Against The World

 

THE PSEUDO-CARPOCRATIAN TRACTATUS CONTRA MUNDUM

 

A Brief Bibliographical History

 

 

 

 

The Tractatus Contra Mundum (Tract Against The World) was written in Greek by an unknown Hellenistic author in the year 203AD. This text, which displays powerful Gnostic cosmological features, was falsely attributed by its anonymous author to the notorious heretical teacher, Carpocrates of Alexandria.

However it is true that, on a superficial level, the Tractatus, does invite comparison with some ideas of Carpocrates – given what is known of them from the prejudiced writings of the theologian Irenaeus of Lyon. Many modern commentators, it should be noted, have long recognised that Irenaeus, who fulminated against the Carpocratians for immorality (whilst ridiculing their metaphysics) in his Libros Quinque Adversus Haereses (AD199), was ignorant of the fundamentals of the doctrine of the transmigration of souls and was, therefore, prone to misinterpretation. Furthermore, the Carpocratian ‘libertine gnosis’ is now defined as just one of many manifestation of an antinomian ‘spiritual’ or existential, tendency intrinsic to the human condition; such tendencies are much better understood in our ‘post modern’ epoch than in the third century. Why the anonymous author chose to attribute his or her text to the notorious and much-vilified Carpocrates must remain a mystery.

Perhaps he or she was a schismatic Carpocratian?

Perhaps the author(s) wished to take advantage of a certain aura of controversy surrounding this anathematised heretic?

 

                 A partial history of the Tractatus was uncovered in the eighteenth century by the eccentric English antiquarian Barnabas Scarfe. His compendious book Ye Reliques of Olde Norfolke (1749) refers in some detail to a volume called Opus Contra Mundum (The Work Against The World), found in a London book shop on an inhospitable, rainy, autumnal day in 1738.  Scholars have since identified this as a copy of the so-called ‘Paris edition’ of 1718, itself an expurgated reprint of a version of the Opus issued in Germany under that incorrect title in the year 1618.

The Opus Contra Mundum, known as an ‘engraved variant’, was an illustrated version of the original Pseudo-Carpocratian text, reproduced, so far as we can tell, with scrupulous faithfulness to the original, but accompanied by an extensive and elaborate, theosophical, Hermetic-Alchemical commentary.

 The heavy, macabre engravings illustrating the volume give the impression of some Faustian Grimoire, and, without doubt, it was this magical-hermetic imagery (and the accompanying, convoluted, even opaque, exegesis) that first attracted Scarfe to the volume.

               After extensive researches on the continent in the years 1740 to 1741, involving travels in France, Germany and the Balkan countries; after searching numerous dusty and forbidden archives, Scarfe traced the Opus Contra Mundum to its source manuscript. Some experts dispute Scarfe’s theory, but nevertheless we will explain it here, as it is still the only coherent account extant.

               Scarfe eventually tracked down, and indeed obtained, a rare copy of the 1599 Eisleben edition of the Tractatus Contra Mundum during a stay in Moldavia in 1741. This was not, of course the first printed edition of the text which, we now know, appeared in Thuringia in 1587. However, the owners of the 1599 version also provided our indefatigable antiquary with a short, printed pamphlet (undated) which contained an account the traditional origin of the work written in a peculiar and outmoded form of scholastic Latin.

Thus Scarfe learned of the Gariannonum Manuscript, copied and illuminated by the Monks of St. Fursa in the year of Our Lord 632. It was this document (transcribed in awe and trepidation from a decaying Latin original) which, despite condemnation by the Holy See, circulated in the ensuing centuries among secret sects of initiates in Central Europe.

Scarfe was in no doubt of the significance of this information, having engaged in antiquarian researches into the origins of Fortress Gariannonum, built by the Romans on the Norfolk coast in AD275 as part of the Litus Saxonicum. In the Post-Roman era Gariannonum was, of course, known as Burgh Castle, but in the seventh century, the ascetic Monks of St Fursa established a monastery within the abandoned walls of this forbidding, ancient fortress. Before the arrival of the Romans the site was, according to local archaeologists, an Iron Age cult centre of the Iceni tribe, the locus of unspeakable rites.

 

Scarfe’s 1599 copy of the Tractatus Contra Mundum is not present in the archives at Buckden Palace, neither is the strange little pamphlet. We know of his researches only through his voluminous letters, and extensive references in the first edition of Ye Reliques of Olde Norlfolke integrating the tales of the Gariannonum Manuscript with the folklore of his native East Anglia.

Much of this has been summarised by Wlosok in his invaluable Die Philosopische Gnosis aus Pseudo-Carpocrates of 1965.

As a modern scholar, Wlosok was aware of the more complex history of the text. Permitting himself a tone of understandable scepticism with regard to the outdated researches of Barnabas Scarfe, he devotes equal space to an almost-complete Aramaic Version of the Tractatus. This version was unearthed in 1928 by a team of Italian archaeologists excavating the ancient city of Oxyrhynchus, in the Nile Valley south of Cairo.

 Copies of this papyrus, obtained in difficult circumstances, were made by specialists, but most were destroyed by the Nazis and the Italian Fascists during the war years. Fortunately Wlosok gained access to one of the few remaining copies in a private collection in Vienna. This text, translated into elegant and poetic French by Alexandre Rollin, provides new insight into the history of the Pseudo-Carpocratians.

The accretions to this version, which differs in minor but significant details from the Latin version, disclose a more ancient perspective. The author of the commentaries, possibly a high initiate in the movement, claims an extensive lineage for the cosmology and doctrine of the original Tractatus.

We are told that the Alexandrian Pseudo-Carpocratians were known to themselves as Charontes and claimed to be the inheritors of a tradition dating back to the times of the Babylonian Empire, or earlier. To indicate this they also referred to themselves as the ‘Muttabriqu-Saghulhaza’, or simply the ‘Saghulhaza’ meaning, in an ancient pre-Babylonian language, ‘Upholders of Evil’. The term ‘Muttabriqu’ means ‘She Who Erases’. The real significance of this nomenclature is unclear, but the Charontes took pains to dissociate themselves from all other religions, ‘secret’ mysteries and cultic superstitions. These they condemned out of hand as childish illusions and distractions.

The Oxyrhinchus author defines this ancient language as ‘Chaldean’, an obviously fanciful invention. He says that the Saghulhaza were persecuted, and almost exterminated, by an ancient bloodthirsty, tyrannical king called ‘Akurgal’. Wlosok identifies this personage as Akurghal of Lagash who reigned about 2465BC. The extreme antiquity of these events is startling, but Wlosok is not apologetic, noting that the Aramaic initiate depicted a mythic ‘proto-Gnostic’ emanationist (Wlosok’s terms) schema of divine origins, stretching back to the dawn of time and the creation of the cosmos.

In this tradition the ‘gods’ of the Saghulhaza belief system, known as ‘Isua’, ‘Khubilkhu’ or sometimes ‘Tiruru-Geshthu-e’, were born into an epoch of darkness in a ‘time before the stars’. These divine pre-stellar entities perpetuate themselves in ‘our world’ through various modes of metamorphosis or ‘transmigration’. Each trans-aeonic incarnation or re-incarnation, being, in fact, another stage in a cosmic ‘fall’, leading to a progressive diminution of divine potency. To them, and their worshippers, ‘our world’ is an abomination, a degraded sphere of creation inspiring nothing but negation and hatred.

The purpose of Saghulhaza initiation was to bestow insight into the process of transmigration, to assist in a mighty task ‘against’ the nature of ‘our world’ (the hiemarmene, to use a Gnostic term familiar to the Hellenistic Alexandrians). This task is a reversion of the transmigration process; an infinite war against the Light to regain primordial darkness.

The original Carpocratians were denounced for believing that the only way to overcome the power of the angelic hegemony, the hiemarmene, was ‘to commit every deed there is in the world’, including sinful deeds. This liberation could only be accomplished by living through a series of lives or re-incarnations. The Pseudo-Carpocratians assimilated this idea but distorted it almost beyond recognition, attributing the desire for liberation from ‘our world’ to the divine, angelic oppressors themselves.

The need for brevity ensures that only a fragmentary outline of the complex system of the Tractatus Contra Mundum can be described in this note. Interested readers seeking further clarification are referred to Rollin’s lengthy article in Revue d’Assyrologie 25 (1932) entitled ‘Le recit epique des Khubilkhu’. We must discount the pseudo-science of discredited folklorist Vincent Roke, whose idiosyncratic researches into Scarfe’s unreliable observations are rejected by most serious students.

 

In summary we have recounted the bibliographical history of this curious document. From the lost Greek original, to the 1718 Paris edition based upon the Garionnonum Manuscript transcribed by the Monks of St. Fursa, eventually issued, in a rare printed version, in Thuringia in 1587. We have also described the more recently discovered Aramaic variant, also, in part, a copy of the lost Greek primary text, translated into French in 1930.

What became of the lost original?

Allusions in the Aramaic commentaries (tantalisingly incomplete at this point) infer that fanatics destroyed many Pseudo-Carpocratian texts; this was in the turbulent and dangerous years AD390-391. Zealous Christians, encouraged by Theodosius the Great, attempted to eliminate all traces of heresy and paganism, even burning Alexandria’s precious Sarapeion Library in their successful bid to establish a new religious or theocratic hegemony, throughout the known world.

Many secrets were lost during the terrible events surrounding the destruction of the Sarapeion; it is not inconceivable that diligent archaeologists and historians may yet uncover further clues regarding the identity of the original Pseudo-Carpocrates - but, for the time being, we can only speculate.

illus: Sphinx Galactica, 2003

 

Strange Journey, Strange Travellers

It is with some misgivings that I present to a sceptical audience this unlikely report obtained by dubious methods from an undisclosed source. It must be said at once that no independent evidence can be found to confirm the existence of the EOU and exhaustive research has failed to disclose any trace of a similar organisation operating at that time. Furthermore, as the substance of the report is so far-fetched, if not reprehensible, the likelihood that the cautious reader may feel it to be an example of a literary hoax must be very high. Alternatively, the less charitable will simply dismiss the entire farrago as crazy delusion masquerading as outrageous fact. Even so, it may be admitted that our anonymous redactor has deployed a not inconsiderable accumulation of telling details to bolster an otherwise flimsy survey, imparting an air of plausibility if not verisimilitude to the proceedings. Finally, I might mention the inclusion of an article ‘Gnostic Alchemy of the Imagination’ in Nox: A Magazine of the Abyss No 1 (1986) – but this, of course, proves nothing.

Dedicated to the ‘exorcism of illusion’ the Esoteric Order of the Ultrasphere (EOU) provides an intriguing footnote to the occult history of Britain in the late nineteen seventies.

Founded around 1979 by Comus Klingsor and Astrodamus Niger, the Order of the Ultrasphere appears to have been based upon an ideology of anti-mystical aesthetic nihilism. Although sharing some features with modern occultism of the Crowley-Spare-Typhonian variety, a close inspection of the ‘Ultrasphere Manuscripts’ leads to the conclusion that the philosophy of the organisation represented a return to the dark-side of the Enlightenment era.

A fixation with Sturm und Drang, anti-clericalism, libertinism and with the noir Gothic themes of the late eighteenth century ensured that the artistic practices and aesthetic ideas of Klingsor and Niger were rooted in the world of Goya and Sade. They sought to continue the dark, pessimistic tradition that links those artists, via Baudelaire and Lautreamont, with the incendiary actor-poet Antonin Artaud and some other Surrealists. Rimbaud’s Lettres du Voyant are a recurring point of reference in the manuscripts.

One must accept that the origins of the OU will remain forever shrouded in the deepest mystery. The earliest document that has survived is the first letter of a small collection of correspondence known as The Colchester Papers. Addressed to a recipient known simply as ‘NQNQ’, the letter proposes a future grimoire of ‘new demons’ with mildly ludicrous names based on typing errors (‘Ogdogon’, ‘Dawneophyte’, ‘Occultor’ and ‘Desiravle’ among others). Also, the writer (Klingsor) claims affinity with the Black Brothers (‘defectors/challengers of all belief systems – of belief systems as such’) and calls for the Grand Oeuvre (Great Work) to be aligned with the notion of self-initiation, claiming there are ‘no true gurus, teachers or spirit guides’.

In the second letter (Third Thoughts) a system of seven degrees of attainment is outlined but takes the form of an anti-image or mirror image of the traditional cabalistic scheme derived from the Golden Dawn and other mainstream societies. This mirror image of occult attainment arises from the application of the Formula of Reversion – a key concept of the Ultrasphere, just as the mirror was a key symbol. The author says: ‘Mirrors and reflections, images of the anti-verse, anti-matter, black holes…’ The term ‘anti-verse’ may refer to a literary as well as to a cosmological theme.

In another letter with the title Notes Written on Trains, Klingsor demands the construction of ‘new system of magic’ to oppose ‘the black magic of the world theocratic power elite’ who use faith as ‘a mechanism for draining the energy of the masses.’ The new magic of the Ultrasphere will be ‘materialistic, anti-abstractionist, non-mystical…the magic of the shamans v the magic of the priests.’ In this text (under the formula Reality = 0) Klingsor summarises the OU worldview thus: ‘in politics – Anarchism, in morality – Nihilism, in science Relativity, in art – Dadaism, in space – Black Holes.’ 

These documents date from 1979 (the year of The Postmodern Condition and the year the Voyager probes reached Jupiter), but in the archives of the Ultrasphere are numerous other artefacts and images, many of them of obscure date, many dated earlier than the Colchester correspondence. Colchester was often referred to by its Roman name Camulodunum and ‘NQNQ’ may be the same person listed on the membership register as Frater Camulodunumensis.

Illustration VII from a set of images titled Codex Archon (1976) carries the title ‘Ultrasphere (Apocalypse)’ there are two other images from the same year, one called ‘Archon Of The Ultrasphere (The Sacrament)’, and another called ‘Life For Art’s Sake (Initiates of the Ultrasphere)’. The first picture is a pencil drawing; the others are photomontages (collages) in the style of the Surrealists or earlier Dada artists like Hanna Hoech and John Heartfield.

The earliest reference to the mythos of the Ultrasphere in the collection is a different image, this time dating from 1975 and called The ‘Archon of Goth’, another photo-montage showing a volcanic seascape and a demonic figure identified by the artist as the ancient god Set. This quasi-mythology of Archons is clearly derived from certain interpretations of Gnosticism, while the appearance of the god Set may reflect a Typhonian influence. Elsewhere Klingsor and Niger refer to a ‘Gnostic alchemy of the imagination’.

The Ultrasphere Manuscripts comprise four sub-collections. Three collections of holograph manuscripts and a small set of typescripts (photocopied) comprising the Colchester Papers, the letters to NQNQ already mentioned. There are replies from NQNQ, but not collected here.

The three collections of hand-written holographs are numbered and titled Primary Papers of the Ultrasphere (15 documents), Supplementary Papers of the Ultrasphere (10 documents) and a final group of 8 documents called Rearguard Aesthetic. This final collection seems to comprise a set of notes for some kind of artistic manifesto – an unrealised programme for ‘Ultraspheric Art’ in conflict with both the traditional canons of high culture and the official avant-garde..

The bulk of these documents consist of hastily scrawled notes and tabulations, a very few are fragments of continuous text. Separate from the documents are a number of occult illustrations or diagrams intended to visualise various tenets and themes of the system or in some cases to operate as Liberation Symbols or pictorial fetishes. These illustrations may have been intended to form part of a larger, synthesised text or grimoire.

In the papers there is reference to another text or project, Codex Sardonicus: Existence in Theory and Practice (1976-1979), predating the Order, but which Klingsor and Niger used as a point of reference, the basis of their anti-method of ‘attainment’. This was the core of the system, usually referred to as the Axis Mundi (or ‘Axis of the Ultrasphere’) – kind of ‘world-tree’ or central, axial structure that functioned, like the well-known cabalistic diagram, as an ontological framework. But, as described, the Axis was a reversion, or inversion, of usual expectations: it was a katabasis or descent, not an ‘ascension’ model of ‘higher’ attainment. The initiate of the Ultrasphere was expected to navigate downwards, to plumb the depths of his/her own personal hell, or unconscious. The ironical collage ‘Life For Art’s Sake’ shows a group of dandified initiates in the guise of eighteenth century dilettantes in a kind of submarine art gallery full of curious works – above them, on the surface, is the Sadean universe of Terra (terror); the ‘world’ as we know it.

Considerations of space preclude detailed exposition of the theoretical occultism of the OU. A summary of the various topics covered in the Primary and Supplementary papers will, however, provide a glimpse of the range and scope of the collection.

The first three Primary Papers deal with the Paths and Keys of the Axis Mundi. The fourth paper sets out a version of the Grades of attainment. The fifth paper is a list of projects and recommended authors (Auctores Damnati) whose works form the Books of Vital Doctrine or Diamond Dogmas. All these documents date from 1979.

The titles of the rest of this set are as follows: Infinite Initiation, Psychoanalysis, Anxiety, Nihilism, Initiatory Cycle, Fiat Lurks, Magia Innaturalis, Bardo Cartography, Beyond Rebirth and Initiation: The Ultimate Myth.  Paper XI (Fiat Lurks) deals with the macro-history of initiation including such topics as the ‘collapse of tradition’, infinite self-creation and the ‘rupture of the normal’. Magia Innaturalis (Paper XII) talks of ‘radical disengagement’ and introduces various art-historical concerns because ‘cultural evolution reflects the initiatory process’, although, according to Third Thoughts, the ‘object of the exercise’ remains ‘the infinite transfiguration of the self’.

The Supplementary Papers of the Ultrasphere recapitulate similar themes and ideas. The First two Supplements return to the topic of self-initiation. Initiation I is called ‘Unio Mentalis’, Initiation II is called ‘The Sanctum of the Art’. There follow three items of continuous text dealing with blood symbolism (with reference to some quotations from Artaud), death doctrines and the theme of Atavistic Resurgence (this item blatantly assimilated from the New Sexuality of Austin Osman Spare). Another paper Bestial Atavisms attempts to interpret various Symbolist paintings as images of the atavistic phenomenon. The last four papers in this group are titled as follows: Invasion/Obsession, Great Year of Renovation (rough notes on occult macro-history), Springboard to the Aethyrs and Transmutation of the Real. The term ‘aethyrs’ implies a familiarity with Crowley’s The Vision and The Voice and, therefore the ‘angelic’ scryings or workings of Dee and Kelly.

Separate from these manuscripts is another document in a different hand headed Known Members of the Order 1979-1981. There are nine names listed, all of which are ‘magical’ pseudonyms. It should be borne in mind that the nomenclature is deliberately ‘absurd’ in the ‘pataphysical’ spirit of Alfred Jarry. These include NQNQ; Nyktikorax, the Night Raven; Chryse Planitia, Mistress of the Cathedrals; Rodrigo Terra; Imbroglio Korgasmus; Sarchasmus Caesaromagus; Citrus Zest the Whore of Babylon; Comus Klingsor (707z); Frater Retrogradior and Ponerologicus Astrodamus Niger.

It appears that these alleged members of the EOU assigned extravagant titles to each other. For instance one was known as the Purple Legate of the Third Degree Below Zero (zero is the symbol of psychic death or nirvana), another, the Supreme Pontiff d’Estrudo and yet another, Cardinal of the Oversoul (the ‘Autarch’, the ultimate level of self-transfiguration, or initiation, in the Ultrasphere).

There is also an enigmatic note referring to ‘inner plane adepts’ of special interest or importance to the Order. One, a semi-legendary figure named Curion Orphee le Deranger, was thought of as a kind of wandering ‘Cagliostro’ figure and composer of wild musical works, and the other, the very sinister Archon of Othona, was also known as ‘Lord of the Dark Face’. Othona is the old Roman name for modern Bradwell, a fort on the Saxon Shore. The Essex towns of Colchester (Camulodonum) and Chelmsford (Caesaromagus) are linked with Bradwell in a kind of psycho-geographic affinity. Unfortunately, no further explanations are given.

One is left with the notion that the OU was an attempt to formulate a kind of nihilistic counterpart to the psychedelia of the preceding decade, an eclectic ‘counter mythology of inner space’ using the Axis grade system as a framework. Primary Paper IV is a fragmentary list of the grades, ranging from Grade Double Zero (Student) through Grade Zero (Mendicant) to Supreme Pontiff (Beyond the Abyss) and Magus Maximus or Autarch. These grades or levels are restated in the fourth letter of the Colchester Papers: Kinx Om Pox (1980) where each level is associated with a key attribution. For example the Mendicant is associated with the key of Fear/Hate, The Retreatant with Disgust, the Preceptor (Purple Legate) with Cynicism and the Magus Maximus with Autarchy, the infinite transfiguration of the self. Each grade key of the Axis was represented by its own particular Sigil or Liberation Symbol and every key was linked by one of the twenty-two paths mapping out the ‘Strange Journey’ of the initiate.

Here is a quotation from Primary Paper VI Infinite Initiation (Unio Innaturalis):

‘No one has time for politics. Nothing is psychotic. Initiation is total – infinite, the infinite totality of the cosmos in microcosm. The infinite totality of the microcosm writ large in the macrocosm. Each grade creates his own universe, his/her own myth, each grade is creator of his/her own dream…’

There is a lost poem by Comus Klingsor and an illustrative collage picture (still extant in the archive) with the title ‘Strange Journey, Strange Travellers’ – a very strange journey indeed.

Illus: Ultima II, 1979
Illus: Strange Journey, Strange Travellers, 1976