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
