Manicheanism Quotes

“How puerile it would be, and what a dangerous heresy from the religious point of view, to believe that passion in its proper place is offensive to God! We are not Manicheans, that we should incline to believe that the flesh is under a curse, and that all matter springs from the Principle of Evil. Rather do we say that matter and the flesh come from God”
― Antonin Sertillanges

“In 312, Manichaeanism and Mithraism were no less popular than Christianity. Constantine could just as easily have chosen one of these - and Europe might today be Mithraistic or Manichaean.”
― Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem: The Biography

“Like dreams, statistics are a form of wish fulfilment.

Manicheism is the irreconcilable antagonism between two forces. Morality is merely the opposition of two values. In the order of values, there is always a possibility of reconciliation. The disorder of forces is irreconcilable.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories

“The third commandment forbade monks from committing any act that might favor, directly or indirectly, the reproduction of living beings, animals, or plants. Thus, if cutting down a tree contravened the second commandment, planting one was an infraction of the third: "He who has planted a [fruit-yielding tree] shall pass through several bodies until the [tree] has been felled:' The theological reason for this was Simple: to encourage reproduction was to endlessly retard the process by which the particles of light trapped in the bodies of living things were finally and permanently liberated.”
― Michel Tardieu, Manichaeism

“(…) the Manichaean stands in the same relation to his stomach as the demiurge and his sons stand to the world, which is to say that he is a maker of light. The microcosm repeats the macrocosm. (…) Chewing, swallowing, and digestion work to separate the dark matter of food, evacuated in stools, from its luminous and divine part, the "limb of God" [membrum dei], which brings about the return to pure light. (…) thanks to the luminosity trapped within his body (otherwise known as the sanctitas), the elect is able to filter the light by separating out what is unclean and keeping intact the filtered part, which is then liberated and restored to the world from on high. (…) According to the fine formula of the Chinese Manichaeans, "The universe is the pharmacy where the luminous bodies heal”
― Michel Tardieu, Manichaeism

“In enjoining the monk to "nonviolence" [Sogd puazarmya], in the literal sense of the word, the second commandment, or seal of the hands, forbade the monk from engaging in any violent act liable to injure one of the five elements-light, fire, water, wind, air-that are found in a mixed state in living creatures, or in plants, or in nature itself. The cosmological foundation of this commandment had to do with the conviction that imprisoned in every composite body are particles of pure light that await release (...)”
― Michel Tardieu, Manichaeism

“Upright, nonviolent, chaste, abstinent, and poor-such was the Manichaean monk who practiced the five commandments laid down by Mani to express his ideal of evangelical blessedness and purpose. (…) Manichaean ethics, regarded as diabolical and insane in the West, had the effect among the peoples of Upper Asia of helping to moderate bloodthirsty behavior: "Countries with barbaric customs where blood used to stream," al-Biruni noted (in Pelliot's translation), "were transformed into a land where one ate vegetables; states where one used to kill were transformed into a kingdom where one exhorted others to do good". These lines (…) suggest the civilizing impact of such an ethics in Turco-Mongolian lands in the second half of the eighth century.”
― Michel Tardieu, Manichaeism

“Prosperous countries are content with an easygoing religion; where there is poverty and misery, something sterner and darker is required. This is why Presbyterianism later made such an appeal in Scotland, and why Methodism flourished among the bleak and rainy villages of Cornwall. There is also something in the Manichean doctrine that appeals to the deep romanticism in human nature, the feeling that this world is hell and that man’s happiness lies in ‘another sphere.”
― Colin Wilson, The Occult

“The risk of racist religiosity are great. By projecting grievances, fears and anxieties onto the 'shadow' figures of other races, religious transcendence is stunted and perverted into the dynamics of delusion and hatred. Instead of genuine spirituality, there is partiality, separation, restriction. A rigid self-righteousness leads down into the spiritual basement of a primitive dualism, where pseudo-salvation depends on elimination of the Other. The political projection of religious Manichaeism onto human differences inevitably leads to strife and violence. Whenever human groups are interpreted as absolute categories of good and evil, light and darkness, both the human community and humanity itself are diminished. Such degraded religion never leads to light but only to darkness.”
― Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity