Mining Gnosis Through the Tao Te Ching, verse 6

Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and to the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. We’re proceeding through a study of the Tao Te Ching and how it relates to our Gnostic beliefs. Today we’re going to have a look at verse six of the Tao Te Ching.

First, I’ll read the version translated by David Bentley Hart in his Tao Te Ching, A New Translation. It goes like this.

The goddess of the valley is deathless;

She is called the mysterious Mother,

deep and subtle, the Mother’s dark womb.

The gateway to the mysterious Mother’s abode

is the foundation of Heaven and Earth.

The one origin lasts forever and ever,

like an endless strand of gossamer,

ceaselessly drawn out, yet never depleted.

So it’s a fairly short verse. In comparison, Jonathan Star’s translation draws it out quite a bit. He uses more words in his translation of the Tao Te Ching, from The Definitive Edition.

He says,