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The Story of the Golem:
The Fall of the Gnostic Anthropos
The golem flourished in Jewish mythologies of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. However, this living clay had its origin in the second and third centuries, when Gnostics were making myths of the perfect anthropos and his fall into imperfection. These myths of decline take three basic forms: emanation, error, imprisonment.1
In a Coptic gospel, the anthropos is the first manifestation of the hidden god. This androgynous human reveals and contains all universes, from highest to lowest. At the head of his highest universe is Setheus, the original god in his aspect as creator. From Setheus issues a current that first coheres into the glories of the pristine heavens, descends through the quivering intermediate realms, and falls into matter, where it animates seeds with life and souls with knowing. All beings, regardless of their place in the continuum, possess the potential of the anthropos, are emanations of his powers.2
In John's Secret Book, the anthropos falls farther down on the chain of emanations and serves exclusively as a model for the material Adam. In John's cosmogony, the hidden god first gives birth to a thought, the Barbelo. From this couple issues a family of spiritual aeons. Among these is Geradamas, the "perfect human being."
After the creation of Geradamas, Sophia, wisdom, the last of the aeons, tries to rise above her appointed place. From her error emerges an "imperfect product," Laltoboath, who immediately creates the inferior universe in which we now suffer. Meanwhile, Sophia reverses her mistake. With the help of the eternals, she convinces her son to create Adam, a material version of Geradamas. Through further actions of the eternals, Adam is charged with a spiritual faculty that connects him to his heavenly archetype.3
In a third, Manichean myth, the first man himself fills into the material world. In the beginning the universe is divided between the god of light and the deity of darkness. The dark world attacks the light. To counter, the god of light creates the primal man. This Urmensch descends into matter, where he is ostensibly defeated by evil forces. After this apparent decline, the king of light calls the wounded man home. The anthropos returns to the light but part of his soul remains behind, imprisoned. To free these sparks, the bright spirit creates the material cosmos.
Each time a person of matter hears the call of the light, he liberates part of the imprisoned soul. When all people apprehend the call, the Primal Man will be fully liberated and matter annihilated.
