Harold Bloom on Gnosticism

The following an a brief excerpt from Harold Bloom's Nov. 1979 Washington Post review of The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels:

During the first two centuries of Christianity, the new religion sustained a constant challenge by the Gnostic movement. This movement was regarded by all Christian authorities as an initial heresy within Christianity itself, but such a view of Gnosticism is clearly inadequate. Gnosticism from its origins constituted a rival religion to both Judaism and Christianity. There were indeed Jewish Gnostics, and a bewildering array of Christian Gnostic sects, but there were also pagan Gnostics. Gnosticism was both a tendency within other religions, and an eclectic but authentic religion in itself.

...Knowing is the essence of Gnosticism, whose name derives from the Greek word, gnosis , signifying knowledge in an experiential and intuitive sense. The Gnostic is a person who knows that what is oldest and most authentic in him is neither his body nor his soul, but rather is an inmost self, the pneuma or "breath" which is also a "spark" of the fire of an alien, true God, alien both to this cosmos, and to the human body and soul alike. Through no fault of his own the Gnostic finds himself solitary in a cosmic dungeon, our galaxy, cut off from salvation by the true God who has not made this world, has not made man's soul, has not even made the pneuma or man's true self, because that is co-eternal with Him.

The central dilemma of Gnosticism is that it remains a religion of salvation, dependent upon knowing rather than believing, while insisting that salvation is wholly acosmic and atemporal.

Pragmatically, Gnosticism is an elitist religion of despair, because it holds out no hope for the natural woman or man, but only an ultimate hope for the "spark" we continue to carry.

The central shock of Gnosticism comes from its aggressive side, turned strongly against normative Judaism and orthodox Christianity: The evil or at least foolish Demiurge or wrong-headed god who made the world, our bodies and even our psyches or souls, is no less than Jevoah Elohim, the creative God of the book of Genesis.

Credit should go to a user on the "Gnostic" subreddit for digging up this quote.

3 Domains of the Human Condition

I compiled this basic re-iteration of the "Threefold Social Order" model from various notes and tidbits I've collected over a long period of time. This model is reminiscent of Rudolf Steiner's Social Threefolding. Here is the basic outline with some brief explanations:

1. Cultural Sphere/Domain (Religion + Ideology)
2. Political Sphere/Domain (State + Military)
3. Economic Sphere/Domain (Trade + Business)

The extreme forms of each, when one particular branch gains disproportionate power over the entire social organism:

1. Theocracy (Priests/Clerics have most of the power)
2. Dictatorship (Military rulers or civil bureaucrats have most of the power)
3. Plutocratic Oligarchy (Business owners and merchants have most of the power)

The basic idea is that for a healthy social order to persist, there needs to be a balance of power between these three spheres/domains. When one of these domains becomes too powerful, it begins to dominate the other domains and eventually the others become subordinate to the dominant domain. The most clear example of this in the current era here in the West is the economic sphere almost totally dominating both the cultural and political spheres. With economic dominance, multi-billionaire capitalists, oligarchs and robber barons effectively control the institutions associated with the other two spheres. Here in the US, mega-corporate lobbyists representing the Oligarchs bribe politicians and make them pawns of the economic elite. Likewise, the oligarchs buy up the cultural institutions and force them to peddle cultural propaganda that serves their interests. In other words, there's clearly a huge balance with our current system. Only a system of independent cultural institutions and fully-sovereign political actors will bring back any semblance of balance to the overall order.

America's founding fathers we're quite right to utilize a "three branches of government" schema to formulate the US government. However, outside of the political domain, the best minds might want to conceptualize society as a whole having a threefold structure.