Abraxas, also written Abrasax, is a name best known from Gnosticism, the group of early Christian-era movements that taught that the material world was made by lesser powers and that salvation comes through hidden knowledge. The name is linked to Basilides, a teacher in Alexandria in the early second century CE. His own books are lost, so we know his system mostly through the church fathers who attacked it.
The number 365
The church father Irenaeus reported that Basilides taught of 365 heavens, each ruled by its own powers, and that the name Abraxas, read as Greek letters with numerical values, adds up to 365, the days of the year. That is probably why Abraxas came to stand for a supreme power that governs time. Scholars still debate where the word comes from.
Magical gems and amulets
Hundreds of engraved gems and amulets from the Roman world carry the name, often with a figure that has a rooster’s head, a man’s body and snakes for legs, holding a whip and a shield. They are often engraved with other names of power such as Iao and Sabaoth, borrowed from Hebrew sacred names, and many were meant as protection from illness and evil. The rooster, announcer of the sun, and the whip fit the image of a sun-god driving a chariot, which is how this painting pictures him.
Jung, Hesse and a pseudonym
Carl Jung brought the name back in his 1916 Seven Sermons to the Dead, a privately printed text which he wrote in the voice of Basilides of Alexandria and in which Abraxas is a god who unites good and evil. Hermann Hesse’s 1919 novel Demian gave it a famous line about the bird fighting its way out of the egg: “The name of the god is Abraxas.” Hesse first published that book under the pseudonym Emil Sinclair, and his own name was added to later editions.
The painting
A rooster-headed figure rides a serpent-framed chariot pulled by four white horses, under a sun and an eclipsed moon. It was painted by J. Augustus Knapp for Manly P. Hall’s The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928).
Little-known facts
- The Greek letters of Abraxas have these values: 1 + 2 + 100 + 1 + 60 + 1 + 200 = 365. Some writers have guessed that the stage word abracadabra is related, but nobody has proved it.
- The printed caption on the original plate says it enlarges an ancient gem that was only a trifle over an inch tall.
- Santana’s 1970 album Abraxas took its title from Hesse’s line in Demian, which is quoted on the album.
- Gnostic writings returned to view in 1945, when a jar of fourth-century codices turned up near Nag Hammadi in Egypt. Before that, scholars knew the Gnostics mostly through their opponents.
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