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Proposal: 12 Pillars of Traditional Gnosis
Dec. 1st, 2018 11:27 amOk I just made this list up based on text I modified just a bit from that list of copypasta in an earlier post:
1. Traditional Gnostic teachings posits an original spiritual unity that came to be split into a plurality. This doctrine can be conceptualized as either Monism or Panentheism.
2. As a result of this pre-cosmic division the mainifest universe was created. The lower layers of existence, which would include the material universe, were created by beings possessing inferior spiritual powers to that of the Godhead and His highest emanations. These lesser spiritual beings resemble entities like the Old Testament Jehovah, and many of the deities of ancient pagan religions.
3. A female emanation of God was involved in the cosmic creation (albeit in a much more positive role than the leader).
4. In the cosmos, space and time is imagined as having either a malevolent or constrictive character and may be personified as demonic beings (or simply, capricious forces of nature) separating man from God.
5. For man, the material and psychic universe is a vast prison. He is enslaved both by the physical laws of nature and by such moral laws as the Mosaic code and other legalistic religious doctrines and creeds that were created by very fallible, flawed and corrupted men.
6. Humankind may be personified as Adam (or Anthropos), who lies in the deep sleep of ignorance, his powers of spiritual self-awareness stupefied by materiality.
7. Within the soul of each human of this physical world is an "inner man," a fallen spark of the divine substance. Since this exists in each person, we have the possibility of awakening from our stupefaction; a human soul requires many lifetimes (death/rebirth cycles) of cumulative experience on the material plane to reach the point where an awakening is possible.
8. What ultimately ignites the awakening is not obedience, faith, or good works, but knowledge of the divine. However, to attain knowledge of the divine, a seeker must cultivate for himself higher states of consciousness and attaining these higher states requires achievements possessed of spiritual discipline like: good works, temperance of lifestyle, virtuous conduct, and an all-around excellence of character.
9. Before the awakening, humans undergo troubled dreams, undergo a series of spiritual trials and tribulations, or have a crisis of conscience of some form or another.
10. Man does not attain the knowledge that awakens him from these dreams by cognition (intellectual reasoning and speculation) but through revelatory experience, and this knowledge is not information but a modification of the sensate being.
11. The awakening (i.e., the salvation) of any individual is a cosmic event; upon attaining salvation, the the individual is liberated from the cycle of deaths and rebirths on the material plane; this cycle can be symbolized as either the Wheel of Fate or the Ouroboros, i.e. the serpent who eats his own tail.
12. Since the effort is to restore the wholeness and unity of the Godhead, active rejection of fallible, man-made moral law codes asserted by the powers of this world as bring “inerrant divine revelation” is enjoined upon every man of good conscience.
1. Traditional Gnostic teachings posits an original spiritual unity that came to be split into a plurality. This doctrine can be conceptualized as either Monism or Panentheism.
2. As a result of this pre-cosmic division the mainifest universe was created. The lower layers of existence, which would include the material universe, were created by beings possessing inferior spiritual powers to that of the Godhead and His highest emanations. These lesser spiritual beings resemble entities like the Old Testament Jehovah, and many of the deities of ancient pagan religions.
3. A female emanation of God was involved in the cosmic creation (albeit in a much more positive role than the leader).
4. In the cosmos, space and time is imagined as having either a malevolent or constrictive character and may be personified as demonic beings (or simply, capricious forces of nature) separating man from God.
5. For man, the material and psychic universe is a vast prison. He is enslaved both by the physical laws of nature and by such moral laws as the Mosaic code and other legalistic religious doctrines and creeds that were created by very fallible, flawed and corrupted men.
6. Humankind may be personified as Adam (or Anthropos), who lies in the deep sleep of ignorance, his powers of spiritual self-awareness stupefied by materiality.
7. Within the soul of each human of this physical world is an "inner man," a fallen spark of the divine substance. Since this exists in each person, we have the possibility of awakening from our stupefaction; a human soul requires many lifetimes (death/rebirth cycles) of cumulative experience on the material plane to reach the point where an awakening is possible.
8. What ultimately ignites the awakening is not obedience, faith, or good works, but knowledge of the divine. However, to attain knowledge of the divine, a seeker must cultivate for himself higher states of consciousness and attaining these higher states requires achievements possessed of spiritual discipline like: good works, temperance of lifestyle, virtuous conduct, and an all-around excellence of character.
9. Before the awakening, humans undergo troubled dreams, undergo a series of spiritual trials and tribulations, or have a crisis of conscience of some form or another.
10. Man does not attain the knowledge that awakens him from these dreams by cognition (intellectual reasoning and speculation) but through revelatory experience, and this knowledge is not information but a modification of the sensate being.
11. The awakening (i.e., the salvation) of any individual is a cosmic event; upon attaining salvation, the the individual is liberated from the cycle of deaths and rebirths on the material plane; this cycle can be symbolized as either the Wheel of Fate or the Ouroboros, i.e. the serpent who eats his own tail.
12. Since the effort is to restore the wholeness and unity of the Godhead, active rejection of fallible, man-made moral law codes asserted by the powers of this world as bring “inerrant divine revelation” is enjoined upon every man of good conscience.
