The Secret Writing According to John (Apocryphon of John), Codex II, 1 · 17 of 24 · tr. Samuel Zinner
The Archons Conspire Against Adam
When they gazed down, they realized that his intellect surpassed (their own), and they convened in counsel together with the group of archons and all angels.
They took fire and earth [II, 21] and water, and combined them with each other together with the four fiery
winds, and they worked them together and made a loud commotion, and they took him into the shadow of death, so that they could once more shape him from earth and water and fire and wind, the one whose origin is in matter, which is the ignorance of darkness and lust and their false spirit.
This is the tomb for the mold of the body that the robbers used to clothe the man, the chain of oblivion, and he became a mortal man.
This is the first one who descended, and the first division, but Reflection of Light, who dwelt inside him, she [IV, 33] roused his intellect. Further, the archons brought him and placed him in paradise, and they said to him, ‘Eat,’ meaning, ‘in laziness,’ because their delight is surely bitter, and their beauty is degenerate, but their delight is trickery, and their trees are godlessness, and their fruit is an untreatable poison, and their promise is mortality.
However, they had placed their tree of life in the middle of paradise, and I will teach all of you the mystery of their life, which is the plot they concocted together, which is the likeness of their spirit.
Its root is bitter and its branches are mortality, its shadow is odium, and trickery dwells inside its leaves, and its blossom is the evil anointing, and its fruit is mortality, and lust is its [IV, 34] seed, and it buds in the darkness. Those who taste [II, 22] of it, their dwelling place is Hades, and the darkness is their resting place.
However, so that he could not gaze up toward his perfection nor realize the shame of his nudity, they remained in front of what they call ‘the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil,’ being Reflection of Light. I was the one, however, who caused them to eat.”
I also askedthe savior: “Lord, was it not the serpent that instructed Adam to eat?”
The savior grinned and said: “The serpent instructed them to eat of the evil of sexual lust and destruction, so that he could exploit him. Further, he was aware that he was disobedient to him because of Reflection of Light that dwells in him, which caused his intellect to be more accurate than the chief archon, and he desired to extract the power he had himself given to him, and he caused a ‘trance’ to overcome Adam.”
I further asked the savior: “What is the ‘trance’?”
He, however, said: “It is not what Moses wrote, nor what you have heard, [IV, 35] because he said in his first book, ‘He caused him to sleep’; instead, (he caused his) perception (to sleep), because in fact he said through the prophet: ‘I will cause their hearts to be heavy, so that they do not pay attention and do not see.’
Narratives or doctrines of cosmic origin — how heaven, earth, and the primordial deities first came into being. The Kojiki's deities born alone on the Plain of High Heaven, Voluspo's Ginnungagap, Genesis's tohu wa-bohu, the Timaeus's Demiurge fashioning the Receptacle, the Hesiodic Theogony, the Kalevala's egg-cosmogony, Egyptian Nun-and-Atum. Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (structural-ontological cascade), letters_of_creation (mechanism of creation), and apocatastasis/frashokereti (end-state restoration); cosmogony is temporally-narrative beginning.
The passage details the specific narrative of how the archons combined elements to fashion the first human body.
A secondary creator deity—often ignorant or malevolent—responsible for fashioning the material world, distinct from the supreme transcendent God.
The text describes the archons (functioning as a collective demiurge) fashioning the material body from elements and creating a false paradise to trap the divine spark.
Transgressive knowing acquired against divine prohibition — the Watchers' teaching of metallurgy, sorcery, and cosmetics in 1 Enoch, the Gnostic Eve narratives, the Promethean mytheme; explicitly contrasted with gnosis_direct_knowledge, which is salvific.
The text reinterprets the 'tree of knowledge' and the serpent's instruction as a mechanism to introduce sexual lust and destruction, contrasting it with the true liberating knowledge.
Salvation through direct experiential knowledge of the divine nature, not through faith, ritual, or moral works alone.
Salvation is depicted as the awakening of intellect through the 'Reflection of Light' and the realization of one's true nature against the ignorance imposed by the archons.
Esoteric teachings reserved for those ready to receive them; outer meaning conceals an inner liberating truth.
The Savior reveals the 'mystery' of the archons' plot and reinterprets the biblical narrative of the serpent and the trance as esoteric truths hidden from ordinary understanding.
Gurdjieff and Ouspensky's claim that ordinary human beings live in a state of waking sleep, reacting mechanically without unified will or consciousness, and that the spiritual path begins with recognising this condition.
The text describes Adam falling into a 'trance' where his perception sleeps and he becomes a 'mortal man' subject to the archons' control, akin to waking sleep.
The recognition of one's own true divine nature as the primary path to liberation; 'know thyself' as soteriology.
The awakening of Adam's intellect allows him to realize his true nature and the 'shame of his nudity' (his entrapment), which is a form of self-recognition.
The felt condition of exile from one's divine origin — Rumi's reed flute torn from its bed, Plotinus's 'we have forgotten,' the Gnostic forgetfulness; the affective wound that complements return_to_source and gives the return its motive.
Adam's condition as a 'mortal man' in the 'shadow of death' and 'chain of oblivion' illustrates the state of exile from his divine origin.