Gnosticism and Tantra are groupings of esoteric traditions that each posed challenges to the philosophical or theological doctrines of the religious systems coeval to them by introducing beliefs and practices that were in shocking...
moreGnosticism and Tantra are groupings of esoteric traditions that each posed challenges to the philosophical or theological doctrines of the religious systems coeval to them by introducing beliefs and practices that were in shocking contrast to existing purity codes. In both Gnostic and Tantric traditions, female figures can be seen as performing opposing kinds of symbolic work, when they both define a stable and fixed reality for the normative male to transcend, and facilitate the symbolic fracturing of that reality, an act key to enabling spiritual realization or “gnosis” for the male practitioner.
This paper forges a comparison using select female-gendered Gnostic and Tantric figures or principles, with reflection on how the discourses of orthodoxy and heresy shape and define the identities of these groups. I consider how the female principle—both the feminine-gendered symbolic, and also, in some instances, the human woman acting as a metaphor for the Divine—is encoded in these traditions with a purposive ambiguity. Gender theory frames this analysis, as I treat the derivation of religious symbol systems as a gendered act.
In Gnosticism, Sophia and the Barbelo or First Thought are discussed. Sophia’s condition--her will and her generative power-- has been called by Buckley one of “simultaneous deficiency and an excess of power” (132). Throughout the Gnostic myths, her presence is a liminal one: neither here nor there, she exists to delineate a newly formed otherness or ambiguity.
In South Asian Tantra, the female symbolizes and plays the role of the Goddess, in the form of a yogini, a being also between two realms. Close to the human world and divine (similar to the figure of the Sophia), the yogini’s liminality is evoked.
In a general sense, in Gnosticism and Tantra, females and their bodies seem to symbolically embody a performative multivalence: they are by turns the fullness of creation, the most pure and most sought, and the most impure, problematic and othered. Biernacki argues that this very multiplicity of shifting forms does profound work, and can “...explode[ ] the binary logic that founds the idea of an ‘other.’”(126-7).” When the goddess speaks in The Brhannila Tantra, Biernacki writes, hers are “not just words, they are the bodying of sound into female forms. This feminine anthropomorphized speech fuses the notion of sign and thing, giving us a word that is...the presence of being, the goddesses themselves” (119).
To show how the female in select Gnostic texts also performs this engagement of speech-as-gnosis, I discuss Mary as a character in the narrative of the Pistis Sophia who can be seen as the human counterpart to the Sophia. Speech takes on an ontological quality in this text as Mary alone among the disciples succeeds in repeating back the Savior’s teachings, and ultimately, she transforms: “When Mary had finished saying these words...she had become pure spirit entirely” (1896, 199). Mary’s unique acumen will also be explored as potentially noteworthy in terms of the status and capabilities attributed to women by the Gnostics.
Abstract Citations:
Anon. 1896. Pistis Sophia. New York: Theosophical Publishing Society.
Biernacki, Lorillai. 2007. Renowned Goddess of Desire. Oxford: Oxford University Pr.
Buckley, Jorunn. 1986. Female Fault and Fulfillment in Gnosticism. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina Pr.
