Marsanes

Marsanes is a Sethian Gnostic text from the New Testament apocrypha. The only surviving copy comes from the Nag Hammadi library, albeit with 14 pages completely missing and a large number of lines throughout the text damaged beyond recovery. Scholars speculate that the text was originally written by a Syrian in Greek during the third century. The content of the text focuses on the 13 seals, the Triple-Powered One, the shape and structure of the soul, acquiring power and knowledge, and an apocalyptic vision.

==Summary== The opening lines of the document are mostly unrecoverable. The thirteenth seal is established "with the summit of knowledge and the certainty of rest." The text discusses the other 12 seals, first mentioning the power that will provide rest and protect those who receive it from passions and division. Other seals concern the conversion of those within, the self-begotten ones, salvation and wisdom, the mind, Barbelo, the Invisible One, and the Spirit. The thirteenth seal speaks of the Silent One who was not known and the primacy of the undistinguished one. Marsanes has achieved understanding of the true existence of everything, including unbegotten beings, divine aeons, the sense-perceptible and intelligible worlds, and has come to know the boundary of the sense-perceptible world, with a focus on the Self-begotten One who descended from the Unbegotten One who is the Spirit and has the ability to save a multitude.