The Thunder, Perfect Mind
an Easter message for a New Age
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.
G.K. Chesterton
In the final part of this AstroTerica Jesus Trilogy - we investigate the BOOKS THEY TRIED TO BAN! Jesus and Mary, the untold story, and the mystery of The Thunder, Perfect Mind.
The Nag Hammadi texts are a collection of incendiary ancient manuscripts found in 1945 in Egypt. The discovery consists of thirteen papyrus codices credited to early Christian sects blew apart the carefully constructed narrative of the Christian Church.
Amongst this incredible collection are gospels by apostles Thomas and Philip and others. Controversial, and hugely inconvenient these so-called ‘Gnostic Gospels’ cast a new light on the life and teachings of Christ.
But if these were written accounts of Jesus’ philosophy written by those who knew him? why were they not included in the New Testament? And who decided what went in?
Not so Nicaea after all?
In 325 C.E. new Christian convert and Roman Emperor Constantine convened the Council of Nicaea, to decide which books and interpretations were included. Decisions taken there were political rather than theological, and compromises were made to please this powerful patron.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John made it in: they became canon.
The work of Thomas and friends was banned and there are many reasons why, we’ll delve into them shortly.
Another fascinating decision taken at Nicaea was the pairing of the Synoptic Gospels with the books of the Old Testament. It made sense on a cultural level – they were written by followers of a Jewish man, and yet there is little thematic overlap between them.
Instead, many early Christians had seen the gospels as a natural companion piece to Plato – someone who Jesus would have been aware of and with whom there is a great deal of crossover. Platonism and other Greek ‘trends’ like Stoicism infused the philosophy of Jesus, and John before him, so it makes perfect sense. The Middle East in the era of Roman Empire was heavily influenced by the Hellenistic tradition, just as the Western world is to this day.
It seems that Constantine’s Christianity ‘The Brand’ – was essentially an off-shoot creation of an empire. And many pagan and wider Middle Eastern spiritual traditions were interwoven into the story as later amendments in an apparent bid for peace and homogeneity. This probably helped make it more palatable to what must have been a vast melting pot of beliefs, cultures, and customs.
Ruling a diverse empire was tough, and Constantine wanted mass buy-in to this new concept, for the sake of a peaceful life, probably. Jesus ended up with a Winter Solstice birthday, and elements of his death story aligned with that of Persian God figure Mithras. The holy day of ‘Sun’ day appeased the Romans and their ‘Sun’ God, and the emblem of the sun, which was a cross began to be used as emblematic of Christ. Not because that was how he died, but because it was a recognisable symbol associated with pagan culture. The cross didn’t take off, until a few hundred years later, prior that the image of shepherding, the lamb or ram, associated with Aries was preferred.
But if Constantine learned anything, it was that you can’t please everyone. And appalled by the re-brand and cultural appropriation, some of the Aramaic speaking, O.G. Christians, fled into the desert, fearing persecution and trying to protect the true ‘way’. There they lived, practised, and meditated in what I imagine was an early, ascetic prototype of Burning Man.
Some ended up in Syria where they preserved their belief system withstanding the Western imperialism of the Constantine era and their practises eventually formed the basis of Eastern Orthodox Christianity which still thrives today.
Some ended up in Egypt, (Coptic Christians), and presumably this is who buried the papyrus at Nag Hammadi.
It was clearly a febrile and paranoid time (sound familiar?) and there was a whole lotta buryin’ going on.
N.B. Not to be outdone by the early Christians, a bunch of hardcore Essenes holed up in Qumran, now the Palestinian West Bank where they hid some of their ancient texts, discovered two years after the Egyptian find, these were the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea scrolls give us lots of new information about some of the esoteric Jewish practices speculated about in part 2.
But what do the Nag Hammadi texts tell us about the life of Christ and early Christian belief?
The Gospel of Thomas
Unlike the synoptic gospels which were essentially biographies of a high profile figure - Thomas talks about a Living Jesus who can be found within the text itself. This work is a collection of sayings rather than doings. Thomas presents Christ or ‘The Way’ (attention Daoists!) as integral to the creation and structure of the Cosmos. There is much more of an emphasis on ‘salvation’ through the teachings rather than the death and resurrection motif.
Thomas maintains that anyone can learn ‘the truth’ and ‘the way’.
'“When you come to know yourselves", Jesus says, "you will realize that it is YOU who are the sons of the living father.”
Shut the front door! That kinda talk ain’t gonna fly with our early Church fellas, right?
Whereas Mark was all about “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”
Thomas was more: “[the Kingdom of heaven] is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it."
(Although let’s go easy on Mark because if you’ve read part 2 you’ll know that wrote a secret gospel that was way more juicy, so perhaps the well-known one was an early example of what we call ‘audience capture’).
According to Thomas, we all come from a divine realm of permanence and intellect (hard to believe sometimes, I know). Thomas explains that we can return if we learn to know ourselves during this lifetime.
Jesus tells us "If they say to you, “Where did you come from?”, say to them, “We came from the light, the place where the light came into being on its own accord and established itself and became manifest through their image." No original sin here then!
Furthermore, sin is not the problem in the Book of Thomas - it’s ignorance!
Total doofuses that we are, we believe that the current matrix is our true home and that this is the only reality available to us. Thomas compares this delusion to inebriation effectively telling us, ‘go home, you’re drunk!’ Pass me the blue pill, dear!
Ultimately Thomas teaches that it is knowledge, rather than devotion, obedience or sacrifice is the key to the puzzle box.
And that my friends, is why Thomas did NOT make the final edit.
The idea that God is going to step in and establish a new Kingdom was a core tenet of the Synoptic Gospels and later additions by St Paul which made it into the New Testament.
This was called ‘Apocalyptic Eschatology’, another one that trips right off the tongue. But Thomas’s version of Jesus maintains that “the kingdom is inside of you”.
Here are some excerpts from another amazing piece of text in the Nag Hammadi collection is one of the best titles for any piece of literature I’ve ever encountered – the poem entitled:
The Thunder, Perfect Mind.
For I am the first and the last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am the mother and the daughter.
I am the members of my mother.
I am the barren one
and many are her sons.
I am she whose wedding is great, and I have not taken a husband.
I am the midwife and she who does not bear.
I am the solace of my labor pains.
I am the bride and the bridegroom, and it is my husband who begot me.
I am the mother of my father
What people focus on here, it is written from the female perspective – and this is remarkable given the times they were living in.
But for me this evokes the non-dualism reflected on in Part 1. It appears to be a meditation on the creation story, and the eternal chicken and egg conundrum it presents us with.
It reminds me of the Chinese origin myth of Lao Tse having to give birth to himself. What an ordeal that must have been! (Although in a way, isn’t that what life is all about giving birth to yourself? *strokes long sage-like beard*)
Back to the poem:
I am the one whom they call Life, and you have called Death.
I am the one whom they call Law, and you have called Lawlessness.
I am the one whom you have pursued, and I am the one whom you have seized.
I am the one whom you have scattered, and you have gathered me together….
Hear me, you hearers
and learn of my words, you who know me.
I am the hearing that is attainable to everything;
I am the speech that cannot be grasped.
I am the name of the sound and the sound of the name.
It’s extraordinary and the cherry on the cake is that there are a few words missing just as we come to the bit where the writer appears to be about to ‘ID’ the Creator. Classic.
The Gossip-el of Philip?
Philip’s Gospel, treads similar ground to Thomas, apart from one killer bombshell.
Phil spills some very interesting tea about female apostle Mary being Jesus’ ‘favourite disciple’ and that Jesus ‘kissed her on the lips.’
Sadly for Philip this got him struck off the Nicaea best-seller list for good, until a wandering Egyptian Shepherd (go shepherds!) found his manuscript centuries later.
The Gospel of Mary.
Yes, she had a gospel too! It wasn’t actually part of the Nag Hammadi texts, but we’re discussing it here because it is a key example of ‘the bits they left out of the Bible.’
It was discovered in the 1880’s by a German Carl Reinhardt, and referred to as the Berlin Codex. But it’s often viewed as part of the same collection, it was published in 1955 and was originally found with other copies of material found in Nag Hammadi.
Who was Mary though? Just over a century earlier, The Pistus Sophia came to light detailing Christ’s conversations with Mary Magdalene, but also with his sister Mary, and of course his mother, also called Mary. One can only imagine the occasional and hilarious confusion that arose ‘Chez Jesus’!
Philip tells us that this gospel was written by Mary of Magdala, the woman mentioned in the canonical gospels as a follower of Jesus, but written off by the Catholic Church as a prostitute until 1969, when they apologised for this gross mischaracterisaton finally stopped calling her that.
Megan Watterson explains in her book Mary Magdalene Revealed, that the historical Mary of Magdala (her place of origin) was a well-to-do, literate woman who had escaped being married off to some local merchant, and opted for a more interesting life hanging out with Jesus instead.
“I will teach you about what is hidden from you”
Mary 6:3
Mary’s gospel contains teachings given to her by Christ which explain in some part why women were just as capable of spiritual enlightenment as men – a revolutionary concept in a time when women were chattels.
“Peter said, has the saviour spoken secretly to a woman and not openly so that we all could hear? Surely he did not want to show that she is more worthy than we are?” Then Mary wept and said to Peter, “My brother Peter, what are you imagining? Do you think that I have thought up these things by myself in my heart or that I am telling lies about the Saviour?” Mary 10:3-6
She tells us how he instructed her in a process of unification – exactly what we can only speculate, but the concept of unity is consistent in meditative practices, union with the divine, marrying heaven and earth, balancing left and right hemispheres of the brain. At the end of the book, she describes how the other disciples were annoyed that they hadn’t been given this innermost inner door teaching.
Well dear reader, is your mind boggling? Mine certainly is!
Whatever else was going on with this lot; Jesus, Thomas, Philip, Peter, Mary, Mary, and Mary – there is one commonality amongst these texts which ruled them out of inclusion in The Book.
They are what theologians like Dr. Karen King refer to as ‘ascent narratives’, concerned with the ascent of the soul and personal development – leading to a state of enlightenment, or rather awareness that everything is connected, we all emanate from ‘the one’ and that is where we return. They endow the reader with sovereignty and an innate connection to the divine, that doesn’t need to be bestowed upon them by some self-appointed higher-ups.
No wonder the chaps at Nicaea left them out, how different might our world have been, had they not? And how different is our worldview in the decades since we’ve rediscovered them?
Hopefully, over time, understanding how the supposed dichotomy of Eastern and Western thought are actually in harmony, will help us synchronise our inner and outer divisions and we finally comprehend that everything is connected and we are all one.
In a time of great division and societal fracture, it’s helpful to hold on to this dangerous and revolutionary concept hidden from us for centuries; perhaps this is the real message of Easter?
Until next time :)
Love your substack Maggie and your writing! Just brilliant. Happy to find you here. I’m a newbie on the app :) but loving the freedom that writers have here.
Brilliant article. So thought provoking. Imma gonna have to read all three Adan to fully digest… but fascinating to see what was excluded and theorised as to why. A whole new meaning to an edit! As ever, who benefitted from the exclusion? It’s like the masses of today being sold one ideology through media. Imagine as you say if we hadn’t been? Mind boggling