Böhme, the Divine Feminine Saviour, and the French Gnostic Church

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There is perhaps no esoteric movement more misunderstood than the French Gnostic Church.

What few realize about the Church, is that when Bricaud became Patriarch and was ordained in the French Gallican Church, much of what was original about the Gnostic Church also disappeared; including the strong place it made for the Divine Feminine and the place of women in the Church. The Church took a more orthodox Roman Catholic doctrinal turn under Bricaud’s leadership, which would continue all the way to Ambelain and beyond.

Most people in the English world are more familiar with the Bricaud-Ambelain version of the Church (or the Thelemic one which is a whole other can of soup) because of his ‘1907 Catechism’ which has been readily available in English for decades (also known in English as the Esoteric Christian Doctrine).

However, few know that this ‘1907 Catechism’ is just a high level and more orthodox rendition of the massive 300+ page ‘1899 Catechism’ which full tittle is : ‘Le catéchisme expliqué de l’Église Gnostique’ written by Louis Sophrone Fugairon (Tau Sophronius) under the guidance of the second Patriach of the Church Léonce Fabre des Essarts (Tau Synésius).

If one wants to get to the bottom of what the French Gnostic Church really was about, one needs to read that Catechism carefully and in great detail.

When one does, what is clear is that the influences on the Church’s conception of Gnosticism are complex. These include the more obvious: ancient Gnosticism (the ‘Pistis Sophia’ and the ‘Books of Jeu’ are often referenced) and Catharism (Jule Doinel’s Church was mainly Neo-Cathar), but people may be surprised to learn that it also includes influences from Jakob Böhme through Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin (his French translator) and even the Rig Veda and the Avesta, not to mention a little bit of Blavatsky’s Theosophy and Spiritualism.

So the sources for the Church’s doctrines are very eclectic and the understanding of Gnosticism is “universal” in the sense of “multi-sourced esoteric” and does not really conform to the narrow understanding of Gnosticism as a Christian dualistic sect from the 2nd century.

The Böhmist influence can particularly been seen on the Church’s understanding of Christ as a cosmic and physical force-fire, but perhaps nowhere is the Böhmist influence stronger than in the Church’s approach to the Divine Feminine and particularly to the Sophia and the Holy Virgin. Conceptions which are clearly not dualistic or Ancient Gnostic.

For example, here is what the ‘1899 Catechism’ has to say about God as a Mother:

What is the opposite of God the Father?

The opposite of God the Father is the Divine Mother.

Explication-The opposite of God is the void which is being in potentiality. Considered in this way the being in potentiality is not the Propaptor, but the Mother of God and the Mother of beings, as we will see later. This mother is distinct from God, other than him, independent from him, and absolute like he is himself. In the language of the orient she carries the name of Ea (the place, the dwelling) and is to be related to space, the place of all beings…In latin we name here Materna, where the word matter in French comes from, (however) for the ancient sages this word did not mean what our savants mean by matter today, it meant the total sum of all atoms, intelligible, the receptacle of all beings as well as a disposition toward becoming other things.

What then is the Divine Mother?

The Divine Mother is space which is the receptacle of all beings in their activity and constitutes being in power (being expressing its power, its beingness).

What do we name this receptacle of all beings as distinct from the expression of the power of being?

We name it Kenoma, or the void.

Explication.-We will borrow an image from the Kabbalah, which will enable us to explain what we need to understand by the term Kenoma. When the being in the expression of its power (the Propator), wanted to manifest himself he concentrated himself into a single point which became infinitely luminous, and by doing so left around him a void and its abysses. This void and the abysses are the Kenoma. The luminous point is the universal sun, the inexhaustible source of the light, the treasury of light. The luminous point is the absolutely positive pole and the Kenoma is everywhere the negative pole. This luminous point is the universal hearth and that is why Paul in his epistle to the Hebrews was able to say like Simon the Mage: “Our God is a consuming fire.”

So if the Mother is identical to the power of being, why do we make a distinction between them?

Because the primordial being must be considered under two different points of view, in one case the Gnostic Church considers God as engendering himself, and in the second as engendering beings under the action of God, beings that when fully formed develop into seeds. In this way the being in power resembles a female.

Can we also say that the being in the expression of its power is the Mother of God?

We can to a certain extent, but we have to remember that the resemblance with a female no longer exists at this point because the mother does not engender God through the act of a being in action and God does not develop into a seed.

This place made to conceive of God as the Divine Feminine and God the Mother is hence radical and non-conformist both in a Catholic and Protestant sense. Equally radical is the place for the Divine Feminine in a very important prophecy of the early Church: that of the Coming of the Virgin of Light.

This prophecy is intimated in the early prayers from Patriarch Doinel:

“Hail, shining white Lily of the gleaming and ever tranquil Pleroma, and ever brilliant Rose of celestial delightfulness, from whom is born and from whose milk is nourished Jesus, the Flower of the Aeons, who willed that our souls be nourished by the showers of thy divinity. Let thy dew descend upon us, and may Justice rain from the clouds in heaven above. Let thy dew descend upon us, and may Beauty rain from the clouds in heaven above. Let thy dew descend upon us, and may Goodness rain from the clouds in heaven above.”

This prophecy was more explicitly explained when Patriarch Fabre des Essarts made it a point to mention it as an essential teaching of the Church, during his address to the Spiritualist Congress in 1908:

“I don’t have the intention here of giving a full exposé of the Doctrines (of the Gnostic Church).

These doctrines were presented in a series of articles in La Voie. But there is one dogma on which I would like to insist.

It is the dogma of feminine salvation. The work of the Father has been completed, that of the Son as well. Remaining is that of the Spirit which alone can determine the definitive salvation of terrestrial Humanity and prepare the Reconstitution of the Adam-Kadmon.

The Spirit, or the Paraclete, as the Cathars named it, corresponds to that which is feminine in the Divinity and our Teachings specify that it is the only face of God which is truly accessible to our reason. The Hebrew language identifies the Spirit as Ruach, which is of feminine gender. On this, I call upon the linguistic expertise of our dear President (i.e., Papus).

What exactly will be the nature of this new and next messiah? Will it be a woman from the elite with the specific mission of working this salvation? Or will it be a group of divine women?

I couldn’t say, but what I do know, and affirm strongly, is that it is by the eternal feminine that the world will be saved.”

The original Church survived in parallel with Bricaud’s under De Chauvagnie’s leadership (who was the first female Bishop of the Church also known as Sophia Escarlamonde) and in 1913, it made this Prophecy of the coming of the Virgin of the Light an Act of Faith in its Creed:

“I believe that the goal of the mission of these Saviors is to prepare us for the advent of the Paraclete which is the Holy Spirit and which will manifest itself to us as the Virgin of the Light.

On behalf of our Pansophers community, thank you Mat Ravignat for this fantastic article. Readers may also enjoy our interview with Mat “On the Gnostic Church, Elus Cohens and Rosicrucians.”

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