Greco-Christian stream·Pistis Sophia·Second Book — The Repentances of Pistis Sophia·Chapter 101
Of the Limbs of the Ineffable
Saviour is their treasury · For this cause he who hath found the words of those mysteries, is like unto the First
Source context
- Theme
- culminating petition of Pistis Sophia for full restoration and ascent through the light-treasury
- Soul-faculty
- Consciousness Soul
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Neoplatonic henologyThe soul's final return to its source in the pleroma mirrors the Neoplatonic epistrophe, the soul's reversion to the One after its descent through successive hypostases.
- Valentinian GnosticismValentinian accounts of Sophia's redemption through the intervention of Christ and her restoration to the pleroma exhibit cross-tradition congruence with the cumulative repentances and restoration-petition structure of Pistis Sophia Book II.
- Jewish mysticism / Kabbalistic teshuvahThe iterative, confession-and-ascent structure of Pistis Sophia's repentances bears cross-tradition congruence with the Kabbalistic doctrine of teshuvah as the soul's staged return through the sefirot toward Ein Sof.
Chapter 101
CHAPTER 101
[THE CONCLUSION OF ANOTHER BOOK]
Of the Limbs of the Ineffable."AND those who are worthy of the mysteries which abide in the Ineffable, which are those which have not gone forth,--these exist before the First Mystery, and to use a likeness and similitude, that ye may understand it, they are as the Limbs of the Ineffable. And every one existeth according to the dignity of its glory: the head according
to the dignity of the head and the eye according to the dignity |253. of the eyes and the ear according to the dignity of the ears and the rest of the Limbs [in like fashion]; so that the matter is manifest: There is a multitude of limbs but one only body. Of this indeed have I spoken in a pattern and similitude and likeness, but not in a form in truth; nor have I revealed the word in truth, but the mystery [only] of the Ineffable.
The Saviour is their treasury."And all the Limbs which are in it,--according to the word with which I have made comparison,--that is, those which abide on the mystery of the Ineffable, and those which abide in it, and also the three spaces which are after them according to the mysteries,--of all these in truth and verity I am their treasury beside whom there is no other treasury, who hath not his like in the world; but there are still words and mysteries and other regions.
Of the dignity of those who have received the mysteries."Now, therefore, blessed is he who hath found the [words of the] mysteries [of the first space] which is from without; and he is a god who hath found these words of the mysteries of the second space, which is in the midst; and he is a saviour and an uncontainable who hath found the words of the mysteries of the third space, which is within, and he is more excellent than the universe and like unto those who are in that third space. Because he hath found the mystery in which they are and in which they stand,--|254. for this cause, therefore, is he like unto them. He on the other hand who hath found the words of the mysteries which I have described unto you according to a likeness, that they are the Limbs of the Ineffable,--amēn, I say unto you: That man who hath
found the words of these mysteries in divine truth, is the first in truth and like unto him [sc. the First, i.e. the Ineffable], for through those words and mysteries . . . and the universe itself standeth through that First. For this cause he who hath found the words of those mysteries, is like unto the First. For it is the gnosis of the gnosis of the Ineffable concerning which I have discoursed with you this day."