Weekly Apocryphote: June 8-14

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Awaken your divine nature to God.  Strengthen your soul (to be) without evil...Seek what is permanent, what is not generated.  The Father of everything summons you...You have not come to suffer.  Rather you have come to escape from what binds you.  Release yourself, and what has bound you will be undone.  Save yourself, so that what is (in you) may be saved...Why are you hesitating?  Turn around when you are sought.  When you are summoned, listen.

Zostrianos 130.19-131.19; translation is mine

Weekly Apocryphote: May 12-19

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Woman with mirror, Louvre CA587 

Woman with mirror, Louvre CA587

 

Unless you become like the things that actually exist, it is impossible for you to see them. Yet this is not how it is in our world.  We see the sun without being a sun.  We see the heaven and the earth and everything else, but we are not them...But when we see things in the spiritual realm, we become those things. We see the Spirit, we become spirit...In our world, you see everything except yourself, but in the spiritual realm, you see yourself.  And what you see, you will become.

Gospel of Philip (translation is mine; with occasional adjustment of person and tense for aesthetics)

Weekly Apocryphote: May 5-11

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A quotation of the Gospel of Philip in the comment of my post yesterday reminded of the time years ago when I would present a weekly apocryphote as food for thought or contemplation.  The idea is like those weekly calendars that display a pretty picture and a bible quote to illuminate us.  Here, on this blog, the forgotten and forbidden are called forth instead.

Week May 5-11

"Redemption is an ascent.  It is (ascending by) the degrees which make up (God's) Wholeness...It is an entrance into what is silent, where there is no need for voice nor for knowing nor for thinking nor for enlightenment, but (where) all things are light, needing no illumination." 

Tripartite Tractate 124.14-15, 19-25.  Translation mine.

Apocryphote of the Day: Meditation on Easter

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"He dwells either in this world or in the resurrection or in the middle place. God forbid that I be found there! In this world there is good and evil. Its good things are not good, and its evil things not evil. But there is evil after this world which is truly evil, what is called 'the middle'. It is death. While we are in this world it is fitting for us to acquire the resurrection, so that when we strip off the flesh we may be found in rest and not walk in the middle. For many go astray on the way. For it is good to come forth from the world before one has sinned."

Gos. Phil. 66.8-24 (sec. century Valentinian text)

Apocryphote of the Day: 8-20-09

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My heart was pruned and its flower appeared,
Then grace sprang up from in it,
And it produced fruits for the Lord.
For the Most High circumcised me by his Holy Spirit,
Then he uncovered my inward being towards him,
And filled me with his love.
And his circumcising became my salvation,
And I ran in the way, in his peace,
In the way of truth.

Odes of Solomon 11.1-3 (Syrian, end of second and beginning of third century CE)

Apocryphote of the Day: 8-18-09

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I promise to return to more substantial posts next week. I have given myself the first three-week "vacation" I have had, well, since I can remember. Once I am back in the office, regular "hearty" postings should resume. But for now, an apocryphote for the day.

"If you desire to devote yourselves entirely to God...lend to those who do not repay you."

Ahmad ibn Hanbal, al-Zuhd, The Muslim Jesus, pp. 144-145