A Body of Vision: Representations of the Body in Recent Film and Poetry

Leonard Cohen's Gnosticism and Its Influence on His Conception of the Body

A Mystical View of the Body 207 go into the vagina]." "The Son of man [ascending] up where he was before," (John 6:62) they took as referring to semen returning to its source. Gnostic scripture recommended the same practices; even the most famous of the statements attributed to Jesus in the Nag Hammadi'sGospel of Thomas, Borborians interpreted as enjoining their members to consume the male and female fluids: "That which you have will save you if you bring it forth from yourselves. That which you do not have within you will kill you if you do not have it withinyou."184 When the penis ejaculates semen into the vagina and the semen penetrates the womb, a child is sometimes conceived. The soul-lights of the woman and the man fuse to form a new, carnally entrapped being. Borborians recommend spillingthe seed outside the vagina to prevents the perpetuation of the miserable round of procreation. Coitus interruptus allows as well for gathering semen as material for a sacrament, Borborians used semen collected after coitus interruptus, masturbation, or even emitted externally after ordinary intercourse, as sacramental material . One of their rites, allegedly, was spermepottation. In this rite, sexual partners would engage in intercourse up to the point when the man was about to reach orgasm. The couple then disengaged, the women letting her partner go and withdrawingher body. She reached for the phallusand rubbed it till she received the semen in her palm. She then stood naked before her coreligionists, prayed, and saying, "This is the body of Christ," consumed the ejaculate. Other sects were said to spread ground meal beneath the bodies of the copulatingcouple to collect the vaginal and phallic discharge; when the couple completed the sexual act, the group collected and ate the ground meal. The most important of the Gnostic sects was the Valentinian,followers of the Egyptian poet and teacher Valentinus. Valentius claimed to have received the secret teaching that Saint Paul the Apostle had handed to his disciple Theodas. He was also familiar with Greek philosophy's major themes. Valentinus taught that the first of the cosmic principles, which he called The Glory of the Father, produced an ogdoad (i.e., an eightfold emanation), the names of whose members are often given (forlists vary) as: Thought, Grace, Silence, Mind, Truth, Man, Church, and Wisdom (Sophia.) From this Ogdoad emanated fifteen pairs of aeons, or angelic beings, who constituted the pleroma, i.e., the fullness of the upper realm. These paired aeons copulated furiously, filling the lower realms with lesser beings. Valentinus also taught that a dualistic rift, between good and evil or between God and Satan, permeates everything, including human nature. As well, Valentinus first drew the distinction that became so common in Gnostic thought, among the noetic 208 A Body of Vision person in whom the soul predominates, the psychic person in whom intelligence predominates, and the hylic person in whom carnal drives predominate .185 All three principles—those of the soul, the intelligence, and the body—are active in each person, but one principle or another is dominant. The way to achieve salvation is to harmonize the discord between these antithetical principles in a coincidentia oppositorum. The sacrament of the bridal chamber rehearses the harmonizing of opposites; thus, Valentinian celebrations that began on the eve of Roman Lupercal (that is on the evening of February 14) involved witnessing and then imitating the nuptials performed in the bridal chamber. While Valentinusprobably led a pure and blameless life, his followers gave his teachings a libertarian interpretation and the Valentinian sect became one of the most sexually free of the Gnostic cults. Later, Valentinians encouraged their fellow cultists to emulate the wild sexual antics of the aeons. They adapted Valentinus's teaching that gnosis eradicates all sin, interpreting it as implying that sin cannot corrupt human nature irremediably , since gnosis can undo sin's force. They claimed therefore that the possibility of acquiringgnosis gave them licence to sin and, in particular,to engage in free sex. The Nicolaitans, a Christian Gnostic sect with Ophite affiliations, wrongly believed to have been founded by Nicolas, the "proselyte of Antioch" (Acts 6:5), advocated free sex. The Hebrew equivalent of "Nicolas" is "Balaam" (both mean "conqueror of the people"), and we find the Balaam condemned in the Scriptures. In the Second Epistle of Peter (2:16) we read that Balaam, "was rebuked for his iniquity." The Zohar suggests that Balaam'siniquity was that he besmirched himself nightlyby bestial...