The Thunder, Perfect Mind is one of many significant texts known as The Nag Hammadi Library, discovered in Egypt in 1945 and dated as approximately written around 325 CE. Similar to the form of certain Greek epics, the piece is repetitive and parallel in structure, paradoxical and confrontive in content, and written or spoken in a first-person voice. The author's repeated declaration "I AM..." is clearly indicative of its narrator's Divine nature one who possesses the "Perfect Mind" or "Perfect Intellect"; and one who passionately enjoins her hearers and readers to "wake up," "give heed," and "pay attention."
This Divine Voice is clearly Feminine, referring to "I am 'she'" or "I am the 'wife' or 'mother'" more than 25 times in the course of the short work, yet is far from comforting or sweet in its declarations. Rather this Voice "thunders," unabashedly, offering contradictions and the enigma of opposites in almost every line. It is this paradoxical nature of its content and its upfront feminine power statement that make the work such a controversial, much researched, and highly regarded treasure. From scholar and author Elaine Pagels (The Gnostic Gospels) to bestselling novelist Sue Monk Kidd (The Book of Longing), from author Toni Morrison (who quoted the work in the epigraph of several books), to filmmaker and documentarian, Ridley Scott's authoritative commentators within countless genres of religion, the arts, philosophy, history, etc., have been taken by the clarity and mystery of these obviously sacred but non-doctrinal utterances.
This contemporary rendering by American spiritual teacher Lee Lozowick (1943-2010) reflects one individual's heartfelt cry in response to the call of the divine Feminine. As both author and lyricist, Lozowick's work is distinguished by his pleas for the awakening of Woman - not an individual female, but the Feminine principle that resides within all genders, and collectively within the world soul. He does what all seekers of truth are enjoined to do; that is, make the perennial wisdom one's own.
Today's readers, searching for a ground on which to stand in catastrophic times, will find the text both empowering and humbling, challenging and view changing. Beyond the provincialism of many religious systems, The Thunder, Perfect Mind offers its readers and hearers the echo of their own truest longing.
