Skemmata -- 2

31 Hades is a lightless place filled with eternal darkness and gloom.

32 The gnostic (gnostikos) is a hired man receiving his wage on the same day.

33 The man living the practical life (praktikos) is a hireling awaiting his wage.

34 The mind (nous) is a temple of the Holy Trinity.

35 That mind (nous) is embodied which is a seer of all the Ages.

36 That mind is unclean which tarries with reprehensible passion among those things which are sensible.

37 Desire (epithumia) is a power of the soul which makes wrath (orge) to disappear.

38 The man accomplished in the practical life (praktikos) is he who leads his life piously and justly in the world which is constituted in the intellect (dianoia).

39 The man accomplished in contemplation (theoretikos) is he who forms the sensible world in his intellect (dianoia) only for the sake of its gnosis.

40 Of the thoughts, some occur to us as [if we were] animals, while others occur to us as [if we were] men. And those that occur to us as [if we were] animals are those thoughts which are from desire (epithumia) and anger (thumos). Those that occur to us as [if we were] men, however, are those thoughts which are from sorrow and vainglory and pride. But, since they are mixed, those [thoughts] which are from accidie occur to us both as [if we were] animals and as [if we were] men.[1]

41 Of the thoughts, some lead while others follow. And those thoughts lead which are from the <desire (epithumia)>,[2] whereas those thoughts follow which are from the temper (thumos).

42 Of those thoughts which lead, some again go before whereas others follow. And those go before, then, which are from gluttony, whereas those follow which are from fornication.

43 Of those thoughts which follow the first thoughts, some lead whereas others follow. And those lead which are from sorrow (lupe), whereas those follow which are from wrath (orge), if indeed, according to the proverb, ‘A sorrowful word stirs up wraths.’ [Cf. Prov. 15, 1.]

44 Of the thoughts, some are without material; others are of little material; while others are of much material. And without material, then, are those which are from the first pride; of little material, those which are from fornication; while of much material are those which are from vainglory.

45 Of the thoughts, some cause damage from time; others from consent; others from sin in act. And those which cause damage solely from time: the natural thoughts. From time and from sin in act: the thoughts which are contrary to nature, the demonic thought and the thought from an evil intention.

46 To the good thought, two thoughts lie opposed: the demonic thought and the thought from an evil intention. To the evil thought, three thoughts lie opposed: the thought from nature, the thought from an upright intention and the thought from an angel.[3]

47 Of the thoughts some have their materials from without; the thoughts of fornication, however, have their materials from the body.

48 Of the thoughts, some are given birth from the soul when it is set in motion; others, however, come to occur from without, by the agency of the demons.

49 Of the unclean thoughts, some show God to be unjust; others show him to be a regarder of persons; others show him to be weak; and others show him to be merciless. Those which show God to be unjust are the thoughts which arise from fornication and vainglory; those which show him to be a regarder of persons are the thoughts which occur from the second pride; those which show him to be weak are those from the first pride; and those which show him to be merciless are the rest.

50 Of the thoughts some occur to us as [if we were] monks while others occur to us as [if we were] seculars.

51 Pleasure follows every thought with the exception of the thoughts of sorrow.

52 Of the thoughts some have the fantasies before their own gnoses, whereas others have the gnoses first.

53 The first of all the thoughts is the thought of self-love (philautia), after which the eight.[4]

54 Of the thoughts, some are from demand[5] whereas others are from the common war.

55 Of the thoughts, some give a form to (morphousi) the intellect (dianoia) whereas others do not give a form to it. And those which give a form to the intellect are as many as are from sight. But those which do not give a form to the intellect are as many as occur to us from the remaining senses.

56 Of the thoughts, some are according to nature, whereas others are contrary to nature. And contrary to nature are as many as are from desire (epithumia) and anger (thumos). But according to nature are as many as are from father or mother or wife or children.

57 Alone among the thoughts, the thoughts of vainglory and pride occur after the defeat of the remaining thoughts.

58 A common property of all thoughts is that they are damaging from time.[6]

59 Of the passions which are set in motion, some are set in motion from the memory, some from the senses and some from the demons.

60 All the unclean thoughts bind the mind (nous) either from desire (epithumia) or from anger (thumos) or from sorrow (lupe).

61 Alone among the thoughts, the thoughts of sorrow are destructive of all the [other] thoughts.

62 Of the mental representations (noemata), those which are from the senses are five, while those which are from the memory are ten, of which five are clean—if one should act well—and five are unclean—if one should comport oneself evilly. Those mental representations (noemata) which are from the angels are five spiritual ones, whereas those which are from the demons are five. Of these [sc. the thoughts which are from the senses], those which are from the sight are five: from a good or evil memory, from an angel, from sight, from demons. Of these, two are evil—those which are from an evil memory and those which are from demons imitating the sight—and three are clean. Those mental representations (noemata) that are without image are twenty-eight.

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[1] Cf. On the Thoughts, Chapter 18.

[2] Following Harmless p. 527.

[3] Cf. On the Thoughts, Chapter 31.

[4] These are the eight most general thoughts discussed above all in the Treatise on the Practical Life.

[5] Evidently in the sense that the Devil demanded from God permission to tempt Job (cf. Job 1, 9–12; etc.). These would be extraordinary temptations, as opposed to the ‘common war’.

[6] Codex Barberini Gr. 515 (see fn. 22), has this same chapter as Chapter 46, but without the final phrase ‘from time’. That could well be a truncation.