« Le monde comme matrice. Aspect sexuel de la nature et ascétisme chez les gnostiques »

Abstract

The sexual symbolism of the gnostic myths uses the image of womb in the physical and neutral sense as the place where an embryo grows or in a very positive sense as the « matrix of the all (Pleroma) ». But on the other hand, the same image is used in a very negative sense to represent the whole visible world as the domain of evil maintaining itself by means of sexual intercourse between male and female. In this last case, the physical death, for the true self of the gnostics, is but the very moment of the exodus from the « womb » and likewise the corpse remaining on the earth is but after-birth (chorion), while the physical birth is only a fall into the « womb ». Of course in the ancient hellenistic and oriental worlds this view of the matter did not stand alone without analogies (Origen, Porphyry, Seneca, Marc Aurel, and so on). But they were not always related to a clearly developed cosmological framework. It is the Paraphrase of Shem that for the first time made this framework clear. It describes the w...