The E.G.C. Creed Compared to the Nicene Creed

One of the many perspectives from which to explore our creed is by contrasting it with those of other churches. The Nicene Creed, with its historical placement in regard to our own antecedents and similar syntactic structure, shares a number of obvious touchstones with the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica Creed, further highlighting the doctrinal differences. Some of these points come so close that the EGC Creed (EGCC) can be viewed as a response to or possibly a rectification of that which has in its various permutations served as an explicit the foundation for many of the major threads of Christian churches. “Let the evil ones be cast away; let the good ones be purged by the prophet!” apparently extends beyond rituals to the broader case of statements of belief, as well.

The first three statements of belief in the EGCC outline primary entities which form the highest level of reality, as both physical and metaphysical structures: CHAOS, BABALON, and BAPHOMET. This inter-related triplicity bears correspondence to the Nicene Creed’s (NC) depiction of God the father, Mary/Holy Spirit the mother, and Jesus the son.

For the creative force of the universe, the EGCC describes the hierarchical descent from the general to the particular, starting from its secret and unspeakable, perhaps involuted, source. Though one among many on the grander scale, the Sun, to us humans, is the most primal manifestation of that force, whose presence on Earth (named CHAOS) is the pervasive mystery of life itself as the sole executor of the Sun’s power. The most particular and least rarified evidence of this force is the air-driven process of metabolic respiration. We see this descent reflected in the downward traversal of the Qabalistic Tree of Life’s middle pillar (LORD = Kether, Sun = Tiphareth, CHAOS = Yesod, and Air = Malkuth) as well as in the letters comprising the ineffable name itself (יהוה).

This is a rather detailed metaphysic when compared to the NC’s elucidation of the creative principle as God the Father, who is very simply described as being the unassailable source of all things manifest and transcendent, period. The elaborate description is saved for Jesus, the Son. Of his life little mention is made, but his birth, death, and resurrection as well as the specifics of why people ought to care about him are thoroughly described. In contrast, the corresponding principle in the EGCC, BAPHOMET, is depicted only to the extent that he is the “Serpent and the Lion.” Outside the creed but within the context of Liber XV, this lion-snake pairing is further contextualized as being the father of the Gnostic Catholic saints as well as the ones who “destroy the destroyer” as the consecrated elements are mixed.

Both fulfill the role of the being the issue of the Father and Mother. The NC places special emphasis on the notion that Jesus was not “made” but “begotten” of the father and the mother, ostensibly to work against the idea that he was a man rather than a purely spiritual being. The same holds for BAPHOMET who is begotten, not made, from the mingling of the body and blood in the cup. However, the purpose for Jesus’ manifestation is so that he can suffer sacrifice and then resurrect himself for the everlasting life of the fallen mankind. As a perfect inversion of this, BAPHOMET is born as the revivification of man’s sacrifice of life and joy, identifying the Priest and Priestess as the divine operants themselves, CHAOS and BABALON. Jesus was born to suffer; BAPHOMET is a joy to beget.

The Mother provides another set of clear distinctions. Jesus is begotten by God the Father on a virgin, Mary, with the implication that this is the sort of purity required in order to serve as a suitable vessel for God’s holy issue, the baptism for the forgiveness of sins. BABALON, however, far from being virginal, is an indiscriminate whore, the mother of us all who gives her womb to any taker who are willing to offer in ecstasy a final sacrifice of their last drop of blood. As the bearer of BABALON’s cup in the Gnostic Mass, the Priestess begins as a lowly virgin who after invoking the Priest is then “upraised” by him through acts of sexual congress into her sanctified form as the whore who is then suited to bear the offspring wrought of the sacrifice of life and joy in the baptism of wisdom.

On a scope encompassing the respective spiritual engines arising from these triplicities, we see still larger differences in function and aim of the two creeds. Unstated within its text, original sin is the elephant in the room of the NC. Each point is carefully struck to delineate that God and man are very separate, one being all-powerful and the other weak; that his kingdom in Heaven is eternal, though man and his world is not; that salvation comes from submission to an authority outside the imperfect and ephemeral self. The EGCC depicts a radically different reality where man is God; where the proclaimant is himself ageless and eternal, perpetuating the world through the promulgation of his perfect will; an individual in the company of those inspired by the virile Holy Spirit that moved the “saints of the true church of old time” to carry the gnosis from its primordial origin into our current day, and onward; and a miraculous identity between the process that fires our brains, muscles, and gametes and that which connects us as producers and partakers of the transcendent.