The Recovery of Light. Metaphors of Rescuing the Light Soul in Manichaeism

In antiquity the Manichean religion was identified by two basic principles of its doctrine, the Light and the Darkness, or the God and the Matter, put in a dualistic opposition of conflict and struggle. The result was an attack of the Matter and a consequent mixture of darkness and light. This mixture is the basic point of a process of knowledge and awareness about the human existence and the cosmic life, both marked by the stigma of an amalgamation that must be recognised as reduced and (as much as possible) extinct. The means is furnished by a series of noetic and spiritual energies, with a practical intention of purification, to deliver the light entrapped into the matter and the world (macrocosm and microcosm). A cosmic divine framework of refinery and an ascetic effort of depuration are two aspects of a macrocosmic and microcosmic machinery of filtering, cleaning, and delivery of the Light-Soul, a process described by an imagery of collecting metaphors for recovery, rescue, and transmission.