r/Gnostic

Like the title says. It seems I lost interest in everything since I started to "clean the noise". It's not a depression. It's simply a feeling that everything is futile. Everything feels like stuff put there to distract us the real goal. I was a guy with many interests in many fields but now nothing feel worthwhile.

Any body else feels like this?

A day for the celebration and commemoration of the 'divine' Plato, a towering figure who's works form the foundations of so much of the philosophical and esoteric worlds and who's thought was a major influence on the classic Gnostics of the ancient world. This day was likely celebrated by Carpocratians, and possibly even other Gnostics such as Sethians who's tradition contained a profound Platonic influence. Use this day for contemplation and intellectual pursuits, or for the reading of his works and the 'Platonising' Gnostic texts.

From A Gnostic Calendar

Hi!! So, I scrolled for quite a while for book recs on this sub I'm unsure of how to begin the post but I think i'll just get to it? I am quite interested in learning more about gnosticism/modern magic, and am looking for grimoires or any texts that touch on light magic, working with shadows and darkness, spellwork... I guess i just want something that might help me bridge the philosophical with practical magic? I dont know if this helps but some of the deities I work with are Gaia, Lilith, and the Morrigan (Idk if that's relevant but I thought I might drop that in there).

Thank you!!

Ever since my existential crisis I've been searching for years for the truth, countless authors, countless philosophies. Christianity gives some sort of hope only for doubts to get again through the window. I'm getting tired of searching, I heard that Gnosticism is about gaining secret knowledge and liberate oneself from the illusions. The God of the old testament seems so different from the loving Jesus of the new Testament, Christianity just don't seem monotheistic with the Trinity part.

I've been thinking a lot about Christianity, the nature of the world. On why the Christian God doesn't intervene already and stops all the cruelty of mankind and nature, on why there's so much suffering.

What's the best place to start with Gnosticism? Which books?

How it differs from traditional Christianity? Is there a God? A good God or The Monad beyond this universe and time? Did Jesus existed and was sent as a prophet or guide to liberate humanity from the False God?

I'm frickin getting tired of searching 24/7 for the definite answers that western and eastern philosophy had to offer.

I'm tired of Christian hypocrisy too. No one does anything of what Jesus told to do only praying around me. Many Christians are also conspiracy theorists and belong to the far-right. Which is the last thing Jesus said to do aka the battle is not against flash and blood but against evil spiritual forces.

What are your thoughts about Lucifer ? Is he an archon or a liberator ? Or both in some ways ?

do anyone got any help. ?

To rephrase for an example - do you believe archons are literal entities, or figurative of our potential, personal psychological states of mind

Apologies if I’ve worded this terribly.

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So the demiurge has trapped us in this simulacrum of a world and cut our access to the Pleroma, to escape it we must reach gnosis. So what happens when someone dies without gnosis? Does the souls stay stuck as a "ghost" (for a lack of a better term) in the material world? Do they get reincarnated?

Gnosticism says the Source is complete, all knowing, and exists outside time. So Sophia’s fall must have already been known .it couldn’t have been a surprise.

Sophia is described as an Aeon and a reflection or aspect of the Source itself. Not a separate being. So Sophia’s curiosity and imbalance was Source’s own wisdom reaching beyond itself.

The Demiurge emerged from that imbalance,
also therefore within God

We carry Sophia’s spark
also God.

So is what’s actually happening this?
a spark of God is trapped within God’s own ignorance, and that spark is fighting its way back through all of us to the Pleroma?

Does anyone believe that the OT God Yahweh, The God of Traditional Judaism and Christanity is the Gnostic Demiurge Yaldabaoth?

Hi friends,

I see a common thread in this sub that I want to call out. This endless argument about "true believers" vs "allegorists" needs to end. Gnosticism is about sharing knowledge, no matter what people believe, knowledge can be transferred. One person's true belief is another person's allegory, but it's a false distinction, it doesn't matter, it only serves to put up walls between us.

Remember, language evolves. Before, in the times that Gnostic texts were originally written, mythology was overwhelmingly the latest technology in which language functioned. Even something as objective as history in this time, such as Herodotus, was riddled with myth. The entire idea of empiricism had not widely spread at this time. For this reason, myth was the entire mode of thinking back then, it's difficult to pull apart belief vs allegory in this period because back then there was no distinction, and perhaps the entire idea of belief back then was something that would seem completely foreign to us today.

I ask "true believers" to not ever use their belief or their perceived difference of belief as an argument when we debate our ideas, full stop, knowledge, Gnosis can come from ANYONE so we need to remove these false distinctions. We are all one divine organism.

Let's pick up where the Gnostic fathers left off, with a genuine interest in protecting and training inner knowledge, let's focus on that from now on instead of purity tests.

Love you ALL

"We have heard that there are some on the earth who take the male seed and the female monthly blood, and make it into a lentil porridge and eat it". Pistis Sophia 147

That's all, from tomorrow no more male seed and female monthly blood in the diet!

There is a figure in Gnosticism I struggle to understand because apparently different sects of Gnosticism are contradictory about her.

I find Zoe is said to be either the daughter of Sophia, either one of the ~30 Aeons coming before Sophia. It is either one, either the other, it can not be both.

I also find she is linked to Eve, so is Eve her Incarnation ?

But it also looks like she is linked to Sabaoth after he learns about the existence of the Pleroma, rebels to Yaldabaoth and ascends to an intermediary realm between the Heavens of Yaldabaoth and the other Archons, and the Pleroma itself.

I struggle to see the same character as being implemented in 2 roles so different from eachothers.

And until now I just asked who is she. The final question is what Zoe is ? Is she the personification of life as in biological life ? If so she should be the daughter of Sophia, and thus not a proper Aeon of the Pleroma, because Sophia is the last Aeon afterall. But life is not necessarily biological life. It could be the life of the divine spark standing as a contrast to the Demiurgical Universe of matter.

And if Zoe is biological life, she should be represented as part human, part animal, even though Aeons are never represented as such and Yaldabaoth and the Archons are rather the ones represented in such way. Afterall biological life is shared by all creatures. But does Gnosticism even need a nature goddess symbolizing biological life ? I do not think so. Biological life as we know it is a creation of the Demiurge in Gnostic texts.

I was born a Hindu, became a Christian (first Eastern Orthodox and then Catholic), only to return anew to the depths of my ancestral faith. This rediscovery of what I've come to view as the 'Primordial Religion' was not prompted by desire to return to a bucolic, unspoiled, idealistic past. On the contrary, it was prompted by delving deep into the Jewish faith, with the help of Rabbi. I studied under a Rabbi for three years because I felt that if I had to come to a true understanding of Christianity, I had to understand Judaism in its depth. Not Judaism as it presents itself to us today (scarred and traumatized as it was by the Roman genocide), but rather Judaism as it was practiced at the time Jesus is said to lived and gone about preaching his mission. I don't have the space to cover the details of how I came into contact with my teacher (it happened entirely by accident), but my studies with him brought me in touch with some basic facts. Facts which I think are worth considering, which clarify many common misunderstandings about the gnostic view of reality, and explain what it entails for people today.

1. Gnosticism is one single thing: Gnosticism as it has been popularly understood is a scholastic category invented to encompass and explain a particular philosophical outlook on life. The most common tropes associated with this pop Gnosticism are: 1. Acosmism (or that material world is unreal in essence and/or probably created by a lesser, evil deity) 2. Dualism (or that the life of the universe is a drama of clash between titanic forces of Good and Evil) 3. Soteriology of Knowledge (or that knowledge is a sufficient condition for salvation).

The problem with this homogenising view is that it is not universally true. There were many sects (most of whom simply identified as Christians) who did not hold all of these views at once, or if they did, not to the same degree. Valentinians believed that the universe, while flawed, is also a pedagogical schoolhouse to educate and arouse souls to the desire for truth. The Hermeticists viewed the world as a beautiful reflection of the Divine Realm, and not a trap for souls. Classical Gnostics, unlike the later Manicheans, believed in Emanationism where the material realm derived its existence from the Monad. Other Gnostics held highly complex and incredibly esoteric view of salvation that required involving rituals, detailed systems of passwords, and even magical acts.

A lot more can be said here: but the basic point is that 'Gnosticism' is not one thing. It is many things at once, and contains contradictions. But the good news (pun intended) is this: For us, the children of these late times, Gnosticism does not demand blind faith. Rather, it demands critical engagement.

My own teacher taught me that early, first century Judaism was itself highly pluralistic with many competing strands (Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes were just the more popular ones). And some of the more esoteric strands involved theologies of personal deification, where the Temple was not merely a place of worship, but a symbolically charged space where the ritual actions helped in the ascent (it was actually described as descent) of the soul to the Divine Throne; and the soul became Yahweh Katan (the Little Yahweh). This is what was hinted at by the idea that the High Priest might die in the Holy of Holies; he therefore had a cord tied to his ankle in case he does die.

And despite the destruction of the Temple, the symbolism and possibility of descent to the Divine Throne is still available to us in the form of Kabbalah. Kabbalah, thus, would correctly fall under the category of Gnosticism, yet it views the world as fundamentally real (and good), evil as real (and shockingly even essential and indestructible - because it shares in the essence of God).

My teacher taught me, and showed me, that primordial religion is Alchemy. It is the religion that Jews inherited from the silt-rich, river-flooded soils of Babylon and Egypt. In fact, if you grasp the meaning of Egyptian and Babylonian religion, Judaism, and by extension Christianity and Islam become instantly clear. It is Religion of Wisdom, which in its chameleon-like willingness to adapt to the needs of the time, has presented itself in many forms in many places. It yields itself equally to grand public rituals, profound philosophical meditation, as well as secret inner practice.

2. Gnosticism is dualism: The second big misconception that people have about the Gnostic worldview is that world (and body with it) are fundamentally evil and need to be escaped. Some sects do. But more commonly, as seen in the Gospel of Mary of Magdala, matter as such is not evil. It is often treated as a means to an end. For example, in Sethian Gnosticism, after Adam and Eve are awakened to the state of their predicament, it is their offspring who becomes the fountainhead of gnosis for the rest of humanity. Gospel of Mary, despite the fragment we have, tells us something very important.

Matter is not unreal in the sense that it does not exist. Matter is unreal in the sense that it has no permanent existence and is subject to the law of causation.

Spirit on the other hand is not. And the identification of Spirit with Matter, of what is unchangeable and permanent with what is constantly changing and ultimately impermanent, is what is treated as sin. Sin, in other words, is a misunderstanding, a misperception, of who we are. And yet, matter is intensely useful. It is the goad of pleasure and pain, and vicissitudes of time, that awaken us to the possibility of eternity.

3. You can become a gnostic by studying Gnostic scripture: Gnosticism is not a religion for the "People of the Book," to borrow a Quranic phrase. It is ultimately an existential and experiential religion. You cannot study yourself into the kind of knowledge that the gnostic writings are talking about. You cannot think yourself into it. You cannot accumulate Wisdom like knowledge, because unlike knowledge, which comes from the accumulation of facts, Wisdom does not come from the accumulation of knowledge. If Wisdom were subject to effort, to an act of accumulation and building up, it can be torn down and dissipated. Whatever is subject to causation is bound to disappear eventually. Yet, the basic idea of Gnosticism is that true Wisdom is timeless and eternal. That should tell you something about the approach we need to take towards Wisdom. It requires the paradoxical effort of Wu Wei as the Daoists call it; Effortless Effort. Or as Tamil alchemists (Siddhas) called it: Sleeping with eyes wide open. We must become conversant in the language of paradox, which cuts through our ordinary ways of thinking. It requires that we profoundly trust ourselves and our intuitions.

I'd like to close by calling you to reconsider one of the most profound parables of Jesus. The parable of Mustard Seed. You are the Mustard Seed; the shade and shelter of ten thousand things, to repurpose a trenchant phrase from Tao Te Ching. But what am I?

"Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death."

In The Secret Book of John Invisible Virgin Spirit, The Father, The One God emanates Barbelo and they together emanate Christ. It is stated however that He is Perfect and doesn't need anything so why then produce something else and inferior?