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The First Homily - 'On the Holy Gnosis'
- Jules Stany DOINEL

To the Church of the Paraclete.

I

The name of the Holy Gnosis has been forgotten among us. Gnosis is the tragic history of the fall of the spirit into matter, and of the painful and providential journey that the spirit makes to ascend from the emptiness of the night (the Kenoma) to the clarity of the divine Pleroma, from matter full of illusions and mirages to the sovereign and sacred peace of pure idea, from this impenetrable abyss to Thought, which, in their universal language, in an expression of a unique truth, the philosophers named 'absolute' and the people called God. And to operate this journey, this return, this odyssey of the human spirit, the soul has two wings, Science and Love, the celestial Christ and the Holy spirit (Christos and Pneuma Hagion).

II

These terms would not know how to frighten Idealists, nor make the indifferent smile. Souls have broken this bread and drunk this wine for centuries. As for the materialists, mids that only intersect one side of things, Gnosis can be quoted in the words of Jean Scot Erigène: "The danger is not in looking for God in nature with the torch of the Logos; it is in persisting to remain within the limits of nature when driven to the point where it is necessary to go beyond them." Scot could say this, having imposed two sources to Gnosis: "pure reason and vision." Nevertheless, Gnostics are far removed from despising experimental science but they think along the lines of Plotinus, with the Oupanishads, that above the sphere of the phenomenal world, of the world of Maïa, there is an intelligible sphere where base senses do not penetrate. They know that an idea that manifests is a Theophany, an apparition of the Divine in the human soul, and that AS GOD REVEALS HIMSELF, SO HE IS…

III

Gnosis is the science of Theophanies, of apparitions of the Divine. It is the science of Aeons, the sublime theophanies, the hypostases of divine perfection .

Once, the great Emmanuel Kant compared the soul that hovers in the absolute to a dove wanting to hover in a void. Gnosis, on the contrary, teaches us and shows us that the absolute is where the soul moves, since the soul is an emanation of the absolute.

Gnosis, said Ephram the Syrian, weaves a crown for those who love it and makes them sit upon a King's throne.

Firstly, when the LORD said: "I will send you the Paraclet who will teach you all things", He announced at the same time both Christian Gnosis and the advent of the Holy Spirit. To Jesus' prophetic speech, "the flower of the Aeons", answered, for all times, initiators and evangelical messengers. While thumbing through the apocrypha of the Bible, you will hear at nearly every instant the cry of the dove of the Holy Gnosis and its call of love to the men who hunger and thirst for justice and truth.

IV

John revealed to us that from the start-in the beginning-the Logos was emanated by God and from the Logos eminated TRUTH and LIFE. The same John, in Revelations, prophetically shows us the new Jerusalem that comes down from the heart of God, adorned like a wife for her spouse. This is the very Holy Gnosis. It is again he who sees the symbolic woman coming from the sky, clothed in the sun, crowned by twelve stars and having the Moon under her feet. It is he who finally, in his last chapter, calls to the husband in the name of the wife: Amen! Come, Lord Jesus, come!

It is Paul speaking to the Colossians of God's mystery manifested in the Christos, in which are contained all the treasures of the HYPERGNOSIS-and, in the epistle to the Galatians, saying: "If you led by the SPIRIT, YOU are not under the Law!" It is Apollo, in the admirable epistle to the Hebrews, presenting us the Son, the MONOGENES heir of all things, by whom God made the Aeons: the only Son, splendor of the Glory and image of divine SUBSTANCE, that sustains all things by the LOGOS.

V

The doctors and bishops of this Gnosis are the repositories of the esoteric sense of the Bible. It is to us, pontiffs according to the order of Melchizedek, that the Angels confided the pectoral whereupon blazes the Urim and the Thummim (Leviticus viii:8). It is we who read from the book of the Law (Nehemiah viii:8). It is our writing that is sealed in the name of the King; it is we that bear the King's ring (Esther viii:8).

Is it of us that it is written: "Those that are donned in garments of white, who are they and from where did they come? These are those who have endured the great Tribulation and have washed their tunics in the spiritual blood of the lamb (Ram), and are virgin to the superstitions and sins of the Hylic world!"

Gnosis is the very essence of Christianity. (Countess of Adhémar, Theosophical Review, June 21, 1889.) Here is, beloved, the most 'just' definition of Gnosticism. Whereas Christianity told us from where we came and teaches us where we go. Unde venis and quò vadis?

To know this is to know the only thing necessary. Porro unum is necessarium! This illuminative Gnosis is the pearl of the Gospel for which the man worthy of this name must sell and give away everything that he has.

"My soul, from where do you come? Said Saint Basil. Who assigned to you to bear a cadaver? If you are something celestial, oh my soul! teach me."

And Gnosis answers: "In contemplating the Pleroma, you will know all things."

VI

The illustrious Mr. Franck, noticed exactly that Gnosis pretends to be a complete and definitive synthesis of every belief and idea of which humanity has need to realize its origin, of its past, of its end, of its nature, of its future, of the contradictions of non-existence and the problems of life, (Journal des Savants.)

The first Principle is the abyss, absolute Unity, existing by itself, the Ineffable Father, and that cannot be defined precisely because it is ineffable. It is the Being in power with every possibility within its breast, enveloped within its mysterious silence (Sigê) and containing within itself Light, Life, Love and Thought! If the Ineffable Father comes out of this Silence, if this abyss overflows, if this Power manipulates itself, it is not NECESSITY that restrains it, it is LOVE. And it is because he loves that he parts with himself, expands, precipitates, leaves his majestic solitude, prolonging himself to love. Because, says Valentin, he IS LOVE, and there is no LOVE without something beloved!

From this unity of love springs duality (dyad), a living duality, theophany of the absolute, masculine and feminine, lover and beloved, and that which is revealed as Spirit and Truth (Noûs and Alêtheia).

VII

We will stop here, beloved, leaving to a second Episcopal Homily the sublime continuation of this epic.

We deliver this preamble of the divine manifestation to your meditations, to your contemplations.

You who are part of the Church of the Paraclete, join with your brothers. It is by your prayers and your studies, it is by your obedience to your invisible shepherds, it is by your flight from personal pride and everything that can destroy charity, that you will succeed in establishing the profoundly strong foundations ofthe visible community of Pneumatics that the MANIFESTATIONS of On High announce and promise to us. -Amen.

Given under the Tau, August 18, 1890, in the ninth year of Our Lady the Holy Spirit.

T JULES, Gnostic Bishop.