LITERATURE OF GNOSTIC WISDOM 409
Our struggle is not against flesh and blood—as he said—but
against the world rulers of this darkness and the spirits of evil.BAPTISM OF THE SOUL
As long as the soul goes on running around everywhere sleeping with
whomever she meets and defiling herself, she will suffer her deserved punish-
ment. But when she perceives the troubles she is in, weeps before the father,
and repents, then the father will pity her and make her womb turn from the
external and turn inward again, and she will recover her proper character. It is
not like this for a woman. The body's womb is inside the body like the other
internal organs, but the soul's womb is turned to the outside like the male gen-
italia, which are external.
Therefore, when the womb of the soul, by the father's will, turns itself in-
ward, she is baptized and immediately cleansed of external pollution forced
upon her, just as dirty clothing is soaked in water and stirred until the dirt is
removed and it is clean. So the cleansing of the soul is to recover the freshness
of her former nature and to become as she was.
That is her baptism.
Then she will begin to rage at herself like a woman in labor, writhing and
screaming in the hour of delivery. But since she is female, she is powerless by
herself to inseminate a child. So the father sent her from heaven her man, her
brother, the firstborn. The bridegroom came down to the bride. She gave up
her former whoring and cleansed herself of the pollution of adulterers, and
she was renewed to be a bride. She cleansed herself in the bridal chamber. She
filled it with perfume and sat there waiting for the true groom. She no longer
goes about the marketplace, copulating with whomever she desires, but she
waits for him, saying, "When will he come?" And she feared him, not knowing
what he looked like. She no longer remembers, since she fell from her father's
house long ago.
She dreamed of him, by the father's will, like a woman in love with a man.
THE MARRIAGE
Then, by the will of the father, the bridegroom came down to her in the bridal
chamber, which had been prepared. And he decorated the chamber.
This marriage is not like carnal marriage, in which those who make love
with each other become satiated in their lovemaking. And as if it were a bur-
den, they leave behind the annoyance of physical desire. They turn their faces