«O GENTLE HAPPY HOST». — Hymn of Lauds in the Office for the feast of the Holy Family, composed by Leo XIII.
The humble family of Nazareth is held up as a model to Christian families.
OGAMIC, WRITING — Stone with o. writing. — Ardmore (Ireland), Cathedral.
The name of the Hebrew mahd of the serpent. It is therefore mistaken the hypothesis of H. Leisegang (in Eranos-Jahrbuch, 1939 [Zurich 1940], p. 206) who wishes to derive the gnostic sect of the O. from a Hellenistic environment. The kinship of the O. with gnostics who spoke of the patriarch Seth (the so-called Sethians) and with the Peratae, who were likewise adherents of a Judaic gnosis, directs us toward a Judaic and Judaeo-Christian gnosis. These gnostics were known to Irenaeus (v. Haer., I, 30 St = I 28 Harv), who identifies them precisely with the Sethians; they were also known to Celsus (v. Origen, Contra Cels., VI, 21 sq) and Epiphanius, Haer., 36 (cf. Ps. Tertullian, Adv. omnes haer., 2; Filastrius, Haer., I, p. 2, 9 Marx) speaks at length of them. It is always a question of the transmission of gnosis, i.e., of the knowledge, thanks to the serpent, of good and evil that the Judaic creator god had not wished to reveal to men in paradise. Integral to this gnosis is therefore the opposition to the Judaic concept of a creator god. Probably this Judaic sect came from Mesopotamia, where a branch of it has always remained, but later it spread also to the West (to Rome? already in the 2nd century), especially in Egypt. This gnosis predates Valentinus, and it seems that not Hellenism, but a Judaic (or Judaeo-Iranian) speculation was at its base.
Note that it was not the symbol of the serpent, as was first said (v. Comptes rendus de l'Acad. des Inscript. et Belles-Lettres, 1948, p. 89), but the ansated cross that was the decoration on the leather cover of one of the new Gnostic manuscripts from Nag Hammadi; cf. Puech, op. cit. in bibliography, p. 95.