10. The Sermon of Zostrianos
his concluding portion of the long Sethian text Zostrianos
provides a fine example of a gnostic sermon. The figure named
Zostrianos was said to have been an older relative (perhaps a
grandfather or uncle) of the Persian religious teacher Zoroaster, or Zarathus-
tra, the founder of the Zoroastrian religion. Zoroaster himself is mentioned,
along with Zostrianos, in the set of cryptographic titles and descriptions after
the conclusion of the text. Revelations by Zostrianos and Zoroaster are also re-
ferred to by Porphyry in his Life ofPlotinos as texts known to neoplatonists,
and Porphyry claims that Plotinos's student Amelios wrote as many as forty
volumes refuting the book of Zostrianos.
Although the text of Zostrianos is poorly preserved and in fragmentary
condition, parts of the text are quite legible, including the beginning, where
the author, writing in the name of Zostrianos, recounts his call. Once he was
in the desert, meditating on deep questions, when he grew profoundly de-
pressed, to the point of contemplating suicide. Suddenly an angel appears to
him, "the angel of the knowledge of the eternal light," and this angel guides
Zostrianos in an out-of-the-body journey up through the heavenly realms. As
he ascends, Zostrianos is baptized at the various stages of ascent into the
knowledge of the divine. After a series of revelatory experiences, in which Zos-
trianos learns about the meaning of the universe and the divine realms, which
are populated with the usual Sethian characters, Zostrianos returns down to
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