Practicing Gnosis
Ritual, Magic, Theurgy and Liturgy in Nag Hammadi,
Manichaean and Other Ancient Literature
April DeConick, Gregory Shaw, and John D. Turner, Leiden: Brill, 2013
Description
Ritual, magic, liturgy, and theurgy were central features of Gnosticism, and yet Gnostic practices remain understudied. This anthology is meant to fill in this gap and address more fully what the ancient Gnostics were doing. While previously we have studied the Gnostics as intellectuals in pursuit of metaphysical knowledge, the essays in this book attempt to understand the Gnostics as ecstatics striving after religious experience, as prophets seeking revelation, as mystics questing after the ultimate God, as healers attempting to care for the sick and diseased. These essays demonstrate that the Gnostics were not necessarily trendy intellectuals seeking epistomological certainities. They were after religious experiences that relied on practices. The book is organized comparatively in a history-of-religions approach with sections devoted to Initiatory, Recurrent, Therapeutic, Ecstatic, and Philosophic Practices. This book celebrates the brilliant career of Birger A. Pearson.
(Text from the publisher)
Table de matières
Introduction
For Birger Pearson: A Scholar Who Both Studies and Embodies Syncretism
Religionsgeschichtliche Schule, Religionswissenschaft, Piano, Oboe and Bourbon
Birger Pearson: Scholar, Professor and Mentor
Birger Albert Pearson A Bibliography
The Road for the Soul Is through the Planets: The Mysteries of the Ophians Mapped
Ecstatic Religion in the Roman Cult of Mithras
The Gospel of Philip as Gnostic Initiatory Discourse
Becoming Invisible: Rending the Veil and the Hermeneutic of Secrecy in the Gospel of Philip
Ritual in the Second Book of Jeu
Death on the Nile: Egyptian Codices, Gnosticism, and Early Christian Books of the Dead
Going to Church with the Valentinians
Practicing “Repentance” on the Path to Gnosis in Exegesis on the Soul
Opening the Way of Writing: Semiotic Metaphysics in the Book of Thoth
“I Worship and Glorify”: Manichaean Liturgy and Piety in Kellis’ Prayer of the Emanations
The Manichaean Weekly Confession Ritual
Ritual Ingenuity in the Mandaean Scroll of Exalted Kingship
Natural, Magical, Scientific or Religious? A Guide to Theories of Healing
Astrological Medicine in Gnostic Traditions
The Persistence of Ritual in the Magical Book of Mary and the Angels: P. Heid. Inv. Kopt. 685
Image and Word: Performative Ritual and Material Culture in the Aramaic Incantation Bowls
From Baptismal Vision to Mystical Union with the One: The Case of the Sethian Gnostics
Marcosian Rituals for Prophecy and Apolytrosis
Ritual in the Hekhalot Literature
The Platonizing Sethian Gnostic Interpretation of Plato’s Sophist
Did Plotinus “Friends” Still Go to Church? Communal Rituals and Ascent Apocalypses
The Meaning of “One”: Plurality and Unity in Plotinus and Later Neoplatonism
Theurgy and the Platonist’s Luminous Body
Index
Lien