Evaluación de la coordinación

The second call from the Father of Greatness implemented the processes by which the First Man and his Sons were recovered from the realm of darkness through the evocation of the demiurgical deities. Upon hearing the First Man’s prayers for assistance, the Father called forth the Beloved of Lights, who in turn called forth the Great Builder, who in turn called forth the Living Spirit, who in turned called forth his Five Sons: the Ornament of Splendour, the Great King of Magnificence, the Adamas of Light, the King of Glory, and the Porter (cf. Pettitpiece 2009, 225). The Living Spirit, together with a hypostasised Call and Response evoked through their dialogue with the imprisoned First Man, joined with the Mother of Life and descended to the realm below to begin the liberation of the First Man and his Sons. Although not disclosed in Theodore bar Koni’s account, certain sources – notably the cosmogonic portions in The

Chapters – indicate that the Sons were left behind in the realm of darkness.

As Manfred Heuser notes, ‘With the release of the Primal Man, his five sons who comprise his soul remain behind in the Darkness. In this way, the fate of the Primal Man is separated from that of his sons. In memory of her origin in the land of Life, the soul is frequently called “Living Soul”. The Living Soul is mixed with elements of Darkness and cut into pieces in numerous forms and figures.’54

The demiurgical deities of the second call are thus charged with effecting the rescue of the Sons as the Living Soul from the world of darkness through the creation of a cosmic structure – the universe – situated above it; the demiurge of the Manichaean pantheon is therefore aligned with the good nature, and creation is associated with salvific activity.55 _{The universe serves as an astral}

machine geared towards the purification of the Living Soul as light, and is frequently referred to in modern analyses of the myth as the macrocosm. The Living Spirit, together with the Mother of Life, began their creative work by subduing the evil powers, defeating and flaying the bodies of the sons (archons) of darkness, from which the demiurgical deities made ten or eleven heavens (see Reeves 1992, 203, nt. 38), and eight earths, which emerge from the bodies of the archons cast down into the world of darkness. The earths themselves are used to constrain the sons of darkness, acting as a series of prisons. The five sons

53 _{See esp. Franzmann 2003, 51–87.} 54 _{Heuser 1998, 36.}

of the Living Spirit shoulder the burden of maintaining the integrity of these structures, with each being given a specific realm of authority.

In order to obtain from the sons of darkness a concentrated portion of the very essence of the Five Sons, which is divine light itself, the female Living Spirit56 _{exposed herself to the sons of darkness. The first of two seminal incidents}

in the myth, this particular release permitted the Living Spirit to construct the Sun and the Moon, together with three elemental wheels of wind, water and fire, all of which formed a mechanism for facilitating the release of the light. Just as a water-wheel scoops liquid from the bottom to the top of its arc, the elemental wheel moves light across the ‘extended spatial structure’57 _{of the universe towards}

the Sun and the Moon in order to be separated from matter which originated in the evil world – from whence the purified light sets out on its journey home, ascending to its place alongside the Father of Greatness.

Casting an eye over the cosmogonic fragments M98 and M99 from the

Šābuhragān (trans. H.-J. Klimkeit 1993, 225–7), we gain a clear impression for

Mani’s appreciation of detail in narrating the industry of the demiurgical powers, especially the Living Spirit (appearing there as Mihr Yazd [i.e., Mithra-yazata]). His description of the demiurge’s intricate construction of the eight earths, laid on top of one another with ‘our own earth’s surface contiguous to the bordering area of the celestial light’,58 _{all surrounded by defensive ditches and walls, reflects}

not only the mind of an author with a painter’s imagination and eye for detail,59

but also the circumstances surrounding the composition of that particular work. The emphasis on architectural detail, the palatial sense of the worlds’ construction, would certainly have found favour with the Šābuhragān’s audience, the Sasanian royal elites who, with the continuation of Ardashir’s endeavours by his son Shapur, had initiated a palatial and civic building programme of a highly ambitious nature.60

The astral mechanism was thus set in motion by the Third Messenger, the principal deity of the third call. However, before the Messenger could do this, he had to obtain a further ejaculation of divine essence. Together with the Twelve Virgins, the Messenger exploited the lustfulness that was an inherent attribute of the sons of darkness, by exposing himself, ‘who was beautiful in his forms’, to them (Theodore bar Koni, trans. J.C. Reeves 1992, 192). This led to a further release of captured light, although the sin which had been mixed with the light nevertheless tried to remain bound to the light, a ruse spotted by the Messenger, who cast the sin back down onto the sons of darkness. The archons rejected it, and it fell again, some onto dry land where it produced five trees, some into the sea where it ‘became an odious beast in the likeness of the King of Darkness, and the Adamas of Light was set against her’ (Theodore bar Koni, trans. J.C. Reeves 1992, 192), defeating it in battle.61 56 _{See Pettitpiece 2009, 227, nt. 29.} 57 _{Heuser 1998, 38.} 58 _{Williams Jackson 1932, 25.} 59 _{See Tardieu 2008, 88.} 60 _{See Huff 2008.}

Manichaean Theology II: The Universe, its Rituals and its Community

The Appearance of the Protoplasts, Adam and Eve

The perpetuity of lust present within the natures of the sons of darkness meant that the female archons had been pregnant before their lascivious exchange with the Third Messenger. These archons, upon seeing the form of the Messenger, released their abortions, which also fell to the earth and devoured the buds of the trees. The abortions, closely aligned with the offspring (the Nephilim) of the rebellious Watchers in the Enochic tradition,62 _{lusted for the form of the}

Third Messenger: ‘Where is the form(s) that we saw?’ (Theodore bar Koni, trans. J.C. Reeves 1992, 192). Ashqalun, the lead archon, the son of the King of Darkness, promised to recreate the form of the Messenger for the abortions, on the condition that the abortions brought their children to him and his female companion Namrael, to be consumed by them. After having eaten the children of the abortions, Ashqalun and Namrael copulated, and Namrael produced first Adam, followed by Eve, both of whom were patterned according to the form of the Third Messenger.

Thus, anthropogony followed cosmogony in such a way as to bring humanity into the heart of the mythological narrative. Since a proportion of Adam and Eve, specifically their souls, was composed of whatever residue of divine essence (i.e., the light of the Living Soul) remained on the earth, whilst their bodies were nevertheless constituted of matter, the protoplasts (i.e., the first human beings) represented in archetypal form the paradoxical nature of human existence. The overwhelming density of matter meant that their bodies ultimately subdued their souls in a way not dissimilar to the manner in which primordial matter had suppressed the rational faculties of the First Man and his Sons during their internment in the world of darkness. Nevertheless, light remained in Adam and Eve; therefore it had to be rescued, a task which fell to the divine bearer of self-awareness, the most celebrated of the ‘Jesus figures’ in the religion, Jesus the Splendour (cf. Pettitpiece 2009, 228), who

. . . roused [Adam] and shook him and awakened him, and chased away the deceptive demon, and bound apart from him the great (female) archon. Then Adam examined himself and recognised who he was, and (Jesus) showed him the Fathers on high, and (revealed to him) regarding his own self all that which he had fallen into – into the teeth of leopards and the teeth of elephants, swallowed by voracious ones and absorbed by gulping ones, consumed by dogs, mixed and imprisoned in all that exists, bound in the stench of Darkness (Theodore bar Koni, trans. J.C. Reeves 1992, 193). Adam began to see his real self – his soul – as light cast down into the midst of a body and an earth that was hostile to him, a realisation which evoked the response: ‘Woe, woe to the one who formed my body, and to the one who bound my soul, and to the rebels who have enslaved me’ (Theodore bar Koni, trans. J.C. Reeves 1992, 193). Nevertheless, that Jesus the Splendour introduced Adam to

his real self meant that the first man became the primary microcosm, reflecting in miniature the purpose of the cosmos as the macrocosm, as a further way in which light was to be recovered. Adam and Eve had, after all, been modelled on the image of the Third Messenger, which meant that even though they were formed by the archons, they nevertheless retained a sense of the Messenger’s desire to achieve the release of the Living Soul.

Jesus the Splendour was certainly one of the most important deities in the entire Manichaean pantheon, since he not only brings self-knowledge to the protoplasts at the beginning of creation, but also remains a principal figure during those important times when apostles of light are awoken and commis- sioned to teach humankind about the nature of reality, and at the end of days in his role as judge during the eschaton.63 _{His roles thus intersect the prominent}

soteriological, eschatological and prophetological lines within Manichaeism.