Augustine in His Own Words (continued)
Against the Manichees 203 have forgotten who we are because we have become drunk from long years trapped in the dark delusions of the material world. Mani's teaching opens us to the truth of ourselves. As another Manichean psalm proclaims:
I have known my soul and the body that lies upon it, that they are enemies to each other before the creations.3
Manichees saw the task of redemption as a slow, painstaking recovery of the tiny tidbits of divine light trapped in matter. They viewed the visible universe as a vast light-processing plant, a place where the dross of dark matter can gradually and painstakingly be distilled away and shirked off and where tiny fragments of divine light can be recovered like precious diamonds from a subterranean mine. In the Manichean scheme of things, the sun and moon are two celestial refineries in this cosmic purification process:
The sun and moon were established; they were placed on high [to] purify [the] soul. Daily they take up the purified part to the height; this sediment, however, they scrape [off and cast it below; and the] mixed [portion] they rotate, now above and now below.4
Manichees thus deeply venerated the sun and the moon, and enemies like Augustine would accuse them of being sun-worshipers and moon-worshipers. When Manichees looked up at the night sky and saw the Milky Way (what they called the "Pillar of Glory"), they saw it as visible evidence of distilled light-souls gathering together and making their way back to the Kingdom of Light.
Mani consciously sought to create a world religion. He authored a body of writings that, together, formed an official canon of scriptures. He even put together a picture book for illiterate followers. Only fragments of these texts have been preserved. In fact, Augustine is the major preserver of one, a letter known as The Foundation.5 Mani also commissioned missionaries to go out and spread his teachings in all directions. Some went east into China; others, west into the Roman Empire. Manicheism tended to blend in with its local religious surroundings. Manichees in China adopted a Buddhist guise and spoke of Mani as "the Buddha of Light." In the West, Manichean missionaries portrayed themselves as elite Christians and wrote off ordinary believers as ignorant semi-Christians. They fiercely rejected Judaism and the Old Testament but routinely appealed to the New Testament, especially the letters of
3. Coptic Manichean Psalm 248.26–27; trans. Allberry, 56. 4. Coptic Manichean Psalm 223.14; trans. BeDuhn, 483. 5. For a reconstruction of the Foundation Letter, see Gardner and Lieu, Manichaean Texts, 168–72; see also Madeleine Scopello, "L'Epistula fundamenti à la lumière des sources manichéennes de saint Augustin," in Van Oort, et al., Augustine and Manicheism, 161–73.