KAHIOHJUfllC
592
ICANIOHJUSM
Reason, Thought, Reflection, and Will The designa-
tion of *' Tabernacle" contains a play on the sound
Shechina which means both dwelling or tent and *' Di-
vine glory Of presence and is used in the Old Testa-
ment to designate God's presence between the cheru-
bim. These five tabernacles were pictured on the
one hand as stories of one building — Will beine the
topmost story — and on the other hand as limbs of God's
body. He indwelt and possessed them all, so as to be
in a sense identical with tiiem, yet aeain in a sense to
be distinct from them. The^r are abo designated as
CBons or worlds, beata scBcula in St. Augustine's writ-
ings. In other sources the five limbs are; Longanim-
ity, Knowledge, Reason, Discretion, and Understand-
ing. And again these five as limbs of the Father's
spiritual body were sometimes distinguished from the
five attributes of his pure Intelligence: Love, Faith,
Truth, Highmindcdness, and Wisdom. This Father
of Light together with the light-air and the light-
earth, the former with five attributes parallel to his
own and the latter with the five limbs of Breath, Wind
Light, Water, and Fire constitute the Manichsean
Pleroma. This light world is of infinite extent in five
directions and has only one Hmit, set to it below bv
^e realm of Darkness, which is likewise infinite in all
directions barring the one above, where it borders on
the realm of light. Opposed to the Father of Grandeur
is the King of Darkness. He is never actually called
Qod, but otherwise, he and his kingdom down below
are exactly parallel to the ruler and realm of the light
above, "the dark Pleroma is also triple, as it were
firmament, air, and earth inverted. The first two
(Heshuha and Humana) have the five attributes,
members, aK>ns, or worlds: Pestilent Breath, Scorch-
ing Wind, Gloom, Mist, Consiuning Fire; the last has
the following five: Wells of Poison, Columns of Smoke,
Abysmal Depths, Fetid Marshes, and Pillars of Fire.
This last five-fold division is clearly borrowed from
ancient Chaldean ideas current in Mesopotamia.
These two Powers might have lived eternally in peace, had not the Prince of Darkness decided to in- vade the realm of light. On the approach of the monarch of chaos the five seons of light were seized with terror. This incarnation of evil, called Satan or Uivdevil {AiitfioKot irpdrot, Iblis Kadim, in Arabic sources), a monster, half fish, half bird, yet with four feet and lion-headed, threw himself upward towards the confines of light: The echo of the thunder of his onrush went through the blessed seons till it reached the Father of Majesty, who bethinking himself said: I will not send my five sons, made for blessed repose, to engage in this war, I will 90 myself and give battle. Hereupon the Father of Maiesty emanated the Mother of Life and the Mother of Lite emanated the First Man. These two constitute with the Father a sort of Trinity in Unity, hence the Father could say: *' I my- self will go". Mani here assimilates ideas already Imot^ from Gnosticism (q, v., subtitle The Sophia Myth) and resembling; Chnstian doctrine, especially when it is borne in mmd that *' Spirit" is femmine in Hebrew- Aramaic and could thus easily be conceived as A mother of all living. The Protanthropos or *' First Man" is a distinctly Iranian conception, which like- wise foimd its way mto a number of Gnostic systems (q. v.), but which became the oentral figure in Mani- chsism. The myth of ihe origin of the world out of the members of a dead giant or Ur-man is extremely ancient, not only in Iranian speculations but also in Indian mytholo«y (Rig-Veda, A, 00). Indeed if the myth of Giant Ymir In Norse Cosmogonies (see Coa- MOOony) is not merely a medieval mvention, as is sometimes asserted, this legend must be one of the earliest possessions of the Aryan race.
According to Mani the First-Man now emanates sons as a man who puts on his armour for the combat. These five sons are the five elements opposed to the Ave moM of dMrkaow: C^ear Air, Eefseehing W^d,
Bright Li^t, Life-giving Waters, and Warmin£[ Fire.
He put on first the aerial breeze, then threw over himself
light as a fiaming mantle, and over this li^ht a cover-
ing of water; he surrounded himself with gusts of
wind, took light as his lance and shield, and cast him-
self Qownward towards the line of danger. An angel
called Nahashbat (?), carry ine a crown of victory,
went before him. The First-Man projected his light
before him, and the King of Darkness seeing it, thought
and said: *' What I have sought from afar, lo; I found
it near me". He also clothed himself with his five
elements and engaged in combat with the First-Man.
The struggle went m favour of the King of Darkness.
The Firs^f an, when being overcome, gave himself and
his five sons as food to the five sons of Darkness, " as a
man having an enemy, mixes deadly poison in a cake,
and gives it to his foe ' . W^hen these five re^lendcnt
deities had been absorbed by the sons of Darkness,
reason was taken a%vay from them and they became
through the poisonous admixture with the sons of
Darkness, like unto a man bitten by a wild dog or ser-
pent. Thus the evil one conquered for a while. But
the First-Man recovered his reason and prayed seven
times to the Father of Maiesty, who being moved by
mercy, emanated as second creation, the Friend of the
Light, this Friend of the Light emanated the Great
Ban, and the Great Ban emanated the Spirit of Life.
Thus a second trinity parallel to the first (Father of
Light, Mother of Life, First ManJ comes into existence.
The first two personages of the latter trinity have not
yet been explained and particularly the meaning of
the Great Ban is a puzzle, but as in the former trinity, it
is the third person, who does the actual work, the Spirit
of Life (Tb ZQw liveO/xa), who becomes the demiui^
or world-former. Like the First-Man he emanates five
gersonalities: from his intelligence the Ornament of plendour (Sefath Ziva, Splcnditenens, ip€yy6Karoxot in Greek and Latin sources), from his reason the Great King of Honour, from his thought Adamas, Light, from his self-reflection the Iving of Glory, and from his will the Supporter (Sabhla: Atlas and *Qfio4>6pos of Greek and Latm sources). These five deities were objects of special worship amongst Manichseans, and St. Augustine (Contra Faustum, aV) eives us descrip- tions 01 them drawn from Manichsean hymns.
These five descend to the realm of Darkness, find the First-Man in his degradation and rescue him by the word of their power; his armour remains behind, but lifting him by the right hand the Spirit of Life brings him back to the Mother of Life. The fashion- ing of the world now begins. Some of the sons of the Spirit of Life kill and flay the archons or sons of Darloiess and bring them to the Mother of Life. She spreads out their skins and forms twelve heavens. Their corpses are hurled on the realm of Darkness and eight worlds are made, their bones form the mountain ranges. The Ornament of Splendour holds the five resplendent deities by their waist and below their waist the heavens are extended. Atlas carries all on his shoulders, the Great King of Honour sits on top of the heavens and guards over all. The Spirit of Life forces the sons of Darkness to surrender some of the light which they had absorbed from the five elements and out of this he forms the s\m and the moon (ves- sels of ligjht, lucidcB naves in St. Aug.) and the stars. The Spirit of Life further makes the wheels of the wind under the earth near the Supporter. The King of Glory by some creation or otner enables these \dieel8 to mount the surface of the earth and thus prevents the five resplendent deities from being set on fire by the poison of the archons. The text of Theodore Bar Khoni is here so confused and corrupt that it is difi^cult to catch the meanine; probably wind, water, air, and fire are considered protective coverings, encircling and enveloping the gross material earthy and revolving around it. At this stage of the cosmogony the Mother of lofot
