Caustic Ramblings

Remark from Reddit: "I can’t remember which church schism it was, but it related to the thought that the Old Testament God is not the same God of the New Testament."

My response:

There were actually a good number of early churches which did not recognize the Jewish/OT god as the True God. And they each devised slightly different myths to explain why the OT god is flawed, inferior or even evil. This division actually started before Christianity came to be. The Sethians, who likely predated the first Christian sects by at least a century, started off as a group of disaffected Jewish mystics living in Alexandria who much preferred Platonic teachings. The Sethians simply flipped the script and declared the OT god to be the devil. (Many subsequent Gnostic groups would follow suit) And then during the 1st century CE there was Philo of Alexandria. Though he remained a pious Jew throughout his life, he devises and hammered out an esotericized Jewish theology that was essentially Platonic in character. While Philo's work didn't make a lasting effect on the Judaism of his time period (though it may have influenced Kabbalah centuries later), it essentially was a blueprint for what would become the core Christian theology. For example, the allegory of the Word/Logos becoming flesh was one of Philo's innovations, among several others.

The standard Christian canon is an unresolved and rather schizophrenic attempt at reconciling an all-good Platonic godhead with a rich and voluminous Hebrew scriptural base plagued by a very flawed god; the church fathers eagerly utilized the Jewish canon as an easy means to bolster their claim that Jesus Christ was prohphecized centuries before his coming, and thus convince lots of simple-minded people to join their cult. The very blatant incongruity between these two clashing god concepts was haphazardly paved over by the church and thus never explained in anything resembling a coherent or logical manner. And thus all the violent mob attacks, book burnings, witch hunts, heresy hunts, ect. when any sane mind dared to point out this gaping wound in the entire edifice.

On belief and practice:

1. Traditional Gnostic schools of thought posit an original spiritual unity that came to be split into a plurality, through a series of emanations. This doctrine can be conceptualized as either Monism or Panentheism.

2. As a result of this pre-cosmic division, the manifest 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. Some historical Gnostic doctrines speak of these lesser spiritual beings resembling entities like Jehovah of the Hebrew scriptural canon (The Christian Old Testament), and many of the anthropomorphic deities found in most ancient polytheistic religions. Other doctrines speak of a benign or neutral Demiurge (Artificer) being/spirit (or series of artificer beings) who created the material universe.

3. Differing Gnostic teachings and myths feature both male and female emanations of God (often referred to as either Aeons or Archangels) who were involved in the cosmic creation. Some Gnostic myths organize these emanations into a hierarchy of male-female pairs, somewhat reminiscent of the ancient Egyptian religion.

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. In other doctrines, the domains contained within space and time are a part of an illusion or at least a rather distorted or degraded version of the higher realms.

5. For humankind, the material universe is either vast prison or an illusion that ensnares souls. Human beings are enslaved both by the physical laws of nature and by man-made moral laws that are based on worldly-material power dictates (like the Mosaic code, as an example) and other legalistic religious doctrines and creeds that were created by 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. And within the soul of each individual 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.

7. 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 the cessation of habits, behaviors and activities that turn people down toward the material plane and thus away from divinity. Gnosis-seekers must work hard to purify their souls and attain a state of temperate, benevolent and disciplined conduct. This is accomplished through leading life of performing good works, avoiding destructive lifestyles, engaging in virtuous conduct, and striving to attain an all-around excellence of character.

8. Before the awakening, individual humans often undergo some sort of psychological crisis event; things like: troubled dreams, trials and tribulations in their daily life, loss of a loved one, having a crisis of conscience of some form or another, ect.

9. Man does not attain the knowledge that awakens him from these dreams by cognition (intellectual reasoning and speculation) but through direct revelatory experience, and this knowledge is not conveyable information but a modification of the sensate being.

10. 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/Karma, or the Ouroboros, i.e. the serpent who eats its own tail.

On Ethics and Modernity:

11. The heartfelt rejection of fallible, man-made moral law codes and ossified religious doctrines asserted by the powers of this world as bring “inerrant divine revelation” is enjoined upon every person of good conscience. Gnosis-seekers must reject the authority of religious dogmas that have been shaped by the dictates of money and politics.

12. Having said that, a Traditional Gnostic is reverent toward time-honored teachings and practices and is thus quite diligent and discerning when it comes to determining which teachings are legitimate and which are fanciful, misleading, incomplete and conceived in error. The Traditional Gnostic must be able to identify and reject false teachers.

13. The Traditional Gnostic must be especially skeptical toward any spiritual, metaphysical or religious ideas that have emerged in the modern era, that is: within the last 500 years of Western cultural development. Most modern doctrines on ethics and the human condition are tainted by the corrupting influences of materialism, hedonism, consumer culture, money, dependence on technological conveniences, erroneous ideas about “progress” occurring in a perfectly linear and material manner, and of course the literalist approach to interpreting ancient religious scriptures.

14. The most recent modern ethical doctrines tend to: overwhelmingly emphasize rights (legally sanctioned protections and entitlements) over duties, assert material pleasure as being the highest good, and encourage the pitting of the sexes and racial/ethnic and subcultural lifestyle groups against one another in the name of things like “progress” and “social justice,” thus dividing and destabilizing communities and nations. Very little emphasis is placed on the individual's collaborative role within their family and community, and their obligations and responsibilities toward their social surroundings in general. The Traditional Gnostic must be able to balance their state-granted rights as an individual with their responsibilities to society.

15. Modern ethical doctrines tend to tie their concept of “progress” directly to the advancement of material science and technology, with almost no attention given to spiritual goals and perspectives on the matter. This set of assumptions tends to imply an eventual material-utopian “end of history” event whereby humanity will be “saved” by some sort of technological singularity. In contrast, the Traditional Gnostic must be able to differentiate spiritual progress from the advancement of material knowledge and innovation, and recognize that technology is merely a tool (which can be used to bring about both good and bad outcomes), and not an end in itself. First and foremost, the Traditional Gnostic must prioritize a spiritual worldview over a material one.

16. Many groups and people today claiming to be “Gnostic” actually prioritize these aforementioned modern ethical doctrines over genuine Traditional Gnostic teachings and a spiritual worldview in general, probably owing more to a lack of awareness on the matter, as opposed to a willing ideological orientation. As a result, they will cheery pick fragments of Gnostic teachings and shoehorn them into a modern or postmodernist worldview that is defined by many of the traits outlined above. The is tantamount to the material tail wagging the spiritual dog. To alleviate this cognitive dissonance, the Traditional Gnostic must be able to frame ancient Gnostic teachings within the proper historical context and resist the urge to confuse or conflate such teachings with modern ethical speculations.

17. The Traditional Gnostic must envision ethics as the means for individuals to improve themselves first and foremost, rather than being the act of forcing some set of lofty-sounding abstract ideals onto the world around them. The latter endeavor usually involves flawed people trying to “save the world” before first addressing their own character flaws and bad habits. The result of this is more often than not, a rather predictable drama whereby people project their own demons onto the world and end up doing more harm than good, despite originally having good intentions.

18. The Traditional Gnostic will be able to differentiate genuine Gnostic teachings from literal interpretations of Gnostic-themed myths which have the potential of promoting a cosmic victim mentality for human beings. In other words, when the constrictive and inconvenient aspects of manifested nature are excessively anthropomorphized, human beings may be seen as helpless victims of all-powerful supernatural comic book villain characters and thus things like adolescent-rebellious attitudes toward existence and world-denying escapism are encouraged. When in actuality, according to various Wisdom teachings, humans are more often than not the victims of their own vices and short-sighted worldly endeavors. In other words, the so-called “archons” are alive and well within our own psyches and we certainly have it within our power to battle them. In summary, the Traditional Gnostic will aspire to be a hero rather than a victim.

19. Having said that, people have often indeed been victims of circumstance and collective ignorance over the many many centuries of human history. Victims are ultimately people bereft of agency (willpower) and self-awareness and thus strewn about by chaotic forces. Thus, Gnostics must be ever compassionate and forgiving toward people in the grip of ignorance and flawed modes of living and conceptualizing the world. Of course this doesn't mean accepting their flawed worldviews, but rather recognizing the root causes of error and thus cultivating the awareness and ability required to isolate oneself from the corrupting influences of error.

20. And finally, the Traditional Gnostic must resist the urge to harbor hatred in their heart toward various historical forces, movements, ideologies and institutions which have oppressed, suppressed and mercilessly attacked Gnostic thinkers, visionaries, sects and movements throughout the last 2,000 years or so of history. The Gnostic may recognize that such oppressive and evil-spirited movements have been first and foremost political projects and not genuine religious or spiritual endeavors. The Traditional Gnostic must resit the urge to employ a boogeyman or scapegoat to pin all of humanity's problems onto. Understanding error does not mean the need to conjure up a storm of negative emotions. In the end, a negative mental or emotional state means a negative spiritual state. Such a state inhibits spiritual growth and makes liberation/salvation impossible until this antagonistic state is dissolved into the aether.

It goes without saying that Gnosis is not for the faint of heart (to put it lightly). And it's certainly not a path for extroverts or really anyone who requires a lot of interpersonal attention and social validation in their everyday bumblings. It's not the path for those who have the proverbial "ants in their pants" and are thus prone to constant action at the expense of contemplation and self-reflection. The so called "man of action" and the aspiring Gnostic will seldom see eye-to-eye on much of anything.

There's a very good reason why spiritual seekers throughout history often preferred to cloister themselves away from the general public. Asceticism has always been a logical defense against the temptations, corruptions and vulgarities of the mundane world. However this act of running away comes with a downside. The cloistered ascetic may become totally out of touch with the general society and thus become incapable of rendering any useful service to others. We see this enough with Ivory Tower intellectuals who fancy themselves as far above the common rabble and often assume to know what's best for them.

So there needs to be a happy and harmonious middle-ground. That is: shield myself from the malignant influences of daily life, but still engage in the surrounding social fabric, in a limited capacity. I shall, to the best of my abilities, only interact meaningfully with people of sound and temperate character. And when I am able to, offer help and assistance to those in need, granted this assistance does not devolve into over-personalized interactions. In other words, keep the walking wounded at arm's length. But first, do everything possible to not myself be one of the walking wounded.

The long and short of it: there's very few people out there who earnestly pursue spirituality the great mysteries. That is, people who embark on a spiritual path that is divorced from religious dogma. And for those who wish to undertake this journey, there are countless obstacles, pitfalls and distractions along the way. The many wayward paths usually lead to places like: conspiracy theory rabbit holes chock full of paranoid parallelomania; religious fanaticism and fundamentalism that rapidly falls upon immature persons who develop a false sense of certitude with regard to a specific doctrine or set of teachings; New Age nonsense and other forms of milquetoast modern pseudo-spirituality; and then of course the sort of crushing nihilism and hedonistic materialism that may result from too many fruitless searches.

It's all very lonely until you find the right friends. But when those friends do materialize, it's life's most ultimate adventure.

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.

We could easily say that the Least corruptible parts of religious traditions are the artistic aspects; that would be, visual art, music, poetry, and really any aspect that's difficult to concretize or render literal or legalistic. This is so because the corruptors of religion are usually the sort of people who possess very little in the way of artistic aptitudes. They are the personalities we would recognize today as lawyers, bean-counters, politicians, businessmen and establishment propagandists journalists; people who are quite gifted in the realm of quantity but are sorely lacking when it comes to understanding and appreciating the finer nuances of symbolism and metaphor (quality). And thus the literal-minded are unable to corrupt what they do not sufficiently understand. We see here the Pharisee archetype that Jesus so rightly lambasted at every opportunity.

So now we know that it's the literal and concrete aspects of religions that are the most easily-corruptable. Those particular aspects are the dogmas, doctrines and rules found within a given religious tradition. These things are always reflective of specific social context based on a particular time, place and cultural environment. And if its a big, institutional religion we're talking about, we have to take into account the worldly political agendas of the particular priesthood at the time a certain dogma or doctrine of theirs was solidified into a "final" written form. During a canonization phase, the lawyer-minded Pharisee priest is tempted to redact, reword, or omit the doctrinal elements he lacks the higher intuition to grasp; such is the murky stuff of mystics, seers, poets and sages; the type of people who don't need the priests in the first place. The Pharisee priests is most concerned with keeping his flock of simpletons in line and regularly offering tithes into the coffers of his religious body. High-minded mysticism and philosophy is of little use for telling the average person the do's and dont's of mundane, everyday living.

We could say that the genuine seeker can take the dogmas of his religion with a grain of salt, or at least interpret such things in the most allegorical or symbolic manner within his set of intellectual abilities. But this is not where his faith dies. There are all the aforementioned artistic elements embedded within the religion that are really sacred forms which have been passed down via much earlier traditions; the sacred products of the great sages and poets of yore. In this sense, even some of the most mainstream religions like Christianity contain those primordial pieces of Tradition the Perennialist thinkers love to talk about. The moral of the story here is that one's Tradition is much more than mere words written on paper. Focusing religiosity just on texts can be termed the idolatry of the written word. Specifically referring to Protestantism, we can use the term: Bibliolotry.



To continue with Christianity as an example, let's look at all the beautiful liturgies (music), the stunning works of visual art and architecture of the best Cathedrals, and all the other symbolism associated with the apostolic tradition. These are all works of higher intuition. We could say all these works together constitutes the real religion. Gnosis was never fully eradicated from the religion, just from overt, open practice. Gnosis never goes away, but it does go underground in times of trouble.

The good news is that Gnosis is safe and sound; it's locked up within all the arcane patterns and symbols which the petty-minded, earth-bound souls are unable to understand, much less penetrate and defile.

The 10 Powers of Purification, from the Corpus Hermeticum, Chapter VII:

1. Revelation of God defeats Ignorance.
2. Knowledge of Joy defeats Sorrow.
3. Power of Temperance defeats Intemperance.
4. Continence is the power over Concupiscence (Sensual Longing), and this continence is the foundation of Justice.
5. And this Justice derived from the above, defeats Injustice.
6. Communion is the virtue which defeats Covetousness.
7. Truth defeats Error, Deceit and Envy.

Special note: only 7 powers are directly listed in the text...I'll surely be looking for the other 3 ;) ...that Pythagorean decad must be completed.

The 12 Torments of Darkness (Vices):

1. Ignorance
2. Sorrow
3. Intemperance
4. Concupiscence
5. Injustice
6. Covetousness
7. Deceit
8. Envy
9. Fraud
10. Wrath
11. Rashness
12. Maliciousness

Ok 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.