49 2 LITERATURE OF GNOSTIC WISDOM
These are the lesser mysteries of carnal generation. After initiation into them,
people should end the lesser and be initiated into the great and heavenly ones.
Those who acquire lots connected with the latter will receive greater parts.
This is the gate of heaven and the house of god, where the good god dwells
alone, where no impure person enters, none psychical, none carnal. It is re-
served for the spiritual people alone, and those who come there must put on
the wedding garments and all become bridegrooms, made male by the vir-
ginal spirit.^75 She is the virgin who is pregnant and conceives and bears a
son,^76 a son who is not psychical or corporeal but is the blessed aeon of aeons.
Concerning these matters the savior expressly said, "Narrow and strait is the
way that leads to life, and there are few who enter it. But broad and spacious is
the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it."^77
ALMOND AND FLUTE PLAYER
The Phrygians also say that the father of all is an almond,^78 not the tree, but
that preexistent almond that has within itself the perfect fruit, palpitating and
moving in its interior. It tore open its own womb and brought forth its in-
visible and unnamable and ineffable child, of whom we are speaking. To tear
open^79 is to tear open and cut through, just as physicians call scarifications^80
the incisions that they make in inflamed bodies or in those that contain some
tumor. So the Phrygians call almond the being from which the invisible one
came forth and was begotten, and "through whom everything came into exis-
tence and apart from him the nonexistent was made."^81 The being so born is
called flute player, because what was born is a harmonious breath or spirit.
"God is a spirit. Therefore the true worshipers will worship neither on this
mountain nor in Jerusalem, but in spirit."^82 The worship of the perfect ones is
spiritual, not carnal. The spirit is there where the father and the son are
named, the son born of the father. He is the many-named one, many-eyed, in-
comprehensible, toward which every nature strives, and each in its own way.
- See Gospel of Thomas 114.
- Isaiah 7:14.
- Matthew 7:13-14.
- Greek amygdalos.
- Greek amyxai.
- Greek amychas.
- John 1:3.
- John 4:21, 23-24.