The Hymn of the Eternal Marriage

I enjoy finding fragments of lost treasures and piecing them together to see what they might have been like. This is a hypothetical reconstruction of a Gnostic myth. It find it aesthetically pleasing that I could assemble it entirely of passages from the Gnostic sources. I’m presenting it not as what I believe in any literal sense, but as their vision of the archetype of the Divine Lovers, an archetype that makes sense to Witches and a great many other people. The sources can be found in The Nag Hammadi Library in English and in The Ante-Nicene Fathers.

Our sister Sophia came down in innocence

By the Father’s will to unify All into the Light.¹

A mighty power in Heaven,

She came into the world and was called Mary,²

Who is the Great Sophia, destined from the first

for union with him by the self-Begotten Father,³

For Mary incarnates Sophia, who rules the present world.

Entrusted as the first prophetess, Mary announces

prophecy among all those born of woman.⁴

Sophia wishes her priestess to equal men in authority;

wherefore she brings forth the words as wholly her own.⁵

Hence there are two genuine prophets, Mary and Jesus,

Who descended into the world to find his lost sister Sophia.

Clothing themselves with the light, Jesus and Mary.

Celebrate the sacred mystery as bridegroom and bride,⁶

For bridegroom and bride belong to the Sacred Marriage,

the Holy of Holies, the bridal chamber, the fullness of All,

wherein they celebrate the sacred mysteries of love.⁷

Mary, Queen⁸ and Bride, receives him as her Anointed spouse.⁹

Not ignorant but fleshly is She who takes the Savior as a husband,

He who exists as well as She who brought us forth. ¹⁰

In joy she gives herself to him, hoping for fruit from the union.¹¹

God created bodies for our use, that we may increase in ecstasy

And God joins us and enjoys us as we enjoy ourselves.¹²

Whenever Sophia receives her consort and Jesus is anointed,

the Pleroma will receive Sophia joyfully and All will be unified.¹³