The unique mystic gems of the Gnostics, known as the Abraxas, are a series by themselves; they had no prototype.

Their strangely decorated and inscribed stone tokens are so characteristic of the sect that they also are easily recognized. The task of explaining the meaning of these incisions is the more difficult, as the veil is almost impenetrable which obscures the history of everything that pertains to these little stone fetiches of the Gnostics.

The very disciples who carried those amuletic gems did so without understanding the meaning of the marks and symbols engraved upon them. They evidently were sacred types of their superstitious creed, invented and placed there by their mentors or priests.

They were Pagans, Jews, and nominal Christians, and we find in their inexhaustible inscriptions a series of emblems, Hebrew and Syriac, which dimly show forth Christ the Son, and Sun of Righteousness with ??????, and the seven Greek vowels symbolic of the seven heavens. These Greek vowels have often amused me when I have shown an Abraxas talisman with long inscription to some Greek scholar not acquainted with their gems, who would stumble when he reached the other characters.

SOMMERVILLE COLLECTION.

ABRAXAS OR GNOSTIC GEMS.

The religion of Jesus Christ was by no means established peaceably and immediately in the days following his crucifixion and resurrection. By a close reading of several of the Epistles of the New Testament you will see that during the first and second centuries many were the beliefs and even schisms among those who thought that they believed in Christ. In the second Epistle to the Corinthians there is evidence that the learned doctors raised altar in opposition to altar. None of them were avowedly reared by the Gnostics, yet the Apostle Paul recognized their opposition to the orthodox growing faith and combated them, knowing that Christianity at that critical moment was constantly losing adherents who, through the sophistries of the Abraxas, were daily relinquishing their ardent hold on the new hope in Christ.

Undoubtedly this Abraxas sect, who made so many cabalistic talismans, which were so blindly accepted and worn by their disciples, had among them many who knew of our Saviour. It appears from history, and from their mystic characters, that they had a clearer appreciation of Christ than a just or reasonable fear of the prince of the region of darkness, as Zoroaster termed the chief of inferno. They derived their idea of Satan, the arch tempter, from the appellation given him by certain sects in Central Asia, where, to better deceive their victims, they spoke of him as an angel of light. In modern times the lives of many men have proved that they had no desire to repulse Satan, but rather lived harmoniously in fellowship with him as their guide.

St. Paul besought the Christians to guard well the precious truths revealed and confided to them, and to fear and fly from the profane novelties that were threatening the welfare of their souls (I. Timothy, vi).

In a word, these great pagan monuments were the forerunners and the models of many of the small and portable talismans that were freely disseminated by the priests of the Abraxas to their disciples and their followers.

One important fact must be understood. The signs, symbols, the unintelligible hieroglyphs of the Gnostics, the Basilidians, which we find on the Abraxas gems—almost all talismans—are the mystic representations of a sect thus made up of people of several nations, all of whom in their aspirations sought for knowledge of the invisible power, that unquestionably had created and who governed all things, whom, though unseen, they served and feared.

SOMMERVILLE COLLECTION.

ABRAXAS OR GNOSTIC GEMS.