“He said to me, The mother-father is great in mercy, the holy spirit, who in every way is compassionate, who sympathizes with you, the Afterthought of enlightened forethought. This one raised up the offspring of the perfect generation and raised their thought and the eternal light of the human. When the first ruler realized that these people were exalted above him and could think better than he, he wanted to grasp their thought. He did not know that they surpassed him in thought and that he would be unable to grasp them. He devised a plan with his authorities, who are his powers. Together they fornicated with Sophia, and through them was produced bitter Fate, the final, fickle bondage.
“Fate is like this because the powers are fickle. To the present day fate is harder and stronger than what gods, angels, demons, and all the generations have encountered. For from fate have come all iniquity and injustice and blasphemy, the bondage of forgetfulness, and ignorance, and all burdensome orders, weighty sins, and great fears. Thus all of creation has been blinded so that none might know the god that is over them all. Because of the bondage of forgetfulness, their sins have been hidden. They have been bound with dimensions, times, and seasons, and fate is master of all.” ~Book of Baruch
Mother-Father
This is an unusual reference to find in ancient scripture. We have been led to believe that everything back then was male-oriented and women were rarely mentioned. Yet here we have a Gnostic leader talking about God as Father-Mother rather than just Father. He is correct, of course. God is both male and female, yet neither. God is all and beyond and distinctions or separations.
Afterthought of Forethought
This sounds insulting to many of us. To us, an afterthought is something unimportant. It is the minor details that are filled in after the major issues are resolved in forethought. But that isn’t what Baruch means. He is saying that we are the creations of God’s thought. But he is also saying that if we are creations of thought, than we are thought. He is calling those thought creations afterthought.
First Ruler
You may be understandably confused by the reference to the “first ruler”. You would think that is a reference to God, but it isn’t. The first ruler is the ruler of the material plane. The ruler of the fallen angels. We must remember that these stories are all allegorical, so can differ greatly if taken literally. We have to look for the inner meaning instead.
This First Ruler is jealous of humanity because we are “above him”. That is because, in that time, we had done no wrong and were still servants of God.
Producing Fate
One should definitely not take literally the description of Fate being produced by the First Ruler and his Powers fornicating with Sophia. All this is saying is that different energies and powers were mixed together to produce Fate. More accurately, it produced the realm of Fate, the universe of matter.
In Bondage
Baruch says Fate has but us in bondage with forgetfulness, ignorance, and great fear. We might also add by making us see the Great Illusion as reality and behaving accordingly. This is Plato’s allegorical Cave. A place where illusions seem real and reality stays hidden.
Baruch also says we are bound with “dimensions, time, and seasons”. That brief statement says a lot about the structure of the universe. We have been moved to a lower dimension, one of matter. It binds us because it is like being in a deep hole that is difficult to climb out of. Like the kids game of Slides & Ladders, it is easy to slide down to a lower dimension, hard to climb to a higher one.
Hope Arrives
The good news in all this is that the Sun of Righteousness has come as promised by the Biblical prophet Malachi. This sun is our ladder for climbing out of the hole. It is like a wormhole between heaven and earth. It awakens and nourishes our spiritual faculties. By doing so, it give us the ability to return to our original state of spirit. But we still have to work at it. There are no free rides.
Afterthought or forethought, it doesn’t matter. God is not just going to save us because we are so wonderful and lovable. He is providing the means whereby we can work with Him and the angels to save ourselves. If we choose to ignore it, we will truly become afterthoughts in the modern sense.
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