“An Uthra calls from without and instructs Adam, the man” (G 387, J 225); “At the gate of the worlds stands Kushta (Truth) and speaks a question into the world” (J 4); “It is the call of Manda d’Hayye. . . . He stands at the outer rim of the worlds and calls to his elect” (G 397). The transmundane penetrates the enclosure of the world and makes itself heard therein as a call. It is the one and identical call of the other-worldly: “One call comes and instructs about all calls” (G 90); it is the “call of Life” or “of the great Life,” which is equivalent to the breaking of light into the darkness: “They [the Uthras] shall make heard the call of Life and illumine the mortal house” (G 91). It is directed into the world: “I sent a call out into the world” (G 58); in its din it is discernible as something profoundly different: “He called with heavenly voice into the turmoil of the worlds” (J 58).

The symbol of the call as the form in which the transmundane makes its appearance within the world is so fundamental to Eastern Gnosticism that we may even designate the Mandaean and Manichaean religions as “religions of the call.” The reader will remember the close connection which obtains in the New Testament between hearing and faith. We find many examples of it in Mandaean writings: faith is the response to the call from beyond that cannot be seen but must be heard. Manichaean symbolism went so far as to hypostatize “Call” and “Answer” into separate divine figures (see below, p. 82). In the “Hymn of the Pearl,” the “letter” which the celestials send to their exiled kinsman in the world turns on arrival into “voice”:

Like a messenger was the letter which the King had sealed with his right hand. . . . He flew like an eagle and alighted beside me and became wholly speech. At the sound of his voice I awoke and arose from my slumber . . . and directed my steps that I might come to the light of our home. The letter who had awakened me I found before me on the way, the letter who with his voice had awakened me from sleep. . . .

In the Valentinian elaboration, the call is specifically the calling by “name,” i.e., the person’s mystic spiritual name, from eternity “inscribed” with God in the “book of the living”:

Those whose names He knew in advance, were called at the end, so that he who knows, is he whose name has been spoken by the Father. For he whose name has not been pronounced, is ignorant. Truly, how should a person be able to hear, if his name has not been called? For he who remains ignorant until the end, is a creature of “Oblivion” and will be destroyed with it. If this is not the case, why have these miserable ones received no name, why do they not hear the call?

(GT 21:25-22:2)

Finally, the call can also be the apocalyptic call announcing the end of the world:

A call rang out over the whole world, the splendor departed from every city. Manda d’Hayye revealed himself to all the children of men and redeemed them from the darkness into the light.

(G 182)