Gospel of Philip · 10 of 13 · tr. Thomas O. Lambdin
Section 1j
In the world these are the true people.
They are the attendants of the bridal chamber.
POWER AND WEAKNESS In this world, power and weakness mingle when man and woman have sex.
Joining is different in the eternal realm, though we use the same names to speak of it.
There are names beyond the ordinary ones and stronger than showy brute strength.
Yet all is the same, and this is incomprehensible to hearts of flesh.
KNOWLEDGE OF SELF Should you who possess everything not know yourself?
If you do not know yourself, you will not enjoy what you own.
But know yourself and what you have enjoy.
GARMENT OF LIGHT The perfect human can neither be restrained nor seen.
If they see him, they can stop him, so there is no way to grace but to put on the perfect light and become perfect.
All who put on that garment will enter the kingdom.
This is the perfect light.
We must become perfect before leaving this world.
Who is rich and has not thrown it off will not share in the kingdom but will go as imperfect into the middle.
Only Jesus knows where that will end.
THE HOLY PERSON The priest is fully holy, including his body.
Does one take bread and make it holy?
Or the cup or anything drunk?
Are they sanctified?
If so, why not the body too?
BAPTISM AND DEATH By perfecting the water of baptism, Jesus emptied it of death.
We go into the water but not into death, so we are not poured out into the wind of the world.
Whenever that wind blows, winter comes.
When the holy spirit breathes, summer blows in.
KNOWLEDGE AND LOVE Whoever has knowledge of the truth is a free being, but the free human doesn’t sin.
“Whoever sins is the slave of sin.” Truth is the mother, knowledge the father.
Those who think that sinning does not apply to them are called free by the world.
Knowledge of the truth can make one arrogant, giving meaning to the words “being free.” It makes them feel superior to the world.
But love builds up.
Who is really free through knowledge is a slave because of love for those who have not yet attained the freedom of knowledge.
Knowledge makes them capable of freedom.
Love never calls something its own, yet it too may possess the same thing.
Love never says, “This is mine,” or “That is mine,” but “All these are yours.” SPIRITUAL FRAGRANCE Spiritual love is wine and fragrance.
Those nearby also enjoy it from those who are anointed.
But if the anointed withdraw and leave, then those unanointed, who are hanging around, remain in their bad odor.
The Samaritan gave nothing but wine and oil to the wounded.
Only the ointment.
It healed the wounds, for “love covers a multitude of sins.” CHILDREN AND ADULTERY The children a woman gives birth to resemble the man who loves her.
If her husband loves her, then they are like her husband.
If affections comes from an adulterer, then the children are like him.
Often, if a woman sleeps with her husband out of need, while her heart is with the adulterer with whom she also has sex, her child will look like the adulterer.
You who live together with the son of god, love not the world but the lord, so your children will look not like the world but like the lord.
SEX AND SPIRIT Humans have sex with humans, horses with horses, donkeys with donkeys.
Those of one sort usually linger with those like them.
So spirit mingles with spirit and thought consorts with thought and light shares light.
If you are born a person, a person will love you.
If you become a spirit, a spirit will join with you.
If you become thought, thought will mingle with you.
The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.
The passage asserts that like joins like, stating spirit mingles with spirit and thought consorts with thought.
The Stoic and Plotinian doctrine that all parts of the cosmos are bound by hidden affinities, so that a movement in one part resonates through the whole; the metaphysical basis for astrology, magic, and divination.
The fragrance of the anointed is enjoyed by those nearby, indicating a resonance between spiritual states.
Eckhart's Abgeschiedenheit/Gelassenheit — radical letting-go of will, image, and grasping that opens the soul to God; distinct from inner_silence (quietness) and from material renunciation, and adjacent to Sufi tark and Buddhist non-grasping as a practice rather than a metaphysical claim.
Love is described as never calling anything its own, contrasting with the possessive nature of the world.
Ecstatic, non-rational receptivity to the divine figured as drunkenness — Plato's symposium wine, Rumi's sukr, Eckhart's 'sober drunkenness'; the passive/receptive metaphor for divine encounter, distinct from divine_madness's active possessing rapture.
Spiritual love is explicitly compared to wine and fragrance.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
The text instructs believers to put on the perfect light and become perfect before leaving this world.
Iamblichean ritual practice that engages the gods directly through consecrated material symbols and actions, on the premise that divine power descends into properly prepared matter — distinct from philosophical contemplation alone.
Baptism is presented as a ritual act that perfects water and empties it of death.