Basilides and the 365 Heavens: The Gnostic Master of Abraxas
Add up the Greek letters of the name ABRASAX, using the numbers the Greeks gave to each letter, and you reach 365. That is the number of days in the year, and for the followers of the Alexandrian teacher Basilides it was no accident.
The name of the supreme power of the heavens added up to the count of the days. The sum is the one clear fact about a thinker whose system comes down to us in two quite different accounts, written by hostile critics, and whose own words survive only in scraps.
A Teacher in Alexandria
Basilides taught in Alexandria in the first half of the second century. Writers of the next generations say that he was active under the emperors Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, roughly between 117 and 161. He is counted among the earliest great Gnostic teachers, a contemporary of Valentinus.
According to later reports, he claimed that his teaching came from Glaucias, said to be an interpreter of the apostle Peter. He wrote a commentary on the Gospels, said to be in twenty-four books, and his son Isidore carried on his school.
Almost nothing of his own writing remains. A few fragments are quoted by Clement of Alexandria and others. For the rest, we depend on opponents, above all Irenaeus of Lyons and Hippolytus of Rome, and they do not agree.
The 365 Heavens
According to Irenaeus, Basilides taught that the highest God is an unborn Father, from whom came Mind, Word, Prudence, Wisdom and Power, and from these came the first angelic powers. These made the first heaven, and others made a second, and so on until there were 365 heavens, one for each day of the year.
Each heaven had its own angels and rulers. The lowest heaven, the one we can see, was the work of angels who shaped the world and divided it among themselves.
Their chief, in this report, was the god of the Jews. He wanted to bring the other nations under his own people, and the other powers opposed him. The Father then sent his Mind, called Christ, to free those who believed.
Irenaeus adds a strange detail. According to him, Christ did not suffer. Simon of Cyrene was crucified in his place, and Jesus stood by and laughed. Whether Basilides really taught this is uncertain, and it comes from a critic.
Abraxas
The ruler of the highest of the 365 heavens is called Abrasax, or Abraxas. The name is a Greek spelling whose letters sum to 365, a number that stands for the whole circle of the year, the full order of the heavens.
Many small engraved stones from the Roman world carry the name Abraxas. They often show a figure with a rooster's head, a man's body and serpents for legs, holding a whip and a shield. These stones were used as amulets and in magic.
It is not certain that Basilides' own followers made them, and modern scholars usually say they belong to the wider world of Greek and Egyptian magic. The name Abraxas lived on in later European writing about magic, and in the twentieth century it appeared in the work of Carl Jung and Hermann Hesse.
A Different Account
Hippolytus gives a much more philosophical picture. In his version, there is at the start a God who does not exist, meaning a God beyond being. This God makes the world from a single seed that holds everything in it, like a mustard seed.
Out of the seed rise a threefold "sonship," and the Great Archon, the ruler of the eighth sphere, and a second ruler of the seventh. The goal is the return of the sonship to the God beyond being.
Modern scholars debate which account is closer to Basilides himself. Some think Irenaeus describes the early teacher and Hippolytus reflects his later school. Others think Hippolytus is closer to the original. We cannot settle it, and the careful answer is that both are second-hand.
Suffering and Faith
Fragments in Clement of Alexandria show a more human Basilides. He wrote that suffering can be a discipline, a way by which a hidden fault is brought to light. Clement quotes him with unease, since the thought of suffering as correction sounded close to Christian teaching. The wording is Clement's report, and the details are uncertain.
Closing
The 365 heavens are a way of saying that the world is ordered, vast and stepped, that each day belongs to its own ruler, and that the human soul lives far below the highest light. Basilides asked what lies at the top, and answered with a name that adds up to a year.
That arithmetic shows how seriously the ancient thinkers took the link between number and meaning. It also shows how little we know. Behind the engraved stones and the sums stands a teacher we meet only through the voices of his critics.
Related Esoteric Inquiries
- The Gnostic Basilides: Abraxas and the Seed of the Cosmos
- Basilides and the Great Archon: The Gnostic Seed of the 365 Heavens
- The Ascension of Isaiah: The Seven Heavens
Lux Esoterica.
2026.
Comments