In my last post I wrote “Once a story has been told, it masks reality with a layer of meaning.” to describe the power of a story to alter perception of the world. A well chosen metaphor, a constellation outline in the stars, the identity of a brand. Stories make up our world. But what then is truth, if our own minds, and the shared imagination of others, are distorting our world view? Well, in the Gnostic cosmology of Valentinus, the first emanation of the Monad is Nous (the mind) and Alethia (truth). The very idea of creation, brought in to existence the powers of the mind and the very existence of the mind, brought into existence all the truths of the universe but were unobserved. If this dynamic seems familiar, it is. It’s Schrodingers cat. All potential scenarios exist but it is only when they are observed or seen that they become real in the Mind. And, if they are not observed and remain unseen they are real but veiled from us. This emanation is all truths known and unknown. The infinite possibilities of the mind inseparable from the infinite possibilities that have not yet been thought of or imagined.

Literally the word Alethia that Valentinus uses is the derived from the Greek Lethe which means ‘forgotten’. A-lethe means has the ‘prative prefix’ meaning ‘not’ and lethe meaning forgotten. That that is revealed or remembered.

The card Alethia is in the suit of diamonds and is represented by the forward facing triangle. And typically you might think that this means looking outside ourselves for new truths. And in some ways this is true. Looking beyond the things that we know but beware this interpretation.

We tend to imagine truth as something ahead of us—something to be discovered, proven, or finally arrived at. But in the Gospel of Truth (one of the Nag Hammadi Texts often attributed to Valentinus) it is clear that unknown truths are not missing. They have been hidden (by our mind or by the minds of others in the stories we’ve inherited and believed. Alethia is what happens when the veil or the fog lifts.

There’s much more to say on this, so watch out for a future post on Alethia.