Thunder Perfect Mind

[smokingboot]

Still inspired by the storm, I'm doing something different for Lammas.

I'm copying this famous ancient poem translated from the Nag Hammadi Library. I have chopped loads out because TPM is very long with huge chunks made incomprehensible by lost/damaged text.

Many consider this to be a poem written about Sophia, the Gnostic personification of wisdom seeking enlightenment. Many, including the authoress Asphodel P Long ('In A Chariot Drawn By Lions') consider it a testimony to intellect given divine and female shape. There has got to be a place for this view in a world where Logos was so long subdued by Credo and where, even now, women are encouraged to find identity through their genitalia rather than their brains.

Now I need to find an example of the beautiful irrational male intuitive in release, Dionysus rather than Apollo. I know he's out there somewhere, probably drunk. In the meantime:



THUNDER PERFECT MIND

(...)
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
and the sister of my husband
and he is my offspring.

I am the slave of him who prepared me.
I am the ruler of my offspring.
(...)
I am the silence that is incomprehensible
and the idea whose remembrance is frequent.
I am the voice whose sound is manifold
and the word whose appearance is multiple.
I am the utterance of my name.

Why, you who hate me, do you love me,
and hate those who love me?
(...)

For I am knowledge and ignorance.
I am shame and boldness.
I am shameless; I am ashamed.
I am strength and I am fear.
I am war and peace.
Give heed to me.

(...)

But I, I am compassionate and I am cruel.
Be on your guard!
Do not hate my obedience
and do not love my self-control.

In my weakness, do not forsake me,
and do not be afraid of my power.
For why do you despise my fear
and curse my pride?

(...)
For I am the wisdom of the Greeks
and the knowledge of the barbarians.
I am the judgement of the Greeks and of the barbarians.
I am the one whose image is great in Egypt
and the one who has no image among the barbarians.
I am the one who has been hated everywhere
and who has been loved everywhere.
I am the one whom they call Life,
and you have called Death.

(...)

Why do you curse me and honor me?
(...)
I am the knowledge of my inquiry,
and the finding of those who seek after me,
and the command of those who ask of me,
and the power of the powers in my knowledge
of the angels, who have been sent at my word,
and of gods in their seasons by my counsel,
and of spirits of every man who exists with me,
and of women who dwell within me.

(...)
I am control and the uncontrollable.
I am the union and the dissolution.
I am the abiding and I am the dissolution.
I am the one below,
and they come up to me.
I am the judgment and the acquittal.
(...)
I am the hearing which is attainable to everyone
and the speech which cannot be grasped.
I am a mute who does not speak,
and great is my multitude of words.

(...)
I am the knowledge of my name.
(...)