the incomprehensive ones, etc., collecting ciphers and seals on the way. Competing with Sethians and other Gnostic sects, they seem to have grown literalistic, elitist, and hierarchical before dying out (Erin Evans).
Judas Iscariot: in the Gospel of Judas, reluctantly accepting of his mission to betray Jesus, to whom no earthly harm can come.
Kalyptos: “Hidden”: the highest level of the Barbelo Aeon, a realm of archetypes and Platonic Ideas. (Jung would probably identify it with the collective unconscious.)
Kardiognosis: “knowledge from the heart,” a Valentinian term for gnosis.
Kaulikau: Basilidean Gnostic name for Jesus pronounced when he entered the world and again when he ascended from it. The name derives from the Hebrew of Isaiah 28:13.
Kenoma: the lower world; also, the ordinary emptiness, meaninglessness, and repetitive time of the world as usually experienced. See Pleroma.
Literalism vs Symbolism: Gnostic texts chide believers for taking spiritual truths literally. Without a literal death and resurrection, of what use would martyrdom be? Belief in a God whose son was the only savior ratifies the apostolic succession for all time. For many Gnostics, literal belief is “the faith of fools”; resurrection, for example, should be a symbol of and call to enlightenment, and it happens while still alive (as the Gospel of Philip hints). Bishops and deacons and priests are “waterless canals” (Gospel of Peter).
Lithargoel: the name of Jesus in The Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles. The name might refer to a stone that gives off light.
Luminaries: four angelic beings in Sethian myth: Harmozel, Oroiael, Davethai, and Eleleth, all emanated by Barbelo. Each has an aeonic consort: Grace, Perception, Understanding, and Prudence (Gospel of the Egyptians). Youel, a fifth power, is sometimes said to bear Christ.
Male/female: Gnostic code for active or higher vs. passive or lower. Not literally about gender or sex.
Marcionites: followers of Marcion, an early Gnostic attacked by Irenaeus because wealthy women kept defecting to Marcion's church because (Irenaeus maintained) Marcion gave them a love potion. He was the first to conclude that Jesus intended to start a new religions movement centered on a loving and world-transcending God, not the dark and violent Old Testament version. He also thinks of Jesus as a spirit in human disguise (known later as Docetism).
Mary Magdalene: for many Gnostics, the true receiver of the inner teachings of Jesus. In several texts she complains about Peter's obvious hatred of her for being a woman. In the Gospel of Philip, she is called “koinonos” (companion or partner), implying that she shares the teaching with Jesus. She also kisses him, presumably on the mouth (the word “mouth” is missing but is inferred from the context).
Messenger of Light: a bearer of gnosis, often one who becomes equal to their teacher. Mary Magdalene is an example. Gnostic Jesus exhorts his listeners to become like himself and even go beyond him.
Metanoia: a profound change of mind and heart; a deep transformation of consciousness and, in Gnosticism, also an aeon sent into the world.
Middle: the boundary space between upper and lower worlds. Sometimes equated with the thirteenth aeon in which Sophia is said to reside.
Mirothea: the light-giving mother of Adamas and also of the Four Luminaries. A feminine counterpart to Autogenes.
Monogenes: “only-begotten,” sometimes applied to Jesus.
Nag Hammadi: a town in upper Egypt on the west bank of the Nile near where a collection of Gnostic texts was recovered in 1945. Local farmers found thirteen codices in a jar near a monastery, put there presumably to protect them. Also included were two Hermetic texts and a copy of Plato’s Republic.
New Testament: a term coined by the Gnostic Marcion, who with his Evangelion and Apostolicon created the first version. Paul's letters, written within two decades of the death of Jesus, are the earliest surviving Christian documents. The scholarly consensus is that Acts, Luke, the Pastoral Epistles (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus), the Catholic letters (James, 1 and 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Jude), and Hebrews are mid-second century texts written to authorize a particular group of third-generation Christians as the real ones and all others as false, a practice that started before the NT. Whomever wrote Paul's Pastoral letters attacks Marcion. Early Gnostics like Marcion, Basilides, and Valentinus were already active at this time. The word "Christian" also appears during the second century, and Paul's letters don't surface until the third.
Norea / Horaia / Orea: the fabled daughter of Eve in some accounts; in others, the wife of Seth. A Gnostic heroine and Messenger of Light. Her name means "Fire" or “Light.” When Noah excluded females from his first ark, she breathed on it and burned it down. Females were allowed aboard the second ark.
Nous: an aeon usually translated “mind,” although “creative consciousness” might be better. Paired with Epinoia (Insight) or Aletheia (Truth) and advocate for Sophia. The mother of Logos and Sophia. For the Gnostic Basilides, Nous is the parent of Logos; for Simon, the first root of the six-rooted tree of gnosis.
Ogdoad: the eighth realm; the heaven of fixed stars above the realm of the wandering planets (Hebdomad). The powers who inhabit or comprise the Ogdoad vary with the telling. The word and image come from Egyptian religion.
Oikonomia: in Valentinianism, God’s plan for the salvation of the lower world.
Ophites: the Serpentine Gnostics (probably Alexandrian Jews) who saw the Eden snake as a wisdom bringer. At death, according to the Ophites, the Gnostic soul journeys through half the zodiac before departing the cosmos: having incarnated via Capricorn (and guided by Venus), the soul departs via Cancer. The seven planetary archons were Ialdabaoth, Iao, Sabaoth, Adonai, Eloaeus, Horaeus, and Astaphaeus. Ialdabaoth in art resembled a Roman soldier with the head of a lion.
Oroiael: the angelic Luminary in whom Seth dwells. Oroiael associates with the angel Gabriel.
Oxyrynchus: site in Egypt where various Gnostic texts, including the Gospel of Thomas, were found in a garbage heap in 1896.
Parousia: although in Christianity the word refers to the return of Jesus, in Gnosticism salvific figures like Pronoia make more than one redemptive descent to the lower world, often during difficult times for Gnostics.
Perates or Peratics (“passers through”): an older Gnostic sect about which little is known. The cosmos is a fountain-like outpouring from the transcendent God into various Divinities and then into the Creation. Christ guards the star gate at the constellation Draco to open the portal for Gnostic spirits seeking the Divine once they get past Cronus (the demiurge) and the other archons whose secret names they had memorized. Peratics called this voyage the Mystery of Eden.
Phainon: Saturn.
Pigeradamas: heavenly Adam. In The Three Steles of Seth, Pigeradamas is the offspring of the divine Self-Generated One.
Platonizing texts: although Gnosticism owes much to Plato and Neoplatonism, some third-century texts (Allogenes the Stranger, Marsanes, Zostrianos, and Three Steles of Seth) bear more of a Platonic influence than others. The authors wanted to build on the spirituality and metaphysics of Plato and were criticized for this by Neoplatonists. (It may be that Plotinus first heard about Gnostic ideas of a transcendent God while in Alexandria.)
Pleroma: "Fullness," the many-layered Gnostic heaven. Emanations of the ultimate hidden Godhood reach from heaven to earth. For the Gnostics, heaven is a state of abundance or wholeness, whereas human existence can be characterized by alienation and exile.
Pronoia: the aeon "Forethought." In ancient Greek myth, the wife of Prometheus. She was involved with redeeming Sophia and is sometimes synonymous with Barbelo.
Propator: God. Following Pythagoras, sometimes known as the Monad (the One).
Protennoia: the aeon "First Thought." One of the first or primary emanations, she sometimes speaks as Barbelo and Epinoia. “I am the Womb that gives shape to the All by giving birth to the Light that shines in splendor” (Trimorphic Protennoia).
Protophanes: the highest level of the Barbelo Aeon, where the perfected unite with their angels. The other foundational emanations or aspects of Barbelo are Kalyptos (“hidden”: the archetypal realm) and Autogenes (“self-generating”: the realm of manifesting forms). Protophanes might link to the bright Greek love/eros god Phanes.
Prunikos: the lower, earthly form of Sophia.
Psychism: mere belief; also, getting lost in abstract arguments and intellectual ramblings. In Gnostic typology, psychikoi are above hylikoi (materialists) and below gnostikoi.
Right/left: Gnostic code for higher/brighter/insightful vs. lower/darker/ignorant. These directions show up a lot in Pistis Sophia.
Sabaoth ("SAH-bay-ought"): a benevolent archon; a son of the demiurge. Also, a reference to Mars. His name probably refers to “hosts” (armies).
Salome: the biblical dancer who demanded the head of the Baptist. In Gnostic legend, she and Jesus converse about death and other existential matters. She is one of many Gnostic figures who show up in Jung’s recorded active imaginings.
Sarkikoi: from sarx, “fleshly,” meaning hylics. Materialists.
Sethians: "children of Seth," a legendary Gnostic Messenger of Light. Seth, a son of Adam and Eve but of "another seed" (Genesis 4:25) than Abel, replaced his dead brother after Abel's murder by Cain. In general, Sethian Gnosticism was more ascetic, less concerned with saving the Creation, and closer to its pagan and Hebrew roots. Barbelo, the feminine form of God, appears in their texts, which emphasize Father, Mother, and Self-Generated Son. The Five Seals is a mysterious set of baptisms. The demiurge is an evil force. John Turner believes the Sethians emerged from baptismal sects in Syria and Palestine around 300-200 BCE. Sethianism showed strong Platonic and Pythagorean influences. The Secret Book of John, the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit, Melchizedek, Thought of Norea, and Three Forms of First Thought are characteristically Sethian texts. Sethian Gnosticism did well in Alexandria and then Rome, Syria, and Mesopotamia.
Seventh Root: the boundless Spirit of God in Simonian Gnosticism. Gnostics could access it directly for their own salvation/liberation.
Sexual rituals: what the early Church Fathers accused many Gnostics of performing. According to Hippolytus, this was in imitation of the “Perfect Love” between Simon and Helen.
Simon Magus: His rescue of Helen from a brothel launched a forerunner of the legend of Faust. He was from Samara, a marginalized region between Judea and Galilee. Although the New Testament disparages Simon as a wizard defeated by Christians, an early legend hints that Paul was actually Simon. “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world…” in other words, against archons: this statement is from Ephesians, a letter attributed to Paul but possibly written by a disciple of his. For Simon, the original creative cosmic principle is fire, which births six paired aeons, with Logos as a seventh and supreme power. The angels that made the world rebelled against Epinoia (Insight; the Holy Spirit), who had birthed them, and placed her in the mortal body of Helen, erasing her memory. She was awakened by a Power from on high in the form of Simon, who found her in a brothel in Tyre.
Sodom and Gomorrah: cities that in Gnostic legend were refuges for Gnostics until destroyed by archons.
Solomon: in Gnostic legend, an ambiguous wizard who built Jerusalem with assistance from demons he imprisoned in the foundations.
Sophia: “Wisdom,” an aeon who lives in the thirteenth realm between the upper and lower worlds. After her entanglement with the lower, she is helped to rise again by various salvific figures. In some Gnostic texts, she inadvertently creates the lower world while separated from her divine male partner. (In the Matrix films, the Oracle might be based on Sophia. She tells Neo that the demiurgic Architect must “balance the equation,” that’s his job, whereas hers is to unbalance it.)
Soteria: came to mean "salvation" within Christendom but originally means "healthiness."
Soul: often created by the demiurge and planetary archons or star demons and in need of reuniting the spirit, which comes from above (Exegesis of the Soul). Psychikoi are sometimes called “soulish” people controlled by different parts of the zodiac. What later Christians call soul, Gnostics would call spirit, spinther, or Spark.
Spinther: the divine Spark left in all of us by Sophia or by the Logos, both emanated by God. Gnostic practice and study are to increase our awareness of this Spark. In some Gnostic tales, after death the Spark ascends to the Pleroma and is deposited in a Treasury of Light.
Strempsouchos: a Sethian guardian of the eternal soul.
Syzygy: complementary pairs (syzygies) of male and female aeons. Jung borrowed the term to describe anima-animus dynamics. Ultimately derives from Egyptian religion. The lower world arose when Sophia tried to create without her syzygos (consort).
Theletos: desire, longing, intention, will. A lower aeon paired with Sophia.
Treasury of Light: where all the divine Sparks of Gnostics are gathered in the Pleroma. Sometimes the term describes the Pleroma itself. A key task of the Gnostic is to find the Spark within and return it to the Treasury, thus reassembling Sophia and eventually fulfilling the purpose of the Creation.
Triacontad: the thirty aeons of Valentinian Gnosticism.
Trinity: according to Marcellus of Ancyra, a lost work by Valentinus describes God’s nature as three persons: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Trinity did not become doctrine until the fourth century and is not in the Bible.
Triple-Powered: a Neoplatonic attribute of the Supreme One in Sethian tradition. It expresses existence, vitality, and knowledge.
Valentinians: Gnostics who followed the Egyptian Christian Gnostic Valentinian, who came to Rome in the mid-second century. He had had a vision of a divine child called Logos. Valentinians emphasized a transcendent God—a Hermetic influence—who manifests as the couple Father (or Depth) and Mother (Thought or Silence) giving birth to thirty coupled aeons (the real, celestial church), a redeemable demiurge, a second baptism ("Chrism") for entering the aeonic realm, meeting one's angelic counterpart there, the passions of divided Sophia translated into three types of people (materialists from Sophia's trauma, the soulish from her repentance, and the spiritual from her love of God, absorption into the cosmic Mind (another Hermetic image), and Christ and his shadow the Demiurge. The Spirit / soul / matter trinity shows up a lot in Valentinian tales. Eastern Valentinians (Alexandria, Syria, Asia Minor) told tales of the spiritual nature of Jesus, whereas Western Valentinians (Rome) focused on his physicality, via a body created by the demiurge, on Christ's reception of his aeon at baptism and release of it at his trial, and on the awakening of the psychikoi (Gnostics). Christ's presence among the aeons satisfies their need for contact with the divine. The interconnection of all things echoes in a surviving fragment of poetry by Valentinus (he might also have written the Gospel of Truth):
Harvest
I see that everything is suspended for the spirit. I know that everything is transported through the spirit. Flesh is suspended from the soul. The soul is transported by air. The air is suspended from the ether. Fruits come forth from the abyss. An infant comes forth from the womb.
Vowels: the seven sacred vowels chanted by Gnostics are A, E, Ē, I, O, U, Ō (Alpha, Epsi- lon, Eta, Iota, Omicron, Upsilon, and Omega). Used in Egyptian religious ritual, they are linked to the seven planets. The first four letters might refer to a name of God. The chanting alters consciousness.
Women: served as Gnostic leaders. Tertullian complained about this: “The very women of these heretics, how wanton they are! For they are bold enough to teach, to dispute, to enact exorcisms, to undertake cures—it may be even to baptize” (The Prescription Against Heretics).
Yesseus Mazareus Yessedekeus: personification of baptismal waters; the water of life.
Youel: the Sethian mother of glories who brings revelations about aeons and seals.
Zoe: “Life,” or Eve, a Messenger of Life.