12. Thunder
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I hunder (or Thunder: Perfect Mind) is a sacred text of paradox
I and antithesis, with few obvious characteristics of Jewish, Christ-
JL, ian, or gnostic themes. However, gnostic ideas such as liberation
from the material world, a pantheistic deity that permeates matter and life,
and the promise of salvation of return distinguish it from traditional religious
poems. Hence we may recognize gnostic and even Sethian themes in Thunder.
The speaker is a woman, and while there are diverse views on her identity—
appropriate in a riddle poem—we favor those who find in her a concealed
Sophia, after her fall, carrying her spark into the world of body, what Bentley
Layton calls "a manifestation of wisdom and Barbelo in gnostic myth."l How-
ever, her mystery is that one cannot know for certain who she is and whom she
represents. In being that mystery she transcends sects.
George W. MacRae discerns the formal qualities and the transcendence of
this poem:
While the Jewish wisdom literature and the Isis aretalogies pro-
vide texts which are parallel in tone and style, the particular sig-
nificance of the self-proclamations of Thunder, Perfect Mind
may be found in their antithetical character. Antithesis and par-
adox may be used to proclaim the absolute transcendence of thei. Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, p. 77.