Saturday, April 07, 2012

First Peter 3.19

For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:19By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;

A fragment on Holy Saturday from the mythic works of the Dragoman Gnostics,
medieval Byzantine Slavic provenance,with connections to the heterodox Khazari Jews.

When Jesus descended into Hell in spirit,
he broke down the doors
and entered in power.
He called out to Adam and Eve
and all their just offspring who had died.
They all came with joy and took refuge in his body,
entering into him through the gates of his shining wounds.

The Descent of Christ into Hell
Andrea Bonaiuti: The Spanish Chapel in S Maria Novella, Florence
1365


And he called out to his heavenly mother,
Shekinah, who had long ago left
Yahweh’s side to share exile with
the fallen creatures.
She came out of the darkness and took his hand
and together they ascended on high,
taking captivity captive.
Jesus stood before the gates of Heaven
in glory, carrying inside him
all the prisoners of Sheol
and the company of heaven rang out with joy.

But when Shekinah came to the threshold of Heaven,
wherein Yahweh awaited her,
she stopped and would not enter in.



She turned around and looked back
and in the depths she saw her other children,
Satan and Sheol,
the first offspring of her union with Yahweh,
the elder brother and sister of the Christ.
They howled with rage
that Christ had entered their kingdom
by trickery, hidden in the flesh of a mere man,
and had despoiled their realm by stealth,
leaving them poor of their subjects
and stealing their mother,
who had comforted them in their long exile.

I will not enter”, said Shekinah,
until all my children are reconciled”.
And she became a great pillar of cloud
stretching from earth to the threshold of Heaven.

Lady Sabaoth, the seraph who was her servant,
heard and saw all this
and she returned to the gate of Hell.
She spoke to the elder children of Shekinah
and Yahweh,
she spoke to Satan and to Sheol,
and said,
What can be given you, O great Aeons of God,
Lord of Light, Queen of Darkness,
to calm your anger, so that you might be reconciled
to Heaven?”

And they spoke to her the words of
a final covenant which would bring peace
to the Aeons.

Sabaoth returned to the gate of Heaven
and in the sight of the Father and the Son,
in the presence of the Mother
and of all the angels,
she spoke the dreadful words of the covenant of peace
which Satan and Sheol had given her.


Earth and heaven were shaken when they heard her words,
thunder rang out and lightning filled the skies
and the veil of the Temple was torn in two.

But the Father gave his consent
and Jesus, too, accepted this covenant.
Shekinah was grieved, but said to Sabaoth,
Go now to Miriam our daughter
and bring her this word,
for her Amen is the foundation.”

So the archangel Sabaoth went down to Jerusalem
and found Miriam the mother of Jesus.
She was in mourning for the cruel death of her firstborn.
Sabaoth opened herself to Miriam and said,
Peace, daughter of Zion!

Satan said, “We have seen that our brother
the Christ has become a son of Adam and Eve.
And we acknowledge that he is faithful and humble.
But he has invaded our realm by stealth
and by trickery has stolen the souls of humankind
and taken away our mother.
And so we make a covenant with our mother Shekinah
by your message, O Sabaoth.
This is our covenant:
We shall return to the circle of God
at an appointed time
but this shall be the ransom and the sacrifice,
and the peace-offering for us:


in exchange for our mother
we shall have the mother of the Christ;
and for the despoiling of our realm,
Jerusalem and the Holy Temple shall be laid waste;
and for the theft of the race of Eve and Adam from their exile
Israel shall again go into exile out of its land
This shall be the ransom for the peace of Heaven.”


Miriam said to her, “After all that I have borne,
how shall I carry this great sorrow, too?
Sabaoth replied, “The Spirit which overshadowed you
shall overflow. Nothing is impossible with God.”
Miriam was silent a long time and then she said:
Amen. Let it be done as you say.”

The Seraph Sabaoth bowed low before her on the ground
and did homage to Miriam
and cried out:
You are greater in honor than the Cherubim,
beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim!
Virgin, unmastered and untamed,
You have brought forth the Word divine.
O Woman, now truly you give birth to God.
Glory to you!”

and then she left her.

And so a covenant of peace was made
between Heaven and Hell:
as the blood of the Son
had made one the human and the divine
so the blood of the Mother and the People
would make one the divine and the divine.

Jesus arose on the third day, the Firstborn of the Dead,
he returned to his disciples
with peace and forgiveness.
He promised them another Advocate,
she who was to come,
and he departed from them.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Process Church (from the Christian side of things) and the Yazidi (from the Zoroastrian and Sufi and Azdanism side of things) also have seat for Satan at the family table. Not a happy family, but a family.

- Trevor

Anonymous said...

Not Azdanism, Yazdanism.

- Trevor

OreamnosAmericanus said...

"Not a happy family, but a family."
:)

I had forgotten about the Process Church. I think they had a branch in Toronto when I was a student there. The Wiki article is pretty funny:
"Further changes in both name and focus followed, and the organization eventually became the Best Friends Animal Society, which is now one of America's best known animal welfare rescue groups."

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