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

https://brill.com/view/title/24418

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