The Gnostics wear Prada

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Oct 24, 2006

Over on his excellent Fathers of the Church blog, Mike Aquilina is shaking his head over a promotional film for Prada perfume, with a script drawn from "Thunder, Perfect Mind."

You say you're not familiar with "Thunder, Perfect Mind?" Ah, that's because of your sadly limited education. Aquilina describes it as "a Gnostic text found in the Nag Hammadi cache," and I'm just guessing that such texts were not ordinarily read at your high school.

But now they're read on TV. In ads for perfume. Don't believe me? Watch it yourself.

Aquilina says that he is waiting for the day "when Arius is hawking Doritos." Personally, I'm pretty happy with the line from the Gnostic/Prada paean to the pagan/feminist/consumerist woman who samples forbidden ancient wisdom, changes clothes in a taxi, greets her doppelganger on the escalator, and smells good all the while:

I am substance… and the one who has no substance.