Barbelo: The First Female Principle in Gnosticism

In Gnosticism, an early branch of Christianity now mostly considered heretical, Barbelo is the first entity to emerge after God. Clearly feminine based on her name. Barbelo was not born from God but rather emerged from him. God was so great that he had an inexhaustible overflow of thoughts and energy, and she emerged from that overflow. She then became the foremost inhabitant of Pleroma, which is the Gnostic version of Heaven. It is a realm of the supernatural rather than an afterlife.

Sethian Gnosticism

This story features most prominently in Sethian Gnosticism, which was popular in the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries CE. Its creation myth is recorded in the Nag Hammadi Library, an early text found in Egypt.

It suggests that all subsequent creation within the Pleroma happened through Barbelo’s coaction with God, thus making her a kind of great mother. She is described as the “womb of everything.” Nevertheless, she is sometimes described in androgynous terms as a masculine-feminine virgin.

In the Zostrianos passage of the text, Barbelo, who is often described as being trimorphic, is represented as having three distinct phases, much like the maiden, mother, and crone incarnations of other goddesses.

First, she is Kalyptos, the Hidden One, who represents the initial latency or potential existence of Barbelo, still waiting to overflow from God.

Second, she is Protophanes, the First Appearing One, who is the initial manifestation of Barbelo as the perfect male mind.

Third, she is Autogenes, the Self-Generates, who is the final female form of Barbelo.

She is often described as appearing to the Archons in a beautiful form to beguile them and scatter their power.

Mother of Christ?

In the Apocryphon of John, Barbelo is portrayed as the mother of Christ. But in Gnosticism, Christ is a supernatural being who exists in the Pleroma before he incarnated on earth to fulfil his destiny. This formed a trinity of God the Father, Barbelo the Mother, and Christ the Son, representing the perfect family, of which all families on Earth are just imperfect imitations.

In the Gospel of Judas, Judas tells Jesus that he knows that he comes from the “immortal realm of Barbelo” and that he is not worthy to utter the name of the one who sent him..

Holy Spirit?

Barbelo’s placement in the Gnostic trinity also suggests that she occupies the position of the Holy Spirit. Like the name Barbelo, the word spirit is feminine in Semitic languages, so those people would have imagined the Holy Spirit to have a feminine quality. This is explicitly seen in some places. For example, in the Gospel of the Hebrews, Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as his mother. In the Gospel of Philip, it complains that Mary could not have been impregnated by the Holy Spirit, as a woman cannot get pregnant by another woman.