Valentinus's Spiritual Psychology — The Inner Anthropos
Valentinus's anthropology describes the inner 'Anthropos' (perfect human) within each pneumatic — the divine image that must be activated through Gnosis to restore the soul to its original divine dignity.
Valentinus's understanding of the human being centers on the concept of the inner Anthropos (perfect human, divine Man) — the divine image implanted in each pneumatic soul that constitutes their connection to the Pleroma. This inner Anthropos is not merely the divine spark (pneuma) but the complete structural image of the divine realm's perfect human — the Aeon Anthropos who is one of the highest Aeons in the Pleroma. Through Gnosis, the practitioner does not merely recognize a fragment of divine light within but encounters the complete divine human form — the image of God in its fullness. This theology of the 'perfect human' within has influenced subsequent mystical traditions: Meister Eckhart's 'Sohn Gottes' (Son of God) within the soul, the Quaker 'inner light,' and the Jungian concept of the Self all carry echoes of the Valentinian inner Anthropos.
From the beginning, the Father planted a garden — for he wished to create in it a man according to his image.
Jungian analyst Edward Edinger (The Christian Archetype) traced the Gnostic 'divine Anthropos' through Christian history as the archetype of the Self — the wholeness that the ego seeks but cannot achieve on its own, accessible only through the kind of inner encounter that Valentinus's tradition prescribed.
Fragments of Valentinus