(1st draft)
Gnosticism is a mystical religious and philosophical movement that emerged in the early centuries of the Common Era, which was heavily influenced by Platonist philosophy, borrowing his concepts of the demiurge, and those found within Timeaus, which the Gnostics rearranged into a framework that better fit within Christian/Judaic ideology. In the sects dealing with reincarnation, elements from Phaedrus and Phaedo are also obviously present. Where Gnosticism differs from Christianity and Judaism is it’s reliance on a dualistic worldview that contrasts a transcendent, unknowable God with a malevolent or ignorant creator god, giving it unique flavor that cannot be classified as either monotheism or polytheism.
The story of the descent of the Monad's light into the body of man is a narrative found in certain Gnostic texts, including those associated with Sethian and Valentinian Gnosticism. It is a symbolic and mythological account of the divine spark or essence within human beings. The narrative can be summarized as follows:
According to Gnostic cosmology, the highest divine source is often referred to as the Monad, representing the ultimate, ineffable, and transcendent God. This divine source emits a ray of its divine light, which contains the spark of divine consciousness or the divine seed, that descends from the highest, most spiritual realm through various levels or emanations of the divine hierarchy and on through the layers of existence, until it eventually reaches the material or physical world. Thus, the material world is often depicted within Gnosticism as a place of ignorance, darkness, and separation from the divine source. At this point, the divine spark or light becomes trapped within the physical body of a human being. The human soul, unaware of its divine origin, is considered an exile in the material world, and the Gnostic goal, like Moksha, is to awaken to the presence of this divine spark within and to seek to reunite it with the higher, spiritual realms. This process of awakening and reunion is often described as the journey of gnosis (knowledge).
Through self-discovery, contemplation, and spiritual practices, the individual seeks to recognize the divine spark within and to ascend back toward the divine source. The ultimate aim is the return of the divine spark to its origin, reuniting the individual with the Monad/God and achieving spiritual liberation and salvation. This could be considered my life’s ultimate goal prior to my mystical experiences, though I did not realize I was operating under a Gnostic framework, as this idea had been inspired by the alchemical fragments I had been researching.
This narrative underscores the Gnostic emphasis on the divine potential within every human being – as opposed to it just being within Jesus – and the quest for knowledge to awaken to one's true, divine nature and transcend the limitations of the material world.
Again, we can see from the above a very similar concept to those found within Lurianic Kabbalah, Orphism and Advaita Vedanta.
Like the Advaita Vedanta and other Hindu arrangements, Gnosticism emphasizes personal "knowledge of divine truths” (Gnosis), often through inner spiritual experiences, in contrast to the more structured and doctrinal approaches that Judaism and Christianity take. Gnostic beliefs challenge traditional religious and societal structures, standing apart from the monotheistic traditions of Judaism and Christianity in its core principles and cosmology.
It was for this reason the early church fathers, like Irenaeus deemed the Gnostics as heretics and systematically fought to have their ideologies banned within the Christian community. This led to the persecution of many Gnostic Christians and the attempted eradication of their belief system, which was so successful that, ironically, for a long period of time Iraneaus’ work “Against Heresies” was one of few known sources that dealt with Gnostic cosmogony, all of which took a biased approach towards painting Gnosticism in an heretical light,.
It wasn’t until the discovery of the Nag Hammardi Scrolls in Egypt in 1945, that modern scholars got to see Gnosticism from the perspective of those who practiced it. Out of these few church fathers mentioning Gnosticism as a heretical movement, Against Heresies provides the most comprehensive description of Gnosticism, which was ultimately supported with the scrolls of the Nag Hammardi.
Irenaeus himself was a Turkish born Bishop who lived from 130 to 202AD and was known for helping to expand Christianity into France and for his work in developing its theology. He was a student of Polycarp, who was allegedly – according to Ireneaus and Tertullian – himself a student of John the Apostle, though not definitively proven. This alleged connection to John the Apostle is the key to understanding Ireneaus’ disdain for Gnostic cosmogony – particularly that of the Valantinian and Sethian sects – and the reason for his commitment to expose it as a heretical movement against Christianity: the Gnostics provide an alternative “secret” set of teachings they claim Jesus taught John and the other disciples directly, that were never meant for public consumption like the narrative that went on to find its way into the New Testament.
Valentinus – who lived before both Irenaeus and Tertullian from 100 to 180 AD – was the founder of the Valentinian Gnostics, one of the oldest of Gnostic sects, and purportedly received education in Hellenistic Alexandria, where the Old Testament was translated into Koine Greek in what became known as the Septuagint – the bridge between it and the New Testament. This was where Greek philosophical thought on the former began to influence the latter.
According to Tertullian, Valentinus was at one point a candidate for bishop who started his own group when another was chosen in his place. This group was the Valentinian sect Irenaeus and other bishops, including Tertullian, ended up dismissing as heretical due to their claim of having a direct lineage to John the Apostle, which granted them access to Jesus's secret teachings. Valentinus suggested this secret knowledge had been handed down by Jesus to John directly, who then passed it on to Theudas, who is the one that ultimately taught it to him.
Apart from Valentinus, this claim is backed by Titus Flavius Clemens, also known as Clement of Alexandria, a church father who again had a significant impact on Christian theology through his integration of it with Ancient Greek philosophy, and his allegorical interpretation of scripture. Much of Clemens’ work would be read by the church fathers whose ideas would ultimately go on to shape the New Testament.
His secret works, however, suggest that he was not only familiar with Gnosticism but also with pre-Christian Jewish Esotericism (ie the Kabbalah). Clemens criticizes the Orphics and their Dionysian rituals as 'pagan superstition,' a stance that may be influenced by his pagan background. He also substitutes the Song of Orpheus for the Logos of Christ. Notably, Clement appears to overlook the Orphic/Pythagorean influence on the Greek philosophies he studied, including those within Plato’s works, whom he praises as a philosopher with insights into certain truths. Clement was also responsible for taking the concept of gnosis and rebranding it so it was more palatable to Christian theology, an idea which would eventually become the forerunner to Monasticism after his death.
In the Gospel of John, the Logos signifies an almost identical representation of the Brahman (God) made manifest within the Atman (Jesus):
"In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
This passage is often interpreted as identifying Jesus Christ as the Word or “Logos” who was both with God and divine in nature. The Logos is described as the agent through whom all things were created, and it became incarnate in Jesus Christ – very similar to the Kabbalistic idea that Adam Ha Rishon was the embodiment of the Ain Soph Aur within the body of man, which we linked to the Atman-Brahman and the Orphics/ Pythagoreans/ Kabbalists, except now found exclusively within only one man, instead of all men and women alike. We can now see that the Christian tradition borrowed a then 1000 + year old concept and distorted it’s meaning so that the Atman could be found only within one man – Jesus Christ – rather than within all men and women as was first stated in the Upanishads. Unfortunately the Christian tradition missed the warning that ultimate reality, the realm of god, could not be experienced by reliance on “the body within the illusion”, and worship was given to the body of Jesus as savior, rather than his soul component, as found within the above three ideologies. For someone such as Clemen, who was very apparently well versed in Platonist and Pythagorean philosophy, I find it rather extraordinary that he seemingly overlooked this integral part of their works.
Coincidentally, the teachings of the Gnostics very much do place emphasis on this aspect of Christ, and again follow the mentality of the material world being an illusion of a higher divine world which is the real creation of God. This is hinted at in the works of the philosophers such as Plato and Pythagoras whose works Clement was apparently an expert on.
Further, the Gospel of John – which reached its final form around the start of the 2nd century CE – cannot be definitively traced to being a work by John the Apostle, the idea of which has been refuted by most scholars on the grounds that they could not see a simple fisherman devising it’s sophisticated theology or writing it to the intellectual standard of Greek it is in. The authorship of the Gospel of John is attributed to an anonymous disciple described as 'whom Jesus loved.' The earliest explicit association of the Gospel with John the Apostle is credited to Irenaeus, creating a point of contention between his assertion and that of Valentinus regarding the authenticity of Jesus' teachings."
"The Sethian Gnostics offer an additional perspective, claiming to inherit knowledge through a direct familial lineage traced back to the third son of Adam and Eve, Seth.
The Apocryphon of John is a Sethian text found within the Nag Hammardi purportedly written by John the Apostle himself after Jesus visited him personally after the Messiah had “gone back to the place in which he had come”, which, if true, does away with the need for Iranaeus’s (and the other bishops, who could not escape the influence of the political factions of the time) and Valentinus’ hand me down hearsay. Unfortunately for Irenaeus, the cosmology found within the Apocryphon of John not only aligns more with Valentinus claims than his, it also is backed by concepts originating more than 1000 years beforehand in the literature of the Upanishads, as we have seen in earlier chapters.
The Gospel of John can therefore be considered in the Gnostic context as not placing Jesus upon the pedestal of being a savior, but rather as a teacher of knowledge which, when practiced could potentially lead to a revelation of spiritual mysteries (gnosis) and the realization of god; to put it succinctly the Gnostics were more concerned with directly experiencing the divine rather than a simple vicarious understanding gleaned through the reading of its apparent scripture.
If we look at some of the concepts found within Valentinian Gnosticism, again, we can draw comparison with the Advaita Vedanta – which links “salvation” with withdrawal from the identity of the material body (ego) and the mind it influences – and their idea of the hylics who exhibited the lowest of the three forms of consciousness, unable to be “saved” due to their fixation on the material world (kenoma) which renders them incapable of ever receiving gnosis, and thus ever knowing god. We can again equate this with the concept of the letter A within the Sanskrit word AUM(Silence).
Applying what we learnt about the Advaita Vedanta, we can once again state that lucid dreaming is the method by which to experience self without body and move our consciousness to the secondary psychic, “partially initiated” state (U), and then on to the pneuma-tic, “fully initiated” and “spiritual state” (M) in which Ousia (Silence) – the essence of god – is finally realized.
Of course, the church fathers like Irenaeus and Clement flat out rejected the dualistic component that suggested the material world as being inherently evil, and provided an account of it being good based on passages found within the book of Genesis.
The book of Genesis, as we know, was influenced by Mesopotamian creation and flood myths, notably those found within the Babylonian Enuma Elish, the Sumerian Eridu Genesis and Epic of Gilgamesh and the Akkadian Atrahasis.
Being the oldest of the texts (18th Century BCE), The Enuma Elish gives an account of man’s creation from the clay of the earth with the blood of a slain god, whilst the Eridu Genesis delves into the story of a flood, in which the hero Atrahasis – who the later book is named after – is instructed by the god Ea to build an ark to escape the impending deluge and save various animals as well as his family. The flood in this story is caused by the gods after they become disturbed at the commotion of humanity’s overpopulation, in an effort to wipe them out – a theme that was later expanded upon in Atrahasis. Enuma Elish combines both the flood and creation narratives which would ultimately go on to find their way into the book of Genesis, in an almost identical manner. The Epic of Gilgamesh is evidentially the Sumerian version of the same story, which omits details of the creation part of the narrative.
In Enuma Elish, we are told that the creation of the material world comes from a battle between one of the primordial gods of unorganised chaos, Tiamat, and its offspring, Marduk, where the victor creates the world from the body of the defeated.
Tiamat and Apsu, the first deities of chaos, birth the younger generation of gods to help them with the feat of creation, of which Marduk – a god of Babylon – is a part of. Apsu sets about destroying this younger generation of gods after they make too much noise during their labor of creating the material world.
Enki – known as the same Ea in Eridu Genesis in Babylonia – learns of Apsu’s plan and decides to kill him while he sleeps. An enraged Tiamat, who seeks revenge for Apsu’s death, births ugly beings to make an army. She appoints Kingu as their leader which she sets upon the lesser gods, whilst the lesser gods choose Marduk as theirs. Marduk agrees on the condition he will be elevated to the supreme authority of the gods should he win. After defeating Kingu, Marduk faces Tiamet and wins by driving a spear through her heart, then he creates the cosmos using her dismembered body, and humans from the blood of the ugly being, Kingu who, thenceforth, are declared as “slaves to the gods”, specifically to relieve them from their labors of creation. Marduk then takes his place as the false authority of the heavenly realm.
Atrahasis can be considered as giving a very similar account of gods creating humans to do their bidding, in which a flood is sent after they make too much noise, with the Babylonian Pantheon substituted for those of Sumerian/Akkadian syncretized heritage. It should be noted that in Atrahesis the method of human creation is attributed to Nintu/ Ninhursag who adds the blood of the slain god Geshtu to the clay of the earth to create the first seven male and first seven female human beings.
We can begin see here elements that align more so with the Orphic ideologies surrounding Dionysis’s dismemberment, as well the Mahabharata’s tale of the Asuras creating the illusory world both to keep humans in bondage to them, than they do with Irenaeus’ account of material reality being a happy place for humans.
One could even go so far as to suggest that these original myths contain an account similar to Lucifer’s rebellion against god that evolved from that found within the Book of Issaiah.
If we take a look at the Apocryphon of John, one of the main texts found within the Nag Hammardi that had a driving influence on most branches of Gnosticism, we find somewhat of an Orphic interpretation of the above mentioned Ancient Mesopotamian myths.
Purported to be a direct account by John the Apostle of a meeting between him and a divine entity from the heavenly realms described as under the influence of a higher state of consciousness that allows access to the spiritual reality beyond the material world, the Apocryphon of John suggests that the material universe is in fact a bad copy of the original, created by an evil and illegitimate creation of the divine Monad,
Yaltabaoth/Yaldabaoth/Ialdabaoth. After conceiving Yaltabaoth without the Monad’s blessing – and thus creating a grotesque child with no original soul essence of the divine creator itself – Sophia hides her bastard child away where it will not be found by the Monad or other Aeons (emanations of the Monad).
Because he was hidden from the upper world of the creator, and the upper world was in turn hidden from him, Yaltabaoth develops an egotistical viewpoint that he is the supreme creator of the universe. Through his own arrogance, he creates a whole host of others like unto himself, and deficient of the divine spiritual component of the Monad, which come to comprise the first Archons or Demonic “entities”. He then creates a “dim” world that is “neither light nor dark”, for them to inhabit and declares himself the sole and jealous god of this realm.
After repenting for creating Yaltabaoth without the blessing of the Monad, Sophia is assisted by its spirit and the other Aeons in retrieving the stolen light that is in Yaltabaoth. He, along with the other Archons hear the voice of the Monad, whose echo leaves an imprint on the boundaries between the upper and lower worlds. Seeing this power, Yaltabaoth and the other Archons decide to try and copy it, leading to the creation of Adam, the first human man. Sophia and the other Aeons then trick Yaltbaoth into blowing the stolen light of the Monad into the newly created vessel. As a result, Yaltabaoth becomes emptied of this creative light.
Enraged, Yaltabaoth tries destroying Adam. When this fails, he decides to try and neutralize him by confining him in yet another false world; the Garden of Eden. The archons give Adam access to the Tree of Life, but cut him off from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Christ reveals that it was actually him that bid Adam to eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, and that Eve was an agent of the Monad sent when Yaldabaoth tried to draw the light back out of Adam, which results in the creation of the female body. Yaltabaoth then initiates human reproduction as a means to try and regain control of the light of the Monad. It is here, the question should be asked of why Clemens decided the Orphic ideologies were Pagan superstition, when their account again aligns more correctly with that found within Enuma Elish as this oversight presents a major contradiction with the Christian theology. Why? Because Plato’s Timeaus once again gives an account of the flood myth in a similar semblance to how it is found within Enuma Elish, this time replacing Apsu/Tiamat/Enlil with Zeus, Enki/Ea with Prometheus, and Atrahasis/Utnapishtim/Ziusudra with Deucalion. This is an obvious hand me down account of the flood found within the Myth of the Ages of Man in Hesiod’s Works and Days, of which some scholars believe holds Orphic influence in that its first 10 verses are seemingly taking from Orphic hymms about Zeus. In it we find the same account of Zeus flooding the world, and Prometheus warning Deucalion to prepare for the flood by building an ark signifying the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Heroic Age. Hesiod (750 – 650BCE) is considered one of the earliest poets to describe the pantheon of the Greek Gods in his Theogony. In both Theogony and Works and Days, he also gives an account of Prometheus fashioning man from clay, before Athena breathes life into him, in which the duty of man becomes “to provide labour to the gods”. It is with Hesiod we can see the Myths from Mesopotamia surviving fairly decently in tact given the twelve or so hundred year gap between them. The Sethian branch of the Gnostics give a direct connection with Noah being Deucalion in their Apocalypse of Adam, found within codex 5 of the Nag Hammardi: “God will rest from his wrath. And he will cast his power upon the waters, and he will give power to his sons and their wives by means of the ark along with the animals, whichever he pleased, and the birds of heaven, which he called and released upon the earth. And God will say to Noah - whom the generations will call 'Deucalion' - "Behold, I have protected <you> in the ark along with your wife and your sons and their wives and their animals and the birds of heaven, which you called and released upon the earth. Therefore I will give the earth to you - you and your sons. In kingly fashion you will rule over it - you and your sons. And no seed will come from you of the men who will not stand in my presence in another glory."” Interestingly, we can find yet another account of a flood in an almost exactly described way to Eridu Genesis within the Shatapatha Brahmana Vedas (8th to 6th Century BCE) of the Upanishads. Shatapatha Brahmana should sound familiar, as they were referenced in our earlier chapter on Orphism: they not only give descriptions of sacrificial rituals and a continuation of Babylonian astronomy, but also provide scientific knowledge of geometry, such as the calculations of pi, the shape of the world as a sphere (which the Greek philosophers later expounded upon), and the root of the Pythagorean theorem, which is used to build certain altars. In the Shatapatha Brahmana, Manu – first man – is warned about the flood by a fish, thought to be an incarnation of either Vishnu, as relayed in the Puranas or Brahman in the Mahabarata. Manu then builds an ark, and becomes the sole survivor of the flood after it comes to rest on a mountain top. After pouring butter and sour milk into the waters as a ritual of sacrifice, a woman is born from them deemed as the “daughter of Manu”. Together the two embark on a mission to repopulate earth with a “new” human race. But the Mesopotamian influence of the Orphics does not stop there. We can once again find a striking resemblance of Dionysis’ descent into the underworld to be with his bride to that of the Sumerian tale of Inanna – known as Ishtar to the Babylonians, Akkadians and Assyrians – and her descent into the underworld to be with her husband, Dumuzid. The hymm which gives this tale, “Inanna’s Exaltation” or “Descent of Inanna into the Netherworld”, was written by the High Priestess Enheduanna (2285–2250 BCE) who played a crucial role in the religious practices of her time, and whose writings provide insights into the spiritual and cultural life of ancient Sumer. Enheduanna – being one of the oldest known named authors in recorded history – also gives an account of Inanna “causing a devastating flood” – in another poem she wrote called “The Great Hearted Mistress” aka “Hymm to Inanna”. Inanna – known as the goddess of love, war and fertility to the ancient Sumerians – later became synonymous with Aphrodite in the Greek pantheon; together they were associated by both cultures with the planet Venus, with modern scholars suggesting Inanna as a reference to that planet’s astrological movement through space. It is important to note here that the Sumerians understood Venus to be the literal “morning star”. The comparison of Inanna’s journey into the underworld, and her subsequent return as well as her title as the morning star, is therefore comparable with Christ – who also calls himself the morning star in the book of Revelations – and his resurrection. We can find even more apparent evidence of Platonic Philosophy being a hand me down of Vedic concepts through the Pythagoreans: during her descent into the underworld, Inanna must pass through seven gates in which her divinity is stripped from her piece by piece, providing yet another bridge with the 7 planetery regions of the Vedic underworld, Patala. The gates are as follows: Gate of Authority: Inanna removes her crown.
Gate of Enlil: She removes her lapis lazuli necklace.
Gate of Anu: Inanna removes her double-strand breastplate.
Gate of Ninhursag: She removes her gold bracelets.
Gate of Enki: Inanna removes her gold ring.
Gate of Sin: She removes her ankle bracelets.
Gate of Nanna (the Moon): Inanna removes the royal robe, leaving her naked and powerless.
Further scrutinizing the Apocryphon of John not only gives us the Gnostic equivalent of the 7 heavens of the Ogdoad (which can once again be compared with the 7 heavens found within the Lurianic Kabbalah that describe the stages of the Ain Soph Aur’s manifestation before it reaches the first Sephiroth, Kether), but also the alchemical linkage of these heavens with specific planetary bodies and metals in a similar fashion to Plato’s Timeaus, if only with a rearrangement of their order.
The Marcosians were an offshoot of the Valentinians responsible for the adaptation of Pythagorean number theory to this system of Gnosticism, resulting in a similar concept to Gematria. Whilst this theory of letters is too complex to delve into in this work, it gives an account of the 7 heavens being birthed through the harmonic vibration of letters within a doxological setting. It is with this same theory of letters we find a thorough explanation of the “creative” potentiality of the word Amen, as well as evidence both Iraneaus and Clement borrowed Marcosian concepts of the number 6 whilst branding them as heretics in the same breath. We also find a rudimentary mention of the directions of the cube of space.
Getting back to the 7 heavens, each heaven was considered by the Gnostics as being under the rule of a particular Archon, which we can now – with a little bit of inspiration – draw comparison with the 7 pairs of the first male and female humans (gatekeepers) mentioned in Atrahasis. The goal of these particular Gnostic sects is the ascension of the soul component of consciousness through these gates, of which their Archon gatekeeper is vanquished to the ultimate reaching of the Pleroma – beyond the 7 heavens –, where an interaction with the divine source of said soul component, the Monad, is said to take place (again similar to the Kabbalistic goal of recombination with the Ain Soph Aur).
Certainly, as we have seen, the Gnostic idea of man’s creation is a more universally shared concept unlike the Christian theology which is somewhat severed from the ancient creation stories it borrowed heavily from and relies on a great deal of faith and trust that the word of the disciples of the Apostles was correct, not to mention an expectation of ignorance when it comes to tracing the roots of its ideological makeup. One could even argue a degree of naivety in suggesting that man hadn’t known god prior to the existence of Jesus, which seems somewhat contradictory considering we were supposedly created by “him”.
On the surface, Clemens changing the concepts of Logos and Gnosis to better suit Christian theology seems quite harmless, but in reality it represents a major disconnection of Greek Philosophy from its Eastern counterpart and introduces major contradictions when it comes to painting the Gnostic beliefs as apparent heresy. Furthermore, it shows that Clemens was not properly qualified to be providing an integration of Greek Philosophy within Christian Theology. As Clement was one of the first and main influences of the Christian Doctrine, one could even argue that that entire theology was built upon flawed foundations.
The reason for this is evident when we come to understand Plato’s idea of Gnosis in the context of his theory of forms and ideas, which, to put it succinctly, was more concerned with understanding true reality than it was for understanding god through faith. Indeed, Plato’s concepts more closely align with those found within most Gnostic sects which provide a dualistic view of reality and liberation from the flawed material world through a focus on transcendent knowledge.
One could argue Clement’s idea of Gnosis is too far removed from Plato’s idea for it to be taken seriously. Certainly, it introduces an obvious level of discrepancy on the part of Clemens and his concepts when calling the Gnostics “heretics”.
Taking into account the Gnostic claim of a more correct knowledge of the cosmos being given to them by Jesus, the Mesopotamian creation myths once again find more similarity with a false god proclaiming rule over the heavens, and a somewhat evil or less divine material realm, than it does with a benevolent god who purposefully created the material realm for humans to enjoy, as was vigorously promoted by the likes of Ireneaus, Clement and their contemporaries.
The Orphics clear connection to these myths via the Shatapatha Brahmana, not to mention their proximity to Hesiod – both chronologically and geographically – , and their incorporation of them within the context of their beliefs in reincarnation – which are synonymous with the reincarnation beliefs of the Gnostics – provide evidence that the Gnostics were at least “more correct” in so far as the original stories of creation are concerned, regardless of whether or not their claims to Jesus' lineage are accurate or not.
But we don’t need to rely on concepts over 2000 years old to make a logical assumption about who is more correct, for we are participants in the very material world that became such an issue of debate. We can look directly at this world that we are part of and ask a simple question: which of the ideologies of the two more accurately describes our existence; those of the Gnostics or those of the Christians promoted by the church fathers like Ireneaus and Clement?
Can we honestly state that our world, seemingly ruled by money and the perpetual pursuit of capitalistic gain – which, in our society, takes precedence over human life, and has taken on a self perpetuating form – fits into the framework of something holy and divine? Or does the idea of humans collectively being a corporal slave to the banking gods – who have convinced them a few pieces of paper are more important than their vessels that house the creative sparks of god – more appropriately describe the concepts relayed within the oldest creation stories and those that that made their way into the minds of the Gnostics?
Of course the rich man can just say he is blessed by god, and that the poor are in that situation because of a lack of faith, completely ignoring the fact his hoarding of wealth is the very epitome of the argument presented by the Gnostics, and Greek Philosophers alike - that he is a hylic as given by the Valentinians. I once again ask the question can he who turns a blind eye to those stricken by poverty all to increase the amount of worthless paper he owns really be considered as one who embodies the principles of Christ or even God?
The idea that humans were created by God specifically to spend our lives perpetually chasing bits of paper and binary numbers seems like an awful waste of the resources of creationism in my opinion, and something of a slap in the face to the genius of such a creator, assuming one does truly exist. At least Gnosticism, and it predecessor ideologies seem to provide a perfect means of reconciliation and redemption to god (the Monad, not Yaldabaoth) for such a life.
These unconventional interpretations of Jesus' teachings are often overlooked by those who advocate for his message. Individuals like us – dare I say Gnostics, as I do not consider myself as one – who assert firsthand encounters supporting the Gnostic perspective and challenge the notion that the universe operates under a 'divine and benevolent' plan, frequently face exclusion from supposed authorities on the matter. These experts seem unwilling to acknowledge that genuine experiences with the divine can occur outside the confines of their established theology—a system I've demonstrated above to be riddled with inconsistencies. This resistance isn't just confined to the Christian community but also extends to those claiming expertise in reincarnation. Consequently, presenting the aforementioned argument becomes essential to dispel the damaging stigma associated with occult knowledge, which simply aims to understand the soul’s place within the cosmos, distancing such knowledge from the unfounded association with allegiance to the devil and satanic practice. This provides a reasoned justification for recognizing the occultist’s experiences as valid understandings that integrate the complex nature of the soul with the earliest concepts of creation.
I advocate for a comprehensive understanding, preferring to analyze the entire narrative rather than selectively focusing on more comfortable fragments. When discussing the purported teachings of Jesus, it is essential to scrutinize the entirety of his apparent lessons, rather than limiting our exploration to aspects that offer a convenient cosmogonic perspective, in my opinion.
My direct experiences with the divine and the revelations regarding the meaning behind human creation resonate more with Gnostic cosmogony than with Christian Theology. In line with this viewpoint, the physical body was deliberately designed to keep mankind in an enduring state of spiritual infancy. This is orchestrated through a process of reincarnation, wherein the soul undergoes an unending cycle of rebirth within the material world, with the potential for liberation coming from the advancing and fortifying of consciousness during the dormant (sleeping) state.
Based on the above, I will assert boldly that while Christian Theology may offer insights into Christ, it is Gnostic Cosmogony - more correctly the original soul theory of Alchemy - that provides a deeper understanding of God.
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