Basilides the Heresiarch

[This piece has been featured in IAO: Ophite Iconography, p.93.]

Basilides has been the Gnostic teacher largely attributed as the founder of Alexandrian or pagan streams of Gnosticism, while Simon Magus was considered to be the founder of the Judaic forms of Gnosis, by the polemical sources of their time: Irenaeus of Lyon, Hippolytus of Rome and Origen of Alexandria.

Basilides may have been Egyptian, and he was said to be the disciple of Glaucias, who, in turn, had been a disciple of Peter. As such, although considered a heresy, it was certainly one of the early expressions of Christianity. He has also been historically credited as the creator of the so-called Abraxas figure, later identified as the type of a rooster headed giant

with snake legs (for this attribution see: Chiflet, Jean. Joannis Macarii, Abraxas, seu Apistopistus. Antwerp: Balthasar Moretus, 1657.)

Hippolytus describes how Abraxas is the supreme archon ruling over 365 heavens, and he may have been responsible for the curious misspelling that took hold in later literature: the actual name found on gems and profusely in magical papyri is Abrasax.

But in my idealized portrait I consciously chose to follow the stream of this historiography and tradition.

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