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By Cyd Ropp, Ph. D.
Copyright 2022, all rights reserved
Let’s review for a moment. In the last chapter, the Totalities of the ALL had awakened to themselves in fulfillment of the Father’s desire for innumerable points of view. Prior to their awakening, the Totalities of the ALL exist as unified facets of the Son. We can think of the shared consciousness of the Totalities of the ALL as the shared consciousness of the One Self of the Son. We refer to them as Totalities because they are parts of the One Totality of the monad we call the Son.
When the Totalities became conscious of themselves and their individuality they each became a singular monad with their own point of view. At this point we begin to refer to them as Aeons. The Aeons immediately sorted themselves into a hierarchy of names, places, powers, and duties based upon their unique points of view. This sorting is called the Hierarchy of the Fullness of God, also known as the Pleroma of the Fullness. The Tripartite Tractate says of these Aeons, “The aeons have brought themselves forth in accord with the Third Fruit by the freedom of the will and by the wisdom with which he favored them for their thought.” The First Fruit is the Son; the Second Fruit is the ALL; the Third Fruit is the Hierarchy of the Fullness.
It is important to note that at this stage of the Pleroma, each Aeon possesses a Self that reflects the full One consciousness of the Son. Its Self is identical to the Self of any other unit of consciousness. However, each Aeon now also possesses a newly-formed Ego that reflects its particular identity. This newly-minted Ego is a label that identifies a particular Aeon’s name, position, station and sphere of responsibility.
Ego is the designation of individual points of view. For Aeons, the Ego does not imply self-centeredness as we humans think of it, but simply the title for their names, stations, ranks, duties, and locations. Although the Aeons still dwelt within the single body of the Fullness, they were now each an independent Self with their own consciousness, identity, and will. Their variety required them to work together in order to remain in full agreement, for only through their union could they approach the Father’s greatness. Here at Gnostic Insights and at A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything blog and book, we call that cooperative spirit and pattern The Simple Golden Rule.
The Simple Golden Rule says that in order to build something greater than any of us can build on our own, we need to reach out to our neighbors with love, information, and assistance to work together on a common project for the betterment of all. This pattern of cooperation is part of the Aeonic order, and we here in this universe have inherited this ability as a fractal pattern from above. It is our common Self and the Holy Spirit of love that enables individual Egos to work together for the betterment of all.
In my mind I picture the location of this Aeonic Ego as the outside surface of the Aeon, because Ego’s focus is outward looking, focusing as it does on the Aeon’s interaction with those outside of itself in the Hierarchy. Those outside of an Aeon’s Self would be its neighboring Aeons. The Ego does not come into play during introspection–that introspective awareness is toward the Self, not the Ego. So the Aeonic Ego’s focus is on its position, power, place, and sphere of responsibility relative to its Aeonic neighbors—not in order to lord it over them, but to discern their respective roles in cooperating with each other.
According to the Tripartite Tractate, in order to remain aligned with the Father’s will, the Aeons needed to glorify only the Father and never themselves, nor any other Aeon, nor the Fullness as a whole. Furthermore, each Aeon of the Hierarchy of the Pleroma was to give glory from its own location, using its own God-given talent and not borrowing the talent of its neighbors. The Pleroma has a place for everyone, and everyone has their place. But watch out, the Fall is about to occur.
The Fall is what initiated this material cosmos in which we live. In religious terms, the Fall is generally described as the “fall from grace” that led to humanity’s expulsion from God’s presence in the Garden of Eden. In Judeo-Christian theology this fall is blamed on the woman, Eve, persuading her husband, Adam, to eat an apple from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This act of disobedience to the instruction of Jehovah not to eat of that fruit is considered the first act of willful disobedience to God. Since the God of Eden was Jehovah, the rule concerning the sinfulness of gnosis as represented by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil may be reframed as an imitation of the archetypal Fall commanded by the Demiurge to keep Adam and Eve under his control. We will cover this territory in depth later on in the chapter about the Demiurge.
In gnostic theology the Fall is shifted upstream, to a time long before humans were created. Back before there were even heavens and Earth.
In the previous chapter, we discussed the generation of the Aeons and the idea that the final Aeon produced by the unified will of the Aeons of the Pleroma was a very special Aeon. The Aeon who crowned the top of the Hierarchy of the Fullness of God contained within its Ego a copy of all of the other Aeons of the Fullness. These copies of the other Aeons were not equal to the originals in the Fullness because they were a fractal iteration down from the originals, yet they did faithfully replicate those original beings of the thought because of the manner in which they were produced. As the Fullness all together gave glory to the Father with a singular focus, that glory reflected back onto them and produced this final Aeon as a mirror image of their glorious Totality.
In Valentinian Gnosticism, Logos is the Aeon who fell. Verses 75 and 76 of the Tripartite Tractate describes the nature of Logos and how and why Logos fell. It is a unique feature of the Tripartite Tractate that the book does not describe the Fall in terms of sin and blame, but rather as an event that was destined to come about in order to usher in a “new economy,” that differed from the ethereal Pleroma where the Aeons dwell. Yet these two different stories, one of Eve and Adam and the other of the Fall of Logos, both share the common features of disobedience to an explicit rule and a resulting expulsion from a Paradisical existence out into a cold, cruel world. At the archetypal level, both of these tales describe the same type of event. But on the gnostic side, this is our archetypal story, our pre-history as fruit of the Aeons. The Adam and Eve story is similar, but it is a pale imitation of the actual Fall of Logos, and the purpose of this imitation of that original archetypal fractal is, like most stories from the Demiurge, is to keep people in line–to keep them obedient to Jehovah.
The final Aeon produced by the will of the Father was placed at the very top of the Hierarchy. I liken its positioning to placing the star or an angel on top of a Christmas tree. This youngest Aeon carried within itself all of the traits of every other Aeon, perfect and complete. This was a very talented Aeon resembling the Son of God himself, who also carried all of the traits of the Aeons within its singular self. This final Aeon was named Logos, because he was also endowed with the ability to reason thoughtfully and to figure things out in a step-by-step manner. The word Logos in Greek means reason.
The Tripartite Tractate puts it this way: “This aeon was among those to whom was given wisdom, so that he could become pre-existent in each one’s thought. By that which he wills, will they be produced. Therefore, he received a wise nature in order to examine the hidden basis, since he is a wise fruit…”
This is a curious statement, because it seems to indicate that Logos was equipped to bring others into existence without the cooperation of his fellow Aeons. If the Father had not wanted an individual Aeon to be able to procreate without the agreement of the Fullness, why would the Father have equipped Logos to do so?
All of the Aeons have free will, because the Father has free will and everything that emanates from the Father carries the attributes of the Father. The Tripartite Tractate says, “for, the free will which was begotten with the Totalities was a cause for this one,” (this one being Logos), “such as to make him do what he desired, with no one to restrain him.”
This is the very definition of personal free will, even though it may appear to be predestined as God’s will. Yet we must realize that there is no free will without choice. As Janis Joplin sang, “Freedom don’t mean nothin’ if it ain’t free.”
Logos was loaded with free will, as are all of the Aeons. Yet the Father foresees our behavior before we do, which seems to contradict the idea of free will. We can resolve this classic theological conundrum by realizing that the Father anticipates every possible outcome of our free will. At the universal level, the infinity of the Fullness of God is represented by the potentiality of all possible choices a person could make as their life passes from one decision to the next. The fullness of all possible futures are within our reach as we pass through this universe; our own free will is driving our consciousness through those possibilities. The Father anticipates all possibilities in his infinite wisdom, and all possible courses of action are anticipated. This choice that Logos made was anticipated though not predetermined.
When Logos came forth, he attempted to approach the Father’s glory, not realizing that his effort was beyond possibility. Logos, “had wanted to bring forth one who was perfect from an agreement in which he had not been and without having the command.” The Aeons were not in on this plan of Logos, nor did he have the go-ahead of the Father. But he still wanted to give forth a perfect creation, a perfect Pleroma out of the fractal fullness of his own body that would be able to give full glory to the Father all at once in its totality, because he did not understand that such a thing was not possible. Yet the book says that “he, the Father, had brought him forth for those about whom he knew that it was fitting that they should come into being.”
All this time we’ve been blaming the Fall on this ignorant, willful, Aeon Logos, but now the Tripartite Tractate is admitting that, honestly, it wasn’t without the knowledge and will of the Originator, of the great Father, because of course nothing on the ethereal plane exists without the Father’s will. We have inherited that will and it passed down through all of us creatures here below. The Father declared that it was fitting that “they should come into being,” and “they” is us. So we were part of the plan from the beginning. We were not accidents. We were not formed from a mistake.
The Father knew this from the beginning and he allowed Logos to fall from the ethereal plane on purpose, so that the generations of the Aeons could eventually follow. We are the fractals of those emanations. We preexist in a different ethereal plane and the Aeons are waiting for us to return. We are their fruit.
Even though Logos contained iterations of all the other Aeons, Logos was not equal to the magnitude of the Son because the Aeons of the Fullness are smaller fractals of the Son. And the Aeonic copies held by Logos were a further order of magnitude less than the Aeons. We could say that, as a toy model car resembles a full-sized automobile, Logos likewise resembled the Son. And, whereas the Son is directly nested into the Father and able to commune directly with the Father, the Aeons are a couple of iterations downstream from the Father and unable to plug directly into the Father’s greatness without risking annihilation. The Tripartite Tractate says of Logos, “This aeon was last to have <been> brought forth by mutual assistance, and he was small in magnitude,” referring, I think, to this concept of fractal iterations.
Because of the danger of coming face-to-face with the originating consciousness and surviving, the Father had set a boundary between himself and his offspring for their protection. The Father did not let the Aeons know of the impossibility of reunification with Him because He did not want to discourage their constant yearning for Him.
And now we are all set up for the Fall. The Ego of Logos marveled at himself in delight and wonder, for he saw in himself the beauty and perfection of the Fullness and he mistook his own grandeur for that of the Son. Logos decided to give glory to the Father out of his own Ego, in order to produce his own perfect and beautiful Aeonic offspring that would reflect the entirety of the Fullness. However, because Logos did not glorify the Father with the consent and participation of the Fullness, Logos broke the rules by which the Fullness operated.
“The intent, then, of the Logos, who is this one, was good. When he had come forth, he gave glory to the Father, even if it led to something beyond possibility, since he had wanted to bring forth one who is perfect, from an agreement in which he had not been, and without having the command.”
In doing so, Logos broke the Aeons’ basic rule and worked alone to glorify the Father. It begs the question: why did this occur? If the Aeons are all perfectly aligned with each other and with the Father’s will, and if their Egos are in alignment with their true Selves and working according to the Simple Golden Rule, why would Logos make such a huge misstep? Why and how did the Ego of Logos delude him into this unilateral action?
First, none of the Aeons were aware of the impossibility of returning to the Father’s glorious state. The Father did not let them know.
Secondly, I think it may have something to do with the placement of Logos at the top of the Hierarchy. As the final Aeon, Logos was placed at the very pinnacle of the Fullness. His location left him with no next door neighbors; he was up there all alone. There were none equal to him in position, rank, duties, or talents, and nothing located above him to stand between himself and the Father. Looking around, Logos saw none equal to himself up there on the top of the pyramid, and so his Ego understandably concluded that he was superior to the other Aeons. His positioning alone was enough to cause Logos to consider himself worthy of reuniting with the Father on his own.
Consequently, Logos unilaterally launched himself upward toward what is called the realm of perfect glory, forgetting all about his rightful position within the ecology of the Pleroma. The Tripartite Tractate says we are not to blame Logos for the Fall, because Logos reached for God out of an abundance of love. Indeed, all of the Aeons yearned for communion with the Father, for the Father had planted his root deep within their hearts and they recognized themselves as his branches and his fruit. Logos was trying to fulfill this inherent desire to reunite with the Father, and that was all good. The error was that Logos attempted to give glory to the Father without taking into consideration his place and duties in the Fullness.
As we read in the Tripartite Tractate, “the free will which was begotten with the Totalities was a cause for this one, such as to make him do what he desired, with no one to restrain him.
“The intent, then, of the Logos, who is this one, was good. When he had come forth, he gave glory to the Father, even if it led to something beyond possibility, since he had wanted to bring forth one who is perfect, from an agreement in which he had not been, and without having the command.
“And before he begot anything else for the glory of the will and in agreement with the Totalities, he acted, magnanimously, from an abundant love, and set out toward that which surrounds the perfect glory…”
Thomassen translates the word “magnanimously” in the scripture above as “presumptuously.” “And before he had yet produced anything to the glory of the Will and in the union of the members of the ALL, he acted presumptuously, out of an overflowing love, and rushed forward toward that which surrounds the realm of perfect glory.” Given that translation, the movement that resulted in the Fall was presumptuous thought, which is a pretty good synonym for Ego. Yet the intention of Logos was good.
The Tripartite Tractate is unique in its gentle assessment of not blaming Logos for the Fall. The book says that this act of disobedience by Logos was within the will of the Father after all, and it was necessary to usher in an organization that needed to come forth “for the revelation of the Fullness.”
The Tripartite Tractate says, “for it was not without the will of the Father that the Logos was produced, which is to say, not without it will he go forth. But he, the Father, had brought him forth for those about whom he knew that it was fitting that they should come into being.”
The Father knew what would happen and the Father found it fitting that Logos should be conceived as he was and take the action that he did. The Father knew that this was the path that would lead to material creation—the economy that was to come— “so that the things which have come to be might become an organization which would come into being.”
And by the way, Thomassen generally translates the name Logos as the Word, which is also how it is translated in the New Testament. Thomassen substitutes one of the Greek meanings of the name Logos to mean the Word: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” That could also read, “In the beginning was Logos, and Logos was with God, and Logos was God.”
What these verses are saying is the Fall of Logos was needed in order to create the next generation of fractals of the Aeons. This next generation of fractal iterations of the consciousness of the Father, the Son, and the Fullness would come into being in order that the Fullness would be revealed through them. We could say that it is through the Fruit that came from the Fullness into Fall that a new material Hierarchy of God on Earth was created. Logos doubtless thought he was going to instantiate Paradise with his Egoic act. What came instead was a Fall from the Fullness and the first experience of estrangement from the Father.
This, then, is the gnostic version of the original Fall, a movement of Ego away from reason, logic, interdependence, duty, and place, which led to the creation of this material universe.
You may wonder why we spend time figuring out things that happened so long ago that our universe wasn’t even created yet. The reason is because of that oft-repeated maxim: as above, so below. Logos may have been the first to let his Ego lead him astray but he was certainly not the last. We follow the same patterns of behavior as the Aeons, because the consciousness that flows from the Father into the Son and into the Pleroma also flows into us. We are called the Fruit of the Pleroma, known as the Second Order of Powers, and we are subject to the same eternal laws that govern the Aeons. We possess the same Self that the Aeons possess, and we possess our own Egos that govern our interactions with our neighbors and with the world that surrounds us.
Our eternal Self continues to reflect the One Consciousness Above while our Egos identify our individual roles. Our Egos are so well developed that most of us mistake our Egos for our Self, as did Logos so long ago. We will look more closely at this relationship between our Self and our Ego later on in this book.
In our next chapter we will look at the consequences of the Fall and the rise of the Deficiency.
