Text
Hippolytus, Refutatio 5.8.41-45:
And the mystery aforesaid is called Eleusis and Anactoreum; Eleusis, he says, because we have come, we who are spiritual, flowing down from above from Adamas - for eleusesthai, he says, means “to come” - and Anactoreum because of our ascent on high (ano). This, he says, is what the devotees of the Eleusinian cult call the great mysteries; for it is the custom that those who have been initiated into the lesser should again be initiated into the great ones; for “greater dooms gain greater destinies.” For the lesser mysteries, he says, are those of Persephone here below; and of these mysteries and the road that leads there, which is “broad and wide” and leads those who are perishing to Persephone, the poet also says: “But beneath it is an awesome pathway, cavernous and clayey; but this is the best that leads to the pleasant grove of glorious Aphrodite.” This means, he says, the lesser mysteries of birth in the flesh; and when men have been initiated into these they must wait a little before they are initiated into the great, heavenly ones. For those who are allotted those dooms, he says, receive greater destinies. For this, he says, is “the gate of heaven,” and this is “the house of God,” where the good God dwells alone, where no unclean person, he says, shall enter, no psychic (unspiritual), no carnal man, but it is reserved for the spiritual alone; and when men come there they must lay down their clothing and all become bridegrooms, being rendered wholly male through the virgin spirit. For she is the virgin who is with child and conceives and bears a son, who is not psychic, not bodily, but a blessed Aion or Aions. Concerning this, he says, the Saviour has said clearly that “straight and narrow is the way that leads to life, and few there are that enter upon it; but wide and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many there are who pass over it.”
Source (list of abbreviations)
Hippolytus, Refutatio 5.8.41-45
Bibliography
| Foerster 1972 | Foerster, Werner. Gnosis. A Selection of Gnostic Texts. Vol. 1: Patristic texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1972. |
Amar Annus
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