Gnosis

Abstract This essay employs Michel Foucault’s typology of technologies to elucidate the relationship between early modern Eucharistic polemics, scriptural hermeneutics, and the practice of self-creation in the work of Jacob Böhme (1575–1624). Böhme’s work has often been dismissed as philosophically and theologically incoherent. Yet when understood as a therapeutic practice of self-transformation, what might appear to be madness can be seen as method. I demonstrate that Böhme created a program of “spiritual exercises,” rooted in the corporeal imagination, which absorbed and subverted religious power by reinterpreting two institutional “technologies of power” – the Eucharist and scriptural hermeneutics – and synthesizing them into a “technology of the self.” I show that Böhme drew upon esoteric thought to radicalize early modern Protestantism, transforming it from a form of religious protest bent on institutional reform into a countercultural spirituality centered on self-creation. Thus, Böhme developed a creative hermeneutics that appropriated and rejected aspects of competing Protestant modes of sacramental and scriptural interpretation to formulate an erotic gnosis of self and world exploration.

Joshua Levi Ian Gentzke

Gnosis Journal of Gnostic Studies

“From My Body Alone Do I Know This”: Sacrament &amp; Scripture as Technologies of the Self in the Work of Jacob Böhme

“唯我独知此身”：雅各布·波墨作品中的圣礼与圣经作为自我技术

Claire Fanger

Introduction: Comparing Foucault: Cultivations of Gnosis and Technologies of the Self

引言：比较福柯：灵知的培养与自我的技术

Abstract The writer Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) played a significant intellectual role in the American counterculture in the late 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Drawing from a wide range of discourses, as well as his own occultural fictions and personal experiments in “hedonic engineering,” Wilson presented a pluralistic view of reality that combined a pragmatic skepticism with a creative and esoteric embrace of the “meta-programming” possibilities of altered states of consciousness. In his 1975 Illuminatus! trilogy, written with Robert Shea, Wilson wove anarchist, psychedelic, and occult themes into a prophetic conspiracy fiction written with a satiric and willfully pulp sensibility. Ritually experimenting with psychedelic drugs and sexual magic – experiences related in his 1977 book Cosmic Trigger – Wilson developed a wayward if deeply self-reflexive theory and dialectical method of visionary practice, one that, amidst the paranoia, presented its own deconstructive and libertarian vision of gnosis. This essay contextualizes and unpacks Wilson’s visionary pragmatism in terms of Foucault’s roughly contemporaneous notion of “technologies of self,” later elaborated by Peter Sloterdijk as “anthropotechnics.” It also traces the specific debts that Wilson owed to other esoteric and psychedelic technologists of the self, including Aleister Crowley, Timothy Leary, and John Lilly.

Erik Davis

Profane Illuminations: Robert Anton Wilson’s Hedonic Ascesis

亵渎的启示：罗伯特·安森·威尔逊的享乐苦行

Abstract The vernacular magical, divinatory, and healing practices associated with the Afro-American Gulf South, alternately called “Hoodoo” or “Conjure,” offer a window into an intriguing world of “everyday esoterica.” Practitioners envision a world of competing human desires, which move and are moved by an array of malign and benign spiritual forces. They cope with this world with a pharmacopeia of symbolically powerful physical substances, but also through works of bodily discipline, prayer, meditation, and other practices aimed at the cultivation of will, self-awareness, and self-regard. These latter tools and techniques comport closely with Michel Foucault’s concept of technologies of the self . Exploring Hoodoo ritual through Foucault’s lens offers opportunities to re-imagine American Hoodoo as an esoteric system that enables practitioners to manipulate and transform themselves as well as their circumstances. This examination serves to increase our appreciation for the sophistication of these traditions, while simultaneously enlarging and enriching Foucault’s paradigm – offering new ways to consider the techniques by which one might come to know and understand oneself. This inquiry addresses a lacuna in the scholarship of Hoodoo and Conjure and also situates these traditions more firmly (and accurately) within the wider corpus of Gnostic Studies and Western Esotericism.

Stephen C. Wehmeyer

“Yo’ Kin Cut All Kinda Tricks”: Crossroad Ordeals, Peavine Drills, and Other Technologies of the Self in African-American Vernacular Esotericism

“你砍掉了所有把戏”：非洲裔美国民间秘术中的十字路口考验、豌豆藤训练及其他自我技术

Petru Moldovan

Authority and Identity in Emerging Christianities in Asia Minor and Greece, edited by Cilliers Breytenbach and Julien M. Ogereau

《小亚细亚和希腊新兴基督教中的权威与身份》，Cilliers Breytenbach和Julien M. Ogereau编

Abstract According to Mani in his Epistula Fundamenti , many stories have been told about Adam and Eve, but only his version is correct and leads to salvation. This article first explores various Jewish and Christian narratives and ideas about the first humans with which Mani likely engaged. It then shows how he radicalized Gnostic accounts to proclaim the fundamental role of violent, demonic sexuality in the creation of Adam and Eve, as a counter-strategy to prevent the release of trapped light, in support of his strongly anti-reproductive ethic. Finally, it analyzes Mani’s story of the first human generations as an implicit critique of Zoroastrian anthropogonic narratives which provided an etiology for next-of-kin marriage. Mani’s dialogue with these different traditions situates him at the Roman-Sasanian frontier, engaging with Jewish and Christian teachings, as well as Iranian ones, and resisting simplistic genealogies, whether heresiological or scholarly. Indeed, Mani functions as an interpreter ( hermeneutes ) between Mediterranean and Iranian cultures: Manichaean doctrine and practice do not represent a final flowering of Gnosticism, nor a fundamentally Iranian system, but a new movement that weaves Christian, Gnostic, Zoroastrian, and other traditions in complex and unexpected ways, combining his foundational critique of sexual reproduction with a hopeful call for struggle against the darkness.

Paul C. Dilley

The Manichaean Story of Adam and Eve

摩尼教中的亚当和夏娃故事

Abstract This article explores the relationships between the various locations in which divine revelation takes place in the Cologne Mani Codex, employing insights from spatial theory and ecocriticism. It argues that the text emphasizes the possibility of revelation from multiple sources, both worldly and otherworldly, and that the accounts of revelation throughout the text can be understood within ongoing apocalyptic discourses in antiquity about natural revelation, raptures, otherworldly journeys, and worldly missions.

Philippa Townsend

“And the Earth Spoke to Him”

“大地向他诉说”

Dylan M. Burns

Eduard Iricinschi

Preface

前言

Abstract Since the publication of the Cologne Mani Codex, scholars have tended to think about the figure of Elchasai as the “Jewish Christian” past to Mani’s “Christian” future. This article contends that one can also frame Elchasai as the “Jewish Christian” past to a rabbinic future. To make this argument, it focuses on four main points: (1) the concept of piquach nefesh , or the legality of saving a life, (2) prayer toward Jerusalem, (3) the temporality of work in relation to Shabbat, and (4) Gentile ritual impurity. By contextualizing the commandments attributed to Elchasai in relation to early rabbinic law, especially as discussed in the Tosefta, this article suggests that Elchasaites were closer to the rabbis in matters of law than they were with the early followers of Mani.

Jae Hee Han

Elchasai

以尔撒来

Abstract There has been an increasing appreciation of Manichaeans’ capability for certain optimistic expressions about the created cosmos, in spite of their reputation for obsessing about the evil agents of darkness. This present study reviews some of the supporting evidence and explores possible implications for day-to-day life experience among Manichaeans. In spite of a cosmology conveying an ostensibly very dark worldview, could a Manichaean ever have enjoyed life in this world? The second part of the essay turns to implications for mythologies such as those represented among Nag Hammadi tractates and some related cosmologies. In spite of some similarities in mythology, Manichaean tradition is often distinguished from these other cosmologies as a tradition with greater potential for reconciling the role of dark forces in the cosmogony with rather ordinary social and even political life. This essay questions why the same must be denied the authors and ancient fans of cosmogonies like those among Nag Hammadi writings.

Michael A. Williams

Could Manichaeans Be Happy?

摩尼教徒能幸福吗？

Publication Information	Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers，Publishing cycle: ，Journal Type: journal，Open Access Journals: No
Basic data	Year of publication: 2016，Proportion of original research papers: ，Self Citation Rate:， Gold OA Rate:

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“From My Body Alone Do I Know This”: Sacrament & Scripture as Technologies of the Self in the Work of Jacob Böhme