Nag Hammadi Codex 6: Insights into Gnostic Texts and Themes

The Nag Hammadi Codex 6 uniquely blends diverse texts, revealing insights into early Christian and Gnostic thought.

### Exploring Nag Hammadi Codex 6: Unusual Insights into Gnostic Texts
* 📚 The 1945 discovery of the Nag Hammadi library in Egypt has significantly altered our understanding of early Christianities, revealing a collection of **ancient Gnostic texts** that includes both **familiar and entirely new writings**.
* 🔍 Focusing on Codex 6, this volume stands out for its **unique theological and soteriological themes**, which may have influenced the Scribe's decision to **compile its contents in a specific way**.
* 📝 The codex consists of 78 pages made of papyrus, bound with leather, and designed to **endure over 1500 years**, showcasing the importance of materiality in preserving these texts.
* 📖 The texts within Codex 6 include the **Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles**, Thunder, Perfect Mind, and various philosophical and hermetic writings, each contributing to a **broader understanding of Gnostic and early Christian thought**.
* 💡 While some texts reflect traditional Gnostic themes, others, like the Acts of Peter, challenge the typical dualistic narrative by emphasizing the **healing of both body and soul**, indicating a **more nuanced view of the physical world**.
* 🌌 The inclusion of hermetic texts alongside Gnostic writings in Codex 6 illustrates the **diversity of spiritual thought** during the early centuries of Christianity and the **complexity of categorizing these works**.
* 🔗 Ultimately, examining Codex 6 as a whole allows for a **deeper appreciation of the editorial choices** made in its compilation, revealing insights into the **spiritual and philosophical landscape** of its time.
* 🌍 As we explore these texts, we are reminded of the **rich tapestry of beliefs** that shaped early Christianity and the **ongoing relevance of these ancient writings** in understanding our spiritual heritage.

the 1945 discovery of a veritable library of ancient Gnostic texts near Nag Hammadi in Egypt has, and is still having, a dramatic tectonic impact on how we understand the earliest and most theologically decisive years of the Christianities that would become Christianity. The 12 volumes and change are filled with a wide range of texts, some otherwise known from Antiquity, others only hinted at in polemical texts, and others still utterly and shockingly new to us. We had never heard of some of these books, and while the typical way to dive into this material is a close reading of a specific text, something I've done plenty on this channel, from the Apocryphon of John to Thunder, Perfect Mind, in this episode, I want to focus on a single volume of text rather than on a specific work or tractate in the library. Specifically, I want to take a look at what I contend is the most unusual of a frankly rather unusual collection, the collection known as the Nag Hammadi Library, Codex 6, the sixth volume in the

nakabani library. I want to argue that codex 6 stands out from the other text both in what it collects but also perhaps by a distinction of theological and soteriological themes by which it may have been grouped by The Scribe editors to put it together. Thus, by focusing not only on singular tractates of the nagamati library but on both the materiality and the spirituality of codex 6 itself, we may gain insights otherwise lost in a kind of I don't know forest for the trees fallacy. If you're interested in Magic, hermetic or agnostic philosophy, Alchemy, Kabbalah, or the history of the occult, make sure to subscribe and check out my other content here on topics and esotericism, including a numerous amount of curated playlists. Also, if you want to support this kind of work of providing accessible scholarly free content on topics and as a terrorism here on YouTube for free, I hope you consider supporting my work over at my patreon with a one-time donation via Paypal. You can use the

super thanks option below the video, or you can pick up some fancy merch. But now, let's turn to the Nag Hammadi Codex 6, perhaps the most unusual volume in the greatest surviving library of Gnosticism, Hermeticism, and frankly, spiritualities that defy any easy box to stuff them in. I'm Justin Sledge, and welcome to Esoterica, where we explore the arcane in history, philosophy, and religion. [Music] [Music] The 12 codices and change of the Nag Hammadi library were discovered under mysterious circumstances in 1945. By mysterious, I mean they were probably the result of tomb raiding. Also, by mysterious, I mean that in one of the many very unreliable narratives told by those who discovered the text, they were found in a tomb along with a skeleton lying on a bed of charcoal with unusually long fingers and teeth. So, that's not creepy. Kind of get Space Jockey vibes from Aliens. Remember Space Jockey? The engineers? Though the guy's brother who was there and some of the discovery.

narratives denies there was any such skeleton at all, which would make sense to deny that because you don't want to be convicted of grave robbing. Though the discovery would go on to get involved with a blood feud. Some guy killed his father, resulting in, I think it was one of the guys who discovered it with him. He killed his father, resulting in the time-honored tradition of vendetta cannibalism. Vendetta cannibalism, he ate the heart of the guy that killed his father. And so between all of the actual discovery, kind of got lost in the mix, you know, the blood feud heart-eating mix. So all that's to say that a bunch of old books being found in Egypt is the least interesting part of this story. Somehow you find ancient books and it gets overshadowed by vendetta cannibalism because history is amazing. However, 12 books are codices, along with some unbound material actually stuffed into codex 6, were discovered in 1945 before

the Vendetta containing a treasure of Christian Empire. Christian and non-Christian Coptic text written and bound together sometime around 339-342, or at least not any earlier than that of the Common Era. How do we know those dates? Because stuffed inside of the text and cartonage, or the stuffing used to reinforce The Binding, were found several dated receipts. Receipts which also mentioned a nearby Monastery where the codices were very likely copied, bound, stored, and studied before being kicked to the curb. It was also probably the becoming monks that buried the text following some anti-heretical book measures taken up by Theodorus, the leader of a local Monastery, following Athanasius's 39th Pascal letter. That Athanasius, like Athanasius Contra Mundi, Athanasius. That Pascal letter was written and translated into Coptic in 367. So, it's a reasonable guess to assume that those volumes are excised from the monastic Library around then and buried, perhaps as part of a funeral. Sometimes people

got buried with books or libraries, or perhaps just as part of a larger disposal of, you know, heretical books. I mean, better to bury them than to burn them. Lucky for us, the dry climate and the sturdy media upon which the books were composed meant that they would survive for over 1500 years, waiting in the darkness of the Egyptian Earth to be rediscovered. Codex 6 is a fantastic place to begin our understanding of this amazing Library. The text is composed of a single choir of Papyrus leaves. Acquires just a bunch of material folded together, basically take a piece of paper and a bunch of pieces of paper and fold them together, and you stitch those together to make a codex. You've probably done this as a kid, but Nag Hammadi 6 is just one choir made of two rolls of Papyrus, measuring about 28 centimeters tall, about 14 centimeters wide. That's about 11 by 5 inches, with a total of 78 pages, thus making the book slightly taller.

than wider compared to most modern books, with the text in one column, typically in textual continual writing. Further, it was stitched through with two other reinforcements to prevent the choir from ripping as you were reading it, and it was bound together in leather and reinforced with waist Papyrus, along with two sets of straps to close it, both top and bottom, and left to right, top and bottom, and laterally. All in all, given the sturdy media, the Codex was produced with Papyrus and leather, and the dry Egyptian environment in which it was secreted, it's not altogether surprising that such a volume could endure for 1500 years. It's a miracle, really, in some sense, but it's truly a miracle of materiality and circumstance. So, I'm still going to go with Miracle, but a very particular kind of miracle, and that's a point I want to really drive home before moving on in this conversation. Often, we engage with what I sometimes call the platonic bias. Well, we

think truly matters are the ideas of these texts rather than their materiality, but these ideas could not at all persist through time, lacking that material, very materiality. And we lose a tremendous amount of information about those very ideas, sometimes the ideas themselves, by ignoring this very base materiality of book construction, the social forces which led to their particular book being produced, when and where it was produced, why it was produced, why it was buried, the perilous path that took to modern publication and editing, and especially for this episode, the editorial decisions that led to this codex having these contents, the specific contents that it does, why these contents are not something else entirely. I think a recent book that really studies this fantastically, this material element of early Christianity, is Brent Nongbri's God's Library: The Archaeology of the Earliest Christian Manuscripts. He makes a crucially important point that our earliest archaeological evidence for Christianity, it's not churches, it's not relics, it's manuscript codices created by communities like these, and understanding

this is the first, and I think he's completely right. The decisive point in getting our history of Christianity correct. His book and blog are fantastic and are well worth checking out. I'll put links in the description. He's even produced a full-scale mock-up, without the writing, of codex 6. If you want to check that out, if you're in the material history, forensic reproduction world, it's well worth checking out. However, outside of highly specialized treatments, attracted to the Nakamati library, are typically studied in relative isolation from their larger code, ecological, and literary context, and that's not totally unreasonable. These texts are often just extremely difficult just to understand them from a literary perspective, much less a high-level synoptic approach or code, ecological analyzes. Just understanding what's going on at all in a text like the Apocryphanum John or the Gospel of Truth, much less a text as complex as it is highly fragmented like Zostrianos, it's just frankly a major chore in itself, and I'm

guilty of contributing to this as well. Just trying to make intelligible content on some of these texts is absolutely daunting, and me trying to try y'all's patients with translation issues and code ecological matters or issues of dialect in these texts or comparative studies with other texts just didn't just isn't. It's just isn't viable outside of, again, a very highly specialized environment. But this is the problem. Failing to do so also leaves out vital information for making sense of these individual texts, but also what's most important in some sense, the bigger picture in which all of this fits, the emergent field of Christianities and Gnosticisms and Hermeticisms and other philosophical, religious, and spiritual currents in a lay classical world. It's like you miss the real world that they're in by taking such a microscopic granular look at them. So in this episode, I want to do a little bit of a bird's eye view using Codex 6 again, perhaps as an outlier in an already unusual

collection of texts. Now, generally speaking, very generally speaking, what the text at the Nag Hammadi library seems to share in common is that they emerge from a theological and philosophical current that apparently came to be denoted as heterodox or heretical in the community in which they were produced and housed. It appears that they were the victims of a kind of intellectual and theological purge. That's why they got buried out there. That's why they survived at all. The irony of history. This puts the collection squarely into the category of rejected knowledge developed by Walter Hanegraaff as his central heuristic for getting at what we mean by Western esotericism more generally. They're literally rejected. They were buried in the sand. But a theologically and philosophically important kind of gravitational center for these texts is a cosmogenic mythology in which the creation of the physical world is a mistake. It's a complete tragedy. This cosmological tragedy includes other spiritual beings, us, the real us, us, our souls, human beings, our souls trapped in

the physical world trapped in bodies and somehow deluded as to our true origin, our spiritual true origin. However, a central soteriological concept is that the higher spiritual world seeks to help us, to aid us, by sending a messenger of the truth of this fallen world, such that by achieving knowledge about this truth, we are able to escape our condition, often through the transmission of various kinds of secret teachings. That being who does the revealing is often, but not always, Jesus the Christ, and not so. This acknowledges often, though not always, denoted as something like gnosis, hence well Gnostic, Gnostic here, as opposed to perhaps a soteriological theory of blood atonement preferred by the proto-orthodoxy, which eventually won out mostly, though gnosis also plays a role there too, just to be sure. It's in Paul for sure. Now, do all the texts of the Nag Hammadi library contain this myth? No. Do the various versions of this myth agree with one another? No. The Sethian and Valentinian versions of this myth differ profoundly or even

all the text in the Nag Hammadi library. Christian no in some texts Jesus or the Christ is totally absent from the narrative, and even when he's there, he's not sometimes not even named as such, but generally speaking, some version of this cosmogenic and sociological myth is a theological and philosophical gravity well around which contents of the Nag Hammadi library seem to most often orbit. Sometimes they're wide orbit, sometimes in a pretty tight orbit, and I think that's why the term library is well-fitting. Libraries contain all kinds of books, and even specialized libraries organized around a central theme will differ internally in terms of their contents and sometimes widely differ. I think this is also why we should just stop using the term the Bible, the Bible, and speak rather of something like an Israelite library, an Israelite library, and an early Christian library, the New Testament, to allow us to appreciate the internal disharmony of these collections just as much as where they agree, a point that's highly overemphasized in the interest of theological agendas rather.

than trying to understand these texts and themselves on their own terms, which again often don't even agree with each other, forcing them to harmonize themselves as a frankly bizarre project. If you just look at the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament, it's clear that there's very little Harmony in those texts. Regardless, Nag Hammadi 6 is a rather outstanding given that the general theological and social logical gravitation outline just a moment ago. It seems to defy that a bit. These texts in some way seem to be outcasts of the outcasts, or at least text set they didn't fit in anywhere. The Misfits. Nag Hammadi 6 is the misfit, though I don't want to do too much to over-isolate them from the rest of the collection just to be sure. Regardless, we shouldn't assume that the editor describes of this volume just randomly copied things together. This is just sort of a random collection of things. As a calligrapher, I can tell you that hand-copying books is no small task. I've hand-copied longish texts.

such as I don't know Meister Eckhart sermon on Hunger. It's probably 30 folios, and I can tell you that editorial and scribal decisions are anything but random or arbitrary for that matter, given the enormous amount of labor involved in the theological issues at stake. Copying one book means you're not copying another one. Copying a book means you have some Affinity to it, perhaps. Thus, we should ask ourselves, given the specific contents of codex 6, what might have been some of these considerations. So, what texts populate what I argue is a rather outstanding volume in an otherwise outstanding Library? Well, nagamati codex 6 contains, in this order, the acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles, Thunder perfect mind, the authoritative teaching or the authoritative discos or authenticos logos, the concept of our great power, fragments from Plato's Republic, the discourse on the 8th and the 9th, the ogdawad and the iniod, the prayer of Thanksgiving, along with a scribal note which follows after that.

think that's very important, and sections from the perfect discourse or the logos to Leos are eight textual units, along with to me a very important scribal note. So, what are these books about? Let's say a little bit about each one of them, though note I'm not going to go into episode length to tell here, but what I will try to do is show how they come together to make codec 6 rather interesting, perhaps unusual, maybe even outstanding in the context of the larger Nag Hammadi Library. The first is the Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles. While books of Acts of the Apostles were very popular in early Christianity, a dozen or so of them survive in various languages. These Greek-style romantic novels include involving the apostles spreading the gospel, survive, and such narratives are often the origin stories for Apostolic succession in local regions, as Mark over in Egypt, Thomas Didimus over in India and the East generally, Peter in Rome. That's no small thing. These books are that important. Despite this popularity, there is only one Acts

narrative in the entirety of the Nagamani library, which itself was otherwise unknown prior to the discovery of the library. It also follows the apostles on a highly metaphorical seed journey to a city called abide in endurance. It's very metaphorical where they meet a pearl merchant named Lethargol, whose name might mean something like bright light stone of God. There's debate about exactly the meaning of his name, though this angel that L, the M, probably indicates he's some kind of angel, does appear actually as an angel of healing adjacent to Raphael and other narratives, which is appropriate because when the apostles encounter Lothargoal again in his own city, he now appears as a physician rather than as a jewel or pearl merchant. And then he reveals himself to be Christ, as one does, one of the few times actually in the entire Codex 6 where Jesus the Christ is named as such. Again, that's kind of interesting. Lethargoal as Christ then tells the apostles to go out

and heals people's bodies, heal their physical bodies first, but then also their souls following the healing of their body with the power of the Gospel. And then he throws some final shade at rich people who ignore them. Jesus was good about throwing shade on rich people. Aside from the obvious shape-shifting Angel Jesus stuff in the form of lethargoal, which is still grounded very much in the symbolism already in the gospels, is that the apostles are bidden to heal people's bodies, their bodies, their physical bodies, as a propadotic for healing their souls. This, interestingly to me, contrasts with a general dismissal of the body and other more dualistic literature typically associated with gnosticism. Further missing are more of the more mythological elements of the sense of escaping the physical world as a kind of prison or an illusion, elaborate mythological stories about the development of the world, and in general, there's nothing terribly Gnostic, stereotypically Gnostic about this text, and to me, that makes it a bit

unusual in the context of The Wider Library. The next text to Bronte's nustaleos are Thunder Perfect Mind is just beautiful. Now I've made an entire episode about this text, and it is to my mind that only one of the most outstanding texts of the Nakamani library, but maybe one of the most outstanding pieces of poetry of the late classical world. It's a performative speech of an androgyne deity-like being who reveals themselves through a series of profound paradoxical statements, all culminating in transcending even categories of life and death itself. Not only is the text not dualist, but it seems to precisely use dualisms to press beyond them. And while the text is apocalyptic in the sense of its a revelation, that Revelation has no connection to the evil demiurgical mythology so typically associated with Gnosticism, something like in the apocryphonic John. In short, Thunder is recognized as outstanding in its own category. No one nearly knows what to do with it, both in the library.

but also just in ancient literature more generally. You can check out my full-length episode on it, but there's simply no substitute for reading it. It's just beautiful poetry. Should read it out loud. I would really recommend reading it out loud, but it's an outstanding text all in its own right, making codex sex even more outstanding for containing it. Followed then by the authoritative teaching or the authenticos logos is a didactic narrative about the origins, travails, and the ultimate Destiny of the Soul. This is kind of a buildings Roman, a coming-of-age story, but for the soul and not for spoiled 18th-century German people. It's rather similar to the exegesis of the Soul found in nagamati II, and it's worth reading the two together, especially for how exegesis of the soul of nagamati 2 happily uses both the New Testament and Old Testament, but also Homer to make their points. It's just all sacred scripture in that text. The authenticos logos is a highly

metaphorical account of how the soul was sunk into the Physical Realm, only to be secretly fed medicinal logos by her supernal bridegroom, still connected to the supernal realm. Yeah, the soul is almost always depicted as feminine in this literature. It even has the womb in Nag Hammadi II. In fact, in the text of the exegesis, that womb gets turned into a penis because, you know, gender is a grift. Despite this, she is subjected to being an outcast, a stepchild, a sex worker, a drunkard, etc. All metaphors used in the ancient world for Exile and addiction to sin caused by her being cast into the physical world, which ultimately blinds her and causes her to forget her real spiritual Origins, our real spiritual Origins. Eventually, the soul sunk so deeply into this mire is healed of her Blindness by the medicinal power of the word or logos brought to her by her bridegroom and is able to flee, at least at first, into the Treasure House of noose, into the

Treasure House of the Mind. Nevertheless, she's still oppressed by all manner of sinful and demonic assaults, tempted with satanic food, which would only further trap her in the material world. You can see here a distinction between the logos as food and I don't know evil matter as food. Though this dualism does seem pretty typically Gnostic, it could just as well be sort of generically Platonic, and even some Hermetic literature speaks in these terms despite their overall theological position holding that the cosmos is divine and thus good. Even Platina seems to slip into this kind of hardcore dualistic language. However, she, the soul, eventually realizes the emptiness of this world and flees to what this called the depth of her being, the spiritual light, which is her true self, destined to become ultimately free of this world. This text ends with a polemical note, actually slamming other Christians as, get this, worse than pagans. The other Christians, the non-Gnostic Christians or whatever, are worse than pagans. Even the pagans know that they're material icons.

and statues are just mere symbols, and the temples are merely stone, all pointing to a higher reality apparently ignored by the subjects of their polemic, probably proto-orthodox Christians. You know, Christians are overly worshiping actual idols, whereas at least the pagans know it's not really Hermes or Zeus or whatever. While the text was probably produced in a Valentinian Christian context, it actually betrays little in the way of overt Christian content and could just as well be read in a more or less purely Middle Platonic or even Hermetic context. In some ways as well, the text is just so kind of, it's kind of generic in that way. Again, note that the dramatic mythology of even the Valentinian system is basically missing as a mention of the pleroma at the very beginning, but it sort of dives right into mythology concerning the soul. But the focus here on the soul, this text could be taken and enjoyed by a relatively wide ancient audience, I think, even with overtly Christian theology largely muted in this text. So it could be really

read by anybody except from the fact that they throw shade at the Christians. But even them, it's not even totally clear who they're Throwing Shade at. That's why I think this text is interesting. It's sort of a general story, dualistic in character for sure, but so generalized that I think they could have been kind of co-opted by many of these groups. The fourth tractate of codex 6 is the concept of our great power, and it's written in a kind of tortured, maybe even unlearned Coptic, and translated from an original Greek, probably actually several texts stitched together. Scholars aren't clear about this text at all. The concept is a revelatory account of Salvation history, all of it, and even how the great power can you actually make a person invisible and immune to fire. So there's a little bit of magic kind of mixed in there for you. There you can be invisible and be immune to fire, but a notion of our great power as the ultimate deity is unique in the text of

the Nag Hammadi library. That phraseology doesn't appear anywhere else, but it does appear, interestingly enough, in other texts like the Greek magical papyri. Hence, that connection with being invisible and being immune to fire. But this is the most Gnostic text of Codex 6 and contains mythological elements of how the god of flesh created the physical world and now it's going to be doomed to go down in eternal fire with this physical world. However, those that come to have knowledge of our great power will be saved through the coming to know their true spiritual nature. I'm sure you're seeing a theme now, the history of which is spelled out in this text from the primordial period of the flood to the age which it calls the ages of flesh to the age of the soul, the period after the flood to the coming of the revealer. This is a special term where people will come to know some truth about reality. However, the revealer, who's pretty clearly Jesus, so he's never named as

such in this text. He's always just called the revealer. Will come to teach the truth in 72 languages. This is probably just a parable, metaphor for all the languages of the world. And he will speak secretly in parables. Clearly, Jesus, after being betrayed, he'll descend and defeat the underworld before ascending back up into the world of our great power. A final aeon will then begin when the followers of the revealer will be attacked and persecuted viciously. Many of these later sections of the text are probably what Scholars call X of into prophecy. They're where you describe what's happening now as if we're describing what's happening in the future. Probably recalling the wars in Judea and maybe even up to the rule of Julian the apostate, who the text might set up as a kind of antichrist figure that it calls the imitator. This period of persecution by the archons will go on for 1468 years, by the way. That's a manichaean number. That is how long the

universe itself will last until the final conflagration. You know, spiritually purifies everything by fire, in which Mercy will then begin to flow from the Divine Sophia, thus inaugurating the final aeon of beauty and marriage, in which the spiritual will dwell forever with the great power. As I mentioned, this text is the most Gnostic of those found in Nag Hammadi. So, it is interesting that Jesus himself is never mentioned by name in the text. And yet again, this language here betrays a kind of Valentinian-influenced origin. That language of Bride and Bridegroom and marriage is typically a Valentinian language. The text here is also idiosyncratic as well. It's lacking a great deal of the mythological elements of other texts, focusing specifically on the long arc of spiritual salvation from the very beginning of the physical world to the very end of the physical world, with not much interest in what came before the physical world, which is of intense interest to most other Gnostic texts.

you might imagine they're really interested in why the wall is so evil. So, they spend a lot of time thinking about how the world sort of emanated down, and there was the great spiritual catastrophe, the cosmic catastrophe. This text is interested in the historical process of Salvation in time, in this world, something that's typically sort of glossed over in other similar texts. Following the concept of our great power, we have a kind of random section of Plato's Republic, not totally random, I'll be honest, but it's a section of Plato's Republic from book nine, sort of put in here at this point. Now, nakamati 6 isn't unique for choosing to extract this little text for inclusion. The translation's a bit haphazard, the Coptic is kind of weird, and there are definitely some mistakes in here from the Greek. But it was such an evocative image in the ancient world that it was actually included in a range of didactic texts of the time. So, its inclusion here isn't totally unusual, although there

aren't other texts like this in the Nag Hammadi library. This tendulates again a brief section from book nine in the Republic in which Plato compares the soul to a creature of three manifestations: a lion, a mini-headed beast, and a human being. The mini-headed beast represents the lower passions, the lion represents the higher passions like courage (thumos), with the human being representing logos or Reason. The point being that the logos or Reason of the human being should rule over the lower passions and the higher passions, famously driving them like a chariot in some of Plato's other dialogues. Again, the image of the higher Soul controlling the lower and the upper passions would have appealed to a wide range of readers of these texts. Again, like I said, this was included in Christian literature that wasn't heterodox, from gnostics to hermeticists and even again kind of Orthodox Christians. Like this imagery and even by extension, even the imagery of the mini-headed beasts and the lions were common in the echography.

of the time among gnostics and even Orthodox Christians. You can find that kind of imagery in the Book of Revelations. One thinks of the many other Abraxas images on those so-called Gnostic gems. Thus, while the Coptic translation of the text isn't quite competent, it's interesting as an inclusion because no such other translation from an exclusively philosophical text exists in the rest of the Nakamati library. There's no like Aristotle or numinous or Chrysippus in the Nagamani library, thus making it interesting that we have a straightforwardly philosophical text here and basically nowhere else in the library. The last three selections are interesting in that they are all hermetic. They represent the Hermetic rather than a Gnostic School of soteriology. This Hermetic school held that when the soul became implanted in the body, it became infected with dimones, which prevent the soul from grasping the true nature of the world, which is that only really Divine Light truly exists. All of this is

a kind of illusion. This is a delusion, a hallucination. This school developed rituals and techniques which taught ways for gaining gnosis through the alterations of consciousness and recorded some of those experiences in texts like Nag Hammadi 6. Now, I've covered these texts at some length in my episodes on hermetic literature more generally, but suffice to say that the discourse on the 8th and the 9th are on the Ogdoad and the Iynod is a very high-level text for initiates on the way of Hermes, describing some of the final rungs of the mystical ascent and sharing a bit of the mystical technology which actually seems to be very parallel to the Greek magical papyri in which the singing of vowel sounds or strings of vowels along with nomina Barbara perhaps are part of the excitation of these alterations of consciousness. The prayer of Thanksgiving is known actually from other Greek and Latin texts, including another magical text in Greek.

by the way, and seems to have been a ritual formula widely used by hermetic communities. However, it's so generic, this hymn is so generic, it could have been used by a wide range of schools, even Stoics, I think could have used this hymn. But certainly, Christians and even Jews could have used it. You could just set it to music now, and maybe the Baptist could sing it. Interestingly enough, at the end of the hymn, we get a rare comment from the scribes, but off from the rest in a little box, noting that while the Scribe editor had access to other texts, he only included these so as to not annoy the purchaser of this codex. We could have had more texts. It's also interesting. The Scribe appears to avoid naming Hermes Trismegistus by name, something referring to him as that person, perhaps as a kind of taboo replacement. It's not clear, but how many books did he have? Send all the books, Scribe, please, just send all your books. Finally, the Codex comes to an end with

an extraction of a text already well known to us in a Latin Edition. However, also long known to be terribly defective. While the Latin is somewhat of a running paraphrase of the logos to Leos or the perfect teaching known to us in Latin again as the ascalapias. The Coptic is a line-by-line translation, much better preserving the literary quality of the original Greek text, which is really beautiful in the Coptic. The section marked out here are sections of the ascolapias from chapters roughly 21 to 29, using the traditional chapterization as we have it in Latin, and was probably selected for its concise, though perhaps slanted, quite slanted collection of hermetic teachings, especially the importance of knowledge for salvation, but also the so-called hermetic apocalypse describing the spiritual destitution soon to befall Egypt. Maybe they felt the same thing was happening to them, the composers of these texts, but also the eventual punishment of the wicked, something you don't see much in other hermetic texts by various diamonds for the sins they commit during.

this life, especially in piety, especially stealing things from temples or looting temples. Thus, the selection of this text with this focus on sin, salvation, and the eventual punishment of the wicked certainly allows an otherwise hermetic text, which again, it doesn't focus on that kind of stuff too much, to sit next to similar Christian or para-Christian texts in The Wider Nag Hammadi Library more comfortably, so to speak, again revealing the power of the editor to shape the relative valence of a text just by how they select things out and put it next to other stuff. Despite this, the inclusion of these three hermetic texts goes links to again set Nag Hammadi 6 apart from the rest of the larger Nag Hammadi Library. Taken together, we can overall know that Nag Hammadi 6 remains rather aloof from the rest of the collection, both in some of its thematic terms but also in the range of the text and the kinds of text that it preserves. In this way, it's a bit of a

grab bag with little unifying it but its differences from the other codices of the library more generally. Again, it isn't some radical departure to continue to our metaphor of the Central cosmogenic and soterological gravitation well of so many of the other texts in the nakamati library. We can just say that nagamati 6 seems to have a very odd orbit, a very odd orbit indeed compared to the rest. Thus, I think there's something important about not just looking at the individual text found within nagamati Library. They talked from John or thunder perfect mine, even synoptically with other literature in the library or the literature more broadly, but thinking about an entire codex as having its own features, its own prerogatives. One wonders if nagamati six were found isolated from all the others. What would Scholars have done with it? How would they have understood it? To what religious or philosophical genre did it belong? I think that would have been a really interesting and probably divisive debate going on now, probably.

precisely because it divides so many of the categories that we have developed to encapsulate this ancient and complex material. And in that way, if you're interested in agnosticism or hermeticism or hermetic Christianity, I'd encourage you to switch to your best beginner's mind and read through Codex 6 alone. Just read it cover to cover on its own terms and try to get a sense of what the editor had in mind when trying to put this collection together, leaving it at some level to posterity, in fact to vicissitudes they couldn't have ever even imagined, buried as heterodox, uncovered after 1500 years in the darkness, and then carrying its teachings to our heads, to our minds, and maybe even to our spirits. Until next time, I'm Justin Sledge, and thank you for watching Esoterica, where we explore the arcane in history, philosophy, and religion.

How a Gnostic Book Combined Ancient Mystery Schools - Nag Hammadi Codex VI

ESOTERICA

The Unusual Impact of Nag Hammadi Codex 6

The Nag Hammadi Library, discovered in 1945, contains a diverse range of ancient Gnostic texts that have dramatically changed our understanding of early Christianity.

Codex 6, the sixth volume, stands out for its unique collection of texts and distinct theological themes.

The codices were likely bound and stored by monks around 339-342 CE, and their burial may have been a response to anti-heretical measures taken by the local monastery.

The Significance of Codex 6 in Understanding Early Christianity

Codex 6, composed of Papyrus leaves, survived for over 1500 years due to its sturdy materials and the dry Egyptian climate.

The codex's unique construction, with 78 pages and reinforced stitching, played a crucial role in its durability.

Understanding the materiality and social forces behind the production of such manuscripts is essential for grasping the history of early Christianity and its diverse spiritual currents.

The Nag Hammadi Library: A Collection of Rejected Knowledge

The texts in the Nag Hammadi library share a common theme of being deemed heterodox or heretical, leading to their burial and survival.

They revolve around a cosmogenic mythology that portrays the physical world as a tragic mistake, with spiritual beings, including human souls, trapped and deluded in their physical existence.

The library contains diverse texts, some of which offer secret teachings for escaping this condition, with the figure of Jesus the Christ often playing a role in the revelation of truth.

The Unique Texts of Codex 6 in the Nag Hammadi Library

Codex 6 contains eight textual units, including the Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles, which offers a metaphorical journey of the apostles and features Lethargoal, who reveals himself as Christ.

The Thunder Perfect Mind is a performative speech by an androgynous deity, using paradoxical statements to transcend dualisms and categories of life and death.

The Authenticos Logos provides a didactic narrative about the origins and destiny of the soul, similar to the exegesis of the soul found in Nag Hammadi II.

The Soul's Journey Through the Physical Realm

The soul, often depicted as feminine, is cast into the physical world, leading to her exile and addiction to sin.

She is secretly fed by her supernal bridegroom, who remains connected to the spiritual realm, and eventually seeks healing and escape from her blindness.

The text critiques other Christians for their idol worship, while offering a dualistic perspective on the soul's struggle and the search for true spiritual freedom.

The Gnostic Text of Codex 6 in the Nag Hammadi Library

Codex 6 contains a Gnostic text with mythological elements, detailing the creation of the physical world and its eventual doom.

The text emphasizes the importance of gaining knowledge of one's true spiritual nature for salvation.

It describes the coming of the "revealer," interpreted as Jesus, who will teach the truth in 72 languages and ultimately lead to a final aeon of beauty and spiritual union with the divine.

The Philosophical Texts in the Nag Hammadi Library

The Nag Hammadi library includes a unique philosophical text, contrasting with the absence of other philosophers like Aristotle.

Plato's comparison of the soul to a lion, a mini-headed beast, and a human being is echoed in the imagery common among Gnostics and Orthodox Christians.

The last selections in the library represent the Hermetic school of soteriology, focusing on the soul's struggle to grasp the true nature of the world and offering rituals for gaining gnosis.

Nag Hammadi Codex 6 contains a defective Latin edition and a better-preserved Coptic translation of hermetic teachings.

The text focuses on knowledge for salvation, spiritual destitution in Egypt, and the punishment of the wicked, setting it apart from other hermetic writings.

Its unique selection and thematic differences give Codex 6 an odd orbit within the larger Nag Hammadi Library, raising questions about its religious and philosophical classification.